Travel Time: The Whitney

On my latest trip to the “BIG APPLE” (I heard that’s what real New Yorkers call it), in between scarfing down bagels and pizza, I had the distinct pleasure of checking out a show of portraiture at the Whitney Museum of American Art. The dedicated works of art you see below are members of an elite squad called their permanent collection. These are their stories:

The best thing about this huge 2 floor sprawling show was how diverse it was. You had everything from celebrity photos, to video performance to sculptures that were literally on fire (more on that later). The way it was set up was that each room was a different theme…some more successful than others. For instance, the “Portraits without People” room was, as you might expect, pretty dull.

Except for this stunner, Summer Days by Georgia O’Keeffe. She rocked it. 

There was a very cool pairing of Willem de Kooning’s famous Woman and a Bicycle with a painting that makes fun of it. Here’s Will’s:

Then, right across the room, is this:

Peter Saul’s amazing neon parody of de Kooning’s iconic work. He’s clowning de Kooning! He’s clowning errybody! I took a particular like to this spoof, because I hate de Kooning. You go, Peter.

Another challenging one for me was from ‘90s internet aesthete Cory Arcangel:

My companion and I spent several minutes trying to decide if leaving the tag on the flat screen television and all the wires hanging on the floor was intentional. But hey, Diddy. That’s cool.

But Puff’s cool factor pales in comparison to this vision in white by Barkley L. Hendricks:

My girl Cindy Sherman was well-represented, showcasing a few different selfies:

Is it just me, or does she look like Nicole Kidman here?

Another favorite was this stunning portrait by Chuck Close:

But the craziest work of art, by far, was the larger-than-life sized wax sculpture of artist Julian Schnabel by Urs Fischer that was actually a FUNCTIONING candle and was LITERALLY on fire. Here it is whole:

When we got there, the head had already fallen off. They light the wicks each morning and extinguish them each night, but at the end of the exhibition, the sculpture will be ruined. The artist can make a new cast, but every time you see the work it will be completely different. So neat.

He’s meeeeltiiing!

All in all, the Whitney gets the Sartle stamp of approval.

By Angelica