Wednesday, August 10, 2011
The Museum of Modern Art
I just visited the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York yesterday. I have been in NY for the past week and while vacation time here is usually better spent in more epicurean pursuits, I like to take a detour into the museum scene in the city every now and then.
I am not a big connoisseur of modern art, to be honest. I am not very keyed in to the newer trends in art and I often have trouble understanding modern art because I'm seldom able to put these works into context. It is easy for someone in my position to dismiss a lot of modern art as pretentious twaddle from a bunch of hipsters. I wanted to keep an open mind and see if I could learn and appreciate something new in MoMA.
On the first level, the most prominent exhibit was the sculpture garden. Even though the exhibit was closed due to rain, we could see the sculptures through the glass walls. There were abstract pieces coupled with more concrete ones in intriguing arrangements and I really wish I could have had a closer look.
On the second level, there was an exhibit by an artist named Harun Farocki which was essentially based on audio visual depictions of war. There was a darkened room with four videos in a loop which showed footage of American soldiers training in simulated warlike conditions using virtual reality and similar technologies. I was not sure about the artistic merit of this exhibit per se, but it was quite intriguing to watch. It was also a bit disorienting to have four different audio streams interfering with each other, but this was an interesting exhibit nonetheless.
There was also a reasonably large section devoted to contemporary art, which consisted mostly of what people usually associate with modern art. Here, many of the works were as much about using a new medium in interesting ways as they were about expressing ideas. Most of the work in this part puts the onus of interpretation squarely on the shoulders of the viewer and points to a different kind of artistic experience. This should not be so surprising because every bit of communication that bombards us during our lives requires different levels of involvement from us as the audience. Metaphor and suggestion are probably as old as language itself and art has always shared these roots with language as a means of expression. Modern art is a bit more forthcoming about this, even if the end result is often confusing to the uninitiated.
At the third level, there were exhibits about architecture and design, drawing and photography. Each of these genres has its own conventions and its own history in the arts, and these exhibits would require a lot of time to explore carefully. There was also another special exhibit devoted to artistic connections with modern technology. To me, this was very interesting because it was very different from what I would expect from an art museum. There were displays that were very technology oriented in nature, like a pyramid of distractions which essentially graphed various communications technologies in terms of how distracting they are versus how effective they are as communication tools. Such a display is not something to be taken literally (even though I agreed with the IPad as the most distracting device). It is more an oblique commentary on how we are so easily distracted in such a well connected world.
There were other graphical displays, such as one which contrasted federal spending versus media coverage of various departments, displays of the amount and spread of campaign contributions to both Obama and McCain and other items with a political slant. There was also weird inventions, such as a bunch of micro-robotlets (a term I made up just now) which could be assembled like lego blocks to make actual robots, and replicas of commonly seen items that do unusual things. There was a lot of creative energy in this exhibit, and it blended art and technology in ways I could never have anticipated.
The fourth and fifth levels were devoted to more "standard" artistic fare. There were works by artists who were precursors to many modern movements, such as Monet, Van Gogh, Gauguin and the like. There were also famous works by people like Picasso, Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, Duchamp, Matisse, Warhol and so on. A veritable cornucopia of stuff that used to be the vanguard but is slowly inching its way towards classic status. These parts are a treat, even if the odd painting doesn't look like anything more than a bunch of squiggly crisscrossing lines.
Overall, it was an interesting experience and I must say I enjoyed myself a lot in MoMA. While modern art often allows for very fluid interpretations, the very act of viewing it and trying to decipher the works can be quite tiring and exhilarating at the same time. The trip to MoMA was a great one and I might revisit it sometime in the future to see if my views of modern art change with time.
I am not a big connoisseur of modern art, to be honest. I am not very keyed in to the newer trends in art and I often have trouble understanding modern art because I'm seldom able to put these works into context. It is easy for someone in my position to dismiss a lot of modern art as pretentious twaddle from a bunch of hipsters. I wanted to keep an open mind and see if I could learn and appreciate something new in MoMA.
On the first level, the most prominent exhibit was the sculpture garden. Even though the exhibit was closed due to rain, we could see the sculptures through the glass walls. There were abstract pieces coupled with more concrete ones in intriguing arrangements and I really wish I could have had a closer look.
On the second level, there was an exhibit by an artist named Harun Farocki which was essentially based on audio visual depictions of war. There was a darkened room with four videos in a loop which showed footage of American soldiers training in simulated warlike conditions using virtual reality and similar technologies. I was not sure about the artistic merit of this exhibit per se, but it was quite intriguing to watch. It was also a bit disorienting to have four different audio streams interfering with each other, but this was an interesting exhibit nonetheless.
There was also a reasonably large section devoted to contemporary art, which consisted mostly of what people usually associate with modern art. Here, many of the works were as much about using a new medium in interesting ways as they were about expressing ideas. Most of the work in this part puts the onus of interpretation squarely on the shoulders of the viewer and points to a different kind of artistic experience. This should not be so surprising because every bit of communication that bombards us during our lives requires different levels of involvement from us as the audience. Metaphor and suggestion are probably as old as language itself and art has always shared these roots with language as a means of expression. Modern art is a bit more forthcoming about this, even if the end result is often confusing to the uninitiated.
At the third level, there were exhibits about architecture and design, drawing and photography. Each of these genres has its own conventions and its own history in the arts, and these exhibits would require a lot of time to explore carefully. There was also another special exhibit devoted to artistic connections with modern technology. To me, this was very interesting because it was very different from what I would expect from an art museum. There were displays that were very technology oriented in nature, like a pyramid of distractions which essentially graphed various communications technologies in terms of how distracting they are versus how effective they are as communication tools. Such a display is not something to be taken literally (even though I agreed with the IPad as the most distracting device). It is more an oblique commentary on how we are so easily distracted in such a well connected world.
There were other graphical displays, such as one which contrasted federal spending versus media coverage of various departments, displays of the amount and spread of campaign contributions to both Obama and McCain and other items with a political slant. There was also weird inventions, such as a bunch of micro-robotlets (a term I made up just now) which could be assembled like lego blocks to make actual robots, and replicas of commonly seen items that do unusual things. There was a lot of creative energy in this exhibit, and it blended art and technology in ways I could never have anticipated.
The fourth and fifth levels were devoted to more "standard" artistic fare. There were works by artists who were precursors to many modern movements, such as Monet, Van Gogh, Gauguin and the like. There were also famous works by people like Picasso, Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, Duchamp, Matisse, Warhol and so on. A veritable cornucopia of stuff that used to be the vanguard but is slowly inching its way towards classic status. These parts are a treat, even if the odd painting doesn't look like anything more than a bunch of squiggly crisscrossing lines.
Overall, it was an interesting experience and I must say I enjoyed myself a lot in MoMA. While modern art often allows for very fluid interpretations, the very act of viewing it and trying to decipher the works can be quite tiring and exhilarating at the same time. The trip to MoMA was a great one and I might revisit it sometime in the future to see if my views of modern art change with time.
Labels: art
# posted by Sundeep : 8/10/2011 06:23:00 AM
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