art commentary With Marion Wolberg Weiss

CHRISTMAS IN NEW YORK: INTERIOR SPACE AT THE NEUE GALERIE

Part II

Christmas in New York takes us from exterior space and public art in Madison Square Park (last week’s column) to interior space and museum exhibitions. One of the most intriguing and off-beat places is Neue Galerie, located in a landmark 1914 mansion on Fifth Avenue at Eighty-sixth Street. The rotating selections include early Twentieth Century works by Austrian and German artists like Klimt, Schiele, Beckmann and Bauer.

Thus, the venue’s ornate architectural style and the works on exhibit complement one another, both deriving from the early 1900s. Consider, for example, Gustav Klimt’s elaborate style and Ergon Schiele’s Expressionism (which isn’t decorative but still mostly figurative, complex and disconcerting, keeping with the colors and configurations of other Austrian artists during the period).

This feeling of belonging that pervades the Galerie is applicable to the works as well as to the museum-goers. It’s as though we are wandering through our own home, appreciating our own art collection. The soothing music floating through the air adds to the comforting atmosphere.

This ambience is unusual, to say the least, obviously because the space is intimate, unlike a larger museum, perhaps the Guggenheim as an example. That’s the advantage of using a mansion to display art. Obviously, there’s the absence of congestion and lines in places like the Neue.

Each floor brings its own special characteristics and its subsequent unique sentiments, the wrought iron decorative staircase serving as a metaphor for symbiosis. The black and white tile floor in the lobby also becomes a connecting quality with black and white polka dot wallpaper on the third level where furniture designed by Josef Hoffmann is featured for a girl’s bedroom (Vienna 1902 ).

Hoffmann’s design of the Stonborough-Wittgenstein home in Berlin, circa 1905, on the second-floor galleries, also puts the viewer in the middle of the dining room setting. As with the other recreated rooms, carpets and textiles have been re-woven to sustain the integrity of each space.

Moreover, lighting fixtures, ceramics, glass and metalwork have all been incorporated to show how extensive Hoffmann’s talent for design really was.

Visitors to the Neue Galerie have a difficult time leaving the premises. Personally, we often can’t wait to get out of the Guggenheim.

The Hoffmann exhibit will be on view until Feb. 26, 2007. Call 212-628-8824 for more information.