Two days to go

If you're in New York you have until Monday to catch Van Gogh and Expressionism at the Neuegalerie. One of the first pieces in the exhibition is an 1890 rendition of the Farms hear Auvers that could practically have been signed by Cezanne. Then there are twin boat paintings, one a small ink study and the other the final oil on canvas that are sheer joy to behold. Soon after we are brutally thrown out of this mood and into the Klimts from the permanent collection. And somehow the moods of the Klimts just doesn't match the rest of the show. In all the shows I've seen over time at the Neuegalerie the Klimts seem to interrupt this one the most. But we move on to other things in the smaller room. There is lots of color and beauty in the exhibition even in the non-Van Gogh bits. But something about it just doesn't hang together. I walked away perplexed and trying to put my finger on why it doesn't work. If the purpose of the show is to display the Noldes and Kirschners and Schmidt-Rottluffs that mirror Van Gogh's style it achieves it. But there is something strangely unsatisfactory about walking through the rooms and rooms of mirrors, I felt there was no movement. The mad red splats of paint the "others" used often felt heavy. While so many works worked individually and mirrored the Van Gogh influence they remained static. Maybe the pieces were all too obvious. Though I don't think it was the obviousness that bothered me. I am agreed with the New York Times article (link in this blog heading) that one of the more successful couplings is Schiele's bedroom (see above) beside Van Gogh's. The real problem was that seeing the paintings that had been influenced by Van Gogh I felt I wasn't seeing anything essential by the "other" painter (whether the "other" was Nolde, or Kirschner). Schiele can hold his own anywhere but Kirschner would have been dwarfed but for his woodcuts at the very end of the exhibition. I could not help but think of the recent exhibition of German portraits from the 1920s at the Met that had been brilliantly curated or for that matter a Kirschner exhibition a few years back that came from London to NY. Despite the curatorial hiccups the works here are lovely so line up in the sun tomorrow!

On a bleaker note I'm reading Ahmed Ali's Twilight in Delhi. Despite claims that this 1940s novel was an earth-shaking event I'd not heard of him before. I'm wondering if his legacy in India is less known than in Pakistan where he went after Partition. Ali quotes sublime passages of Urdu shayiri in the book. Delhi is palpable though the few mentions ever made of non-Muslim Delhi are condescending or snide or bitter. But it doesn't really matter since we don't often get to read from this perspective about Delhi. One of his characters Mir Saheb reflects upon the illness of his mistress: His wife was there, no doubt; and so were the children. But the world they lived in was a domestic world. There was no beauty in it and no love.