We’re in the Eternal City of Rome, but my mind’s still in the city that never sleeps—partially, because I’m very jet lagged and have barely slept in the past 48 hours, but mostly because I’ve a shit ton of photos left from our time there and it’s been way too hot to take many photos here. So I’ll be sharing some shots from the art museums we visited.
This is the Rothko room at MoMA. 20 years ago, I only visited the Met and spent the whole time in the Modern Art section where I saw a Rothko for the first time and was viscerally moved by the experience. I’m glad I encountered these here, because what I didn’t know yet was that the Met’s modern art wing is currently closed, so I wasn’t getting a chance to relive that particular moment. This was not too shabby either.
I’d since been to Rothko’s chapel in Houston, which was another moving experience; I was surprised, however, to learn about his later years. I had not realized that they were so devoid of color. I feel like that’s an unfortunately common shadow of many a life spent chasing the transcendent. x
Christine and I both agree that we’d be MoMA members if we lived in NYC; there’s just so much to see and learn here, and there’s only so much you can take in on a single visit. For me, the camera is a way to protect myself from overstimulation; it’s also a way to create distance between myself and the art—to see them as part of the experiences of others. I really enjoy that process. x
We came here especially to see MoMA’s big Duchamp exhibit, which did not disappoint. The breadth and diversity of this 20th century renaissance man’s work is dizzying; every room of the exhibit showed another transformation in his life and oeuvre—from painting to illustration to design and sculpture to conceptual art and, finally, to chess, which is how we spent the end of his days.
While we were there, Christine realized that her affinity with Duchamp was very much like her lifelong love of Da Vinci: two artists interested in everything, refusing to be contained by any one lane. Which is fitting; we plan to visit the town of Vinci on this trip as well. x
Another subterranean connection between the two halves of our trip was the major Raphael exhibit at the Met, which was way more crowded than I expected. Here’s that crowd walking past Fra Carnevale’s The Ideal City (Città Ideale, ca. 1475–90), a striking vision of spatial harmony at the very start of the exhibit—a statement by the curators on the visual, philosophical, and political atmosphere that helped make Raphael “possible.” Make what you will out of the contrast between background and foreground. x
If you haven’t already, subscribe to @christine.bingham.art’s Substack at christinebinghamart.substack.com – she just posted an article about our time in New York 🗽 x
More of the vibes at the Raphael exhibit at the Met, where I spent a good part of my birthday. x