Do you picture yourself one day as a mover and shaker who mingles among the elite, famous and ridiculously rich? Now you may have the chance.
“Pleasures of Collecting: Part II, Twentieth Century and Contemporary Art,” currently on display at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, is a gathering of some of the greatest artistic talents of the twentieth century.
Many of the works are a venerable who’s who of the art world, from Calder and Matisse to Warhol and Picasso. If you didn’t have the time to take Fairfield’s survey in Art History, you could come here instead and walk away having seen the evolution of modernism in one afternoon.
All of the paintings currently on display belong to Greenwich area collectors who have generously loaned them to the museum from their private collections for this exhibit. In fact, many of these paintings have never been available for public viewing before.
The mediums on display range from paintings, to mobiles, to found objects and even televisions and donuts; thus not only showing the stylistic evolution of modern art, but also how it has advanced using society’s new technologies.
In addition to showing both these evolutions, the exhibit also demonstrates modern art’s constant reflection of society as it underwent its own rapid modernization. One example is American artist Martha Walter’s “Babies Health Station #8” from 1921.
The painting is done in an Impressionist style and depicts women sitting in the cramped quarters of the health station on Ellis Island. It was in rooms such as this that women were forced to wait with their children to be processed, and Walter’s portrays their exhaustion, joy, and hope beautifully. The vivid colors and sweeping brush strokes capture the eye, as does the stark contrast between the blank background and the chaotically crowded foreground.
Another high point among a show of already amazing highlights was Picasso’s “The Baby Carriage” from 1952. Picasso is often exalted as the most important artist of the century, making his appearance in the show that much more unusual because the paintings are from private collections. The subject matter of the painting further adds to its extraordinary nature given that is was done during a rare familial time in Picasso’s life.
The bead covered Budweiser bottles by Liza Lou’s will give one some new ideas about what to do with those pesky cans the morning after. Lou’s prominence among so many other modern masters comes not only from her originality, but also from her continuation of the Pop Art tradition.
Lou’s work calls to mind many of the same questions that Pop artists sought to answer, and for Lou, art can come from objects we surround ourselves with daily. Her work challenges us to evaluate our surroundings in a new and different way and metamorphoses objects we take for granted into objects of contemplation.
The layers of connections that can be made not only among the artworks within the show, but between the exhibited art and our own modern lives are numerous and profound. The sheer representation of color and its evolution throughout modernism as evidenced in the exhibit is amazing.
A wide breadth of movements that are currently hanging side by side is motivation enough to view this show. From Dada, to Cubism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop-Art, American Art, and even Video Art- both the scope and the scale that this exhibit undertakes are truly incredible.
If for no other reason then to say that you have been in a room with some of the most important talents this century has had, this show is worth it. Especially given the fact that the exhibit does not limit itself to the old masters, but has works as current as last year, which truly shows the museum’s commitment to a holistic survey of modern art then and now. Who knows, afterwards you may be doing some impressive name-dropping of your own.
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