Nov 18 2012
Screaming in MoMa (Will Get You Kicked Out)
I’m not going to talk about “The Scream” that much because I’m a rebel, it didn’t capture my interests like I thought it would. Frankly, it looked like a bunch of colorful, curvy lines on that eggshell-tinted paper the teachers gave you to color on in fifth-grade art class. Don’t get me wrong, after I stood there and looked at the picture for a little bit, I really did appreciate the bizarreness of it. The vividness of the lines of color, especially on the boardwalk, had an otherworldly hue to them, and the sheer mystery that is “The Scream” is something everyone should admire.
I took this picture. Try to steal it and I’ll see you on Judge Judy. (Also it keeps uploading sideways, so please turn your laptop 90 degrees clockwise to get the full effect.)
The painting that truly captured my interest was the first in a series of four paintings that were commissioned to be hung in the foyer of some rich guy’s Park Avenue apartment. The works, painted by Vasily Kandinsky, are just colorful images of nothing in particular. The plaque next to them stated that Kandinsky may have had a landscape in mind when painting them, and while I managed to pick out what could be a park walkway, or a lighthouse on a beach, the painting is inherently void of anything realistic. (Abstract paintings usually are.) I don’t know, it’s just a really great painting.
The “New Photography” exhibit was more interesting than I thought it would be. I went in thinking it’d be just a bunch of pictures of nature or technology in the same style as Tumblr hipsters, but it was more “really depressing Vietnam War” images. I assume the whole “New” portion of the exhibit was to emphasize the changing role of photography in our modern, technologically-advanced times; such as the series of typically normal photos taken from the 1970s, but then a gruesome image of the War is added in as the picture hanging on the wall, or behind the curtain that the woman has so carelessly vacuumed up. The juxtaposition of these two types of photos from the past, brought together with today’s technology is telling. Those two photos showed two distinctly different parts of the same time, but it’s by today’s experiments do we finally get a fuller picture of truth.
The same idea held true for the next series of photographs taken by Harrell Fletcher. Fletcher went to a Vietnam War museum in Ho Chi Minh City and took pictures of pictures shown there. The photos in that
I took this too, so it’s a photo of a photo of a photo.
museum weren’t those of American soldiers bravely fighting, but instead it was filled with images of women and children burned by chemical bombs – what Vietnam saw. Fletcher took these pictures of pictures to expose truth, which is what I believe is photography is meant to be: a truth-teller.
I think “new” photography also represents new types of photography, as in not the classic snapping of a photo. Photographers put thought into what messages they want to deliver and how they can capture different scenes and objects in the picture form in order to do so.
I think Tumblr hipster side of the photography exhibit was found in a little corner next to the exit. I waltzed in, thinking I’d see some more super cool thought-evoking pictures when suddenly BAM. Naked people. Looked like a Tumblr dashboard. This is probably me being immature but in case you missed it I’m bringing it to your attention!
Firstly, I lover your title. Secondly I actually tilted my computer to look at that picture. Thirdly I share your confusion with “The New Photography” exhibit. I mean why all the Vietnam pictures. It didn’t make sense to me and I’m happy someone else said that.