Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible at the Met Breuer Explores the Non-Finito Across Centuries

The Met Breuer's inaugural exhibition, "Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible," curated by Andrea Bayer, Kelly Baum, and Nicholas Cullinan, tackles the theme of non-finito (unfinishedness) in art across media and centuries. Over 100 works from the Renaissance to the early 2000s fill two floors of the Breuer building, arranged in a loose chronological order that resembles an overloaded modern Wunderkammer. The first floor features masterpieces from the 15th to 17th centuries by Donatello, Titian, and Rembrandt, alongside works whose incompleteness is debated, such as Jan van Eyck's "Saint Barbara." Deliberately unresolved pieces like Lawrence's profiles and Turner's stormy seas are included. Portraits left unfinished due to power shifts or artist choice range from Velázquez to Freud. The second floor shifts to theoretical debate, questioning the rationalist notion that art is a finished product. Abstract art exemplifies the impossibility of determining completeness. Works from the 1950s and 1960s engage with infinity, while 1970s populism and activism produced pieces meant to be completed by the viewer, like Warhol's "Do It Yourself (Violin)" and Johns's targets. Rodin's unfinished sculptures echo Michelangelo, and installations by Smithson and Gonzalez-Torres hint at the dialectic between art and entropy. The abundance of works dazzles, but the contemporary section feels weaker in addressing non-finito. The exhibition runs until September 4, 2016, at 945 Madison Avenue.