UNFINISHED BUSINESS
The old Whitney Museum uptown has, finally, been refinished, rechristened and reopened as the Met Breuer. The inaugural exhibition, Unfinished: Thoughts Made Visible, collects Western artworks from the sixteenth century through the present that either were left unfinished or that embody an unfinished aesthetic. This second category is highly dubious, and leaves the show open to paintings that are entirely finished, but that include bits of exposed canvas, patches of freewheeling brushstroke, or blank backgrounds. There are major works by Titian, Velazquez, El Greco, Goya, and Picasso here, and almost all of the Impressionists, particularly Monet and Cezanne. At the heart of the show, in a small interior gallery on the third floor, there are five majestic Turners, each not much larger than a tea tray, that render Atlantic views in a miasma of paint. These canvases are awesomely complete. They scream with life, and blow apart the weak thesis of this show.
And then there is the museum itself, which has been lightly refurbished by Beyer Blinder and Belle, with its original brutalist sensibility left intact. The thick coats of varnish have been scraped off the granite floor, the concrete ceiling coffers have been cleaned, and the partitions have been painted a flat dove grey. The effect, when walking through at midday, is like wandering through a huge, luminous shell. The refinishing highlights details of the architecture I had never noticed before: the rhyme of the square ceiling coffers with the floor tiles, the explosion in volume as one passes from the second floor to the high-ceilinged third floor, the pinched street views through the slanted cyclops windows, and the jagged, ignaceous-like concrete of the bearing walls. This building is a gentle giant. It’s raw sensuality and restrained proportions demonstrate, more so than any painting in the show, that the most thoughtful, accomplished work can feel, in the end, unfinished.