When visiting the MoMA I felt like I looked a lot not only at the art but also at the other people viewing the art in the museum. When reading Barnet’s writing on what art is and how we described it, I kept going back and thinking about the people at the museum. It was interesting to notice what pieces of art certain people would glance at and walk past and which ones people would stare at and crowd around. I related this to the way we view art and beauty. Many people would walk past abstract pieces and then stop in front of a piece that was more socially acceptable as beautiful. While doing this I realized that we all do this and it is somewhat due to our perceptions of what art is and what we believe is beautiful. At the MoMA we first went to look for the exhibit on cubism spend a good deal of time there. It was interesting to see the progression of Picasso’s work as he began dabbling into cubic designs before diving into the cubism movement. Many of these pieces weren’t on first glance beautiful. When viewed at a distance you could see the general outline of the subject and the mind began to connect the lines and create a better picture of what the eyes were seeing. When viewed up close you could see the detailed brushwork and intricate geometric designs of the pieces. While viewing these pieces I tried to ask myself questions about both the subjects of the works and the possible messages or ideas that could surface in the artwork. As I walked around the room and viewed the progression on pieces throughout the movement I began to get a better understanding as to what I was feeling. Each piece gave a distinct emotion or feeling to the viewer. While the viewer may not fully understand what is being represented in the piece they are able to get that message. Not everything has to be clearly shown for you to get your message across to an audience. Through the rest of the museum I tried to continue asking questions to myself about both the artists and the artworks. While I wasn’t one hundred percent engaged by the two readings I was able to use parts of them to open my mind to the different forms of artwork throughout the time periods shown. These readings also helped spark questions during the Night at the Museum event as I looked at the different pieces in the galleries.

I apologize again for my late posting.

Eli McClain

Before this weekend, I have only been to the MOMA one other time. My first experience there was quite quick in which I just walked past the art looking at what was before me. If I liked it, I would stop and look at it for a few minutes. However, If i found the work unappealing I found myself just walking right passed it. This time though, after reading both Berger and Barnet and how they discuss how art should be looked at from more than one perspective, I walked around the MOMA with an open mind.

I found myself stopping at what I found to be obscure works of art such as Picasso and asking myself the questions I found in the readings. I stood there, wondered, and discussed with my partner about what the artist wanted us to see and the story we believed was behind the painting. As Berger says in Ways of Seeing “paintings are reproduced with words around them” and this is exactly what I was trying to accomplish during this visit.

The most fascinating piece of work that I saw during the visit had to be Georges-Pierre Seurat’s pointillism work. I went up as close as I can to the picture to see all of the minuscule dots and slowly backed away to see the whole it created. I was amazed at the small detail that I may not have even noticed if I just walked right by it. Even the frame was covered in dots! With just a small shape an entire image was created and a beautiful piece of artwork was made. Taking time to really look at a piece of art and from different perspectives just as Berger and Barnet wrote about really makes a difference when trying to find the deeper meaning of something.

I have been to museums before and tried to appreciate the art but always felt like I wasn’t doing it correctly or the way the artist intend for their work to be seen/felt. The biggest thing I took away from the readings was the fact that so much of art appraisal and appreciation or lack there of today is focused on the famousness of the work and not the work itself. A piece of art is not beautiful because you think it is; it is beautiful because its been used on this postcard and that magazine and was bought for that much money. This emphasis of art’s success being defined by its publicity or cost really stuck out to me.

Some of my favorite pieces in the MOMA when we went last week were ones I didn’t know and I’d never seen before. I tried to remember what I had read and think to myself as I walked through the galleries to judge whether or not I liked a piece of art based on the way I felt about it, not how I thought others felt about it. This also worked in the converse for more well known works I saw in the MOMA that were not new to me. Famous Seurat or Picasso paintings that I know well and that are considered incredibly famous based on their high number of re-printings and monetary value are ones that I took a second look at. I appraised them for myself based on my mental and emotional connection to the works. Some I found to actually appreciate more than I had in the past because I now felt my opinions of the paintings were more valid than in my prior visits. I also found that I was not as interested in some of the works I’d seen in the past because I wasn’t going to love them just because that was the social standard.

The readings gave me a deeper appreciation for my favorite painting in the MOMA: Monet’s Agapanthus. It has been my favorite of the Monet Water Lilies paintings since I was a child and first came to the MOMA. I recognize now that I loved the colors and Monet’s depiction of nature and innocence before I was old enough to know that it was an incredibly famous set of paintings. I like that I felt connected to this painting based off of how I genuinely felt about it, not a societal pressure to like it. All in all the readings helped me to better appreciate some of the pieces in the museum and gave me more confidence in my ability to critically asses the paintings that I see.

I have never been to a museum on my own time. Every time that I have gone, it has been a school or program related trip. Now that I got a chance to visit the MoMa on my own time, it was a completely different experience. No longer was I being guided to a certain section of the museum or being told what I was looking at. I would usually just cruise around the different floors and just slightly look at the different art pieces without really acknowledging what was in front of me. After reading the Berger and Barnett chapters, I gained a lot of new knowledge on some ways to analyze art and interpret it.

One concept I used while I was looking at the art pieces in the MoMa was the concept of form and content. In the reading Barnett says, “such things as the size of the work, the kinds of brush strokes in a painting, and the surface texture of a sculpture – is part of the meaning (52-53). When I was looking at the different art pieces I did not just simply focus on what the painting had, but I actually also looked at how big or small the painting was and the different techniques that were used to make it. For example, while I was looking at the painting The Poet Max Herrmann-Neisse by George Grosz, I did not just simply look at the man in the painting, but I went beyond that and noticed all the different details that the painting had. This told me that this painting was trying to express not just a man, but rather it was trying to tell us something more about the man with all the detail that was included.

Another thing I kept in mind while I was looking at all the different art pieces was that no interpretation of art is wrong. Both Berger and Barnett discuss that everybody interprets art differently and it is up to the person who views the art to interpret what is going on. Berger mentions that what we see is “the relation between things and ourselves (9)”. Therefore, he is trying to say that no matter what the artist’s intention is, the meaning of the art depends on the person viewing it and what the person can relate it to. For example, while I was looking at the art piece Retrospective Bust of a Woman by Salvador Dali I related it to the difference in gender equality and how women are seen as being less of men, so to me this painting had to do a lot with the role of women in society. To anybody else this does not have to be the case, but to me it is what it seemed like. This goes to show that art can have many different interpretations. The artist could have had a specific intention, but what the viewer actually perceives is what is important. While visiting the MoMa, I was very open minded and ready to see art through a different lens.

There’s something beautiful about standing in a room full of beautiful and acclaimed artwork. But sometimes, it’s the conversations they elicit or that you hear in passing that are more interesting. This is because everyone has different interpretations of the same piece of artwork and sometimes even of one section of an art piece. Being in the MoMA is always interesting because there is always the opportunity to have engaging conversations about the artwork; because of this, I was glad to have been there with my partner, Nureen. As we walked around the galleries, we would point out and comment on the different paintings that stuck out to us.

Having read the Berger and Barnet readings made me view the artwork in a slightly different light than from my past visits. I, too, used to look at art and try to interpret it as an art expert or art historian, which put up a barrier between me and the artwork. I would try too hard to find some deeper meaning or message, but I never truly tried to figure out my own, independent opinion. Berger’s point about how the ability to replicate and reproduce art has allowed for a mystification really struck a chord with me. I had never thought about the barrier we place between ourselves and the art we see. This time around, I was able to try to interpret the art–with aid of the background information given on some of the plaques–on my own, which was a point made by both Berger and Barnet. We usually don’t know the artist’s intent, but one of the benefits of replication and reproduction of artwork nowadays is that it’s accessible to, potentially, anyone, allowing us to be able to see a piece of art and interpret it based on our own experiences and thoughts. Art is made valuable by the viewers who look at it and appreciate it, but everyone appreciates a piece of art for different reasons because we all think differently and have our own unique experiences.

For me, this idea really took shape when I was viewing the contemporary art gallery, which focused on using art to show political conflicts around the world. In the past, I may have just quickly walked through the gallery, occasionally reading the plaques of the interesting pieces, but this time around, I really took my time interpreting the pieces for myself. And through talking to Nureen, I got to see first hand the notion that people interpret art differently. For instance, there was an installation that was just a black room with one huge screen of bright white light, nothing more, nothing less. It certainly helped to read the three panels on the wall leading into the room, but once I got in there, it touched me in a beautiful way. The overwhelming light made me think of my own past and of some of my own personal memories, and I honestly almost cried because of the emotion it elicited in me. And it was nothing more than a huge, lit up screen. To Nureen, perhaps it was simply just a bright light in a dark room, but for me, it was so much more because it made me think of my struggles.

There is no right or wrong way to interpret a piece of art; I believe that part of the reason so many people feel so out of touch with art is because they feel that it’s something only certain people can understand. But that is not the case, and at least for me, I appreciate artwork so much more now than I did before. The meaning of a piece is fluid and unique, and there’s a certain beauty in just that itself.

One of the concepts, perhaps the core idea of John Bergman’s Ways of Seeing is that the context and perception of a piece of art may be just as important as the work itself. In a sense, The Last Supper that we see is not the same that Da Vinci and his contemporaries saw- they had a different visual vocabulary than we modern viewers, and so would have had a different way of seeing it. Even the most carefully preserved painting will never be the same as it was when it was created: we can preserve an object, but we cannot preserve society’s position in relation to that object.

To some extent, modern art’s use of abstract visual forms sidesteps this problem. To “get” a painting like The Last Supper, you need to study Christianity, Renaissance symbolism and lighting techniques, know what perspective it was created and the significance of that perspective, and so on. To “get” a Rothko work, all you need is an eye (and perhaps a basic understanding of color theory) By eschewing any sort of setting or object that could grow outdated, abstract artists hoped to make universal paintings that could evoke emotional reaction in any viewer. I am not trying to say that no piece of modern art does not need context- indeed, Fountain would become pointless when removed from the context of an art gallery or museum – but I do think that abstract art is actually more comprehensible to everyone than more traditional art.

Why, then does modern art get derided by the masses who say, “My 3-year old could draw that!”. Again, it is a matter of context. If I hang up a Pollock in my house, people view it differently than if I place it on a pedestal in a museum. Museums have an atmosphere and a price that primes people to expect “high art”. And of one the ways in which most people define “high art” is the difficulty in producing it. Anyone can look at the Sistine Chapel or Michelangelo’s sculptures and know they required skill, finesse, and many hours of labor to produce. The same can’t be said of blobs of color or pictures of soup cans. But if these images were displayed in a less pretentious setting – say, on the street or on a bedroom wall – I think we all could see them in a way that would let us enjoy them.

Walking into the MoMA, one is already filled with the assumption that what is featured throughout the building will be art. Berger writes that, “The way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe” (8). As a result, even exhibits that would otherwise seem like just everyday objects were viewed through a critical lens. According to Berger, this means that many learnt assumptions about art such as those concerning beauty, truth, genius, civilization, form, status, and taste come into play. One exhibit from the Dada movement was a shovel that hung from the ceiling. If it had not been in a museum, a shovel would be all it was seen as but, because it was in the MoMA, it was art. With this label of being art by Marcel Duchamp, the shovel suddenly gained all the assumptions that come with the label.

Barnet writes that, in order to get to the meaning of a work, one must interpret “the subject matter, the material and form, the sociohistoric context, and perhaps the artist’s intentions” (55). First the work itself must be analyzed. What details does the artist intentionally place for the the viewer to interpret? The colors, title, and artist all lend to the larger picture of the meaning of the work. Then the time of its conception and the circumstances in which it were made add on to its image, and may even change some original assumptions. These kinds of background information allow the viewer to see what movement was going on at the time and create some kind of individual interpretation of the work. Barnet’s writing encourages the reader to question everything there is about the piece of art in order to fully appreciate and interpret it.

A single work of art has multiple interpretations. There is the intended meaning given by the artist, and then there are the assumed meanings given by audiences from different places and times. Once the time period or movement of the artwork is seen, the viewer may even try to create meaning by viewing the piece from the standpoint of when it was created. Berger additionally writes that different meaning is created in the viewing of authentic works of art as well as the presence of reproductions of a work. The point that is made is that there are many ways to analyze a work of art as well as many factors, personal and otherwise, that will play into how it is analyzed. The accumulation of all this becomes a unique interpretation for each person.

Reading Berger and Barnet’s works really changed my perspective on viewing art. Going to the Museum of Modern Art this past week was much different than my previous museum visits. I had never been to the MoMa before, so it was a brand new experience for me; both the works and the museum itself were unfamiliar to me. A fresh environment, fresh art, and a fresh perspective.

The first exhibit I visited was the gallery of Andy Warhol’s works. It consisted of several images of pop culture, from Elvis to Marilyn Monroe to the Campbell soup can. A prevailing theme in Warhol’s works is repetition. Many of his works were either redone and copied with variation in other works or included the use of repeated images overlapping each other. Reading the descriptions next to each painting, I couldn’t help but think of chapter 1 from Ways of Seeing. I thought of the disparity between words and images. The descriptions cited the use of repetition in the images as a way for Warhol to illustrate the common and commercial existence of the subjects. While it seemed likely that that could be true, it was still “mystical.” The idea wasn’t confirmed by anyone – it was even written that Warhol preferred to refer to the meaning of his works with the phrase “no comment.” I thought of how the descriptions of these works were, in a way, unnecessary. The viewer should be the one to interpret the art, based on the context of the art and the mind of the viewer. From what I understand, this is what Barnet labels the reception theory. The art is not limited to what the artist intended or what the person who wrote the plaque thought the artist intended. I thought of the other possibilities of the meaning of the artwork. Maybe the repetition is a metaphor for Warhol’s delusional mind, or of the duality of American society at the time. As I thought of more and more possibilites, I realized that they are all valid because I was a viewer who was engaged with the art.

Another thing that struck me was viewing Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night. It was not nearly as massive as I thought, especially in comparison to the huge crowd that surrounded it. When I observed it up close, it was undoubtedly beautiful, but I did not find it more or less beautiful than many of the other paintings around it. Yet, it was by far more popular, and without a doubt, more expensive. The scene reminded me of Chapter 5 from Ways of Seeing. This piece is extremely valuable just by possession, which is true for the rest of the works to an extent. The value of an item is not really dependent on the work that the artist went through, or the significance it initially had socially, but of how well the artist’s name has persisted. Van Gogh is famous for being Van Gogh, and so his artwork is valued higher than others. It was fascinating to think about, as I saw the crowd grow around Starry Night while not many people stayed around the Franz Klee pieces.

The final piece that I saw during my visit was Mark Rothko’s No. 10. It’s a personal favorite. I had been told that to fully appreciate a Rothko, one must stand very close to it to observe all it’s underlying colors, which has been said to evoke great emotion from some viewers. However, as I stepped closer to the painting, a security guard told me, politely, that I was too close and to back up. I understood and respected his wishes, but as a result, I don’t think I got the full experience. This was a very insignificant moment, but it struck a chord with me later. I, as a viewer, could not view the piece to its full extent. If, as a viewer, my perspective is important in giving the piece its meaning, by rule of the reception theory, then Mark Rothko’s piece was left incomplete.

-Jaimee Rodriguez