New American Wing

The wonderful new atrium was finished a while ago.

The center piece today of this now newest opening installation, is the George Washington Crossing the Delaware and it's new big gold frame I think remade for this occasion.The refurbished rooms now jam packed with a historical overview hardly allow one to tell it wasn't always as this, with new floors and marble borders.

Sadly, the overcrowded rooms reduce the effect the Church and Bierstadts can have. The recent installation during this renovation in the Lehman Wing was much better, each painting on their own wall.

I feel the cramped quarters spotlights the craft and detail aspect of each painting, and it is conservative as a marching history is. I see paintings such as these all over the US in other Museums that actually look great like one could actually like early American painting.

This installation leaves many paintings out, like an Audubon, and Augustus Tack, two of the more interesting and abstract, I saw in the open storage. I guess somehow footnotes to this more general history?

So when did American painting become American?

This became my theme in this viewing.

I suppose the theme of naval painting is British-- this is a nice painting but recently Ive seen wildly interesting boat paintings and even on Antique Road Show  I saw a better one. Though these paintings at the Met are all in pristine condition.

The landscape is really wonderful and seeming original to my eye. Certainly seems a New World. The Churchs and Beirstadts which I usually like are not well shown-- any way didn't show up here on my notes.

I'd never seen this study or plain air painting by Thomas Cole. Though still looks more like Europe than New World to me. A beginning.

This painting by Thompson begins a strand that to me seems influenced by Goya. The genre carries into the following Mount and Bingham paintings below.  

This painting by Kensett carries the genre theme of the everyday into today in maybe Porter and Katz. I think this Twain like Tom Sawyer feeling American.

I felt Homer very illustrative as Hopper after him. Though obviously both have great paintings they didn't grab me today.

-- then these great examples, more abstract as landscape form for itself.

This  sketch by Church was really the most exciting thing. If this art is not alive today what good is it. It should be hung that way, as if artists today actually looked at it.

                                   

This Twatchman painting I have loved for 40 years.

Though this Ryder is just part of existence for me, the romantic mind along with Melville in America.

I left out the Chases and Hassams as they are just not as good as Monet or the other Impressionists and felt provincial. 

Manet also continued to exert his influence over the Ashcan-- Glackens, Bellows, and Henry but these examples are great American art.

Out of the Met's window.