museum-of-fine-arts-boston
“Taking a Line for a Walk: Alexander Calder & Paul Klee” and “An Imagined Dialogue: Alberto Giacometti & Mark Rothko” are touching reminders of the remarkable kindness inherent in making art – the desire to reach across time and space to offer something to another.
“The MFA is a place that really matters to a lot of people, and it is the safety of this place that matters and its commitment to excellence. These are things that must never be compromised.”
By juxtaposing different artistic approaches, the past with the present, Deep Waters offers a fresh way to consider what we humans have done to the ocean, to the creatures that depend on it, and to each other.
“Georgia O’Keeffe and Henry Moore” at the MFA builds a case for two artists that many are inclined to think of as “unlikely bedfellows.” Brava!
Is the artist’s direction of clothing choices — and how he painted the garments — a sufficiently compelling inquiry in which to anchor an exhibit?
It’s no wonder poets have been drawn to write about Guyer and Twombly’s work. We are carried away by an art that is always immediate, hic et nunc, but elsewhere too.
While impressive, Life Magazine and the Power of Photography disappoints.
While it’s too soon to call it timeless, the vitality in Philip Guston’s art has proved durable. But the structure around it – the “art world” in its blinkered, stultified form, institutional and academic in the worst senses of those words – has died and encased it.
The quilts serve as landmarks whose significance is evolving with shifting times and demographics. Where have we come from, they ask. Where are we going? The answers are no longer what they were.
I recommend this show for Lucian Freud’s highly polished craftsmanship, but his wry game of psychological hide-and-seek is not all that satisfying.
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