On this
perfect spring day in New York City what could be more appropriate than a
member's preview of the glorious and gorgeous exhibition of prints,
drawings and paintings by the great Degas. They're all here, the
ballerinas and prostitutes, the cafe scenes and performers, the little
seen and known (at least by me) of his almost abstract landscapes. This
is a show that you should take your sweet time with,
moving
slowly from one exquisite little gem after the other, the Moma even has
magnifying glasses for those who want to get up close to examine his
pastel strokes and his faint finger prints left behind in one print, but
not too up close or you'll have one of the guards down on you. Be
warned this is going to pack them in. I also want to give a yell out to
artists to get an artists membership because they lowered the price to
$35.00 and this is one of the bargains in the city.
So the Moma gives us this great show but then gives us a slap in the
face and throws us a sour ball of a show by one of the giants of
mediocrity, a powerball of nothingness Rachel Harrison whose banal and
bad installation Perth Amboy (oh boy) takes up valuable space on the 2nd
floor.
The Moma actually bought this garbage for
their permanent collection in 2011 and finally dragged it out of one of
their dungeons for all to see. Harrison's work takes off on a true
story of an apparition of the Virgin Mary that supposedly appeared in a
window of a house in the town and she has filled the space with her
dreadful large color photos (21 of them for Christs sake) along with
dumb and uninteresting small sculptures and assemblages that take on a
flea market kitschy feel. She has placed them in and around large tall
and open brown cardboard "sculptures" that form sort of a labyrinth
within the wasted gallery space. The cardboard is the kind you see
laying in the streets, except these pieces are clean and not nearly as
good as the stuff that's thrown away every day of the week. There is no
doubt that this piece of shit will find it's admirers who will
pontificate long and hard on the importance of Harrison and her Perth.
I'll stick with the prostitutes on the 6th floor thank you.
