Alyssa Monks, "Vapor," oil on linen, 2008
National Academy Museum and School of Fine Arts
1083 Fifth Ave. between 89th & 90th Sts.
Through November 15
Closed Monday & Tuesday
Admission: $10
212-369-4880
www.nationalacademy.org
The National Academy’s current exhibit traces the depiction of the human body in American painting and sculpture, divided into three chronological sections (which then have their own subcategories). It’s a daunting task, of course; a recent show at the National Gallery in Washington was too small and eclectic to be as effective as it wanted to be. But the National Academy does an admirable job, first examining the 1820-1950 period, with works by Malvina Hoffman, Asher Durand, Reginald Marsh, John Quincy Adams Ward, and others, ranging from William Merritt Chase’s circa-1884 painting of a languid “Young Orphan” to Thomas Waterman Wood’s endearingly hunched “Rag Picker” (1859/72) to Isabel Bishop’s classical 1934 “Nude Study.” There are also exciting self-portraits by Andrew Wyeth and Thomas Eakins.
Thomas Eakins, "Self-Portrait," oil on canvas, 1902
Self-portraiture takes up the hallway gallery, with offerings by Will Barnet, Leonard Baskin, Thomas Hart Benton, Chuck Close, Jacob Lawrence, Louisa Matthiasdottir, Robert De Niro, Wayne Thiebaud, and James Wyeth, several notable because they are rare self-portraits painted primarily because it is a requirement for artists to do so when selected to become a member of the National Academy. Philip Pearlstein’s “Nude Torso,” Larry Rivers’s “Headless Fashion,” Robert Rauschenberg’s “Booster,” Susan Rothenberg’s “Spinning,” and Jim Dine’s “Ape and Cat in Paris” go inside and out of the body, both literally and figuratively.
In the last room, “The Figure Now” looks at twenty-first-century works that suggest the immediate future of the depiction of the body, from Will Ryman’s tall, skinny, gawky untitled wire-mesh sculpture to Alyssa Monks’s dreamy “Vapor,” from Jenny Dubnau’s photographic “Self-Portrait in Striped Shirt” to Wei Dong’s “Interior View,” complete with entrails. As with many National Academy exhibits, you have to sift through the so-so (and the not-so so-so) to find a series of gems that make a visit to the former Huntington mansion worthwhile.