If you find yourself with some extra time this weekend, you should head over to one of the three museum exhibits in town that are nearing the end of their engagements. The largest, at the Met, ends tomorrow and is a collection of some of the best American painters of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Rubin Museum of Art has an exhibit of Jinas sculptures that will soothe the soul, and the Onasiss Cultural Center has a fascinating collection of medieval art that forms the inspiration for many of El Greco’s masterpieces. Time is short, so make a plan to catch at least one.
American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765-1915
Metropolitan Museum of Art – through Saturday, January 23, 2010
Between the American Revolution and World War I, a group of British colonies became states, the frontier pushed westward to span the continent, a rural and agricultural society became urban and industrial, and the United States—reunified after the Civil War under an increasingly powerful federal government—emerged as a leading participant in world affairs. Throughout this complicated, transformative period, artists recorded American life as it changed around them. Many of the nation’s most celebrated painters—John Singleton Copley, Charles Willson Peale, William Sidney Mount, George Caleb Bingham, Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt, William Merritt Chase, John Sloan, and George Bellows—along with their lesser-known colleagues captured the temperament of their respective eras, defining the character of Americans as individuals, citizens, and members of ever-widening communities.
American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765–1915 presents tales artists told about their times and examines how their accounts reflect shifting professional standards, opportunities for study, foreign prototypes, venues for display, and viewers’ expectations. Excluding images based on history, myth, or literature, the exhibition emphasizes instead those derived from artists’ firsthand observation, documentation, and interaction with clients. These paintings are analogous to original—not adapted—screenplays. Recurring themes such as childhood, marriage, family, and community; the notion of citizenship; attitudes toward race; the frontier as reality and myth; and the process and meaning of making art illuminate the evolution of American artists’ approach to narrative. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is located at 1000 Fifth Avenue. For more information visit www.metmuseum.org. Opening painting: Mary Cassatt (Americn, 1844-1926) Little Girl in a Blue Armchair, 1878. Painting left: William Merritt Chase (American, 1849-1916) The Lake for Miniature Yachts, ca 1888.
Victorious Ones: Jain Images of Perfection
Rubin Museum of Art – through February 15, 2010
Jainism constitutes one of India’s three classical religions, the others being Buddhism and Hinduism. Though older than Buddhism by a generation, Jainism has much in common with it. Both arose and were first spread in northeastern India. Both aim to lead their followers away from the painful cycle of endless rebirths (samsara) and toward the liberation from all suffering (nirvana). Both also rejected many of the practices and ideas of early Hinduism, particularly the religion’s ritual sacrifice of animals, preaching instead a doctrine of non-violence. Today the commitment to an ethic that regards all life—animal and human—as inviolate continues to be the heart of Jain practice and belief.
The exhibition Victorious Ones: Jain Images of Perfection is centered on images of the founding figures of Jainism, the Jinas, also known as the “Conquerors” or Tirthankaras. These important religious figures, despite their having achieved liberation from the world in which we live, are believed to be accessible to humans as objects of devotion. Thus many Jains worship images of the Jinas and believe that they can be found in different sacred spaces throughout the universe. In addition to fine examples of painting and sculpture depicting the Jinas, Victorious Ones will also present these spaces that the Jinas sanctify, including painted maps of the Jain universe, depictions of famous pilgrimage sites, beautiful domestic shrines, and ritual diagrams (yantras) that were made of both durable and ephemeral materials.Courtesy of The Rubin Museum of Art.
The Rubin Museum of Art is located at, 150 West 17th Street, Manhattan. For information call (212) 620-5000, or visit rmanyc.org.
The Origins of El Greco
Onasiss Cultural Center – through February 27, 2010
The Onassis Cultural Center is exhibiting an extraordinary group of 15th and 16th century paintings, including early works by El Greco. Curated for the Onassis Cultural Center by Dr. Anastasia Drandaki, Curator of the Byzantine Collection at the Benaki Museum, Athens. The Origins of El Greco presents 46 exceptional works from public and private collections in Greece, Europe, the United States and Canada, many of which have traveled to the U.S. for the first time.
According to Dr. Drandaki, “The icon painters in the workshops on Crete in the 15th and 16th centuries were renowned for their skill in painting impeccable panels not only in the traditional Byzantine manner but also in a style inspired by Western models. Although a dialogue with Western painting was not new to Byzantine art, a number of special factors undoubtedly helped to encourage the immersion of Cretan artists in Western iconography and style, especially after the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453.” The Origins of El Greco illuminates these fascinating developments as seen in rare panel paintings that span the course of two centuries.
At the core of the exhibition are eleven superb icons from the Collection of Ecclesiastical Art, Saint Catherine of the Sinaites, Heraklion, Crete. Founded around the 10th century as a dependency of the monastery of the same name at Mount Sinai, the Church of St. Catherine in Heraklion supported a large and learned monastic community by the 16th century and, since 1967, has housed a highly important collection of Orthodox icons and religious objects. Ten of the panels from the Collection of St. Catherine have left Crete only once before, in 1993, for an exhibition in Athens. The eleventh of this group, a Last Supper by Michael Damaskenos, has been outside of Greece only once, for a 1999 El Greco exhibition that traveled to Athens, Madrid and Rome.
Two other exhibition highlights are a famous early painting by El Greco, The Dormition of the Virgin, which travels very rarely from its church in Ermoupolis and a late, Spanish-period work by El Greco, The Coronation of the Virgin, on view in New York for the first time. Courtesy of the Onassis Cultural Center.
For more information visit www.onassisusa.org. The Onassis Cultural Center, at 645 Fifth Avenue, is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Saturday. Entrance is on 51st or 52nd Street between Fifth and Madison Avenues. Admission is free.
