THENEWYORKER, SEPTEMBER 2, 2019 5
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Smartphones waft like palm fronds above the viewers who throng
“Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘St. Jerome’ ” at the Met (through Oct. 6), a shrine-
like display of a painting that the Master started around 1483 and then
abandoned, perhaps when its commission lapsed but as likely owing to
ennui. Leonardo had fully drawn only the face, clavicle area, and right
foot of the old, nearly toothless Jerome, who is about to pound himself
in the chest with a rock as he contemplates a crucifix in a cave or grotto.
A glum brown undercoat occupies much of the wood panel. The saint’s
sketched companion animal, a lion, appears to roar at him for some
reason. The work’s torqued composition and canny human anatomy are
impressive, but it registers mainly as a relic for the contemporary cult of
Leonardo—the innovator’s innovator—which dates from Bill Gates’s
purchase, in 1994, of one of his notebooks. How exciting is it that a
Leonardo fingerprint appears in the paint? Your call.—Peter Schjeldahl
AT THE MUSEUMS
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“Garry Winogrand: Color”
Brooklyn Museum
Winogrand once defined a photograph as “what
something looks like to a camera.” Keep that
in mind when viewing this fiercely pleasur-
able, if somewhat flawed, show, consisting
mainly of hundreds of digitally projected Ko-
dachrome slides, most from the nineteen-six-
ties. Winogrand, the all-time champion of
street photography, died in 1984, at the age
of fifty-six. He is most famous for his hyper-
kinetic shots of unaware pedestrians, taken
with high-speed black-and-white film. The
relatively long exposures required by color
film steered him to subjects more static: peo-
ple seated rather than walking, or at a beach
instead of on the street. The problem here is
that Winogrand didn’t take digital images;
he took color slides. Sixteen sequences of big
digitized images projected onto the walls of a
long room are only too gorgeous, in the me-
dium’s smoothly flattening way. The projec-
tions go by at clips that pander to present-day
attention deficits—eight seconds apiece for
horizontal pictures and thirteen seconds for
interspersed verticals. Winogrand worked
fast, but to absorb the results takes time, first
to register the subjects and then to have the
form and the drama, the intelligence and the
beauty, of his vision sink in.—Peter Schjeldahl
(Through Dec. 8.)
Maurice Sendak
Morgan Library & Museum
In 1978, when Sendak was fifty, the mischie-
vous illustrator, author, and lifelong Mozart
fan was growing restless. A dream invitation—
to design sets for the Houston Grand Opera’s
production of “The Magic Flute”—began a
brilliant new phase in his career. Sendak took
naturally to theatrical work, avidly translating
enchanted worlds into three dimensions. This
exhibition, titled “Drawing the Curtain: Mau-
rice Sendak’s Designs for Opera and Ballet,”
emphasizes preparatory works—dashed-off
sketches, detailed storyboards, and lush wa-
tercolor designs for scrims—evidence of his
inventive approach to five productions, includ-
ing an opera adaptation of the beloved book
“Where the Wild Things Are.” The high point
is a selection of Sendak’s meticulous mockups,
painted with fantastic foliage or trompe-l’oeil
stonework inspired by the blockbuster “Trea-
sures of Tutankhamun” exhibition that toured
the U.S. in the late seventies. These dioramas
are beautifully installed—inset into the walls
and lit like miniature stages. Just outside the
gallery, an arrangement of costumes show-
cases Sendak’s inimitable creatures, includ-
ing a magnificent owl and a diabolical “Tiger
Boy,” from his dark 1983 version of “The
Nutcracker,” brought to life here in transfix-
ing performance footage.—Johanna Fateman
(Through Oct. 6.)
“Delirious Cities”
Aperture
CHELSEA Two dozen photographers from around
the world feature in this visually lively but so-
bering cross-section of a survey, which riffs on
the architectural theorist Rem Koolhaas’s 1978
text “Delirious Manhattan.” The show sug-
gests that his dramatic reflections on New York
City’s “culture of congestion” now apply every-
where. In Noritaka Minami’s stunning series
depicting Tokyo’s decaying Nakagin Capsule
Tower—a complex of tiny, prefabricated living
units, built in 1972—the structure appears as a
metaphor for a fading utopian dream. Michele
Sibiloni’s images of a grasshopper migration
in Kampala, Uganda, including one of an elec-
trical pole overtaken by the insects and others
of people hunting them at night, underscore
the fragility of ecosystems and urban infra-
structure alike. Bryan Thomas confronts the
heartbreaking subject of gun violence; his por-
traits, taken in African-American communities
in Miami, document the vibrant silk-screened
memorial T-shirts worn by victims’ mourning
friends and family.—J.F. (Through Aug. 29.)
“Renoir: The Body, the Senses”
The Clark
OUT OF TOWN The reputation of the once ex-
alted, still unshakably canonical Impression-
ist has fallen on difficult days. Never mind
the affront, to latter-day educated tastes, of a
painting style so sugary that it imperils your
mind’s incisors—there’s a more burning issue.
As the art historian Martha Lucy notes in
the gorgeous catalogue for this tremendously
engaging exhibition, in Williamstown, Mas-
sachusetts, centered on the painter’s female
nudes, the name Renoir has “come to stand for
‘sexist male artist.’ ” At the show, part of me
