Visit to MOMA: The Museum of Modern Art, New York. (10.03.17)
Personally visiting MOMA was at the top of my list of galleries to visit whilst in New York. The large number of contemporary and modern pieces of artwork that have been previously on show and are continually being exhibited at this gallery is something which is well-known within the art industry. Therefore I couldn't miss an opportunity to visit it.
Something which immediately struck me on entering the gallery was the scale of the place and the amount of visitor's it attracted. As I had chosen to visit on the Friday, around 4-5pm it was during a time where admission was free and as a result meant it was really busy.
Myself and the small group of Photography students I was with had to queue down the street for a short-while before getting a ticket for admission. However, once inside the building, I then had to join another queue to check-in my backpack. This was to prevent anything being knocked or broken whilst walking around the gallery.
Once I had checked my bag in, I began making my way up and around the gallery floors using the various escalators', and this itself was an experience for me due to the my interest in design and modernist architecture. This is something which I wanted to photograph as this context of place and the white- walled space, inevitably had an influence on my experience of the art I was viewing and the personal opinions I determined in the process.
The various balcony heights meant that the interior space of the building could be perceived from multiple perspectives and this aspect of the building was utilised by the curators of MOMA in the way that they had chosen to suspend a small helicopter within the air, just off from the 2nd floor balcony. This is unlike anything I had previously seen in an art gallery so it was surprising and interesting to see.
Throughout the white walled gallery spaces' there was a range of varying artworks from Sculpture, Painting, Design, Photography, Print, Projection and also Installation pieces. These artworks were the outcome of very well-known artists' within the art industry such as Andy Warhol, El Lissitzky, Aleksandr Rodchencko, Jason Crum, Mark Rothko, Eduardo Paolozzi, Franz Kline, Piet Mondrian, Marcel Duchamp, Bridget Riley, Roy Lichtenstein, Pablo Picasso and Francis Picabia, just to name a few.
This means that there was a lot of pieces which I liked and found influenced my own artist practice on some level, whether it be colour choice, inclusion of geometry, minimalist design, or even a technique which I found may be a possible direction for the future of my work.
Therefore, choosing pieces to talk about in detail out of the large volume of pieces I saw, is a difficult task to do. So instead I'm going to focus on the pieces that I thought I was most happy with seeing (in no particular order) : -
Andy Warhol's - Campbell's Soup Cans, 1962.
Based on the fact that I wrote about this group of pieces last year in my easy on Pop Art and it gave me the opportunity to see the pieces in person for myself.
Andy Warhol's - Double Elvis, 1963.
Due to the fact that I also came across it whilst researching information and the artwork of Andy Warhol for my prior Pop Art essay.
Piet Mondrian's - Broadway Boogie Woogie, 1942- 43. and Tableau I: Lozenge with Four Lines and Gray, 1926.
Purely based on my interest in Piet Mondrian's abstract practice and the Neoplastiscm technique he developed consisting of Horizontal and Vertical Lines, and the use of primary colours.
Roy Lichtenstein's - Girl with Ball, 1961. and Drowning Girl, 1963.
Seeing these pieces of Lichtenstein's artwork from the Pop Art movement in a gallery context rather than in a book or on the internet was also a great experience as it allowed me to judge the piece for myself rather than a photograph/image.
Bridget Riley's - Fission, 1962.
The Op Art Movement is something that I looked into a few years ago whilst at college and the work of Bridget Riley was something which I found particularly interesting due to the way her simplistic designs created a sense of illusion and the idea of dimensional space.
Finally the piece which I didn't expect to see whilst walking around an upper floor gallery space was a piece of automotive history and design from the 1960s in the form of a Jaguar E-type. For me this car is one of the most beautiful and iconic examples of British motoring and to be able to walk around it, look into the interior of the vehicle and generally be able to admire the overall design, was something which I think only increased my appreciation for it. Not something you normally see whilst walking around a gallery space but defiantly a great experience I think.
The overall experience of the MOMA and the collection of artwork that I saw whilst navigating the spaces', was defiantly worth waiting in the queue for as it allowed me to see pieces of artwork which I have associated and have been informed about, in relation to the past artistic movements. Having the opportunity to see pieces of art which I have previously only been able see in books, internet or other secondary sources, was definitely something which highlighted to me how much an image doesn't allow you to determine a true understanding.