Postcard from New York, 1: Whitney Museum of American Art (+ The High Line)

Renzo Piano Building Workshop, The Whitney Museum, 2007-15

The Whitney Museum of American Art opened in its current location at 99 Gansevoort Street on 1 May 2015 so it was a thrill to visit it while it is still so fresh. The building, by Renzo Piano, is impressive (although quite hard to 'see' from the ground) and the galleries with their external sculpture terraces and 'lounges' offering spectacular views across the city and across the Hudson to New Jersey are wonderful. (I was glad to learn that the, also wonderful, old Whitney building by Marcel Breuer is, apparently, to become an outpost of the Metropolitan Museum.)

Marcel Breuer, Whitney Museum, 1966

We approached the Whitney via the High Line walking from 23rd Street to Gansevoort Street. This was a delight: a relaxed stroll along a plant-lined, elevated former railway track offering great views down into, and over, the streets and punctuated with artworks. I was disappointed that Edward Ruscha's mural had been replaced but enjoyed Ryan Gander's 'kissing' fountain and Damián Ortega's three-dimensional graffiti amongst others.

View along the High Line

Ryan Gander, To employ the mistress... It's a French toff thing

Damián Ortega, Physical Graffiti

The inaugural exhibition at the Whitney, America is Hard to See, is drawn entirely from the museum's collection and is arranged chronologically in a series of 'chapters' from the eighth floor down. We began by ascending in the lift to the top floor then worked downwards via the external staircases which take in the sculpture terraces. The exhibition is fabulous - below is my top ten selection  (in alphabetical order of artist):

Margaret Bourke-White, George Washington Bridge, c1934

Vija Celmins, Heater, 1964

Willem de Kooning, Door to the River, 1960

Charles Demuth, My Egypt, 1927

Arshile Gorky,  the Artist and His Mother, 1926-c1936

Edward Hopper, Early Sunday Morning, 1930

John McCracken, Violet Block in Two Parts, 1966 (floor) and Brice Marden, Summer Table, 1972-3 (wall)

Frank Stella, Die Fahne hoch!, 1959

Wayne Thiebaud, Pie Counter, 1963

And a couple of views of, and from, the museum:

Looking down to the sculpture terrace on floor 7 with work by David Smith

Looking down to the sculpture terrace on floor 6 with work by Robert Morris and Tony Smith

Mary Heilmann, Sunset (detail) on north wall of Museum above terrace on floor 5

View west from one of the museum's windows

Read: 

Jonathan Massey (2015) "High Line Your Museum", Art in America, May 2015, pp110-117

Timothy M. Rohan (2015) "The Breuer Effect", Art in America, May 2015 

(See also: Postcard from New York, 2: MoMA; Postcard from New York, 3: The Guggenheim; Postcard from New York, 4: Dia: Beacon; click on the index label below to see all Postcards from New York)

Stockwell Depot - University of Greenwich Galleries

[Unidentified work on roof of Stockwell Depot]

Stockwell Depot 1967-79 is at University of Greenwich Galleries until 12 September 2015.
This exhibition and associated publication by Sam Cornish celebrate a fascinating moment in British art: the Stockwell Depot studios flourished in a period of notable social, political and aesthetic turbulence. As John A. Walker records in Left Shift: Radical Art in 1970s Britain: "During the 1960s, the formalist ideas of the American critic Clement Greenberg... had dominated art theory in Britain and there were some British artists - mostly abstract painters and sculptors associated with St. Martin's School of Art...and the Stockwell Depot studios in South London - who continued to be influenced by the Greenbergians during the 1970s." (p5)  The emergence of Conceptual Art and the subsequent fashionable fascination with French theory that gave rise to Postmodernism effectively marginalised formalist abstraction - yet many artists such as those associated with the Stockwell Depot stubbornly persisted in their aesthetic convictions. Hopefully, Sam Cornish's book will throw some much needed light on a neglected patch of British art history - it was surprisingly difficult to track down relevant information just to write this blog entry. I look forward to learning more.

Peter Hide, Beryl

Fred Pollock, Honeydripper, 1977

David Evison

John Foster, Full Face, 1978 (left) and Katherine Gili, Vertical IV, 1975

Roland Brenner, Deep Space,

Roland Brener, Sculpture with Single Arch, 1968

[Unidentified artists/work on the roof of Stockwell Depot]

Stockwell Depot: Sculpture Exhibition (1968) with Peter Hide, Sculpture No.2

View of Stockwell Depot

Postscript. For a brief, delirious moment, back in the day, I imagined that the artists of Stockwell Depot worked in the spectacular Modernist concrete architectural masterpiece that is Stockwell bus garage - a sculpture in its own right. 

Stockwell Bus Garage; architects: Adie, Button and Partners, 1952

Albert Irvin - Gimpel Fils

Albert Irvin, Untitled, 1973

Albert Irvin RA OBE: Painting the Human Spirit is at Gimpel Fils until 28 August 2015.
I was very sorry to learn of Albert Irvin's death earlier this year (26 March 2015) and wrote a brief memorial note on this blog (see below); so, I am delighted to see that Gimpel Fils have mounted this memorial exhibition.

Albert Irvin, Moving Through, 1960

Albert Irvin, Pegasus, 1982

Albert Irvin, Merlin, 1987

Albert Irvin, Mansfield, 1993

Albert Irvin, Florian, 1999

Anthony Caro - The Hepworth Wakefield & Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Anthony Caro, Month of May, 1963

Caro in Yorkshire is at The Hepworth Wakefield and the Yorkshire Sculpture Park until 1 November 2015.
The coincidence of these exhibitions of Caro with those of Barbara Hepworth at Tate Britain (see below) and Henry Moore, also at YSP (see below), makes for an interesting comparison of the (arguably) major British, twentieth century abstract sculptors. Caro's innovatory, painted, welded sculptures of the 1960s represented a spectacular and radical turning away from the 'humanist', organic, carved work associated with Moore and Hepworth.
As noted in the entry marking his death in 2013 (see below)  Caro (having worked as an assistant to Moore) was profoundly influenced by the work of the Abstract Expressionists and, in particular, by the work of sculptor David Smith and the ideas of Clement Greenberg experienced during a visit to the United States in 1959.
I like Adrian Searle's description of  an encounter with Caro's best work: "[They] dance in front of you and you have to dance with them and around them. This involves lots of sidling and bending, squats and pirouettes, circling and shimmying." 
Personally, I like the painted work of the 1960s the best - it still seems fresh and lyrical.
Read reviews by Adrian Searle, Mark Hudson, Jackie Wullschlager, Karen Wright, Louisa Buck and William Cook.

Anthony Caro, Twenty Four Hours, 1960

Anthony Caro, Sculpture Seven, 1961

Anthony Caro, First National, 1964

Anthony Caro, Slow Movement, 1965

Anthony Caro, The Window, 1966-7

Anthony Caro, Double Shot, 1987-93

Anthony Caro, Forum, 1992-4

Anthony Caro, Promenade, 1996

Anthony Caro, Morning Shadows, 2012

Anthony Caro, Rhapsody, 2011-12

Anthony Caro, Terminus, 2013

Anthony Caro, End of Time, 2013

Henry Moore - Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Henry Moore, Large Two Forms, 1966-69

Henry Moore: Back to a Land is at The Yorkshire Sculpture Park until 6 September 2015.
Like his contemporary Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore's sculpture developed in close relation to the landscape; in contrast to the concurrent exhibition of Hepworth at Tate Britain (see below) where her work is confined to quarters, this exhibition (co-curated by Mary Moore, the artist's daughter) puts the work into the open air - where it belongs.
Moore and Hepworth were lonely representatives of British Modernism on the international stage in the first half of the twentieth century; however, in the 1960s work that, pre-war, had seemed the last word in avant-gardism began to seem conservative, not least in contrast to the radical work of one of Moore's former assistants - Anthony Caro. The Yorkshire Sculpture Park now offers the opportunity to compare and contrast with a concurrent exhibition of work by Caro (see above). 
Read a feature by Mark Brown interviewing Mary Moore: Damien Hirst set back art by 100 years, says Henry Moore's daughter.

Henry Moore, Large Reclining Figure, 1984

Henry Moore, Two Piece Reclining Figure: Points, 1969

Henry Moore, Draped Reclining Figure, 1978