Three shows currently on exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art must not be missed, and all are closing soon. So this week The Bare Square team is headed to MoMA to see Paula Hayes: Nocturne of the Limax maximus, Abstract Expressionist New York, and On to Pop before they all come down this month.
Paula Hayes. Installation view of Nocturne of the Limax maximus (Slug at left. Egg at right) at The Museum of Modern Art. 2010. Installation: cast acrylic, hand-blown glass, cnc-milled topographical wall and ceiling attachment, full-spectrum lighting, and tropical planting. Commissioned by The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Courtesy of the Artist and Marianne Boesky Gallery. © Paula Hayes. Photo: Jason Mandella
Since the 1990s, New York–based artist and landscape designer Paula Hayes (b. 1958) has produced botanical sculptures—organically shaped vessels made from blown glass, silicone, or acrylic and filled with a rich variety of plant life—that expand upon the classic terrarium, both through their imaginative containers and the microcosmic universes within. Hayes has conceived an installation for the MoMA’s lobby that includes a fifteen-foot-long, wall-mounted horizontal sculpture for the west wall, and a free-standing, egg-shaped, floor-to-ceiling structure nearby. Paula Hayes: Nocturne of the Limax maximus comes down Monday, April 18.
Jackson Pollock. Number 1A, 1948.1948. Oil and enamel paint on canvas. © 2010 Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Drawn entirely from the MoMA’s holdings, Abstract Expressionist New York underscores the achievements of a generation that catapulted New York City to the center of the international art world during the 1950s, and left as its legacy some of the twentieth century’s greatest masterpieces. Abstract Expressionist paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, photographs, films, and archival materials combine to form The Big Picture, devoting a full floor of the MoMA to a single theme for the first time in the museum’s history. (We’ll see if they include any works by Hedda Sterne, who passed away last week. Sterne was the last of The Irascibles, a group of New York artists, primarily Abstract Expressionists, who protested the MoMA in 1950. Check out James’ article here.)
Andy Warhol. Gold Marilyn Monroe. 1962. Silkscreen ink on synthetic polymer paint on canvas. Gift of Philip Johnson. © 2010 Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
On MoMA’s fourth floor, On to Pop features familiar objects and images we encounter in our daily lives–a flag, stockings, comics, and movie stars–in works by Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Andy Warhol, and others. Collectively these artists came to define American Pop art, a very different kind of “American-type” panting, which by the late 1960s had eclipsed Abstract Expressionism’s dominance on the New York scene.
Both Abstract Expressionist New York and On to Pop run until Monday April 25th.
Let’s all go to the MoMA! See you there!
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-Jen Wallace
Paula Hayes: Nocturne of the Limax maximus, Abstract Expressionist New York, and On To Pop
Museum of Modern Art
Exhibits closing soon
Click link above for hours, closing dates
11 West 53rd Street
New York, NY
