Who’s Your MoMa? Part I
Picasso: Girl Before a Mirror, 1932
In a recent trip to New York City all thoughts of spending time roaming Manhattan streets evaporated in the face of consecutive hundred degree days. The good news is that there’s an air-conditioned museum to cater to every taste.
On a whim we decided to go to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), a place to which we hadn’t been in years. Perhaps you are as I used to be and think that you hate modern art. It might be better for MoMA to rename itself the Museum of 20th Century Art. “Modern” is a term that’s as relative as time itself. As an art form it references Western works from the 1860s through the 1970s–basically from early Impressionism on and embracing various styles: post-impressionism, abstract expressionism, surrealism, installations, material culture, photography, video, performance art, etc. The concept of modernism is what links them. Though some art, especially surrealism, can seem weird or bleak, embedded within it is a belief in progress. That’s why so many artists spotlighted factories and machines. Even critical attacks on warfare retain a fascination with the technology of war. If you will, sleek airplanes, silvery bombs, and powerful weapons pay oblique homage to factory production.
Embedded in modernism is a vague belief in utopianism, whether fashioned by fire, reason, rebellion, or innovation. Two world wars and economic collapse were among the challenges of the 20th century. Much of modern art is a conscious attempt to dismantle older ideals and values. When we admire bright impressionist paintings today it’s easy to forget that that it once shocked people as a vulgar cartoonish assault on the “standards” of the day. Imagine what those who felt Western art standards were being eroded made of abstract art. Even I you don’t that far, some critics railed against Van Gogh. After all, human faces weren’t supposed to have streaks of blue, smudges of green, and blobs of red!
Confession: I used to hate “abstract” art. I asked a question you should not: What is it? Think of it this way; everything in an art museum is simulacrum. It is not the thing represented or for use, rather a representation of a person, place, or thing. When Marcel Duchamp displayed a urinal in a museum, he did not expect anyone to pee in it. His point was that context determines meaning. Look at the form, not its usual function. Pop art like Andy Warhol’s soup can silk screens did much the same thing, with quite a swing at commercialism to boot.
A painting is essentially akin to a photograph, a sort of lie that we agree has meaning. Why not abstract it? Take a city and represent it as disjointed cubes or scramble lines like Picasso. A painting consists of color (including black), line, texture, and form, but who says all of those elements need to be present or represent reality? When I first saw Mark Rothko’s all-black paintings I couldn’t distinguish them from a Goth rolling black paint over bedroom drywall. I’m still not very fond of those, but I have come to admire what he did with other colors, especially red.
Artists are often imagined as alienated and skeptical. True, but that is the path to that most vaunted on American myths: individualism. To go back to progress, it is the belief in the power of individuals to change society. (Or, at least, a critique of that belief.)
Enough with the lecture. A big reason to visit MoMA is that it is filled with works now viewed as iconic. I found myself walking into a gallery and exclaiming, “I forgot this was here.” My guess is that what most people mean when they say they don’t like “modern” art is that don’t like “contemporary” or “postmodern” art. Second confession: I’m not fond of most of it either. Both strike me as sterile and soulless because of a lack of belief in progress. It becomes nihilist and narcistic, one person’s screed against everything or nothing. But don’t be surprised if a few decades from now they will seem tame and iconic.
Here's batch one of images from MoMA.
Rob Weir
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| Jackson Pollock, One Number 1, 1950 |
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| Toulouse Latrec, M de Lauradour, 1897 |
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| Mark Rothko, No, 5, 1948 |
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| Max Beekman, Departure, 1932-35 |
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| Rene Magritte, 1932 |
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| Magritte, The Lovers, 1928 |
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| Paul Gauguin, Washerwomen, 1888 |
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| Gustav Klimt, Hope II, 1908 |
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| Giorgio de Chirico, Anxiety, 1913 |
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