Not an Instrument; Not a Country

Renzo Piano's addition to the Morgan Library Museum is a creature both beautiful and rare: a museum expansion/construction that is not a grandiose testament to the egos of its architect and the museum's trustees, an abysmal breach of duty both to the art going public and the art they are going to see, or a colossal waste of money. Instead it is a seamless add-in that yokes together three disparate spaces across the better part of a highly developed city block. The main space is wide open and airy, and yet still manages to have nooks and crannies capable of surprising the visitor and granting her privacy and repose. Primarily steel,wood and glass, it is an incredibly warm space. The steel girded and gridded supports are painted, but in the grey December light seemed plated in silver and no doubt would have been had J.P. Morgan himself been footing the bill.

I was there to see the Lichtenstein show, a display of drawings early and on. The show itself was surprisingly warm as it showed the artist as a young man struggling to master his new approach. His greatest and most charming challenge seemed to entail finding a way to replicate the Ben-Day dots he loved so much with mechanical uniformity by hand. I got to learn that "poichoir" is a lovely word for stencil and that "frottage" does not just mean "dry humping." I also got a wonderful sense for Lichtenstein's sense of humor. In a special niche of the exhibit, the curators had dug up an old door from a studio the artist inhabited during a stay at an art colony in Colorado. A small windowless space, Lichtenstein turned it into a 3-D cartoon using electrician's tape to form contour lines around doors, walls and outlets, as well as heat squiggles and knocking sounds. Hilarious and, dare I say, fun. 


Lichtenstein made a big deal about trying to make passionless art. In restrospect, I think he was trying to get away from the faux white boy passion of abstract expressionism -- and who could blame him? If the trade off is humor for the gesture of passion, I'll take humor every time.


Ultimately, however, Lichtenstein's work is about timelessness. Whether it be the tail gunner going down, the hot dog, the knock on the door, the Alka-Seltzer tablet dissolving or the brush stroke expressing--Lichtenstein captured it, froze it and reduced it to its simplest form funny, lovely and for all time.