The French painter Georges Seurat, is usually recognized for his legacy of pointillism, but the focus of The Museum of Modern Art’s newest fall exhibit is his gorgeous drawings. Georges Seurat: The Drawings, is a collection featuring 135 works primarily of black conté crayon drawings with small selections of his paintings and oil sketches. The exhibit exemplifies Seurat as a prolific Neo-Impressionist artist, whose work was limited to a mere thirty-one years. As an artist interested in the scientific and theoretical studies of optics, his passion played out in his luminous body of work.

Seurat’s strengths are in the accentuation of hands, muscles, and simplistic poses that seem abstract when viewed up close, but become crystal clear if you take a few steps back. His genius in chiaroscuro, a contrast between light and dark, lies in the skillful combination of the paper’s texture and his mastered medium of choice. Included in the collection are sketchbooks with a delightful rendition of a color wheel, as well as letters with the only surviving written artistic statement by Seurat. These personal artifacts complement, and give insight into Seurat’s striking drawings (and my personal favorites) Aged Hindu, Artist at Work, The Zone (Outside the City Walls) and Café Singer.

Noted in a letter, Seurat states his aesthetic on “Art is Harmony” and says, “Harmony is the analogy of opposites, the analogy of similarities of tone, of tint, of line considering the dominant and under the influence of the lighting, in combinations that are gay, calm, or sad.” This brief artistic statement best sums up the large collection, with a perspective that understands the relationship between light and the elements of art. Georges Seurat’s brilliant manipulation of light, and his harmonious collection is on view until January 7, 2008.

If you hurry, you can catch the MoMA exhibit, Present Tense: Photographs by JoAnn Verburg before it closes on November 5th. Verburg’s photographs produce an array of reactions through both subtle and obvious techniques. Her work is described as “an exploration of how to extend temporality in photography—a medium of discrete moments in time.” To show the extension of time, Verburg works with large scale prints presented through multiple panels, sometimes in a diptych (two panels) or triptych (three panels) form. Consisting of landscapes, portraits, and still life, her paintings illustrate everything from the simplicity of an olive grove in Italy (Olive Trees After the Heat) to the most subtle movement of water (Water Triptych). Turning to the peaceful moments of daily life, her pieces Still Life with Jim and Untitled (Marvin & Maurice), explore human beauty.

The most captivating of the collection, Tina, Silent is a diptych piece in mixed medium. Verburg uses digital video, rear-projected film, and gelatin silver print, to show the subject as a muted model. Reminiscent of Warhol’s famous silent portrait films, this piece speaks loudly as a collection of silent and moving images. The exhibition allows you to reflect on the simplicity of time; in the detail of a person’s expression, water’s moving light rays and even the branches of an olive tree. JoAnn Verburg’s strength is taking these tiny details and manipulating them, so that even after you’ve left the exhibit, its power stays within you.

If you’re looking for sitar sounds to spice up your life, look no further than The Darjeeling Limited Soundtrack. Wes Anderson’s newest flick doesn’t disappoint, as he revisits themes of paternity, the tragedy and comedy of life, and introduces us to more eccentric characters, with a soundtrack that compliments the plot nicely. At first glance, the collection may seem random, but like many of Anderson’s soundtracks, the tunes rest as a background to the plot, while three brothers (played by Owen Wilson, Adrian Brody, and Jason Schwartzman) traverse India by train.

The soundtrack opens with a melancholy tune, “Where Do You Go to (My Lovely)?” that sets the Parisian scene for Anderson’s Hotel Chevalier, a 13-minute short that precedes his feature-length film (you can download it for free from iTunes). Most of the other 21 tracks are songs taken from popular Indian films, (and not all Bollywood films either,) that can easily make the listener feel as if they’ve been transported to a bustling Indian capital, or a lonely village content to sing its sorrows away. The infectious beat of these sitar-based songs can work on so many levels: from the quiet lullaby of the title music from the film “Bombay Talkie,” the echo of a persistent chant on “Memorial” by Narlia Village Troubadour, and “Prayer” by Jodphur Sikh Temple Congregation, each song is unique and memorable. But of course, a Wes Anderson soundtrack would not be complete without a few rock songs that linger amongst the other tracks.

(more…)