Finally visited MoMA The Museum of Modern Art yesterday, a dream of mine for a long time. The place was packed, maybe because it was a holiday or just because it was the MoMA, but as it seems to be the case for New York, I must have heard five or six languages other than English, that I could tell apart, in the space of a few hours. The place itself is the ur-example of the white box museum (in fact one of the 85 reasons to support MoMA they had this year was lots and lots of white paint) and itself is credited with starting this trend in the 1930s. The building is unassumingly modern from the outside but in 1939 when the museum opened at this location, it must have seemed like something else. In fact theres a picture of the MoMA from back then which shows men and women with hats walking by and cars with big radiator grilles parked in front; there the museum looks like a representative from the future, or maybe the International Style planet. The collection (or what part of it was shown then) didnt disappoint. The large representation of Cubist and Expressionist art was a joy to see, and my heart quickened a bit when upon walking up to a stair landing I saw four Kandinskys hanging side by side in a white corner. I hadnt looked up what the museum had in a long time, so as to go by surprise and discovery and loved it. Same when I saw they had Gauguins The seed of the areoi and DeChiricos Love Song and Gare Montparnasse. The Picassos and Bracques were great too, Id seen The young ladies of Avignon a million times but sometimes it really surprises you how big some of these paintings are, which is the case with this particular one. Those unsettling Picasso flat eyes make a much stronger impression when they are staring at you larger than life, and every paint stroke acquires a sharper, more defined tone when you can move about and the interplay of shadows comes into play. Another thing I didnt expect was an extensive Toulouse-Lautrec exhibition with many of his posters, paintings and sketches. They covered his main output for the cabarets and cafe-concerts as well as some illustrated books he did. As in the case before, many of these works I had seen many times but it was a joy to actually get close and see the techniques he had used to create them, such as airbrushing, stamping and pencilling. In how much planning and execution these paintings and posters must have taken you can also see the hand of genius at work. Walking further into the museum I found an exposition of 20th century photography, as well as some striking silent films of 1930s Paris and Berlin cut in a thoroughly modern style. It was all inspiring, but it was mostly this section with its fantastic, inventive shots of black and white that most made want to get back behind the camera and make some art. I did see some other things as well, quite a few installations, some good, some merely curious objects or setups, some thoroughly Art world things like a retrospective of Sturtevant whose work consisted mostly of copying or mostly copying other famous works. Even Warhols. Theres an important place for re-appropriation and remix, as it is a way to bring to the surface the creative process, but the comment (and the joke) gets old fast. I am sure theres many things I missed, and those I did see I sometimes didnt contemplate for too long, so I want to come back here too as soon as I move in. One thing that I didnt do much either was take pictures. Me forgetting my camera for this trip was a blessing in disguise as it being the first time I am seeing so many of these things, I am mostly focusing on the experience and it has been a big deal on many levels. New York City (and even the across-the-pond Jersey City) seems like an entirely different country, more like the vibrant United States I expected to come into before I migrated here than the bland, small South. Heres hoping I can come and explore it soon.
Posted on: Fri, 02 Jan 2015 18:24:33 +0000
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