"Life Like" at the Met Breuer: Incredible Casting from 1300 - Present Day
We were in NYC recently for our presentation at the IAC International Gold Conference and we had the pleasure of seeing some amazing exhibitions while we were in the city. If you have a chance to seeLife Like (up through July 22 at The Met Breuer) go! Life Like: Sculpture, Color, and the Body features 120 figurative works made from 1300 - present day ( ! ) several of which are featured in CAST. This was one of the most magnificent shows either of us has ever seen.
Featuring materials from wax to glass, plastic to plaster, fiberglass, and wood, this show was right up our alley (and it didn't hurt that so many of the pieces were cast.) Some of these works were haunting and others so lifelike that they felt like they might get up and walk away. From ancient medical explorations in wax to Westworld-like automatons, this show runs the gamut of the human attempt to capture a person's essence. This show was magnificently curated and installed - while the space is enormous and could feel vacuous, the artful use of scrims and the way the work was placed gave the show an incredibly intimate and inviting feel. This show is a must-see.
Life Like includes works by Rodin, Marc Quinn, Louise Bourgeois, Janine Antoni, Duane Hanson, as well as "wax effigies, reliquaries, mannequins, and anatomical models."
The Met Breuer, the newest addition to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, is located in the building that formerly housed the Whitney. The building was purchased to hold the contemporary collection of The Met and give the institution more options to show contemporary sculpture. The building itself is an incredible example of cast concrete architecture in the Brutalist style, by the way!
The Met Breuer posted 42 pieces from the collection (including a few pieces we didn't see in the exhibition) - see them HERE.
Title image: Malvina Cornell Hoffman, Mask of Anna Pavlova, 1924. Wax, tinted.
Marc Quinn, Self. Blood (artist’s), stainless steel, Perspex and refrigeration equipment, 6'10" × 2' × 2'.
We were so excited to see "Self" by Marc Quinn (one of our favorite pieces in CAST) and we both thought this piece was even more powerful in person than it is in photos. The translucency of the blood has a powerful quality that's hard to describe and the slight disintegration speaks to the temporal nature of life and modern medicine's quest for immortality. All in all, it's just a crazy object to approach. A totally unexpected quality of the piece was the mirror-like stainless steel plinth that reflects your body so if you stand back at a distance, you can see the blood head reflected as your own. It's very unsettling.
Our final destination of the weekend was The Met bookstore so Renée could feel the tingly magic of seeing our baby for sale in such a magnificent place. This was a great moment, especially since CASTwas still up front with in the "New Arrivals" section. What a way to cap off a great weekend of CASTin NY!
