NEUE GALERIE, Alte Tricks.
It was not a very cold day today, it was however pretty windy, so the blue sky was rushed, the clouds flew by, running eastwards.
Neue Galerie was the destination of todayıs excursion, a plan soon abandoned. A line, from the steps of 1048 5th Avenue, (which is, quite honestly an 86th Street address) all the way to the Avenue; 50 Decked out Upper East Siders maybe? The Guards had this cold and superior look on their faces, while the visitors huddled like a flock of freshly shaven sheep, trying to avoid the January wind. Great, New Yorkıs Upper East Side has a new Hot Spot. It is a child of passion and the fathers are Sabarsky and Lauder. Their creation seems like a great addition to the Upper East side, I am sure Ralph Lipschitz will come by to look at the art. I do not want to say too much. I feel that I might need to take a second look. The choice of location, theme, and period mke it seem like more than a child of passion. It feels like a child of two brilliant men with good funding and an excellent investment strategy. Neue Galerie is no Barnes Foundation, the sly remote estate of a passionate man who decided to buy art that was "relatively cheap" at that time to create his own Gesamtkunstwerk, and in the process, to somehow help the artists who became the pieces in his collection, by making suggestions, or giving them the opportunity to work in his house. (ok, also an investment strategy) Neue Galerie is not going to help Schiele or Klee, it will not help Beckmann or Grosz. It is not really a "Neue Galerie". When Otto Kallir opened Neue Gallerie 1923 he was attempting "to capture an innovative, modern spirit". What is Neue Galerie New York trying to capture?
More and hopefully more balanced comments on the Galery once I manage to take a walk inside, not just on the website and over the pages of their Seriously heavy Catalogue, not available online, only in their pretty themed Book Store, right next to the Design store, right next to the themed Café. (This reminds me however of our visit to the studio of Mark Kostabi once. He had a book about himself made to fit exactly between two large monographs on Michelangelo and Picasso.) Hmm...
One more little episode. Wherever I see Egon Schiele : The Complete Works. I am a bit surprised how used the book appears. Even the dustcover on my edition, which I bought at Königıs in Cologne has this sly abused look. The book is superior to anything I have read on Schiele and is so elaborately linked and cross referenced that it surpasses the information architecture of some well designed WebSites. This did not seem to be most important feature for the gentleman in his 50ıs who almost knocked me over to get the book at the book store at the Neue Galerie. I thought that it would be nice to recommend the book to him, since it is really excellent. He already seemed to know his favorite pages however... and his sweaty palms could hardly keep up the weight of the tome. Hmm...
Pretty daring, this "Neue Galerie" after all. No entry for persons under 13 and those under 16 only if accompanied by an adult. I really hope not this sweaty palmed gentleman, who sees Schieles work with probably far more passion than the painterıs contemporaries.
Maybe the Neue Galerie is actually a quite brillinat strike of genius.
Letıs elaborate some other time.
Have a great monday.