The combination of prints, drawings and sculptures in this exhibition draws attention to something not often mentioned in the extensive literature on the artist: the relationship between Mr. Johns's two-dimensional works and his three-dimensional ones.
Although the book is key to the exhibition and something the group has been working on for over a year, the gallery space will also feature a number of other artworks, all of which share the same common intention: to "create a space for people as a kind of refuge from SAD a sanctuary; hopefully somewhere that feels a million miles from London in the middle of February".
Not only is Chain Letter a visual equalizer but it also levels ones standing within the exhibition, something, to which I imagine, the art world and artists are not generally accustomed.
Wren adds: "People of any age who visit the exhibition can find something to relate to in the unique stories told by the sitters and will be moved and inspired by what they hear".
Mapping and landscape art evolved together in the Renaissance, and this exhibition reveals something quite shocking to conventional art history: that maps were displayed as works of art before landscape paintings were similarly valued.
"[The purpose of] this exhibition is to take something I find really inspiring and really innovative and put it in a different context in order to showcase the massive talents of these artists".
Limiting this outstanding show to a 50-year span around the turn of the last century is far from arbitrary, for this exhibition is something of a prequel to "Great Pots: Contemporary Ceramics From Function to Fantasy," an exquisite and memorable 2003 show of post-1930 studio ceramics drawn from the museum's collection.
Critics have focused on the bill's description of the "expansion project," which includes renovation of the Javits and "construction of adjacent facilities containing a plenary hall, meeting and exhibition space," something that sounds remarkably similar to the proposed stadium, just to the south of Javits.
Mr. Christiansen said he hoped that visitors to the exhibition would discover something about the crucial relationship between painting and sculpture — "how they competed against each other" — and that Renaissance portraiture does not only mean painting.
You do not put on an exhibition of something you do not want to look at.
