Arte! Arte! Arte! Marta Minujin at the Jewish Museum
Arte! Arte! Arte! We felt Marta Minujin’s bold and colorful spirit reflected in her new exhibit at The Jewish Museum, which is open now through March 31st. Throughout six decades Marta Minuijin has and continues to create multimedia installations, interactive events, paintings, and sculptures.
Born in 1943 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Marta rose to international prominence as a highly influential artist at an early stage of her career, hailing from an immigrant family with Russian Jewish heritage. Arte! Arte! Arte!," is the first American showcase of nearly 100 pieces that span six decades, highlighting her groundbreaking career in Buenos Aires, Paris, New York, and Washington, DC. The exhibition encompasses a diverse array of works, including pioneering mattress-based sculptures, large-scale fluorescent paintings, psychedelic drawings, performances, and vintage film footage, reflecting Minujín's bold experimentation and lasting impact on Latin American art. Her 30-foot inflatable sculpture “Sculpture of Dreams” was also recently on view in Times Square, marking her first public sculpture in New York City.
Our Junior Art Critic, a.k.a. J.A.C., in the form of one vegan-leather motorcycle jacket-clad third grader, spent an hour perusing the exhibit on the opening night. She was immediately drawn to the bold and colorful soft sculptures, which are undeniably alluring. Her second order of business was to stare, mesmerized, at a group of people dressed in utility suits and plastic bucket hats wade through a shallow pool of grapefruits. This performance piece played on a loop next to a series of photograph portraits of Marta, herself, posing with Andy Warhol. After discussing the meaning of this performance with another museum patron, the conclusion was that this performance was a statement on the intersection of agriculture and industry.
Fans of neon and bright hues can satiate their colorful cravings throughout this exhibit. Parking herself in front of “Soliloquy of Emotions”, our Junior Art Critic marveled at the beautiful bounty of hand-painted fabric strips arranged in a psychedelic pattern that seemed to move, depending on the angle from which it was viewed. Surrounding “Soliloquy” were flanks of equally bold and grand paintings, which all conveyed a sense of movement and vibrant energy.
After surveying the scene some more, and moving through the rest of the exhibit, our Junior Art Critic landed in front of a wall of banned books. Mirroring large-scale outdoor structures Minujin had bedecked with books, this wall included many familiar titles (including one of J.A.C.’s old favorites Julian is a Mermaid). At this point of the evening, J.A.C. scanned the titles and reflected on what subject matter would be taken into consideration when added to a “banned book” list, as well as what would compel someone to take the action of banning book. She was flummoxed.
Ending on a lighter note, J.A.C. sauntered over to the series of photos of Marta with Andy Warhol. J.A.C. admired Marta’s fashion sense and fixated on a spiked bracelet that adorned her wrist in the photo. She mentally added the bracelet to her holiday wishlist, ignorant to the concept of luxury-goods-pricing, and then gave this exhibit an enthusiastic thumbs up.
Join us on December 3rd at The Jewish Museum for a very special Hanukkah Family Day, where we be making an array of mixed media projects inspired by Marta Minujin and to celebrate the Festival of Lights!