Our Art Life in New York: At Last I Gain the Guggenheim «

Our Art Life in New York: At Last I Gain the Guggenheim

Monday 5th November 2012

Twenty-two years I waited. On both previous visits in restauro – the Guggenheim.

Tomorrow Robert Nevil returns from India where he has had tremendous adventures with a lavatory chain at Rose Cottage – if you don’t love The Jewel in the Crown, you’ll be confused.

Mildred said to Barbie, ‘India has been very bad for you and Rose Cottage a disaster.’

Somehow Robert Nevil has visited Rose Cottage although it doesn’t exist.

But that’s Robert Nevil for you.

On Thursday I leave for Berlin, for an Art Show and to visit, never having been before.

So, in New York, the Gay Mother and I queued in the rain for the Guggenheim. Filthy lunch but despite hordes, we loved that building, never before seen on the inside. It’s not perfect, you know. Scoop marks in the cement, some of the edges wonky.

But we loved that building. We even loved Picasso who was shown in it, not even with any colours. Just black and white Picasso, absolutely masses of it, from top to bottom. The Gay Mother and I prefer Matisse. But Picasso came to life in the setting. All the dynamic curves of the building brought out that the energy of Picasso is in the arrangement of lines – there’s such energy and power although hideous.

I’ve never known the Gay Mother so modern. She even insisted on plunging into some remote basement for an exhibition of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Usonian House, a model of which was shown on the site of the present Guggs in 1950. It was a vision of ideal modest modern living. Jolly nice, with a wooden fitted kitc.

There’s something modest, or perhaps honest is the better word, about the Guggenheim itself. Famously its outside reveals and in no way conceals what is within. The materials used are concrete and cement. I think even the floor is polished concrete. There’s none of the clinical impersonality associated with Modernist buildings. The hand-made feel, the imperfections and faults are the making of it.