The David Zwirner Galley and the Guggenheim

Art is something that can be appreciated in several ways. Thanks to the various museums cities have to offer, one can visit numerous places and see exhibitions from various artists. Two such places are the David Zwirner Galley and The Guggenheim. Both places have introduced audiences to interesting and thought-provoking works of art. Four of which will be featured here. The artists of the four works are Robert Crumb and Paul Cezanne.

David Zwirner Gallery is a modern art gallery located in New York City, offering another location in London. Owned by David Zwirner it features of collections of artists like Robert Crumb. For twelve years from 2000-2012, the Gallery was known as Zwirner & Wirth Gallery.

The R. Crumb Art & Beauty exhibition which opened April 15th and ends June 2nd, 2016, is an exhibition featuring various sketches. Lined up in a stark, white room, these black and white sketches are placed in black and white frames in a room that is white with black trim along the edges. The artist features various female athletes amidst impressive feats of athleticism. One of which is Serena Williams. Her bosom and derriere are perky and appear like mountainous peaks as she aims and winds up to smack the tennis ball across the field. The sketch shows the strength and voluptuousness of the female athlete as well as the dynamic movement often seen in sports.

Robert Crumb is an internationally known 'underground' cartoonist. He is also known fairly perverted. Most of his sexual fantasies consist of beefy, muscular, posteriorly ample women. Although some of his work is seen as misogynistic, the series featured in the Gallery and featuring Serena Williams is much more respectful. Monochrome and small, the drawings/sketches reflect the artist's realist, mature style.

The utilization of intense crosshatching and incorporation of appended text adds elements of philosophical contemplations on femininity. It appears oddly sweet, obsessional, with shadows of voyeurism. The piece also shows the level of power a woman can have simply by being herself. Serena Williams is an excellent example of a powerful woman, making a name for herself in sports.

Another piece, with a woman posing with long dark hair and bangs and a vacuum cleaner include a quote about 'Ducky Doolittle'. "Ducky Doolittle is an eccentric New York-based performer and publisher whose bold and striking physique is thrilling to behold even in the mundane act of vacuuming the carpet." This piece shows how perverted the artist is and also his apparent misogynistic streak. Here is a woman with a large backside, posing seductively with a vacuum cleaner because women are expected to clean and maintain the household.

Although the previous piece revered the athlete, this one seems to degrade the subject. The same style is applied here with intense crosshatching. However, the subject does not look dynamic nor does she look happy. She looks more like a steer that is going to be sold at auction and the highlight of her big, beefy legs emphasizes this. While the previous one made the subject look like a person, this one makes the subject look like an animal.

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, known mainly as The Guggenheim, is a museum situated in the Upper East Side of Manhattan at 1071 Fifth Avenue. In the last eighty years, the museum has grown organically a large collection of art several from significant private collections starting with the original collection featured in the museum. The Guggenheim has sister museums elsewhere, with one location in Bilbao, Spain. Boasting a 1.2 million visitor tally in 2013, it also hosted what is considered to be the most popular exhibition that year in New York city. Two pieces from the museum that sparked interest were the still life paintings of Paul Cezanne.

The first painting from Paul Cezanne is the Still Life: Flask, Glass and Jug. This painting was done in 1877 and although simple in nature, has rich colors that invoke a feeling of casual comfort. The fruit and the knife located near with the bread add some elegance to the piece as well as a degree of simplicity. Sometimes the simplest images bring the deepest feelings to the surface. The familiarity of the juxtaposition of the jug and glass are also welcoming and provide a foundation from which to build upon on further inspection.