Art Reviews: Met Museum, Frick Collection, Whitney Museum

Metropolitan Museum of Art
Impressionism, Fashion and Modernity
Through May 27, 2013
Velázquez’s Portrait of Duke Francesco I d'Este—A Masterpiece from the Galleria Estense, Modena
Through July 14, 2013
1000 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY
metmuseum.org

The Frick Collection
Piero della Francesca in America
Through May 19, 2013
The Impressionist Line from Degas to Toulouse-Lautrec: Drawings and Prints from the Clark
Through June 16, 2013
1 East 70^th Street, New York, NY
frick.org

Whitney Museum of American Art
American Legends: From Calder to O’Keeffe 
Ongoing
945 Madison Avenue, New York, NY
whitney.org

The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s big blockbusters are the Costume Institute’s fashion

Monet's Women in the Garden

shows—Punk: Chaos to Couture is the latest—so it’s no surprise that curators conjured a hybrid exhibit of fashion and art. Impressionism, Fashion and Modernity is a canny exploration of how artists from Manet, Renoir and Monet to Cezanne, Corot and Cassatt were influenced by then-contemporary styles. By combining dozens of canvases, familiar and obscure, with complementary clothing from dresses and suits to hats and footwear, the exhibition visualizes how the seminal years from 1860-1890 evolved for the Impressionists. This new angle from which to explore these artists is also a chance to look at stunning fashions.

Another Met exhibit, Velázquez’s Portrait of Duke Francesco I d'Este—A Masterpiece from the Galleria Estense, Modena, shows off the Spanish master’s exquisite jewel of a portrait, now on loan from an Italian museum heavily damaged in an earthquake last year. It’s not only a must-see painting, but a must-learn lesson in the fragility of out artistic treasures when Mother Nature decides to intervene.

Renoir's Pinning the Hat

The Frick Collection’s current exhibits include Piero della Francesca in America, which brings together seven paintings from the renowned Renaissance artist, including six panels from his Sant’Agostino alterpiece: four of them already make the Frick their home; the others hail from Washington’s National Gallery of Art and Lisbon’s Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga. These radiant panels, reunited for the first time since 1555, show the painstaking detail of Piero’s artistry. A seventh Piero work, a refined Virgin and Child from the Clark Institute in the Berkshires, rounds out the exhibit.

Another Frick show, The Impressionist Line from Degas to Toulouse-Lautrec: Drawings and Prints from the Clark, which comprises 58 drawings, watercolors and prints from that venerable museum, is a veritable riot of colorful, balanced figures and locales. Highlights are Millet’s finely etched The Sower; Manet’s delightful At the Café; several splendid Degas animals; and Renoir’s voluptuous Pinning the Hat.

Hopper's Early Sunday Morning

American art of the 20^th century makes up the core of the Whitney Museum’s collection, and its exhibition American Legends: From Calder to O’Keeffe provides a first-rate overview of these valuable holdings. Works by luminaries Charles Burchfield, Alexander Calder, Marsden Hartley, Edward Hopper, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Joseph Stella are shown in this rotating exhibit, where you can examine Burchfield’s luminous watercolors, Calder’s delightfully airy mobiles and sculptures and Hopper’s masterly displays of isolation.