Best time of the year

When it is getting cold and dark early in the afternoon no one wants to be outside anymore. Therefore museums and galleries open their big new exhibition in fall. They offer colorful escapes from the gray-in-gray of autumn days as well as warm thoughts.
 
As always in New York: the number of exhibitions is overwhelming. Therefore I made a selection of five exhibitions to which I am most looking forward:
 

• Chris Ofili: Night and Day at The New Museum (opening October 29, 2014)

It is the first major solo Museum exhibition in the United Stated of the work of Chris Ofili. I became Aware of him at the friend's restoration studio where she just prepared one of Ofili's works for the exhibition at The New Museum. It is intriguing how Ofili brings together a wide variety of materials within his works: paint, resin, glitter, and elephant dung. His work is at the same time figurative, abstract and decorative. In his latest works he shows himself influenced by Henri Matisse, which lets me build the bridge to my next tip.

Chris Ofili, Afrodizzia (2nd Version), 1996

 

• Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs at The Museum of Modern Art (opening October 12, 2014)

Henri Matisse is one of my favorite artists. I like his strokes in simple drawings as well as his use of colors and especially I like his cut-outs. MoMA writes in its homepage:

"In the late 1940s, Henri Matisse turned almost exclusively to cut paper as his primary medium, and scissors as his chief implement, introducing a radically new operation that came to be called a cut-out. Matisse would cut painted sheets into forms of varying shapes and sizes—from the vegetal to the abstract—which he then arranged into lively compositions, striking for their play with color and contrast, their exploitation of decorative strategies, and their economy of means."

The MoMA will show the largest exhibition the cut-outs ever mounted.

 Henri Matisse, Memory of Oceania, 1952 - 1953 © 2014 Succession H. Matisse

 

• Masterpieces from the Scottish National Gallery at The Frick Collection (opening November 5, 2014)

Lately I have been to Scotland but did not had the time to visit the famous Scottish National Gallery. So I am happy to hear that The Frick Collection will host ten masterpiece paintings including Botticelli's well-known The Virgin Adoring the Sleeping Christ Child.

Sandro Botticelli, The Virgin Adoring the Sleeping Christ Child, about 1490

 

• ZERO: Countdown to tomorrow at The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (opening October 10, 2014)

As Zero was a German artists' group (1957 - 66) I am really excited to see and read how the New Yorkers will like the first large-scale ZERO-exhibition in the United States. The exhibition will show aspects as Land art, Minimalism, and Conceptual art.

Illustration from ZERO Vol. 3, 1961. Designed by Heinz Mack.

© 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

 

• Picasso & the Camera at Gagosian Gallery (opening October 28, 2014)

There are no further information on this exhibition at the gallery's homepage at the moment but I know that although Picasso himself dealt little with photography, he knew the potential of the medium well to use for his artistic experiments. I have never seen photography of Picasso before so this will be a new experience.

 Can't wait for all of them to open!