So, a few thoughts that stuck in my head when I was walking about MOMA, and their relations to Berger and Barnet’s concepts… and some more things that I might think about when I go there again.

Berger

  • Art is not only meaningful in itself but given meaning by context and history.
    • A lot of these works, they have the name, the artist, and a little about the history around the work. Many works of art is made famous and known because of their history. Enthusiasts may cite famous works for the revolutionary techniques or ideas or whatnot within the sphere of art, but many, many works are famous because of what happened around them, not always their own merit. (not MOMA, but see: The Mona Lisa)
    • I’ll expand on that in a bit.
    • Also, the hanging shovel, the wheel on a chair.
  • What is the meaning of authenticity?
    • This isn’t really something I was thinking about when I was walking around last time, because obviously, everything in front of my eyes was the real thing, right? (right?) But it’s something to think about. If I had a reproduction of say, Monet’s Water Lillies, down to last brush stroke and pigmentation (not too far off, given 3-D printing), would it still have the same meaning as seeing the panels painted by Monet himself? Would it still give me the same sense of wonder? Why not? There is sense of excitement to a forgery, but only to the context around its circumstances. No one would ever knowingly praise a forgery to have the same emotion as its original.
  • The increase in audience means a greater shift in meaning.
    • Do you know where most of the people gathered around? Starry Night. Not unexpected, given that it’s one of the most ubiquitous images out there. I didn’t really go see it, since (a) there was a lot of people and (b) not my topic. But I felt an urge to see it with my own two eyes. Why? What makes this work so special? Because everyone else knows it? Certainly more people can know appreciate art, given its mass reproduction, but does it mean any more to any people than it did when the few appreciated it?
  • Lastly, historically surviving art is what appeals to the commissioner, or reflects the upper classes. This has changed with the redefinition of art and consumption of thereof.
    • If you generalize things a bit, modern art is pretty much that sort of divide where we break away from traditional upper-class topics in art to actively doing ‘anti-art’ (Dadaism) and rebelling against traditional perspectives or techniques (impressionism, cubism, etc).
    • That’s not to say people didn’t do that before, but those works probably didn’t survive very well since they weren’t bought and their artists would have starved and died.

 

Barnet

  • Institutional Theory of Art- art is art if the public and artists say is art
    • The hanging shovel, the wheel on a chair.
    • Ok, that was sort of a joke, but I did remember that on the slideshow, and it was my first thought. If something is placed in a museum as an installation, does it automatically make it art?
      • Incidentally, there are some people that pull pranks by placing an object (like a glove) on the floor of a museum and watch others go around it wondering ‘is it art? or just somebody’s dropped glove’
    • I also saw this fur covered teacup and the panel said it came out of a discussion between two artists to remove the functionality or something or other but thinking realistically here, it could have well been a discussion like:
      • “I’m gonna over this cup with fur”
      • “But why?”
      • “Because it’d be cool”
  • What is art changes over time
    • The hanging shovel, the wheel on a chair. (look, it’s kinda funny)
    • Also, once we moved even further away from the hanging shovel and the wheel on a chair, we got into some more commonplace objects— video games, computer generated origami, that really cool 3-D printed dress.
      • I’m artsy and a tech geek, this speaks to me
      • To me, this is totally art. To others— not so much. To this, my first question is, is art only art when they have no physical use?
        • But perhaps I should ask, is art only art when it is unique and accessible to the few? Is it art when it offered to the many? (also sort of addressed in Berger)
  • Reception Theory- art has no meaning of itself, it is the viewer and audience that gives meaning.
    • Ok, if you boil it down, paintings, sculptures, everything is just light bouncing off matter and hitting our eyeballs in certain ways that we perceive as separate colors. The thing it bounces off of has no intrinsic meaning. But a fur covered cup can be seen as a commentary as reducing the functionality of object when for all we know it’s just a bull line to sell it to someone when it really was just gag project. Or maybe both, who knows?
  • Art is given several meanings: artist, past, present
    • Sometimes I look at things and then I look at plaques and wonder if we really know what was going on through the artist’s head when they were making it. See: fur covered cup.
    • Of course, art does not exist in a vacuum, though timeless some things may seem. What we see as masterpieces was not always so (Van Gogh comes to mind). And yet, it is one of MOMA’s most popular paintings today, and renown through the world. What does the present day audience see that the past could not?
    • There’s also probably some symbolism that may have more meaning today, but nothing that comes immediately to mind. Maybe homoerotic elements, given the present focus of gay rights. But I digress.
    • You know what really stuck with me? Picasso’s Ma Jolie. It’s not the first image you think go when you think of Picasso and Cubism. But it really confused me, because I couldn’t see the female figure at first. I saw the lines, and individual elements. It took a step back before I could see the whole picture.
  • Constructionist view- all viewers are affected by prejudices and bias (see what they want to see)
    • Just an extension of my thoughts of Ma Jolie, I was also kinda seeing some abstract art from before, so I thought, maybe this is not a representation of an object or person anymore? But despite the stretching and everything, all of Picasso’s work displayed in that particular room had a specific subject. I just couldn’t see it at first.

 

Lastly, not that this has anything to do with MOMA, I read an article a while ago about a cleaning lady who mistakenly threw out an expensive art installation because she thought (and to be fair, it looked like it too) it was garbage (literally, not figuratively). She wasn’t fired from her company; her company defended that she was doing her job. One of the comments on the article really got to me. To paraphrase: if artists are posing the question ‘what is art?’ with their works, they should be prepared for the answer. A very hilarious comment, but, well, they’re not wrong….