Other than seeing two movies and painting, I also woke up Sunday and headed to DimSum with a friend before going to the Frank Stella show at one of the Harvard art museums. It has been a little while since I went to see some real art (before Brasil one could say) and I have been in need. It was a tad bit of a let down. Though once I went back and read their blurb for the show, I should have expected it:
The year 1958 was Stella's first year of independent work. After graduating from Princeton, he moved to New York and threw himself into creating a series of monumental abstract canvases. Until now, these 30 works have been neglected or treated as a prelude to his proto-minimalist black paintings that soon followed. But the works from 1958 stand solidly on their own, as the exhibition demonstrates by bringing most of them together for the first time.
It was just such a variety of work that it was hard to find his message, or meaning, or even at times, his talent. Which is never good. I loved two of the paintings but in a show of like 12, that number should have been higher. I also thought I was a little ripped off for paying 8 bucks to get into the show which was 2 rooms not much bigger than my own apartment. The NYTimes though seemed to love it. Cough.
Then there was napping, jerking off, TV, jerking off, loading all of my Brasil photo's finally, and then Brian called back from his ski trip wanting to go to dinner. So we headed to Toro, again. We snuggled up to the bar, had some sangria, and dined on some incredible fare, even getting to see a glimpse of Ken Oringer who is sadly in need of a stylist. Then the asshole manager of Mistral (overrated and full of people who think they are eating in NY) and his loser friends (all from some shitty north or south shore idea) worked their way over and created a toxic gloom of disgust over the place so we had to leave, abruptly.
yes, i'm sorry your museum experience was lame, but maybe the fact that it was stella shoulda been a warning? i mean, the black paintings are orgasmic, the grey ones that followed were pretty damn awesome, but then everything went to (perhaps necessary art-historically) shit, if you ask me. for art that's so outwardly exciting, i could never understand how stella could be so boring.
Posted by: the austrogoth | March 29, 2006 at 03:53 AM