A New Face for The Met

The Metropolitan Museum wants to be part of modern and contemporary art and it has redefined its brand looking for a more modern look. First, renaming each of its buildings (the building on Fifth Avenue, Fifth Avenue Met, the Medieval Museum on the northwest of the city, the Cloisters Met, and the building formerly occupied by the Whitney Museum on Madison Avenue, designed by architect Marcel Breuer, now called Met Breuer that will host exhibitions of modern and contemporary art. The Met has also changed the look of its web and its logo.

These are the first steps of a more ambitious plan that will include an investment of $600 million for the construction of a new gallery in the Metropolitan Museum on Fifth Avenue. The Met definitely wants to be part of contemporary art, where the money, collectors, donors and visitors are.

Last March, the Met Breuer on Madison Avenue opened with two exhibitions. On the second floor, drawings and photographs of Nasreen Mohamedi (1937-1990), an artist of India The third and fourth floors dedicated to the exhibition «Unfinished: thoughts left visible».

«Unfinished: thoughts left visible» shows about 200 pieces of The Met’s own collection: spectacular art, like the work of El Greco, allowing to make a historical journey from the Renaissance to the present. It also has outstanding loans, as the Leonardo Da Vinci’s drawings.

With this approach, the new Met Breuer shows its potential of a very contemporary idea of re-examining the past. Although the exhibition fails to create an “conversation” between the oldest and most contemporary art, the trip to the Museum is a must if you’re in the Big Apple.

From my point of view it is more interesting the third floor, where the work pre-1840 is shown. The pieces on display allow you to look through the eye of the artists, guess the course of their approached and their process and their thoughts when defining the composition of the work. It is really exciting to observe the unfinished parts and how many of them could be the contemporary version of the classic masterpieces.

The exhibition examines one aspect of the creative process that generates great anxiety in the artist and criticism from experts and viewers about the unfinished work, or apparently unfinished. When is a work of art finished?

Many critics in the past and present have written about the problems and possibilities associated with the works of art that show an intentional lack of finish. These works reveal many artist decisions, both physical, conceptual and, especially, when and how it is considered completed. This exhibition emphasizes the periods in which the notion of finishing became a matter of experimentation. The exhibition contains two types of works: those that were, for whatever reason, and accidentally left unfinished by the artist; and others that adopt a style deliberately unfinished.

The artist generally knows quite well if a work is finished, but that’s not the same as saying that the work is completed in the eyes of another viewer. By the time the artist has done everything possible, the question remains whether the work is enough to speak for itself, as an object of aesthetic enjoyment. The creation of a work of art is a deeply personal experience. Sometimes, it is as if the artist’s soul was transmitted to the surface through its intervention in the art that is being created.

The very nature of creation is so personal that it is sometimes difficult to know when to stop. As an artist, you have to decide if you are satisfied with the result. If yes, then you have finished. Although, of course, the threshold of satisfaction and the concept of finishing the work varies greatly from one artist to another. Here are some of the works prior to 1840 that have captivated me.

There is also a room dedicated to the work of J.M.W. Turner, one of the landscape painters from the ninetieth century most admired for his capacity for abstraction; admired clearly “a posteriori” to his period because in his time, he was criticized by his contemporaries. The group of paintings presented in this room was found in his studio after his death; none of them was shown and what is not known is if the artist considered them finished with the hope that at some point they were accepted, or they were only the first steps of an unfinished work.

The fourth floor of the exhibition is dedicated to the unfinished work in the twentieth century. Since 1945, the artist has analyzed the concept of unfinished as a prerequisite and goal to be pursued. To this end, they have been used materials designed to decay, designing works that expand beyond its own space and time limits. The work of art is designed to survive, its durability against brevity, fragility and transience of life. However, after World War II, often in response to social, economic and environmental upheaval, many artists created works deliberately intended to wane or disappear over time. At its heart lies a fascination with entropy. Although often equated with decay, entropy is more accurately described as loss of energy, a physical process common to all systems. As a system loses energy, it also loses stability and consistency. For this reason, entropy tends to express visually as degradation and disorganization.

The sculptures in the gallery transmitted entropy not only through the form, materials and content, but also through the process and technique. Many pieces show abrasion, corrosion and damage caused by time, whether real or simulated, while others, like the work of Felix Gonzalez-Torre, makes its own decline in real time, providing a poignant reflection on mortality. Sculptures that question our traditional definitions of finish, as well as adversely affect the very possibility of ever ending, once and for all, a work of art.

Gonzalez-Torres, with this installation, represents the portrait of his partner Ross Laycock, who died of AIDS in 1991. The work consists of a pile of candies whose weight is equivalent to Ross ideal weight, 175 pounds. Viewers are invited to take a candy; as these are disappearing, the pile loses its regularity, decreasing in volume and weight. This transformation reflects the weakening of Ross Laycock because of his illness. The Museum replenishes the supply of candy.  Suspended between the disappearance and renewal, the work is in continuous process.

These two sculptures (above) have changed and continue to change over time. One is made of chocolate and the other with soap. The artist herself ate the chocolate and bathed with the one made with soap. According to the artist, «There is this element of destruction, that we have to unmake in order to make, and that interests me very much.», Here the artist challenges the conventions of the classical portrait bust, premised as it is upon immortality and permanence, not to mention the heroism and authority of the white men such busts typically portray.

In the early 60s, the artist Alina Szapocznikow explored the body in new materials such as polyester, resin materials and glass wool. During this period she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and the artist wanted to express in this installation how the tumors had taken over her identity, each tumor appears to grow from the gravel and includes a self-portrait. This group of green paintings from Cy Twombly were found in his studio after his death, never before shown, and so far it is unknown whether the artist considered finished or not finished.

On May 8th, at 3pm, The Met Fifth Avenue will host a talk where an artist in the exhibition, a musicologist and a The Met curator will discuss the ideas raised by the exhibition «Unfinished: Thoughts left visible across time and cultures». «Unfinished: thoughts left visible» March 18 – September 4th, 2016.