The Politics of Art & Authenticity

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:WLA_moma_Reflections_of_Clouds_on_the_Water-Lily_Pond_Monet.jpg

I have a confession. I do not understand modern art. Probably because I’m cynical, reductionist and not in touch with my artistic side. There are no shortage of reasons, but the truth is that when I see random shapes and colors splayed out on a canvas that is all I see, nothing more nothing less. The trip to the MOMA changed my perspective on art in general, and I’m not saying that I now love modern art ,but I have started to gain an appreciation for modern art. It was not due to The Scream or the New Photography  exhibit but rather it was in the Monet exhibit where I found beauty in art.

In all fairness, I looked at “The Scream” and other paintings but I kind of drifted over them with an uninterested gaze. I felt nothing when I looked at “The Scream” and the other paintings, so I decided to wander aimlessly. If we are being completely honest I only found the Monet section because it had couches and there was a cute European girl sitting down. Naturally I sat down next to her and she walked away. Heartbreaking as this was it was all for the best because I now turned to actually look at the art in front of me. It was Monet’s famous Reflections of Clouds on  the Water-Lily Pond painting(as shown above). And as any museum attendee would I sat and beheld the painting in front of me. But this time I did not think about the painting I just sat there and looked. I observed every stroke mark and  the shades of blues and greens that clashed and collided with each other to form a seamless painting. It was beautiful.

It was peaceful to be in the presence of such a painting and I sat there for the next half an hour. It was this experience that made me less cynical and helped me understand the purpose of art. I used to think art was just about making something aesthetically pleasing to the eye and thats why I could not understand modern art with its vague shapes and abstractness. However after my experience at the MOMA I understand that art is about capturing beauty and conveying it through any means. This was an important lesson for me to learn and the first step towards liking modern art and as a result I will always be grateful to the cute European girl that walked away.

This has been the second time I’ve been to MoMA in the past year or so, so I’m ready to accept my “Cultured & Sophisticated Merit Badge.”

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 often look at modern art and wonder why I can’t produce the same piece to be hanging on the museum wall. Well, I guess perhaps I can… I’ll explain myself.
I enjoy marveling (longingly) at masterpieces that I know I could never create. Pieces of art with intricate detail, pieces that took the artist years to finish. Well, looking at Edward Munch’s scream made me realize that there’s another aspect of art that’s important. And maybe that other aspect is something I can put into my own art.
A piece like “The Scream” says so much, has so much character. Perhaps the artist was expressing how he felt towards nature or towards life. Perhaps this scream was stifled for so many years and he finally let it out. The possibilities are endless. The curator at MOMA pointed out that Munch used pastels rather than oil, which definitely effects the expression of the scream itself. The pastel gives the piece a rough feel, instead of the smoothness of oil on canvas. And the wavy lines of the pastel kind of create an image of the scream filling up the whole sky, as if it has a ripple effect. The interpretations for this are also infinite.
I think there is in modern art an extra level of expression. It’s an expression of the everyday, rather than the often lofty ideas and messages of the previous art genres. It’s the expression of the artist, speaking through the art he/she creates. Everyone can create pieces of art; everyone can put feeling and character into that art. Even if the art doesn’t hang on a famous museum wall, it’ll hang on the wall of your own personal museum – whether that’s your magnetic refrigerator or your bedroom wall.

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Usually I never know what exactly we’re doing or where we’re going or what we’re seeing for these productions because I like it to be a surprise. I like surprises. So I knew I was coming to the MoMa, and after accidentally walking into the restaurant and being redirected three doors down, I was excited to be there. I thought, “Well, I’ve never been to this museum before. Modern art can’t be too terrible, right?”

I’m always impressed by photography and how beautiful it can make such ordinary things look. I never know how the photographer decides what angle to snap a shot, or what to take a picture of. Some of my favorite pictures were the ones that looked like one face but they were actually a combination of three overlapping faces. It took me a few seconds to pick up on this but when I did I was amazed. How did they do that? Stevie tried to explain it to me and although it sounds simple, it’s something I didn’t know existed. I was very literally taken aback by it. I appreciate the creativity behind photographs so I definitely enjoyed this gallery.

Then, I remember trying to check in my bag and Professor Davis explaining to me that The Scream by Edvard Munch was being loaned to the MoMa for a few months and it was just one of those paintings you have to see. Naturally, I was expecting some crazy, elaborate, I don’t even know. Then there was a line to get into the gallery and I was pretty pumped. I was thinking, “This has to be awesome, no?” And then I saw it. Usually at this point in my blog post I start complaining about disappointment but I actually wasn’t as disappointed as I thought I would be.

My first reaction was to think, “What…This looks like it was drawn with crayons. This is what I came to see? A crayon drawing? Oh.” But then, in an attempt to be a cultured member of society, I actually stopped and thought about it for a little while. And then I realized, hey, this is kind of interesting. I even squinted to read the little excerpt on the wall about the painting. The contrast between all the bright oranges and yellows and the darker screaming figure with the look of horror on his face made me think of devastation in the midst of beauty. Thinking about it right now, it reminds me of being out in Rockaway this weekend. The beach has a peaceful, beautiful quality to it. I was standing on the beach, looking out into the ocean, momentarily entranced by it’s beauty only to snap back to reality and look around to see a destroyed boardwalk, wiped out houses, and devastated looks on homeowner’s faces. It was beauty in the midst of devastation. Just like the screaming figure with a beautiful sunset going on around it.

This is my favorite quality of art. It is subject to a hundred different interpretations by a hundred million people. It means something else to someone else and there is no right or wrong answer; only new perspectives.

courtesy of MOMA

Munch’s “The Scream” initially looked to me like a five year old had his way with a piece of canvas. But whenever I look at a piece of art, which is not very often, I have to step back and think, “Could I do that?” The answer is usually no. This makes me look again at piece with greater interest and attention to detail. In the case of Munch, I caught onto how deliberate his strokes with the pastel crayons are. Some lines are terse and bunched densely together. Other lines are long and flowing. The use of stroke gives life to the piece, and makes portions of it discernable. Portions which really shouldn’t be. A few, orange, squiggly lines is supposed to be the sky? Give me a break. Yet, I know it is the sky. And Munch uses colors is such a way that nothing seems right. It delivers emotion; not to mention the face. Why is it screaming? The whole damn painting just irks me. Nothing seems as it should. The sky is orange, the boardwalk red, the person barely looks like a person, and there are two other people on the boardwalk. Those other two guys are the most annoying because this thing in the front is “bugging out,” and the other two guys are just “chilling.” Once again, I revisit the painting from a different perspective wondering if I could accomplish all of this confusion and emotion. The answer is no. I guess Munch did his job.

Last week we went to see Edward Munch’s The Scream. I was looking at the picture, asking myself, what is it about this picture? What makes this so perennial? Why is this viewed over and over again throughout the years?

Maybe people can identify themselves with this bald-headed, open-mouthed man standing on this bridge over the water. It could be a calm, serene painting, maybe something Emerson or Thoreau could describe in terms of nature, but Munch painted a swirling storm and a brightly colored bridge with artificial colors. I think his use of colors is what makes this picture tick. The yellow pool in the sea, the red and pink and purple tones in the bridge, and the gauntly tone of the person all make this picture scream. It doesn’t really matter if people live in the nineteenth, twentieth, or twenty-first century. We could be in the middle of a hurricane, or just living in total peace. As Much himself wrote, “I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.” Sometimes, all we want to do is scream.

We also saw the New Photography exhibit. Professor Davis asked us what makes something a 21st century picture. I happen to love photography. I have a DSLR camera and I love taking pictures of everything. I didn’t really like this exhibit so much. Some pictures were really cool, but others seemed really mundane and there was nothing special about them that struck me. I think today, in the 21st century, the term “artist” demands a lot less talent than it used to. Today, people can post videos of themselves singing and dancing and become an instant YouTube star. Today, people can digitalize their faces and voices and pictures and videos. There is more room for creativity, but more of the computer’s work and less of the artist’s. I was unimpressed with most of the pictures I saw. I didn’t like the collages, where it looked like the artist just pasted a bunch of unrelated-looking people or pictures together. The pictures didn’t really speak to me. There were pictures of regular, everyday scenes, like garbage, people smoking, and shots of New York city. These pictures didn’t really have anything special about them. I could walk to school one day and see the exact same scene outside. Today, if people take pictures with a digital camera and edit them on a computer, they can make them so “artsy.” I think this term is so hackneyed in today’s world, and in a sense, rather than the photographer, the cameras and computers have become the artist. After visiting this exhibit, I was a little disillusioned with what today’s photography may have become. People can just take pictures of anything, edit them a little, and call this art.

Later, we went to the Barnard Fall Project. I wasn’t such a huge fan of this performance. In the beginning, I thought it was really cool. I thought, those girls have some real guts to go out there dressed like that. I liked how in the beginning there seemed to be two different dances going on at once – all the girls were moving in sync except for two, who were doing their own sort of dance. I thought this dynamic was cool, but as the show progressed I started to like the dance less and less. I really didn’t understand when the girls came out in dresses and kept repeating their names, and mixing up each person’s name. I couldn’t tell if that was some sort of private joke between the girls, but I don’t know any of the girls and I was so confused as to who was who. I liked it at the end, when they all changed their outfits to either the white or brown outfits. Everyone looked kind of like oreos.

Overall, I enjoyed the experience. I especially liked seeing The Scream. I would recommend it to others.

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At the beginning of the day, MoMA was definitely something I was excited to go to because it was something I would never imagine myself going on my own time. I never stepped foot into a museum. Except for the Natural History Museum, but I don’t really count that as an experience because I was young and I kind of just ran around with my friends at the time. I didn’t appreciate what was around me at the time. When we arrived, the first thing we saw was The Scream by Edvard Munch. This famous piece of artwork that I seen basically every where, on television, in textbooks, basically every where since I don’t even know how long, but to see it before my eyes was incredible. Although people praise this artwork, I looked at it and I said to myself, “This is it? This is what people obsess about, what people think is amazing.” I looked at it and it looked so simple, as if he just took Crayola crayons and wanted to draw something real quick. It didn’t look so special to me and that is when I realized I’m not an artsy person. I understand the time he took, but I expected to see GREAT detail to the point where I’d look at the painting and go, “I wish I was an artist.” However, when I looked at this artwork, I said to myself, “It looks like I can do this” (But of course I can’t because my drawing skills on a scale of 10 is undefined. It’s horrible I must tell you). I do enjoy looking at artwork, especially The Scream because I got to see this painting with my own eyes without media having to portray it themselves.

Also, at the MoMA, the photography section was a little too much for me. I guess the term “modern art” can be interpreted VERY loosely and I wish it wasn’t. I guess my view on that section of the museum is that if you are not open minded about stepping into the photography section of MoMA, then I don’t think you should. Just a fair warning.

Later that night, after watching The Barnard Fall Project, although I left early, it was a different experience. I walked into the theater with a very open mind, actually excited to see what this “modern dance” is because I didn’t even know there was such thing as “modern dance.” I guess, I know what it’s called modern. The way the danced was so very unique I would say. It was just their movements seemed so “different” in a sense. I guess it’s just not what I’m use consider dance. The one thing that really bothered me though was that during the second dance, they kept walking around to wherever they were going. It wasn’t dancing to me, it was just walk to where you need to stand and that what grind my gears at the moment. However, the one thing I must applaud about The Barnard Fall Project was the first dance because the fact that majority of the dance was performed without music. I’ve tried to dance without music in a group and it was a complete fail because people were just off beat, but during the performance everyone was basically in sync with each other. It was amazing to watch and the stamina that they have. Jeez… the amount of jumping and leaping and running and walking they did was just…. CLAPS FOR YOU GLENN COCO (Excuse my Mean Girls reference).

All I can say about this modern stuff is that one needs an open mind, I wish someone told me that sooner or else my mind would of been opened rather than closed. Now I know, an open mind is needed when you are exploring NYC in a different way than what I’m use to seeing NYC as I see it.

When we went to MoMA to see The Scream exhibit, I was very pleasantly surprised. I had seen the iconic image before, so i was just expecting more of the same. But the photocopied versions I had seen in textbooks and in my high school’s art room did not touch the heels of the original painting. Something about seeing it live and real and in the flesh was spectacular.. Thinking about the fact that Edvard Munch’s pastels carved the image out on this paper that I was looking at was a really beautiful experience. I am grateful that I got to see it in the few weeks that it was out for the public to see.

Next, we went to the New Photography exhibit. There, I saw one of the most beautiful pieces of art I have ever seen. Along an entire wall was a picture that was made up of thousands of little pictures, all taken in one place over the course of a day, from three different perspectives. It was interesting to see two forms of art, one so modern and one so.. old fashioned (the scream), juxtaposed so closely together. The Scream is one of the oldest pictures in the book. I have seen it a million times. But, its message is a modern one. It symbolises modernity, how much people want to scream amidst the chaos and confusion draping over them. It looks at the insanity of our world in this post-industrialized society. So perhaps, there is no better place for this exhibition than right in the middle of this modern photography.

Later still, we went to see The Barnard Fall Project. When I walked into the auditorium, I thought, oh! thats why he was screaming! I truly have never seen a moe bizarre production. These girls were… wiggling.

weirdly. All across the stage, saying something about swimming. If they were trying out that stroke in the water, as a certified lifeguard i can tell you that they would have drowned. I cant understand what they were doing! And those four girls, Linden, Lea, MArtha Scott, and Katherine were CREEPY! why were they pulling eachothers hair?!

I guess it was trying to be modern, but I think it was too modern. I read the biographies of the dancers, and I truly commend them for being part of a production and expressing themselves through dance in a public forum. I just dont understand them, but nobody said it wasn’t art if I didn’t get it!

I think the common denominator between the three experiences of the day was modernity. So when I went home, I was mulling over the concept in my mind. Modernity is scary to me, because it is always changing. As time goes by, the modern becomes ancient, making way for the unknown. Someday, wacky dance wiggles will be an old story, and well all watch cloned fish robots walk in a circle on a stage. You really never know whats coming next. I think thats what the guy in the painting is so worried about, because Im worried about it too.