Yoko Ono had so many good ideas her show was almost exhausting. She is a heavy hitter in conceptual art like her friend, the man they call “JC,” John Cage. She certainly didn’t dim John Lennon’s career but he may have hampered hers. She was really on a roll before they met.
MoMA has two sensational Giacometti paintings on display next to one of his figures on a two wheeled cart. A love his paintings. They are as playful, spatially speaking, as his sculptures and the two look so good together it was hard to move along.
There is also a fun show of Gilbert & George’s early work, mostly large drawings accompanied by this quote. “They weren’t Good Drawers. They weren’t Bad Drawers. But My God, they were Drawers.”
The reassembled Jacob Lawrence “Migration” series was graphic and moving. At the end of number 60 they funneled you into a room with film footage of Billie Holiday singing “Strange Fruit” and it packed an extreme punch.
Matisse’s “Swimming Pool.” is still up and next to it a whole room of choice Matisse paintings. The nearby Van Gogh “Starry Night” makes this the gravitational center of Manhattan.
We came down gently with Matisse’s back reliefs on the wall of the sculpture garden.
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