IN THE AIR: T J WILCOX's PANORAMA at the WHITNEY

New York. New York. We never tire of it. Crowded, noisy, dirty, too hot, too humid, too cold, yet always invigorating, always glamourous. This week has been all blue sky and gorgeous: what's called "severe clear"... Perfect for T J Wilcox who spent many cloudy, rainy, misty days trying to film a new fashioned 360 degree video panorama of New York City from the top of his building at the corner of Union Square. "We filmed many times without success. Half way thro' it would rain."

Ten projectors with special lenses now compresses a 24 hour day/night into 30 minutes. It's enthralling. The huge 7ft high x35ft across circular screen hangs in space. U can duck under and into it. The light changes, tower block shadows fall across smaller buildings, at dusk windows twinkle on the Empire State, the new Freedom Tower replacing the World Trade Centre, and the wedge shape City Corps building, (we got married in St Peter's church underneath it - only in NY can they sell the air rights to a church!) It's mesmerising.

Every so often the skyline is punctuated by short 3 min stories which relates to NY - 1930s archival black & white film shot from the air; Gloria Vanderbilt; an account of 9/11 seen from the roof; Warhol's launch of a giant silver phallic ballon just as the Pope passed by his Factory!

Curated by Brit,  Chrissie Iles, it's a great immersive installation - one people will love.
www.whitney.org http://whitney.org

http://whitney.org

MAGRITTE at MoMA, New York

                                          Le Faux Miroir; The False Mirror 1929

Magritte's mysterious, unsettling signature Surrealist images are very well known today: ordinary objects - curtains, bowler hats, clouds, mirrors, nudes, that infamous pipe - painted in deadpan style. But do we understand them any better than when they appeared almost 100 years ago?

Magritte would hope not! What does it mean? "It doesn't mean anything, because mystery means nothing either, it is unknowable,"he said. But he also wanted to make "everyday objects shriek out loud."

This major show of 80 works focuses on a mere 12 years, 1926-38, when he worked flat out in his hometown, Brussels and Paris, the centre of Surrealism, creating his most radical work. It was all produced in a modest working class house with no studio. Despite help from his wife's father, the couple lived on the bread line. So in 1930 Magritte returned to commercial art work, until 1937 when an eccentric British patron commissioned paintings, including one here. This portrait shows a man looking at himself in a mirror, but instead of his face we see, again, the back of his head.

Loans come from Japan, Edinburgh, Paris, Berlin, the Tate, Jasper Johns, plus Chicago and Houston where the show goes next year. www.moma.org

      Le Viol, The Rape 1934 

More later.        http://moma.org

FOLLOW ME this week as I tour MAJOR NEW SHOWS IN NYC.

FOLLOW ME this week as I tour MAJOR NEW SHOWS IN NYC.

                                          1200 year old Feathers from Peru.

Today NEW YORK's Metropolitan Museum of Art, www.metmuseum.org from top to bottom; ground to roof.

                                         Imram Qureshi's painted floor on the roof of the Met.

How wonderful to live 7 minutes from the Met. Their new slogan is One Met. Many Worlds.
All exemplified by 3 new shows opening today: Masterpieces from Tibet and Nepal; Medieval Treasures from Hildesheim, Germany, and Feathers from Ancient Peru! Let me tell you it's a long 4 block walk from Peru to Nepal. I had almost forgotten how huge the Met is - and how breathtaking. And how busy!

The Peruvian feathered hangings date from c 750 AD yet its by far the most modern exhibit. Think Sean Scully. Here 12 rectangular panels - divided exactly into quarters of blue and yellow made out of thousands of Macaw bird feathers - make an impressive 88 ft long wall installation of bold minimal art. The hangings, related to a shrine or ceremony, were found in 1943 rolled up in large ceramic jars, themselves richly decorated. Back then feathers were, I'm told, luxury objects and the birds were carried over the Andes! Dead or alive? We'll never know. The Wari people did not write.
Max Ernst owned one of the panels. That says it all.

Next 50 medieval ecclesiastical treasures: gem and pearl encrusted crosses, silver cruxifixes, metalwork, carving, and copper and opulent gold statues from Lower Saxony where Bishop Bernward was a busy patron. The Golden Madonna has lost her head but is still amazing. And I was glad to see one special Reliquary for St Oswald, King of Northumbria, was probably English.

With all this 10th & 11th century European creativity, how to follow that?

Well, try 13 ancient Himalayan iconic paintings just acquired from a pioneering couple who started collecting in 1964. Buddhas, goddesses, Indian saints in vibrant colours hang along with a rare fierce  copper mask which has a hole in his mouth for beer drinking during the festival processions!

Last The Roof Garden.
Each year the Met commissions a project for its Roof Garden, usually sculpture. For this year, (May to October,) young Pakistani artist Imran Qureshi painted the floor with blood red foliage and ornamental flowers influenced by Islamic art combined with abstraction. Normally a miniature painter, his recent site-specific works in Sydney, Berlin, Istanbul have been political and on an architectural scale.  Here his splatters and stains among the flowers reference the recent Boston bombings, made more poignant by their faded aspect from a summer of feet and baking sun. http://metmuseum.org

close up of roof painting. 

TOMORROW MAGRITTE at MoMA www.moma.org  All you have to do is read. I am the one with sore feet!

NEW YORK is revving up for the Fall/Autumn season!

NEW YORK is revving up for the Fall/Autumn season! Lots of wonderful shows - Magritte, Chagall, Vermeer, George Rickey, (who grew up in Scotland) Robert Indiana, Matisse, Robert Ryman and more.
But there are only a few days left to see the Guggenheim's James Turrell. Ends Sept 25th. He has turned the already breathtaking centre spiral rotunda into a play of computerised light and colour as pink turns to pale mauve becomes intense blue, blood red, gradations of green and then, slowly slowly, dissolves into grey and misty white before beginning the sequence all over again. Purists will like the grey. I rather enjoyed the stronger shades.

Of course there's a problem or two. The young lie flat on the floor and gaze upwards. The old kink their arthritic necks and fight for space on the sloping loungers arrayed around the ellipse. After a while I decided I'd seen enough, my neck hurt, and I moved on to other small, more simple installations from the 1960s and 70s. The main installation cost millions. Theatre designers used to playing with lightbulbs scrims are no doubt envious!
www.guggenheim.org     guggenheim
Aten Reign, the centerpiece of James Turrell’s first exhibition in a New York museum since 1980, recasts the Guggenheim rotunda as an enormous volume filled with shifting artificial & natural light.
Now that the horrid humid heat - 90+ sauna-like weather has gone, I am enjoying NYC's blue blue sky.
But in Scotland u all have a chance for a wonderful week-long Glasgow Open Doors Days.  http://glasgowdoorsopenday.com. Don't miss it! It's wonderful.

GPS 40th B-day

Tomorrow we leave Scotland for New York City. Some adjustment! Edinburgh provided several highlights for its Festival: Ken Currie's superb new oils at the SNPG; Victoria Crow's lovely tapestry at the Dovecot woven from 40 shades of natural undyed wool; Blackadder at the Scottish Gallery; Witches etc at GMA; The Open Eye, interesting as usual- and Ana Maria Pacheco's serious and moving etchings and installation at the Edinburgh Chaplaincy in George Square. This in itself is a great place to visit for its new, elegant chapel in what is really the back garden. (Designed by architect Stuart Allan of www.simpsonandbrown.co.uk. Summerhall, www.summerhall.co.uk deserves praise and a piece to itself: Chinese painting exh; Lawrence Weiner; Michael Nyman film installation; Fiona Banner; Demarco Archive; Artiscience@aol.com & more.

 In Glasgow Glasgow Print Studio celebrated its 40th b-day with a 40/40 show attended by crowds, www.gpsart.co.uk. In fact GPS started in 1972. I was there along with Beth Fisher, Jacki Parry, John Taylor, Jimmy Cosgrove and Eli Lamb. Lamb's marriage of rose and thistle is memorable, also Adrian Wisniewski's colourful print, www.adrianwiszniewski.com and Bruce Mclean's characteristic drips.

See below the 3 great participants - Ken Duffy who began Edinburgh Printmakers 46 or was it 47 years ago; Phillip Reeves who kept us sane in the early 1970s; and John Mackechnie, shorter hair, but still keeping GPS on the road!

                                                  GPS party.

Edinburgh Festival / Richard Demarco

For my blog I am set against a backdrop of Glasgow School of Art. 

Mackintosh designed the world famous building in 1899

                                           Jim Hickey and Clare at the Demarco ceremony

                                               Richard Demarco speaking at the ceremony.

Yesterday I was called "journalist royalty" - today I'm legendary! See David Eustace below. So, with my huge 30 year archive in the process of going to Glasgow School of Art, glasgow school of art, - itself really legendary - I begin my first blog. Until recently I never thought much about Archives. But as Richard Demarco told us when receiving his well earned European Prize 2013 at the Edinburgh Festival last week, "Art and archives are the language of angels. Art is not, not, about entertainment."

Ricky is worried about losing the story of the people who created the Edinburgh Festival in 1947 "to heal the wounds of war. He said, "I was 17. It was the first time I had heard spoken French; the first time I ever hear the music of Vienna under the conductor's baton of a German! OMG! A German. I will never forget that energy of my first Edinburgh Festival." Richard Demarco and Jim Haynes went on to found the Traverse Theatre, this summer celebrating its 50th B-day. richard demarco.

David Eustace, photographer extraordinaire, david eustace, posted "Today two really lovely refreshing hours chatting and sharing stories of both sides of the Atlantic with the legendary Herald and FT art commentator Clare Henry . Quality conversations on very different subjects and a much needed break from reading about how our world today seems to celebrate and recognise the ordinary... It's all good."

Scottish Art Archive 2008

2008 

April 

5th - Armory Show, FT

Sept 

17th - Hudson, Street of Antique Dreams, New York Sun newspaper. 

24th - Silver at Forbes Gallery NYC and Edinburgh, for New York Sun. 

David Mach, Sculpture Magazine .

2011 Catalogue Adrian Wiszniewski, London.

2012  

April John Cleater and Altered Reality, State Magazine etc 

Dec. Bute and Dovecot, State Mag