Neo Rauch at the Met

I had seen a Neo Rauch show a couple of years ago at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in my hometown, North Adams Ma. I walked away guardedly impressed, but skeptical that I was viewing paintings that would continue to be innovative and interesting over a period of time.

I was right, they have gotten much better.

Walking in to the Met yesterday I wanted to see the Rembrandt show, and as a secondary agenda I wanted to see the new paintings from Neo Rauch (the show was called PARA). (Plus I like Roman coins, and I usually walk through the new Roman and Byzantine galleries to view the coins)

The Rembrants left me underwhelmed, but the Neo Rauch left me excited and engaged.

I would say do not bother with the photos on the Met website (you can see them here), but if you can not get to NYC you will have to content yourself with the pale mirrors the photos are. The paintings themselves are in places barely worked on and in other places seemingly slaved over. In person they are painterly, luminous, provocative, smart, funny, and you can tell this guy loves making paintings, and probably thinking about painting. His enthusiasm in not guarded by the paint.

The colors were exciting to me, and there were very subtle mixes of (both pale) blues and yellows, and a lot of magenta mixed maybe with venetian red and some kind of purple or transparent blue (he would render the darker values of the magenta color into cavernous pits of umber, it was exquisite). Overall I would say the earthy greens and yellows were the show stoppers, but the colors were hard to pin down and that made them seductive as well.

I bought a 50 dollar book from on of the little bookstores they have throughout the museum, but I did not buy the show catalog for Para. The one thing that was wrong with the show was the catalog. My two complaints are: poor reproductions that were both small and not photographed well enough to display most of the subtlety that will endear these paintings to you. Basically it was a pretty crappy catalog (for Para), now the store had this other book called Neue Rollen that has a yellow spine (with red and blue text - straight primary color brightness and a work of art in itself), and it has fantastic reproductions, and an interesting series of articles about and quotes from the artist. I do recommend Neue Rollen.

Besides that my day went well, and both of my classes drew well.

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