The line snaked from 5th Avenue and around 88th St. as the Guggenheim doors open for a free admission day as it celebrates its 50th anniversary. Celine caught up with me and politely cut into the queue where I was waiting. The lady behind me didn’t mind; after all there was no seat assignment involved and giving up one space in the long line is a small price to pay for a truly unique experience to view 97 of the Kandinsky paintings.The stately Guggenheim Museum is the host to a full-scale retrospective of the works of Vasily Kandinsky, the leading figure in the development of abstract art. If I had half the brain I would have looked him up and his works before coming here, but no, I relied on the audio guide and Celine’s eye for the art work. Which is no mistake since this is right up her alley and as usual she taught me a lot about abstract expressionism. I’ve never even heard of Bauhaus until now and why it was closed down by the Nazis who condemned Kandinsky’s teachings of modernist art.
The ramps of the six levels of the museum exploded with brilliant colors starting from the Campbell Panels originally painted to adorn the entrance foyer of the apartment of the wealthy Edwin R. Campbell of New York. The stained-glass colors shades of which I’ve never seen before of orange and yellow and pistachio green are so intense lined against the white rotunda walls. Abstract paintings which I’ve under appreciated before are of interest to me now. It was just a matter of exposure.
An accomplished musician himself, Kandinsky was fascinated with music, and its influence on his painting is very strong, particularly the music of Schoenberg and Scriabin. He is believed to have had synaesthesia, a harmless condition that allows a person to appreciate sounds, colours or words with two or more senses simultaneously. In his case, colours and painted marks triggered particular sounds or musical notes and vice versa. He translated the colors he heard onto the canvas and called it a form of “visual music”.
Halfway thru the exhibition, Celine and I paused for some coffee and pastries and what a picturesque view we had. The picture windows by the Café flashed the autumn colors from the trees across Central Park. It was priceless.
We finished off as we walked up to the sixth level to view Kandinsky’s later works of geometric shapes and a series of watercolors considered “biomorphic abstraction." Much of it looked like paramecium and amoeba to me that Celine and I didn’t particularly care for.
We then watched a 2-minute film on the winning entries to the shelter design competition. Google teamed up with the Guggenheim Museum to create a design competition to design a "simple shelter for a specific geographic location anywhere in the world." The prize went to David Mares of Portugal for his Cork Block Shelter and to David Eltang of Denmark for his Sea Shelter. One of the 10 finalists is “A Bamboo Shelter in a Garbage Dump City” by a Filipino architect Gonzalo Raymundo. I’m proud of that.
Halfway thru the exhibition, Celine and I paused for some coffee and pastries and what a picturesque view we had. The picture windows by the Café flashed the autumn colors from the trees across Central Park. It was priceless.
We finished off as we walked up to the sixth level to view Kandinsky’s later works of geometric shapes and a series of watercolors considered “biomorphic abstraction." Much of it looked like paramecium and amoeba to me that Celine and I didn’t particularly care for.
We then watched a 2-minute film on the winning entries to the shelter design competition. Google teamed up with the Guggenheim Museum to create a design competition to design a "simple shelter for a specific geographic location anywhere in the world." The prize went to David Mares of Portugal for his Cork Block Shelter and to David Eltang of Denmark for his Sea Shelter. One of the 10 finalists is “A Bamboo Shelter in a Garbage Dump City” by a Filipino architect Gonzalo Raymundo. I’m proud of that.
It would be a shame to miss Anish Kapoor’s sculpture entitled Memory, which is 24-ton steel that looked like it got stuck in one corner of the gallery. Shaped like a giant egg, looking like a walnut or a Zeppelin dirigible it’s a puzzle how they even got this piece inside that gallery. Known for his large scale sculptures, we’ll recall Kapoor’s Sky Mirror installation at the Rockefeller Center.
Art appreciation for one day, I can only assimilate so much, so off we went to look for a decent restaurant. What a find – Centolire on Madison and 86th, traditional Italian, substantial portions worth the money.
And there it ends - everything I always wanted to know about Kandinsky but were afraid to ask and a lunch treat from Celine on a free day at the Guggenheim. Our target for next month – the Rubin Museum of Art with Carl Jung’s controversial The Red Book on exhibit.
