fifty frenchmen can't be wrong (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
some_stars) wrote2011-05-20 05:03 pm
some_stars) wrote2011-05-20 05:03 pm
should this be my "modern art" icon? i think yes.
Today I have strong feelings about the MoMA! Or possibly just MoMA, I don't know how you're supposed to refer to it in narration.
1. If you are like me in that prints and drawings are your number one all-time favorite form of art forever and ever, and you can possibly get to NYC before July 11, you really really should. There are three exhibits and/or selections from the collection right now--two mainly prints, one all drawings--and they're all good and two of them are completely amazing, and one of those two closes then. "German Expressionism: The Graphic Impulse" (the July 11 deadline), "Impressions from South Africa, 1965 to Now" (August 14), and the somewhat less to my tastes but still great "I Am Still Alive: Politics and Everyday Life in Contemporary Drawing" (September 19). And I didn't even get to see the Hungarian revolutionary posters or any of the paintings on the fourth and fifth floors, due to exhaustion, so I might go back in a couple days.
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wurwilf, I spent the entire back half of the Expressionism exhibition wishing desperately you were with me, as it goes up to 1924 and has, among many other like items, an amazing self-portrait by Grosz, some of Gott Mit Uns and Im Schatten, and all of Otto Dix's Der Krieg. MANY other like items. About 2/3 of the exhibit is pre-that stuff, and also absolutely amazing (and actually the original reason I went), just less reminiscent of your future award-winning graphic novel.)
I will at some point, probably after I get home, post some photos (less gigantic this time) from the South Africa and the drawing exhibits; photography was forbidden in the Expressionism exhibit because it was a special exhibition. Leading to my next strong feeling:
2. If a museum is going to forbid photography in its special exhibitions so that you have to buy the expensive accompanying book, they should make sure that the book actually contains all those images, especially the ones I like most. I mean, I bought the book anyway, but I felt very resentful about it.
3. The bag MoMA gives you when you buy something heavy and thin is blatantly and specifically designed to inflict the maximum number of papercuts per minute of holding. Either that or it's a possibly-ironic triumph of form over function that was clearly never field-tested.
4. I'm also still resentful of the thoughtlessly sadistic floor plan that constantly dumps you, upon exiting a gallery, onto a bridge with waist-high glass walls and an excellent view of a sheer drop up to six floors down. It wasn't quite as bad today as it was five years ago when it actually reduced me to tears, because I wasn't unknowingly in the process of getting sick this time and it was somewhat less crowded (ie, less pushing), and I knew it was coming (in theory; the sudden arrival of individual bridges was mostly a surprise), but I still hate it. I shouldn't have to be fucking good with heights to go to an art museum.
5. I am also resentful of the weather. I feel comfortable blaming MoMA for this.
But really on the whole it was wonderful, and I will probably be going back on Monday. I feel like other things have happened--well, I ate lunch at Woorijip, and by "lunch" I mean "four different preparations of kim chi," and that was also amazing. But the weather ruined my plans of hanging out in Union Square reading one of the used books I picked up yesterday (Bonk and Stiff by Mary Roach, To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip Jose Farmer, and a collection of stories by Haruki Murakami), and the weather plus my unhelpful body cut short plans of going to some chocolate shops in midtown and then to one of my favorite restaurants in the east village(are you supposed to capitalize these things when they're just made of regular real words? I DON'T KNOW), from which is it something of a hike home. So really nothing has happened. Oh, I did go to a salt store yesterday, that was interesting. About ninety pounds of bullshit, but very appealing, and I did end up buying a tiny five dollar container of "Taksu Pyramid" finishing salt so what do I know.
Tonight: The Tempest! An off-off-Broadway version, of course, done by Target Margin Theater at some place in Soho. Because it did not cost five hundred dollars.
1. If you are like me in that prints and drawings are your number one all-time favorite form of art forever and ever, and you can possibly get to NYC before July 11, you really really should. There are three exhibits and/or selections from the collection right now--two mainly prints, one all drawings--and they're all good and two of them are completely amazing, and one of those two closes then. "German Expressionism: The Graphic Impulse" (the July 11 deadline), "Impressions from South Africa, 1965 to Now" (August 14), and the somewhat less to my tastes but still great "I Am Still Alive: Politics and Everyday Life in Contemporary Drawing" (September 19). And I didn't even get to see the Hungarian revolutionary posters or any of the paintings on the fourth and fifth floors, due to exhaustion, so I might go back in a couple days.
(
wurwilf, I spent the entire back half of the Expressionism exhibition wishing desperately you were with me, as it goes up to 1924 and has, among many other like items, an amazing self-portrait by Grosz, some of Gott Mit Uns and Im Schatten, and all of Otto Dix's Der Krieg. MANY other like items. About 2/3 of the exhibit is pre-that stuff, and also absolutely amazing (and actually the original reason I went), just less reminiscent of your future award-winning graphic novel.)I will at some point, probably after I get home, post some photos (less gigantic this time) from the South Africa and the drawing exhibits; photography was forbidden in the Expressionism exhibit because it was a special exhibition. Leading to my next strong feeling:
2. If a museum is going to forbid photography in its special exhibitions so that you have to buy the expensive accompanying book, they should make sure that the book actually contains all those images, especially the ones I like most. I mean, I bought the book anyway, but I felt very resentful about it.
3. The bag MoMA gives you when you buy something heavy and thin is blatantly and specifically designed to inflict the maximum number of papercuts per minute of holding. Either that or it's a possibly-ironic triumph of form over function that was clearly never field-tested.
4. I'm also still resentful of the thoughtlessly sadistic floor plan that constantly dumps you, upon exiting a gallery, onto a bridge with waist-high glass walls and an excellent view of a sheer drop up to six floors down. It wasn't quite as bad today as it was five years ago when it actually reduced me to tears, because I wasn't unknowingly in the process of getting sick this time and it was somewhat less crowded (ie, less pushing), and I knew it was coming (in theory; the sudden arrival of individual bridges was mostly a surprise), but I still hate it. I shouldn't have to be fucking good with heights to go to an art museum.
5. I am also resentful of the weather. I feel comfortable blaming MoMA for this.
But really on the whole it was wonderful, and I will probably be going back on Monday. I feel like other things have happened--well, I ate lunch at Woorijip, and by "lunch" I mean "four different preparations of kim chi," and that was also amazing. But the weather ruined my plans of hanging out in Union Square reading one of the used books I picked up yesterday (Bonk and Stiff by Mary Roach, To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip Jose Farmer, and a collection of stories by Haruki Murakami), and the weather plus my unhelpful body cut short plans of going to some chocolate shops in midtown and then to one of my favorite restaurants in the east village(are you supposed to capitalize these things when they're just made of regular real words? I DON'T KNOW), from which is it something of a hike home. So really nothing has happened. Oh, I did go to a salt store yesterday, that was interesting. About ninety pounds of bullshit, but very appealing, and I did end up buying a tiny five dollar container of "Taksu Pyramid" finishing salt so what do I know.
Tonight: The Tempest! An off-off-Broadway version, of course, done by Target Margin Theater at some place in Soho. Because it did not cost five hundred dollars.