Alighiero Boetti Museum of Modern Art
Oh
joy to the world. I finally took advantage of those member previews that the
MOMA offers to see shows before they open to the “public” in relative calm and
quiet. So I was able to take in the Boetti retrospective nicely without the
hoards of tourists getting in my way and bothering me. I liked the show, I
didn’t love it mind you, but I found enough in his art making career that I can
easily recommend it. Boetti began as one of those Italian art povera guys,
conceptual to the nth degree and using everyday materials to make his
sculptures and what not. His best pieces for me are the beautiful tapestries
and embroidered maps of the world that mainly fill the huge atrium and are
arranged on the walls and on low rising platforms. For these works Boetti
worked with embroiderers in Afghanistan and Pakistan, who worked from his
designs but made their own decisions as to what colors to use (the best and
funniest is when they used pink thread to indicate the bodies of water on one
map because that was the color they had the most of and they had no idea what color an ocean was since they lived in
a landlocked country) and thus really decided on the finished looks of the
pieces, which Boetti loved. Boetti is a perfect artist for the Moma, European,
conceptual, dead, out yet in and ripe with objects that can be displayed in
Moma’s usual sterile fashion. Everything in the show is so tidy neat and clean
and when in doubt just put it in an expensive frame and Wala it looks great
against a wall painted blue. So a series of
postal letters sent to famous art world personalities but addressed to
non existing addresses and returned to the artist are framed and treated like they were Picasso drawings, which is
now a common way to treat once ephemeral conceptual works from the late 60’s
and 70’s that were once treated like nothing, read it and toss it. Some
of his works on paper are weak and not very interesting and the same can be
said for some of his large sculptures which greet the viewer when first
entering the exhibit. I also checked out Ecstatic Alphabets/heaps of language
and Exquisite Corpses: Drawing and Disfiguration. The alphabet show was
appealing to me when they stuck with the early 20th century, but I
quickly lost interest when it turned contemporary and fashionable, I could also
say the same for the Exquisite Corpses show, the later works for the most part
were DOA.
Oh
joy to the world. I finally took advantage of those member previews that the
MOMA offers to see shows before they open to the “public” in relative calm and
quiet. So I was able to take in the Boetti retrospective nicely without the
hoards of tourists getting in my way and bothering me. I liked the show, I
didn’t love it mind you, but I found enough in his art making career that I can
easily recommend it. Boetti began as one of those Italian art povera guys,
conceptual to the nth degree and using everyday materials to make his
sculptures and what not. His best pieces for me are the beautiful tapestries
and embroidered maps of the world that mainly fill the huge atrium and are
arranged on the walls and on low rising platforms. For these works Boetti
worked with embroiderers in Afghanistan and Pakistan, who worked from his
designs but made their own decisions as to what colors to use (the best and
funniest is when they used pink thread to indicate the bodies of water on one
map because that was the color they had the most of and they had no idea what color an ocean was since they lived in
a landlocked country) and thus really decided on the finished looks of the
pieces, which Boetti loved. Boetti is a perfect artist for the Moma, European,
conceptual, dead, out yet in and ripe with objects that can be displayed in
Moma’s usual sterile fashion. Everything in the show is so tidy neat and clean
and when in doubt just put it in an expensive frame and Wala it looks great
against a wall painted blue. So a series of
postal letters sent to famous art world personalities but addressed to
non existing addresses and returned to the artist are framed and treated like they were Picasso drawings, which is
now a common way to treat once ephemeral conceptual works from the late 60’s
and 70’s that were once treated like nothing, read it and toss it. Some
of his works on paper are weak and not very interesting and the same can be
said for some of his large sculptures which greet the viewer when first
entering the exhibit. I also checked out Ecstatic Alphabets/heaps of language
and Exquisite Corpses: Drawing and Disfiguration. The alphabet show was
appealing to me when they stuck with the early 20th century, but I
quickly lost interest when it turned contemporary and fashionable, I could also
say the same for the Exquisite Corpses show, the later works for the most part
were DOA. 
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