NYT 1/30/09

Three articles from the January 30th New York Times.

1. Bonnard Late in Life, Searching for the Light by Roberta Smith  ”By the last quarter-century of his long, productive career, Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) was deep into what might be called his Red-Yellow-Orange Period. These colors dominate “Pierre Bonnard: the Late Interiors,” a sumptuous exhibition that lends some unseasonable warmth to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, specifically to the tepid lower level of its Robert Lehman Collection.

The fiery hues may be offset with touches of green, blue and darker tones; they may be intermittently superseded by expanses of pulsing white — a snowy door or mantelpiece or, most often, a blazing tablecloth. But generally they reign supreme among the show’s 80 or so paintings, drawings and watercolors. All are interiors or still lifes or, best, a hybrid; all were made from 1923, when Bonnard was 56, to the end of 1946, a month or so before his death.   Read the rest here.

2. At the Height of Power for the Netherlands, the City in Glorious Detail by Ken Johnson “There is nothing like a beautiful city, and there are several, lovingly painted, in “Pride of Place: Dutch Cityscapes of the Golden Age,” a quiet, gorgeous exhibition opening on Sunday at the National Gallery of Art.

This display of 48 paintings, 22 maps and assorted atlases and printed books shines a light on a time of extraordinary prosperity for the Dutch Republic. In a limited area of marshy land that fostered concentrated populations, an unusual number of rich urban centers grew up in the 17th century — places with still resonant names like The Hague, Amsterdam, Haarlem and Delft.

As they enjoyed a booming economy, these cities vied with one another for aesthetic as well as political and economic pre-eminence. Jan van Goyen, Gerrit Berckheyde, Jan van der Heyden, Jacob van Ruisdael and other preternaturally skillful painters created vividly realistic yet idyllic images that made their cities seem like parcels of heaven on earth.

Images of towns and cities had figured for centuries in European art but almost always as background scenery in pictures devoted to religious, historical or mythological subjects. The painters of the golden age in Holland brought the city onto center stage and made the cityscape a genre unto itself.

This urban motif evolved out of highly developed Dutch cartographic traditions. Large, intensively detailed maps included in the show suggest an almost obsessive preoccupation with geographical facts.” Read the rest here. 

3. Children’s Television, Tenderly Subverted by Karen Rosenberg  “Alex Bag’s videos take aim at television in all its forms: the infomercial, the reality show, the nature documentary. So it’s funny to learn, as we do in Ms. Bag’s first solo museum presentation, that her mother was the star of two popular children’s programs in the 1960s and ’70s. “The Carol Corbett Show” and “The Patchwork Family” both featured Ms. Corbett as a peppy host who interacted with puppets and animal guests. Ms. Bag appeared on “The Patchwork Family” at the age of 4, pushing a monkey in a baby stroller.

In her latest video, commissioned by the Whitney Museum and on view in its lobby gallery, Ms. Bag reimagines her mother’s programs from her own jaded, 21st-century perspective. Modeled on “The Patchwork Family,” the mock show is hosted by an “off my meds” depressive (Ms. Bag) with narcoleptic tendencies. Its supporting cast includes a wisecracking puppet, a strung-out folksinger in a wheelchair, a creepy animal handler and a witchy doppelgänger who resembles a character from Ms. Bag’s 2004 video, “Coven Services.”  Read the rest here.