Met Breuer: “Unfinished”
Masterpieces of art left “Unfinished” at the Met Breuer
When is a work of art done? Should it ever be completed? These are the questions posed by “Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible,” the awe-inspiring inaugural exhibition of the new Met Breuer in New York—the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s renovated modern-art exhibit space, designed by legendary architect Marcel Breuer, which was the former home of the Whitney Museum of American Art (now moved downtown). “Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible” was a broad survey exhibit, with over 190 works from the Renaissance to the present, nearly half of which were from the Met’s own collection.
Two kinds of artworks were featured: those that were left unfinished by the artist for reasons unknown, and those that follow a non finito aesthetic—which means that there’s a purpose in being unresolved, deconstructed or open-ended. Da Vinci’s Head and Shoulders of a Woman, the image on the home page for this article, is an example of the former kind of work, because scholars can’t be sure why Leonardo never completed it. Yet it looks astoundingly beautiful as is, and its incompleteness gives it a unique and remarkably modern appeal. Andy Warhol’s Do It Yourself (Violin) (below) is an example of the latter aesthetic: Warhol is using an unfinished paint-by-numbers image to comment on (and celebrate) the kitsch in art and ordinary life. And then there’s Alice Neel’s stirring portrait, James Hunter Black Draftee (below), which was left unfinished in anger: the Harlem bohemian Neel was furious that this young man was being inducted into military service. She clearly felt that the racial and political implications of leaving the white canvas white was an appropriate response to the subject at hand. What was so amazing and delightful about the Met Breuer exhibit—which PROVOKR samples below—was how beautiful and exciting the works on display appear in either their unfinished state or in their statement about incompleteness.
