MoMA - Modern Art and Toulouse-Lautrec

I have always been a pencil.

~Henri Toulouse-Lautrec

(Note: This trip to NYC was in August!)

MoMA

Museum of Modern Art

On my last trip, I didn't make it to MoMA. This time it was at the top of my list. There is so much in the permanent collection to see (Van Gogh's Starry Night!) and on top of that, a show of Toulouse-Lautrec prints!

Sculptures by Franz West

Frida Kahlo
Fulang-Chang and I, 1937
Oil on Composition Board

Joan Miró
Hirondelle Amour, 1933-34

I try to apply colors like words

that shape poems,

like notes that shape music.

~Joan Miro

Miro (detail)

Joan Miró
Portrait of a Man in a Late-Nineteenth-
Century Frame, 1950
Oil on canvas with wood frame

Isn't that piece of Miro's amazing? People try this type of thing in photoshop ... and fail, frankly. This is not collage. It is all paint! (And a super cool frame!)

Preview of the Lautrec show at MoMA, and gives an explanation of the show.

Bust of Mlle. Marcelle Lender, 1895

Paris of Toulouse-Lautrec:

Prints and Posters

July 26, 2014-March 22, 2015

During the exhibition, you could hear Yvette Guilbert, over the speakers ...

Loved the music playing, and videos of dancers, of that time. It really put you in a wonderful mood, for the show!!

I have tried to do what is true
and not ideal.
~Toulouse-Lautrec

Au Moulin-Rouge: Un rude! Un vrai rude!

Lithograph, 1893

Jane Avril, 1893

Lithograph Sheet

A Gala Evening at the Moulin Roughe, 1893
Lithograph

This silent video of Can Can dancers played on a loop in the corner of the main exhibition room ...

I paint things as they are.
I don't comment. I record.
~Toulouse-Lautrec

May Belfort from Portraits of Actors and Actresses:
Thirteen Lithographs, 1898

A profesional model is like a stuffed owl.

These girls are alive.

~Toulouse-Lautrec

La Goulue Before the Court, 1899

Another by Yvette Guilbert!

La Goulue, 1894
Lithograph

In the Bois de Boulongne (Au Bois) 1897

I do not know if you bridle your pen,
but when my pencil moves, it is necessary 
to let it go,
or crash! ... nothing more.
~Toulouse Lautrec

In another corner of the room, this video played ...

Le Poney Philbert, 1898

Alexander Calder, American, 1898-1939
Lobster and Fish Tail 1939
Painted steel wire and sheet aluminum

There were these little cards outside the Lautrec exhibition, and they asked you to draw or describe your dream workspace. On mine, you see the little taboret on wheels I want, for my art supplies, and a huge window, looking out with a view of trees ...

My little lunch. Pretty tasty! And the view was lovely!

Terrace 5, The Carroll and Milton Petrie Café

Umberto Boccioni (Itlaian, 1882-1916)
Unique forms of Continuity in Space, 1913

Art seems to me 

to be a state of the soul

more than anything else.

~Marc Chagall

Marc Chagall
I and the Village, 1911

František Kupka
Mme Kupka among verticals, 1910-1911
(detail)

Art is a harmony parallel with nature.
~Paul Cezanne

Paul Cézanne

Pines and Rocks (Fontainebleau?) c. 1897

Cezanne (detail)

Cézanne
Still Life with Apples, 1895-98 (detail)

With an apple
I will astonish Paris.
~Paul Cezanne

Helen Mirren on Painting, at MoMa. (Psst ... her favorite is mine, Kandinsky.)

The Kandinsky's are in a different room now, with ... I think it's a Kirschner. Anyway ... here is the room. Heaven.

Panels #1-4 for Edwin R. Campbell

Wassily Kandinsky, 1866-1944

Panel number 1 is my favorite!

Zooming in ...  (This painting alone would make the whole flight worth it!)

Pablo Picasso
Woman Plaiting Her Hair, 1906

Picasso
Boy Leading a Horse, 1905-06

Mark Rothko
No. 3/No. 13 1949

Art is an adventure into an unknown world,

which can be explored only by 

those willing to take risks.

~Mark Rothko

Love ... like energy, no?

Slow Swirl at the Edge of the Sea, 1944
Mark Rothko

from the MoMA website
"Slow Swirl at the Edge of the Sea pictures two creatures dancing between sea and sky, surrounded by arabesques, spirals, and stripes. The forms “have no direct association with any particular visible experience, but in them one recognizes the principle and passion of organisms,” Rothko said. For him art was “an adventure into an unknown world”; like the Surrealists before him, Rothko looked inward, to his own unconscious mind, for inspiration and material for his work."

Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden

at

MoMA

Sketching  The River, Aristide Maillol

Begun 1936-39

It was lovely to sit out in the sculpture garden and sketch!

The Rose II, 2007
Isa Genzken

Broken Obelisk, 1963-69

Barnett Newman (American, 1905-1970)

Henry Moore (Britis, 1898-1986)

Family Group, 1948-49

Bronze

Selfie with color ... ;)

The only thing that keeps me from going crazy in the museum bookstores (other than money, of course) is the thought of actually having to carry them home on the plane! The Lautrec catalog was great and that one on the right ... sigh.

Around the corner from the museum ...

I was so pooped out, and inspired, after the museum. I grabbed some antipasti on my way back to Larry's, met my friend Lisa, and we just chilled out, talked, and enjoyed the view. She was pooped out from a long day at some U.N. conference, so we were both content to just chill out.

Nice, huh?!

Kandinsky video shows progression of his work.

Paris around 1900. ;)

Hope you are enjoying a lovely November!

Poetry and painting are done 
in the same way you make love;
it's an exchange of blood, 
a total embrace-
without caution, 
without any thought of protecting yourself.
~Joan Miro