Edward Hopper’s “Early Sunday Morning” is among the 20th Century paintings that the Whitney Museum has grouped together as examples of true classical art in a new exhibition running through April 3.
The museum’s use of the term “classical” seems surprising not only in the context of Hopper’s famous silent and desolate street scene but also when applied to a number of the abstract works in the show. They include avant garde creations by such modernists as Stuart Davis, Willem de Kooning, Ellsworth Kelly and Cy Twombly.
But the Whitney stresses that classical art involves principles not confined to Antiquity, the Renaissance or turn-of-the-century Beaux-Arts classicism. The fundamentals of classical art include scale on a human proportion (a Greek development) as well as an emphasis on “balance, symmetry, order and harmony.”
The 100 works in the show, titled “In a Classical Vein,” are as diverse as Thomas Dewing’s 1908 portrait “Lady in a Brown Dress” and Jasper Johns’ 1966 “Studio II.” Lifelike works of Hopper and Reginald Marsh share space and attention with the intellectual abstractions of Mark Rothko and the iconoclastic ones of Jackson Pollock.
Yet classical principles can be found in all.
The exhibition is arranged in three groupings: works in which a systematic order is imposed by the artist, works in which the order is generated internally through the artist’s intuitive sense of form, and works that strike a balance between external structure and the intuitive. The sardonic and satirical portraits of Guy Pene Dubois, a longtime Hopper friend and mentor, are typical of the last category.
This is both a stimulating and demanding show, but one in which the curators have been able to communicate clearly and well.
– Also at the Whitney is a highly provocative-and to some, offensive-survey of the work of California artist Mike Kelley. The one-time L.A. underground performance artist developed some of his visual art forms from live stage routines and concepts.
Much of Kelley’s work is obsessed with sex and sexual frustration, as well as parental and societal authority. Some of the works are light and whimsical, especially those using popular cartoon figures, while others are crude and in your face, such as his disemboweled Raggedy Andy doll (titled “Eviscerated Corpse”). His show closes Feb. 20.
– If the epic film “Schindler’s List” has indeed made this the year of Steven Spielberg, New York’s Museum of the Moving Image has been among the first to provide him with a pedestal. At a Waldorf-Astoria Hotel banquet Feb. 24, it will honor the 46-year-old legendary director with its annual award (Mike Nichols and Al Pacino were among recent recipients) and a gala salute.
From Feb. 6 to March 26, the museum also will hold weekend retrospective showings of notable Spielberg films of the past.
One of the city’s more interesting attractions, this museum devoted to the world of movies, television and even video games is near LaGuardia Airport at 35th Avenue and 36th Street in Astoria.
