The High...

... is the Museum of Art in Atlanta. Named after the High family who donated the land on Peachtree Street. The High is located in Midtown and is easy to spot: a congregation of white buildings added over the years.

Richard Meyer (1934), who favors the color white, designed a 135,000-square-foot building in 1983. Two new buildings were added in 2002 to expand the museum's size to 312,000 square feet. The architect for this project is Renzo Piano (1937).

The color white is the only common feature between the buildings. The curvy building from Meyer otherwise clashes with the angulous shapes from Renzo Piano. Piano's style, who built the Menil Collection in Houston, is recognizable, but due to its scale, the buildings looks like vast, windowless, graceless hangars. The one level museum in Houston, also white, has a mediterranean flavor and the system of panels to filter the sunlight brings an extra nautical or aerial touch. Adding to the coldness of the High is the grey cement courtyard as opposed to the fresh green lawn in Houston.


Walking through the entrance, the visitor is surprised by the brightness of the surroundings and the vast space of the atrium which spreads from the first floor to the skyway level, white with a touch of blue through the glass ceiling (the day of the visit).

At each level, balconies overlook the central area, and a gently inclined walkway brings the visitors to the different levels.

The three buildings (the Stent Wing, the Wieland Pavillion, the Anne Cox Chambers Wing) are connected by glass bridges.

To the left, "Mouth #15" Tom Wesselman, 1968

There is no shortage of space for the permanent exhibition. Large walls and wood floors, the setting is ideal. However, the visit was short due to the lack of interesting collections. European, American paintings, sculptures, crystal, furnitures...the collections are sparse and made of minor works .

The goal of my visit was to see the temporary exhibition "Dali: The Late Work". The works were crammed on the walls or in the corners. The rooms were packed, full of visitors brought by this unique exhibition showing some rarely seen works. They were unable to take the few steps back and forth necessary to appreciate the visual effects of some of the paintings (for example: "Fifty Abstract Paintings") and feel the full impact of the monumental compositions like "Santiago El Grande". The temporary exhibition was not given the space it deserves.

The High has a lot of space, what about the content?

"The Shade" a sculpture from Rodin is a gift from the french governement to the High. 106 Atlanta arts patrons who died in an airplane crash at Orly airport in Paris in 1962.

"House III" Roy Lichtenstein, 1997 decorates the side of Meier's building.



photographs by the author

Cy Twombly

Across the main building from The Menil Collection, the Cy Twombly Gallery also designed by Renzo Piano, houses more than thirty paintings and some sculptures from the artist. It is a permanent collection.

The space is well used and the paintings (some could be called murals due to their size) line up the walls without being cramped. Walking through the gallery, the viewer can take some distance and slowly comes closer to the works which are coming alive under the well controlled soft light.


What appeared to be a delicate, playful work of lines and "cheery" colours (bright pink, yellow, blue), becomes a tortured, hesitant work of words, half erased and rewritten, lines punctuated by long slashes of thick coats of paint partly covering another graffiti. The pink becomes dramatic, a colour of pain ("Analysis of the rose as a sentimental despair"). The strokes of the brush which appear light and gentle from afar, are heavy, brutal when getting close to the canvas.

Cy Twombly writes on one painting: "In his despair he drew the colours from his own heart."

This sums up my lasting impression after this visit.



The artist was recently commissioned to paint a whole ceiling for the "Salle des Bronzes" at Le Louvre. This heavy composition is a poor reflection of the Cy Twombly I just met in Houston.







photograph from artdaily.org


photographs were not allowed at The Menil Collection

The Menil Collection

The major building, conceived by Renzo Piano hosts permanent and temporary collections.

Some time needs to be spent going through the permanent collection, the items displayed maybe small in quantity but are of great quality: arts from Africa, the Pacific Islands, Pacific Northwest Coast, classical Mediterranean civilizations, small sculptures from Eastern Turkey, the Cyclades Islands. I am not an expert but got some education visiting the "Musee de l'Homme" or Musee du Quai de Branly" and appreciated this area of the building. The visitor gets to travel, not only geographically, but also in time with the Byzantine and Medieval collections followed by Modern and Contemporary Art.

Each object (paintings, sculptures, artifacts) is well displayed like collections of masks or this panel "Thunder bird and whale" from the Pacific Northwest.






As the visit progresses, one meets Modern Art. The setting creates a space dedicated to each artist with a De Chirico room, Max Ernst room, Magritte room, etc...

Here and there, Maurizio Cattelan surprises the visitor.


The Surrealist movement is well represented with an added room full of diverse objects which have a common feature: they were inspirations to artists from that movement. The exhibit is titled "Witness of a Surrealist vision". The dark space and the cramped display makes us feel like discovering a long forgotten attic. This causes a visual overload which the Surrealists would have found conducive to creativity: associations, visual puns, oppositions, hidden art. A small catalogue is available for the visitor . I preferred to leave my eyes guide me through this rich collection.

A temporary exhibition "Leaps into the Void: Documents of Nouveau Realist Performance" is set up in an area where one can see the famous photograph from Yves Klein and a copy of the newspaper the artist had produced at the occasion with several sculptures from Yves Tanguy and Niki de Saint-Phalle.

My only regret: one day was too short to visit the Menil Collection.

photograph from the Menil Collection's website

Surprises in Houston

Choices have to be made this week-end in Houston, from the Menil Collection to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, a lot of ground to cover. There is also FOTOFEST2010 BIENNIAL, a biennial international meeting held in Houston, Texas, started in 1986 to promote photography. This year, the calendar of events stretches from March the 12th till April the 15th and is made of workshops, exhibits, discussions, parties, lectures...the program is very busy. I did not plan to attend and will skip altogether the event which brings a crowd in town.

The Menil Collection is the first stop...and turns out to be several visits: the main building built by Renzo Piano hosting the Menil Collection and temporary exhibitions, the Rothko Chapel, Cy Tombley Gallery, Dan Flavin Installation at Richmond Hall and the Byzantine Fresco Chapel Museum. The buildings are located in a sprawling neighborhood, South of downtown Houston, within walking distance of each other.

The day will be filled.

photograph by the author