A High Mark

I’ve had a stressful couple of weeks, so I spent my Sunday decompressing at one of my favorite places with one of my favorite persons: the High Museum of Art with the Beloved Ex. Sunday was the closing day for the Annie Leibovitz exhibit. I hate hitting a show on the last day because it’s too damn crowded, but the boy and I just couldn’t sync our summer schedules to see the show.

I was most eager to see Leibovitz’s more personal work — particularly those of Susan Sontag in her final years — but I was happily surprised to see one of my favorite photographs hanging just inside the gallery door:

Mark Morris (Annie Leibovitz, 1988)

This photo ran with a Rolling Stone interview of Mark Morris in the late 1980s, and I had the tattered page hanging on many a cubicle wall for many a year (now I have four postcards of it!). Yes, Morris is beautiful here — that hair, those lips, those blue eyes — but it’s the attitude, the confidence I love. That’s the ‘tude I want to exude every day. This photo also leaves me craving a ciggie … and I’m not a smoker. Isn’t that the sexiest ciggie you’ve seen in ages?

I’m lucky enough to have seen Morris and his troupe a couple of times, once when the White Oak Dance Project performed in Atlanta. (White Oak Plantation, where they stayed while developing the performance) is near Thomasville, in south Georgia.) Mark Morris and Mikhail Baryshnikov, together on the Fox stage. Yes, I’ll die a happy woman.

The exhibit was better than expected. Many of the photos on display are now-iconic shots, thanks to Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair. The shots of Susan Sontag during her illness and when she died were lovely, heartbreaking — as were Leibovitz's personal photos of her parents and her children.

The Beloved Ex had to get back to his side of town, so I got some High time on my own — going back through the Leibovitz galleries to spend more time with the Morris photo and the Sontag and family series, wandering through the permanent collection, enjoying the quiet in such a crowded space.

Now I’m a bit more relaxed — and full of ‘tude.

* * * * * *

Review: Chuck Close (High Museum of Art)

Dan and I hit the preview of the Chuck Close: Self-Portraits exhibit today. I’ve been a fan of Chuck Close since Dan introduced me to his work about 10 years ago. Close has taken the portrait to a new level. I love his huge canvases, his montage/collage portraits, his massive Polaroids, his daguerreotypes. I’ve seen his pieces at MoMA and the National Gallery, and caught a great exhibit of recent work at the Corcoran about five years ago.

The show includes some amazing pieces. My favorite was the first one I saw: Big Self-Portrait (right), a huge black-and-white portrait painting he did in the late 1960s (love his attitude in the piece). He used a very thin coat of paint to give the canvas the look of a photograph. I know Close hates to hear his work called photorealistic, but, let’s face it, Big Self-Portrait is (sorry, Chuck).

Overall, the show is good. There are self-portraits in many different media: handmade paper, rubber stamping, woodcuts, etchings, drawings — even holograms. Some wildly colorful, others beautiful tones of black and white. It's fascinating, too, to see the gridded photographs he uses to develop the paintings.

I found, though, that since you saw the same self-portraits over and over in different media, it felt a bit repetitive by the last gallery. I would have liked to see some of his other portraits, as well. But don’t let that statement keep you at home; whether you’re a Chuck Close fan or have yet to see his work, I recommend this exhibit.

My all-time favorite Chuck Close piece (and one of my favorite pieces of work from the last half of century) is Fanny/Fingerpainting, at the National Gallery of Art (since the High show is self-portraits, this one didn’t make it to Atlanta). It hung for a long time in the lobby area of the East Wing. From afar, it looks like a huge, beautiful black-and-white photograph; once you get close to the piece, you notice that this huge portrait is made from fingerprints. It gives the piece life, texture. Really amazing piece; I keep a postcard of it on my desk.

For more on Chuck Close, click here.

BTW, if you have yet to visit the High Museum of Art since the expansion opened, you’re missing a lot. It’s an amazing building. With more than 175,000 additional square feet, more of the High’s permanent collection is on display. I didn’t know the museum owned several Ellsworth Kelly pieces or a Jean-Michel Basquiat piece until the new section opened in November. Put the High on your list for the spring.

Here's the new main entrance. Doesn't the building look beautiful again our blue spring sky?

Here's the back of the original building, shot from the courtyard; Peachtree's just below the the trees.

I call this one Groovy Guy Sunning in Courtyard.


And — finally — there’s a great restaurant at the complex. I’ve eaten twice at Table 1280 — lunch with my niece after Christmas, and Sunday brunch today with Dan — and I give it a big thumbs-up. We really needed a good restaurant at Woodruff Arts Center. Make plans for the Sunday brunch buffet; the food and desserts were absolutely amazing.

* * * * * *