Art-full members are invited to join us on Sunday March 27th when we dive into the world of Kandinsky at the Guggenheim with Patricia De Picciotto of the NY Art Experience.
In Vasily Kandinsky: Around the Circle, Kandinsky’s work unfolds in reverse chronological order, starting with his late-life paintings and proceeding upward along the Guggenheim’s spiral ramp. His was not a fixed path from representation to abstraction, but rather a circular passage traversing persistent themes centered around the pursuit of one dominant ideal: the impulse for spiritual expression… At every turn Kandinsky responded to his environment and developed new ways to probe the spiritual in art. These paintings, watercolors, and woodcuts drawn from the museum’s extensive Kandinsky collection illuminate the journey of an artist who would not leave behind the precedents of representation or of his own work altogether, even as he explored the transcendent potential of abstract forms. (from the Guggenheim’s website).
In order to help us navigate and more fully understand this beautiful exhibit, we’ll have Patricia De Picciotto, Founder of the NY Art Experience, to prep us for our self-guided viewing — over a delicious brunch at Island Restaurant in Carnegie Hill.
We will meet first for the brunch & art talk at 11:30am, followed by a 1:30pm visit to the museum, with the option to continue the discussion over drinks at Eli’s Essentials Bar 91 after the museum visit.
All tickets include the art talk & brunch (brunch includes 1 brunch entree, 1 non-alcoholic beverage, tax & tip). Full experience tickets also include 1:30pm museum admission. Art talk/brunch only tickets are designed for those who are members of the Guggenheim.
Brunch & talk only: $50 through 3/6; $55 thereafter (for those with a museum membership)
Full experience with reserved museum admission: $75 through 3/6; $80 thereafter
Group will be limited to 15 people. In compliance with the New York City mandate, all attendees are required to show 1) proof that they have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and 2) a valid I.D.
Full Schedule:
11:30 am | Brunch & art talk
Island Restaurant | 1305 Madison Ave.
1:30 pm | Self-guided visit at the Guggenheim
1071 Fifth Ave.
3 pm | Optional coffee, drinks or dessert at Eli’s Essentials Bar 91
1270 Madison Avenue (at 91st Street)
*Brunch includes any ONE brunch entree (OR 2 items adding up to $28 or less) + 1 non-alcoholic beverage, tax & tip. Any other food & drink can be ordered and paid separately on site.
Patricia de Picciotto was born in Hong Kong from Lebanese parents and raised in Geneva, Switzerland until she graduated from college with a BA in Marketing and Communication. She then spent a couple of years in London for her GIA and worked in Jewelry. She lived in Sao Paulo, Brazil, for ten years, where she met her husband, had three kids and founded a jewelry line, Pasha Joias. After moving to New York seven years ago, she went back to her studies at Christie’s education and became an art experiences curator, living fully all the city has to offer artistically, socially and culturally. Since the passing of her mom in 2019, Patricia turned to her passion project Neshama Journey, to help and support other grievers through grief coaching.
More about the exhibit (from the Guggenheim’s website):
Vasily Kandinsky is recognized as a major artistic innovator and painting theorist. In the opening decades of the twentieth century, he was among those who advanced nonrepresentational modes of art-making to lasting effect. The artist’s stylistic evolution in this regard was intimately tied to his sense of place and the communities with which he engaged. Kandinsky gained insight from meaningful intersections with artists, musicians, poets, and other cultural producers, especially those who shared his transnational vision and experimental bent. Uprooted time and again, he adapted with his every relocation across Germany, back to Russia, and eventually to France—all against the backdrop of the sociopolitical upheavals occurring around him.
In this exhibition, Kandinsky’s work unfolds in reverse chronological order, starting with his late-life paintings and proceeding upward along the Guggenheim’s spiral ramp. His was not a fixed path from representation to abstraction, but rather a circular passage traversing persistent themes centered around the pursuit of one dominant ideal: the impulse for spiritual expression. This, what Kandinsky called the artist’s “inner necessity,” remained the guiding principle through the periodic redefinitions of his life and work.
The presentation begins with Kandinsky’s final chapter set in France. The natural sciences and the Surrealist movement, as well as an abiding interest in Russian and Siberian cultural practices and folklore, informed his organic imagery and prompted recurrent themes of renewal and metamorphosis. Paintings from his decade of teaching at the Bauhaus, a progressive German school, manifest Kandinsky’s conviction that art could transform self and society and exemplify the revitalization of his “non-concrete” style following direct contact with the avant-garde in Russia. The final section of the show examines Kandinsky’s earliest paintings, made while he was living around Munich. There he participated in heightened vanguard activity across multiple disciplines, fluidly moving between painting, poetry, and stage composition, for example. In time the artist interrogated the expressive possibilities of color, line, and form.