Many people think that I do not like modern art because I am a fan of realism. That is not the case. I simply believe that art should arouse some sort of thought or feeling in the viewer and for me, modern art fails miserably in that regard. However, a work of art need not be realistic in order to be meaningful. The picture below is called Me Playing with Ilanna, and, in my humble opinion, it is greater by far than any other piece of art I’ve seen.

This drawing is one of the many masterpieces done by Dassie Schuster, a highly skilled artist who also happens to be my five-year-old sister. As you can see, her depiction of the female form is very nearly as abstract as Dekooning’s. The piece even contains some strategically-placed blobs, just like Dekooning’s paintings. At first glance, this looks very much like the modern art I viewed at the MoMA last week.

However, I feel very differently when looking at this picture than I did when looking at “Woman on Bicycle” or “[Untitled].” Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the drawing was done for a specific client (i.e. me). We discussed in class how the quality of art often disintegrates when trying to appeal to the masses instead of to a select few people, and in Dassie’s case, this certainly seems to be true. The quality of the drawing is, in my opinion, exquisite.

Or maybe it has more to do with how the artist herself gave me a big hug when she presented me with her masterpiece.

In any case, I get a warm, fuzzy feeling inside whenever I look at this drawing. Because it symbolizes something so much more than the simple crayon markings on white paper. It represents something bigger and deeper than itself. It gets into the heart of what it means to be human.

And that, my friends, is what true art looks like.

After visiting the Dekooning exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art, I learned two things:

1. It turns out there is a method to the madness we call modern art. The artist does not simply dump random blobs of paint on the canvas. He actually thinks about where do dump the random blobs first.

2. I gave it a fair shot. I really did. I approached the exhibit with an open mind. And yet, I still don’t understand modern art at all.

I believe that art is supposed to mean something. It is supposed to make you look at the world differently, or at least stir up some sort of emotion. However, while standing in front of the grotesque, blob-adoorned forms that vaguely resembled the human female, i felt nothing but slight distaste.

The paintings that contained nothing but colorful streaks were even less thought-provoking. The only thought that came to mind was “Hmm . . . my five-year-old sister once drew something remarkably similar.”

I guess I will never fully understand the phenomenon that is Modern Art.

Diego Revera, an artist originally from Mexico, was one of the first people to have his art displayed in the Museum of Modern Art. He painted  several large-scale murals for the museum in the 1930’s, and were later scattered to several locations, both in the United States and Mexico. Now, five of the murals are being gathered and displayed in the MoMA once again.

What strikes me as the most interesting about Revera’s work is how relevant they seem to our time, especially considering the Occupy Wall Street movements. For example, his piece “Frozen Assets” depicts the contrast between the rich and the poor in 1931. The top panel shows the New York skyline, the middle panel depicts the Municipal Pier on East 23rd Street, where the homeless were sheltered, while the bottom panel shows the wealthy counting their assets.

This contrast between the rich and the poor was the number one issue in America during the Great Depression. It is paramount on people’s minds now, too, with Occupy Wall Street Protestors claiming that 1% of the population controls 99% of the country’s wealth. If this claim is correct, it seems that we are not far off from facing problems of the same magnitude of the Great Depression.

You can see the New York Times article about the returning murals here.

More and more museums are challenging the “traditional” model of the viewer’s experience. We usually think of a museum as a viewing station, with neat little exhibits displayed on walls or behind glass. While this view has been recently challenged by a Guggenheim exhibit that involves sculptures hanging from the ceiling, this museum

takes it even further.

The museum’s designer calls the exhibits “not science, not art, but something in between.” The museum increases the level of viewer participation and interaction with the exhibits. Visitors will be able to hurl down a steel, adult-sized slide while others laugh at their distorted faces through the slide’s transparent walls, trick their brains into thinking their noses are growing at an alarming rate, and even experience a simulation of running face-first into a tree. And this is just the start. The New Museum holds dozens of increasingly more bizarre objects. What I am most eager to try? Glasses that turn your perception of the world completely upside-down–literally!

Though there is a lot of science involved, the New Museum is considered an art museum. Though an adult-sized slide is not necessarily what springs to mind when one thinks of art, I guess there is something beautiful in watching everything you know be turned completely on its head.

The artist Maurizio Cattelan is, shall we say, a rather unique individual. His pieces have covered subjects as far-ranging and bizarre as a hundred-foot house cat skeleton, a suicidal squirrel, and Hitler. Cattelan has a quirky sense of humor, which is represented quite extensively in his art pieces.

Cattelan’s pieces are quite humorous. The only problem with this is the question of how to display the  items in the Guggenheim Museum, where the Cattelan exhibit is due to open shortly. Displaying them in the conventional manner doesn’t seem like a good idea– I can’t imagine browsing through a gallery full of the bizarre, humorous pieces as if they were classical art, with a neat little plaque beside each pieces, bearing the name and perhaps a short description. It just seems backwards.

Cattelan felt the same way. He half-jokingly suggested that his pieces be hung from the ceiling of the famous Guggenheim rotunda, and, surprisingly, the museum agreed to try it. The Cattelan exhibit will consist of over a hundred pieces of art, suspended from the ceiling by cables.

This may be the single most bizarre–albeit interesting– art exhibits I have ever heard of.

Call me cynical (as many have), but I always found it a tad interesting that while European art was kept in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Sub-Saharan African, Asian, and Native American art was for the most part kept in the Museum of Natural History. You know, with the monkeys.

This sort of layout implied that European art is superior  to the art of other cultures; I’ve even heard it said that African art “isn’t real art.” But no longer. A new exhibit is opening at the Met, showcasing African art and focusing on what it meant to be an African leader. The exhibit is called “Heroic Africans: Legendary Leaders, Iconic Sculptures,” and depicts the huge variety of African art style– from realism to abstract. It is a fascinating portrayal not only of African art, but of the historical politics of the continent’s various regions.

The exhibit looks like a fascinating combination of history, art, and politics, and explores the question of what it means to be a political leader.

A link to the article about this exhibit can be found here.