de kooning, diego rivera and black eyed peas

greg was off today, and wanted us to see the de kooning retrospective at moma (nytimes article) as he had seen it the week before. it was really an amazing collection and allowed us to see how he began and grew as an artist, what his influences were, and where it all took him. in the two last rooms of his paintings, at the end of his life, i was so moved by the color and brushstrokes. he conveyed all his passion and experience in the simplest lines. for many new yorkers and tri-staters, he was also expressing his observations of our world . . the poet edwin denby was quoted as saying that he remembered walking with de kooning along the streets of manhattan, and de kooning would point out to him the cracks in the sidewalk, the placement of a gum wrapper . . one of greg's favorite paintings was gansvoort street, and morgana really liked excavation.

i loved many of his later pieces when he had moved out to east hampton, and then to springs: montauk i 1969 (which is from the wadsworth atheneum in hartford, ct), his untitleds from '80 - '83 (pirate) and the cat's meow from '87. morgana really liked whose name was writ in water. chanda even finally put the book down that she was reading and wandered through . . morgana didn't like the woman series, (i didn't not like it, which surprised me. i actually felt like he conveyed a lot of anguish that women feel, and didn't find them misogynistic, as i had read. it's best not to read, i think. at least at the beginning. it's good to experience paintings just as one's self, and not with others' opinions swimming through one's observations. morgana was listening to the commentary for several pieces, and disagreed with the commentator's, and de kooning's, views of figure in landscape and landscape in figure. she didn't see the figures. she really enjoyed de kooning's charcoal and oil pieces. at the beginning i thought that if i had been a painter, i would have appreciated his early work much more. since morgana had worked in charcoal at a metropolitan museum class she participated in over the summer, she found these pieces fascinating.)

from de kooning, we took the escalators downstairs to the diego rivera exhibit, and were amazed to learn how he worked with buon fresco, true fresco. it was another very moving exhibit for me. (and i found a newspaper photograph of "diego rivera and his wife" from 1931 interesting in it's complete omission of frida's name! she looked so young, and was, i suppose, unknown as an artist at the time.) rivera studied in italy and worked with large murals that were fixed on site. to show his work at moma in 1931, he constructed huge panels of mesh, steel, wood and concrete. onto these he painted scenes of revolution and life in mexico (several, i believe, were fragments of his larger pieces in mexico). he also created three scenes of urban life in nyc. true fresco is a mixture of pigments and water, marble dust and aged lime putty. the paint sparkled in the exhibition lights, like glitter. rivera would divide his panel into what work could be accomplished in a day (giornata), and paint quickly. it took six people to move one block. i think one block weighed a thousand pounds!

the de kooning retrospective ends january 9th, but the diego rivera exhibit is until may 14th.

back at home i made black eyed peas and collard greens, our traditional new year's day dinner (which isn't always eaten exactly on new year's day!). good luck and good health for the new year.