After reading the writings of Berger and Barnett, I believe that I had a better experience when I visited the MoMA this past Tuesday because the writings not only told me what to look for in paintings and how to look at them, but also that there are more ways than one to look at a painting, giving me the confidence to think of my own interpretation, rather than asking someone else for their interpretation or looking an expert’s thoughts up online.

Although there were so many amazing works of art at the Museum of Modern Art, the two that I have selected to analyze are Robert Rauschenberg’s Rebus, because it was the most intriguing painting at the museum and also my personal favorite, and Max Beckmann’s Departure, because it was the German Expressionist painting that stood out to me the most.

Robert Rauschenberg’s “Rebus”

Max Beckmann’s “Departure”

(John Wetmore, Blog A)

In visiting the Museum of Modern Art, I will keep in mind all of the ideas in John Berger’s Ways of Seeing and Sylvan Barnet’s A Short Guide to Writing about Art; however, there are three points that stood out to me in particular that I will apply the most during my visit and that I will explore in this blog post.

Firstly, in Barnet’s book, he poses the question “What is art?”¹ While I possessed a very limited scope of what I believed art to be, I came to realize from the readings and from our discussion in class that there are different “ways of seeing” art. From a famous masterpiece like Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa to the design of the Apple MacBook Pro I am typing this blog post on, art is everywhere and in everything. Art is different to everyone, and so is their opinion about what is art and about what each particular piece of art means. Keeping an open mind is essential to fully enjoying and truly understanding any work of art – especially works of modern art.

Secondly, in Ways of Seeing, Berger states that “the meaning of an image is changed according to what one sees immediately beside it or what comes immediately after it.”² Although the lavish and magnificent displays add to your overall experience at a museum, they take away from each individual work of art by separating the onlooker from the work itself. When I visit the MoMA on Tuesday, I will attempt to view each piece of art separately from the museum and the collection of artwork around it.

And finally, by saying , “Even a reproduction hung on a wall is not comparable in this respect for in the original the silence and stillness permeate the actual material, the paint, in which one follows the traces of the painter’s immediate gestures,”³ Berger explains to the reader that reproductions are inaccurate to a degree because they cannot reproduce every minute detail of a work of art, and so they further distance the reader from it. Because of this point, I will show a greater respect for the artwork I see at the MoMA by taking in every aspect of the work instead of just taking a quick look and a snapshot with my camera and then moving on.

The works of Barnet and Berger helped me to better expand my knowledge of art, and they will definitely enhance my experience of viewing it at the Museum of Modern Art by causing me to question my previous notions and to look at art in a new perspective.

¹A Short Guide to Writing about Art by Sylvan Barnet, p1
²Ways of Seeing by John Berger, p29
³Ways of Seeing by John Berger, p31