Art in NYC: Like Life – Sculpture, Color, and the Body at The Met Breuer

History of Sculpture from 1300 until Now on view from March 21 – July 22, 2018

Like Life sculpture color body Met Breuer Museum — Tip Toland, The Whistlers, 2005, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of Dale and Doug Anderson, 2011 / Image courtesy of The Met Breuer

This truly fascinating exhibition at The Met Breuer covers seven hundred years of history from 1300 till now of sculptures, casts, tableaus, masks and even automatons to illuminate the perfection of likeness and its distortion. Covering a vast time window and the diversity of the approaches, the show is organized into 8 thematic sections located on 2 floors of the museum. Each section includes works from various places and times connected by either similarity or extreme contrast in the concept. About 120 works by old and new masters are selected including Donatello, El Greco, Rodin, Degas, Kusama, Koons, Cattelan and many many other.

One may agree or disagree with the overarching thesis about the use of colors and the influence of religion and societal biases on how we perceive the body in its nakedness and likeness, but it all comes back to how we see ourself and how we are perceived by others. Allow yourself enough time to observe, compare and read.

The questions thoroughly explored by the curators of the exhibition revolve around western art depiction of human body and the prejudices and biases it entailed. The first section, titled “Presumption of Whiteness” serves an introduction to Comparative Art 101. Starting from the Gallery 1 in the exhibition, the classic antic marbles, clear and acceptably beautiful in their impeccable whiteness and proportions, are shown alongside other sculptures done in the same monochrome color but using a colored metal in the case of Aluminum Girl from 2003 by Charles Ray and plaster in Mother from 2016 by Bharti Kher. The idea that the statues from ancient Greece and Rome were originally not exactly as white as they become after being rediscovered at the time of Renaissance, is laboriously explained in the texts and labels.

Moving on, the addition of colors, bright and vulgar or subtle and erotic, is presented in the works by the old masters and modern artists. The expose is full of surprises which makes one to open up new angles in how we see the art and to deepen an understanding of how our preconceived biases were developed.

The control of the church in what was acceptable to worship and what was deemed too life-like and hence too disturbing for pious crowds to look at is another theme covered by the exhibition. “Desire for Life” section is centered on a balancing act of depicting the sufferings and piety while not succumbing to idolatry. That leads to some modern takes on the Pygmalion story.

Like Life show has everything in-between a perfect marble monochrome and its exact opposite

The final section “Between Life and Art” is a curious collection of art that makes you stop in your steps and rethink how far you would want to go in your unstoppable quest to see it with your eyes. As P. Schjeldahl in The New Yorker review points out “Good art is irreducible to attitudes, and great art demolishes them”. The show surely expands the boundaries of medium, subjects, and expressions and is a sampling feast for those who are free of the preconditions and are open to discoveries.

With the New York Pass your can enjoy a free visit to the Met Breuer!