Raw art meets raw fish on the Upper East Side

Like a college girl on the campus lawn, the National Academy Museum & School of Fine Arts opened its newest exhibit on July 8 to show off its summer body. Its 150-piece museum exhibit, “Reconfiguring the Body in American Art, 1820-2009,” shows the development of artists’ explorations of the human figure in American art through paintings, sketches, and sculptures. But don’t be fooled—the exhibit is not nearly as exciting as its title or promotional advertisements suggest.

As one who loves risqué modern art, I felt that I had fallen for the old bait-and-switch. Unlike the sexually suggestive promotional ads that feature a wet, naked girl draped with a transparent shower curtain, seven of the nine sub-exhibits fell flat and felt stale by comparison.

This deceptive exhibit is divided into three sections by time period, and from there thematically subdivided. The 1820-1950 collection is broken up into four galleries: “In the Act,” “The Figure Undressed,” “In the Round,” and “From A to Z.” The second collection hosts modern works from after 1950 in “Dis-embodiment,” “Self-Reflection,” “About Face,” and “Bodies in Motion, Bodies at Rest.” The final exhibition, and the closest to what I anticipated, ignores the past and instead stands in the present, looking toward the future, calling itself “Next: The Figure Now.”

“In the Act” makes an attempt to display works that take a fresh and welcome approach to old favorite techniques, styles, and subjects. These works primarily use stiff oils and sketches, showing both self-portraits and scenes abroad, and did not seem particularly innovative at all.

Iron and bronze statues, usually typical of Greek and Roman sculpture, in the “In the Round” gallery use classical techniques to show people of different races and with different jobs engaging in everyday activities at work or play. Here, the intended purpose of the exhibit—to monitor artists’ changing perception of the human figure—started to become clearer. “In the Round” and “From A to Z,” which feature a painting of a sassy girl spending a day with friends at Coney Island (“Barrel of Fun” by Reginald Marsh), show a visible shift toward artists’ appreciation of the mundane life of the everyman.

“Dis-embodiment” is the first in the galleries of the modern realm. And it shows. These works focus less on the human figure itself and more on the emotion and energy that each human body emanates. It is about how the artists interpret bodies, harness their energy or pain, and translate that into Nepalese prayer flags or stained glass.

Unfortunately, the excitement was short lived. “Bodies in Motion, Bodies at Rest” was deceptively self-explanatory. The first piece shows people reading, sitting, and eating. The best of the paintings is “Propeller,” a Lorraine Shemesh piece that contorts the human body of a swimmer into a mechanical water engine.

The pieces from “About Face” I liked, I really liked. A magical realism piece titled “The Study of George,” shows how an artist without a specific fleshy human subject can, like an author who creates a storybook character, conjure up an image to paint with extraordinary detail. In combination with Everett Raymond Kinstler’s “Triple Self Portrait,” which shows him painting himself in a mirror that reflects that image three more times through other painted mirrors, this sub-gallery wound up a winner in my book.

While “Next: The Figure and Now” toys with emotional proximity and distance between people shaped by their emotions and experiences, the other sub-galleries showed bodies and faces empty of expression and excitement.

Although I am not sure whether “Reconfiguring the Body in American Art, 1820-2009” quite met my expectations for a risqué summer exhibit, a nearby restaurant upped the ante for UES eateries. The Ito En-owned restaurant Donguri only seats 24 people and serves (with impeccable service) the freshest and most authentic Japanese food north of Columbus circle.

The Agedashidofu, or fried tofu, was dipped to perfection. Its crust was light and flaky without too much oil, and the warm tofu felt more like nibbling on a small pillow than eating a soybean byproduct. Listing our meal from chilled soba noodles to fluffy udon noodles to a simple sashimi platter that featured bluefin tuna would not do the restaurant justice.

The ingredients are incredibly basic. The preparations are divine. It’s nothing revolutionary and it’s certainly not fusion. Japanese superiority has just made its way to 83rd Street between First and Second avenues, and I’m happy to have experienced it for about the same price as dining at Community Food & Juice in the days pre-fire. The service was so impeccable that I hadn’t even picked up the glass I spilled before three waiters started cleaning the mess for us. The Japanese have proved again that they do food better than anyone else.

Elyssa Goldberg is a Columbia College sophomore.
Gallereat runs alternate Fridays.