Museums and Culture

The Museum of Modern Art is not my favorite museum in New York City.  It’s not my favorite museum, period.  But I had to go for my Arts in New York City seminar.  And I have to admit, I had a semi-enjoyable time there.  Look, a museum is a museum, and no matter what museum I might find myself in, something ends up interesting me.

What I went for: Photography

My seminar group decided that they wanted to focus on the photography exhibit – mainly New Photography 2012.  Of course, me being me, I chose images from the older collection of photography.  I found three interesting pieces – all interesting for different reasons.

Harrell Fletcher’s The American War (2005) was possibly the most disappointing series I have ever seen in a museum.  Yes, there is Rothko who tends to paint colored squares, and Pollock who thinks art is waving a loaded brush on a canvas.  And yes, I do have a problem looking at these modern artists with the same prestige as I look at Rembrandt.  But, at least they’re doing something.  Harrell Fletcher did absolutely nothing in this photography series.  He went to the Ho Chi Minh museum in Vietnam and simply took photos of the images on the wall.  What’s different between that and what I did on my trip to the MoMa?  I took photographs of the images I thought were interesting – but I’m not considering these photographs art!!!  This really infuriated me.  What is art coming to?  And this is one reason that the MoMa isn’t my favorite museum – too conceptual for my taste.

The other two photographs that I found interesting were, what I would call, photo experiments by Man Ray.  His 1931 image, Électricité, reminded me very much of the experiments my great-grandfather did in his darkroom.  The photograph is of a female nude’s torso – very much similar to pose of the Venus de Milo – with white squiggly lines going across the composition.  This was part of a series experimenting with the idea of electricity and light – a commentary on how it has become a human necessity.  The fact that this modern contraption – electric light – is overlaid on such a beautiful and classic form emphasizes this as an almost negative.  His 1924 image is also an experiment – Ingres’s Violin.  Obviously the photograph harkens to Ingres’s The Large Odalisque.  The allusion is in the title.  The woman is wearing a very oriental head covering, similar to the nude in the painting by Ingres.  What I absolutely love about this image, though, is that he manipulates the woman into an instrument.  The “f holes” carved into her back give her a certain grace – their curve and their automatic connection to music.  I don’t know much about photography in the 1920’s, but I do know one thing – Man Ray seems to be really advanced for his time.

What I thought was a complete treat: The Quay Brothers (click for a 20 minute video)

I really had no idea what was in store when I first looked into that coffin.  The first installation that happens to be at the entrance to the first floor of the museum is a video installation where museum goers have to take turns looking into a lens.  The lens is attached to a black coffin which emerges out of the wall from a fire place.  The video, around three minutes long – a little too long due to the fact that a line tends to form, follows the life of a maid and her daily tasks.  I must say, I was a little afraid.  The music was such that it made me believe something was going to pop out.  Anyone who sees that installation knows that the Quay Brothers are something different – not your ordinary artists.  I decided to follow the signs into the underground depths of the museum to see the Quay Brother’s exhibit.  The brothers are “internationally renowned moving image artists and designers” (MoMa).  The collection was of their stop-motion film sets and puppets – all creepy and disturbing in their own way.  They were displayed as dioramas and some were housed in boxes with special lenses to make the dioramas seem bigger than they really were.  Overall, the exhibit left me wanting more.  I wanted to see all the films that these puppets took part in!

Marina B. Nebro