MoMa in December, Phoneless
A series of posts inspired by visits to art museums. In an attempt to capture what I saw and what I felt, I’ll select three pieces that moved me most.
For years I’ve documented museum trips in a small green Moleskin notebook. Names of pieces that took my breath away. Names of artists to research later. A curious concept captured by the curator. Revelations about my own life or mood, sparked and inspired and validated by someone else’s questioning and grasping and searching for meaning. It’s deeply spiritual, visiting a good museum. I haven’t visited a synagogue in years but when I enter a gallery and start to read the description on the wall of what I’m about to see, I feel the most delicious combination of calm and excitement at the sheer opportunity of witnessing someone else’s interpretation of life, the world, and what the hell is going on. It’s life affirming. It’s divine.
There’s something about a trip to an art museum that lifts my spirits and reminds me what it’s like to feel alive. When I’m in the depths of depression, art is the only bulletproof remedy. It’s not a complete cure, but an effective short-term reprieve, like a balm or a salve that starts working instantly. For the entire time I’m inside the walls of an exhibit, it feels like I’m drinking water from a spring in a desert after years of thirst. That’s been the visceral power of art museums for me, as far back as I can remember and I suspect others feel the same.
Visiting MoMa with No Plan
I had no exhibit in mind; I simply needed a strong dose of art like a shot to the arm. I had to book tickets in advance, the new way to visit museums thanks to social distancing creating the need for limited capacity. Booking in advance turns an idea into a commitment. Rather than simply dreaming about visiting the MoMa, buying tickets online makes the experience immediately begin - turning it into an event to look forward to. Similar to how concerts used to feel on your calendar, back when live music was a thing.
My phone died while I was there, adding another layer to the experience. I was singularly aware of the impact the art was having on me, rather than how it would look on Instagram. I was grateful for this. There’s something so irritating about walking through an exhibit, seeing people staring at artwork through their screens, or recording live video to share with others and also prove they were there...instead of just being there.
Collection: 1970′s - Present
I hadn’t been to the MoMa since its renovation last year, so decided to explore one of the permanent exhibitions to reacquaint myself with the space.
The three pieces that inspired me the most were all created by female artists. I didn’t realize it at the time. And as I write these words I realize how ridiculous it is for that to be a thing worth noticing. How unusual it is to see multiple works by female artists, beyond exhibits focusing on female artists. I wonder if the pieces that stood out to me the most did so because they were created by women, and there’s some form of shared experience that I’m responding to at a time of such loneliness and yearning for connection. Perhaps.
In any event, here they are in order of appearance:
“Transparent Self Portrait” by Maria Lassnig, 1987
A dreamy self-portrait with an ominous expression in a pastel color palette and expressive brush strokes. This piece most captured my current mood and emotional state, and would be the catalogue cover for today if not the entire month. I also love the title of this; yes it’s translucent in the paint treatment, with loosely applied stripes of color, and a lower section seemingly left unpainted with sections of the white canvas showing through. Yet it’s also a transparent representation of self. Totally exposed, open mouth, eyes staring into the distance in a slightly bewildered expression. The rectangular section over the top portion of the face floats like an extra window into the mind of the artist.
It was in a gallery room named “Hardware/Software” featuring assorted works about “the body as a critical and vexed point of focus”.
[Composition-45-2011] by Shirana Shahbazi, 2011
A beautifully chromatic piece by a female German artist who was born in Iran. The composition is soothing and balanced, complementing the explosion of colors with a kaleidoscopic effect. Each fragment is smooth and solid, with rich, opaque, uniformly applied paint. The result is a vibrant, radiant work.
This work is in a themed gallery called “Surface Tension”, including works that “reflect the fragmentation of the physical and digital worlds we inhabit, admitting the impossibility of a cohesive image”.
“Dear Data” by Giorgia Lupi and Stefani Posavec, 2015
A year-long project by two information designers in which they exchanged weekly postcards based on a different theme related to daily life. Each week they’d record their observations around the chosen theme, bringing those observations to life visually using colorful charts and symbols, custom designed for that particular week. For example, "A Week of Laughters” included an itemized list of each laughing incident, color-coded by the cause of the laughter, and with whom it was shared, over the course of a week. “Complaints” was another one, in which the subject and recipient of each complaint was recorded and expressed, visually.
It was a meditative practice for the two artists, as well as the viewer. I found myself tempted to start a project like this of my own, recording daily seemingly mundane observations that combine to tell a story of one’s life. The pieces were in a gallery called “Search Engines”, exploring how “the internet transforms art making”.
germansingergirl
annaxmalina
romaincrisis
prguitarman
baratheonpilled
dailybridgerton
