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rhuToday was Grandparents' Day at MoMA and my mom had made reservations for us. It was wonderful. Some quick reactions that I want to capture.
The Richard Serra sculptures were very interesting. My first time through Sequence it brought to mind the Children of Israel crossing through the Sea of Reeds, with the waters "as a wall to their right and to their left." The cant of the walls evoked the chaos outside, barely held back by the walls; my eye kept being drawn upwards (heavenwards?); the final resolution into a wide open space created a palpable sense of arrival.
In contrast, his Torqued Torus Inversion was all resolution, no conflict, and felt disappointing. Later, after experiencing them both a second time, I started to fell that Sequence is a lot like the First Prelude, and TTI is simply an unarpeggiated C-major chord. A chord with lovely timbre, but nothing building up to it.
Another striking piece of his whose name I forget (the program is upstairs) was two rectangles, one on the floor and the other on the ceiling at right angles to the first. I found myself thinking of the intervening space in lots of different ways: a helix (half turn, 1.5 turns, etc.) bounded by the two rectangles; the volume created by the intersection of the two rectangles through space; the volume created by the cross created by their union; the volume created by the enclosing square. It was a minimalist projection into space that left a lot to the mind of the viewer.
We went through the main galleries and Tani really got it. He liked the Mondrians (and described this one as reminding him of the skyline of Jerusalem, which I didn't see until he mentioned it but he was quite right). We discussed whether Duchamp's "ready-made"s are art (Tani's answer: yes; a common object well-made and with its own beauty can be appreciated for its artistic merits). He really enjoyed the Jasper Johns map of the U.S. and especially the flag. ("It's painted on newspaper because it's what happens in the news that makes America different.") The Magrittes (1) (2) (3) made him giggle before I even explained them. The Monet triptych "Clouds Reflected in the Water Lily Pond" made quite an impression on both of us.
Alissa was thrilled to see the Jackson Pollock works, having just studied him in nursery school. And she recognized van Gogh's "The Starry Night" from Little Einsteins. Sigh. I was both amazed by the brushwork on "The Starry Night" and struck by how much smaller it was than I expected.
They have a special exhibit celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of Helvetica. It's not a large exhibit, but it was fun to see a font taken so seriously.
The Richard Serra sculptures were very interesting. My first time through Sequence it brought to mind the Children of Israel crossing through the Sea of Reeds, with the waters "as a wall to their right and to their left." The cant of the walls evoked the chaos outside, barely held back by the walls; my eye kept being drawn upwards (heavenwards?); the final resolution into a wide open space created a palpable sense of arrival.
In contrast, his Torqued Torus Inversion was all resolution, no conflict, and felt disappointing. Later, after experiencing them both a second time, I started to fell that Sequence is a lot like the First Prelude, and TTI is simply an unarpeggiated C-major chord. A chord with lovely timbre, but nothing building up to it.
Another striking piece of his whose name I forget (the program is upstairs) was two rectangles, one on the floor and the other on the ceiling at right angles to the first. I found myself thinking of the intervening space in lots of different ways: a helix (half turn, 1.5 turns, etc.) bounded by the two rectangles; the volume created by the intersection of the two rectangles through space; the volume created by the cross created by their union; the volume created by the enclosing square. It was a minimalist projection into space that left a lot to the mind of the viewer.
We went through the main galleries and Tani really got it. He liked the Mondrians (and described this one as reminding him of the skyline of Jerusalem, which I didn't see until he mentioned it but he was quite right). We discussed whether Duchamp's "ready-made"s are art (Tani's answer: yes; a common object well-made and with its own beauty can be appreciated for its artistic merits). He really enjoyed the Jasper Johns map of the U.S. and especially the flag. ("It's painted on newspaper because it's what happens in the news that makes America different.") The Magrittes (1) (2) (3) made him giggle before I even explained them. The Monet triptych "Clouds Reflected in the Water Lily Pond" made quite an impression on both of us.
Alissa was thrilled to see the Jackson Pollock works, having just studied him in nursery school. And she recognized van Gogh's "The Starry Night" from Little Einsteins. Sigh. I was both amazed by the brushwork on "The Starry Night" and struck by how much smaller it was than I expected.
They have a special exhibit celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of Helvetica. It's not a large exhibit, but it was fun to see a font taken so seriously.