Saturday, November 26, 2011

Last Call - Georges Braque and Geoffrey Johnson Pose Existential Questions

Georges Braque, Harbor, 1909, oil on canvas, 16 x 19 inches,
National Gallery of Art, Washington,
Gift of Victoria Nebeker Coberly in memory of her son, John W. Mudd
1992.3.1
Image Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington
© 2011 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Georges Braque: Pioneer of Modernism, Acquavella Gallery through November 30.

The glorious Georges Braque retrospective, long overdue, is scheduled to close too soon.  For beautiful as it is, Braque's work may not be as easy to understand as it may seem superficially.  It requires multiple viewings at different times to understand this exploration of the seen and unseen all at one time.  This is truly Cubism: a conceptual intersection of space and time.  Ideally, one should see the show, read the brilliant catalogue essays by curator Dieter Buchhart, French modernist scholar Isabelle Monod-Fontaine and Cézanne specialist Richard Shiff, and then return for another look to study the writers' insights. 

However, if you have not seen the show already, just go before it closes midweek.