Tag: The Met Museum

Art Event in NYC: Seurat’s Circus Slideshow at the Met Museum

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Art Event in NYC: Seurat’s Circus Slideshow at the Met Museum 

On view till May 29, 2017

Art Event: Seurat's Circus Slideshow at the Met Museum
From the exhibition: Circus Slideshow, G. Seurat, 1887-1888

Feel the energy of festive crowd, hear the noise of excitement, become part of Paris street fair at the end of 19th century! This is the experience of the exhibition at the Met Museum about the saltimbanques, street performers, who were a well known presence on the cities’ streets around Europe. The musicians, the acrobats, the clowns – they are all there with all their glory and misery.

The title painting in the show is a great masterpiece by Georges Seurat “Parade de Cirque” complemented by many more works on the subject of street shows and circus performances. Seurat’s oeuvre is represented by two paintings and 16 conte crayon drawings. Those are shown alongside the works of Seurat’s contemporaries such as Fernand Pelez, Louis Hayet, Honoré Daumier among others. The stunning and subtle “Parade de Cirque” is contrasted by the naturalistic depiction of saltimbangues in Perez’s “Grimaces and Misery—The Saltimbanques” from Petit Palais in Paris. Other works in this exhibition are the lithographs and posters of Corvi Cirque, street scenes, and even a drypoint by Rembrandt from 1655. The selection of material and the storyline of the show presents the viewer with multiple angles of street life mixing highs and lows of that time.

The New York Times review calls “Seurat’s Circus Slideshow” at the Met Museum “an enthralling exhibition”.

Venue: The Met Museum on Fifth Avenue        Time: till May 29, 2017

April – July 2017 Art Event in NYC: “Age of Empires” Exhibition at the Met Museum

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April – July 2017 Art Event in NYC: Age of Empires: Chinese Art of the Qin and Han Dynasties at the Met Museum  

April - July 2017 Art Event NYC: Age of Empires: Chinese Art of Qin and Han Dynasties at the Met Museum
Terracotta Warriors

Organized in collaboration with 32 cultural institutions from China, the Age of Emrires exhibition at the Met Museum covers the epic period in Chinese history. The Qin (221–206 B.C.) and Han (206 B.C.–A.D. 220) dynasties’ rulings brought in a long period of stability and fostered a “golden age” in Chinese history. Scholars ascribe the Chinese identity as we know it today to be rooted in that period of 221 B.C. – A.D. 220. The significance of Qin and Han empires’ period resembles Greco-Roman era in the West.

The exhibition includes more than 160 artifacts and features a Terracotta Warrior and other examples of ancient sculptures as well as ritual vessels, musical instruments, lacquerware, and silk textiles. It is organized into 3 sections in chronological progression. A review of the upcoming exhibition in the ArtNet News quotes Met’s outgoing director Thomas Campbell calling the show “the largest and most important display of Chinese art in the US”.

You can find more at the Met Museum site.

Venue: Metropolitan Museum, Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street     Time: April 3 – July 16, 2017

February – May 2017 Art Event in NYC: The Mysterious Landscapes of Hercules Segers

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February – May 2017 Art Event in NYC: The Mysterious Landscapes of Hercules Segers at the Met Museum

February - May 2017 Art Event in NYC: The Mysterious Landscapes of Hercules Segers
Hercules Segers, Mountain Valley with Fenced Fields, c. 1615-1630, etching, ink

The mystery of a faraway land, the beauty of new space, the expectation of secrets, the passing of time…. All of it is on full view at the Met exhibition of Hercules Segers, 17th century Dutch Golden Age master known for his prints, etchings and oil paintings. This is the first exhibition for Segers in the USA. Not many details of the artist’s life is known to us now but from what we do know he was well regarded by his contemporaries. He brought in pioneering techniques to printmaking by mixing colors, mediums and textures. At his time in the first half of 17th century his methods were fresh and groundbreaking like the impressionism at its time. Add to it an assumption that the artists had never traveled farther than between Haarlem, where he was born, and Amsterdam in the Low Countries but filled his work with mountainous views, and the mystery surrounding the master persists. The New York Times calls the exhibition mesmerizing and the New York Review of Books notes that “an air of unreality hangs over” Segers’s paintings. 

Venue: The Met Museum on Fifth Avenue        Time: till May 21, 2017

April-May Art Event: Picturing Math at the Met Museum

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April-May Art Event at the Met: Picturing Math – Selected Artworks from the Department of Drawings and Prints 

April-May Art Event: Picturing Math at the Met Museum
From the exhibition

It is absolutely remarkable that the Met has organized this small exhibition serenading the beauty of mathematical notations, formulas and geometric forms. True to its subject, the drawings and prints are precise, simple and super-logical. And that is exactly the point! Looking at the equations signed by modern day mathematicians P. Lax or S. Smale alongside the geometrical drawings by Sol LeWit (1982) or P.Flotner (1528), you can see how mathematics was and still is “the queen of sciences” in Carl Gauss’s words.  The only thing to add is that once proved, no matter how trivial or on the other hand significant the point is, it becomes eternal and beautiful at the same time.

 

Venue: The Met Museum on Fifth Avenue        Time: till May 8, 2017