{"id":710,"date":"2010-12-03T13:59:21","date_gmt":"2010-12-03T17:59:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/arthistory\/?p=710"},"modified":"2010-12-07T13:09:52","modified_gmt":"2010-12-07T17:09:52","slug":"toms-picks-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/arthistory\/?p=710","title":{"rendered":"Tom’s Picks"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the winter holidays approach New York art institutions are cutting loose with scads of fascinating exhibitions to attract tourists, locals and potential shoppers.<\/p>\n

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The Kissers<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At Gagosian uptown you can see John Currin<\/strong>\u2019s recent paintings.\u00a0 All sold, they feature finely rendered, sexually suggestive women\u2014and sexually explicit women (with other women).\u00a0 These surround the center-piece of the show, a large painting of two middle aged men in shorts, one fitting the other for a new outfit.\u00a0 Currin combines Old Master technique and virtuoso rendering with bizarre subjects.\u00a0 A beautiful still life of a white tea set at the lower right of The Women of Franklin Street<\/em> steals the show from the erotic high jinks above. (980 Madison Ave., through December 23).\u00a0 Currin is often called a Mannerist, and to see why check out the weirdly proportioned, erotic mythological nudes in the memorable exhibition of Netherlandish Mannerist painter Jan Gossart<\/strong> at the Metropolitan Museum.\u00a0 (1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd<\/sup> Street, through January17).<\/p>\n

Currin\u2019s hyper-realist and fashionably decadent paintings would also fit comfortably in the major, eye-opening art historical exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum, Chaos and Classicism. <\/strong>It surveys the artistic reaction to World War I in Europe, when avant-garde artists moved either towards a subversive Dadaism, or towards a new look at tradition.\u00a0 The latter is the theme of this beautifully installed show, with works that range from the majestic (Picasso) to the unsettling:\u00a0 long forgotten, or suppressed, Fascist and Nazi paintings and sculptures.<\/p>\n

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Messerschmidt Head<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For some more bizarre art on the Upper East Side, check out the Franz Xaver Messerschmidt<\/strong> show at the wonderful Neue Gallerie.\u00a0 Messerschmidt was a late 18th<\/sup> century sculptor, an expert portraitist until he developed mental problems and turned to his unique 3D studies of people\u2019s faces making extreme expressions.\u00a0 This is the first U.S. exhibition of his work, and it is comfortably small, consisting of around 25 heads, upstairs from the lovely exhibition of early 20th<\/sup> century Viennese art and design on the second floor.\u00a0 If you visit, you might want to save some time for the truly delicious coffees and deserts available in the Caf\u00e9 Sabarsky, which is so popular that there is usually a long line\u2014but downstairs the same menu is available in the recreation of Viennna\u2019s Caf\u00e9 Fledermaus, which is much less crowded\u2014so far.\u00a0 (1048 Fifth Avenue at 86th<\/sup> Street, through January 10).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the winter holidays approach New York art institutions are cutting loose with scads of fascinating exhibitions to attract tourists, locals and potential shoppers. At Gagosian uptown you can see John Currin\u2019s recent paintings.\u00a0 All sold, they feature finely rendered, sexually suggestive women\u2014and sexually explicit women (with other women).\u00a0 These surround the center-piece of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":144,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-man-about-town"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/arthistory\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/arthistory\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/arthistory\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/arthistory\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/144"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/arthistory\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=710"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/arthistory\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":735,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/arthistory\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710\/revisions\/735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/arthistory\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/arthistory\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/arthistory\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}