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MegaMoMA: A Special Report
 
Now, I totally realize I was asking for trouble in visiting the new Museum of Modern Art the day after Christmas, but something in me reasoned that I had the time and the stamina and would probably make a couple of pilgrimages to MoMA on this trip to the city, and, really, how bad could it be? Dizzyingly awful, it turns out. If you were not fond of the museum in its previous incarnation, as revamped by architect Yoshio Tanaguchi 16 years ago, you’re really going to hate this one, especially if it’s full of selfie-snapping holiday tourists.

The previous “new” MoMA, which re-opened in 2004 after a couple of years of exile in Queens, reminded me a lot of the Time Warner building with galleries instead of shops. Up and down the escalators you went, perhaps stopping off to admire the wares (“Oh, honey, just look at that cute Donald Judd! Wouldn’t it look great in the dining room?”), and ultimately the architecture seemed often to defeat the art. But I got used to it and learned to navigate the building after many trips to review the contents, attend press previews, or go to the rare party where the hoi polloi could mingle with the likes of Glenn Lowry, Agnes Gund, and Henry Kravis (listed in approximate size order).

I still carry fond memories of the museum from my teenage years, when the Whitney and the MoMA were back to back on West 54th and 53rd streets. It was a quieter, gentler place; people hung out in the garden to eat lunch and read the newspaper, and for a pittance I could drop in  to commune with adolescent favorites like Pavel Tchelitchew and Andrew Wyeth, as my tastes gradually morphed in high school to prefer Matisse, Brancusi, and Pollock.

The problem then, as the new MoMA reminds us, is that the museum told the traditional story of Modernism as dictated by white male curators and art historians about white male artists (the group Robert Hughes once identified as the “pale penis people.”) So it’s great to see that the canon has opened up, but so has the confusion.

As I made my way through the lobby to the second floor, fighting the chattering masses, I told myself, Treat it like a shopping experience again. Just stop and look at the things that catch your eye, read the tags, examine the goods. But don’t touch, and don’t try to make a whole lot of sense of why things are the way they are….it’s worse than trying to figure out the Ukraine mess

So I breezed past the Brice Mardens, promising to get back to those later, and headed upstairs. My vague goal was to find painter Amy Sillman’s “Artist’s Choice” show called “The Shape of Shape," but I figured I would bump into that somewhere in my rambles. In the humongous second-floor gallery known as the Marron Atrium I encountered Korean artist Haegue Yang’s “Handles,” a multimedia installation that, says the website text, “draws on Yang’s in-depth research into various sources, ranging from vernacular craft traditions to the historical avant-garde, esoteric spiritual philosophies to contemporary political events. She integrates these seemingly disparate narratives into an artistic language uniquely her own, offering a fresh take on modernism and a critical reading of its legacy.” Not only that but “the sculptures generate a subtle rattling sound when maneuvered by performers, and recall the use of bells in shamanistic rites, among other sources.”


"Handles," an installation by Haegue Yang

I didn’t hear any bells, but I found the whole thing about as inviting as a miniature golf course designed by Ru Paul and a support team of space aliens and quickly took refuge in another second-floor exhibition, “Black Girls Window,” a lovely collection of prints from Betye Saar, described on the website as an ‘in-depth solo exhibition exploring the deep ties between the artist’s iconic autobiographical assemblage Black Girl’s Window (1969) and her rare, early prints, made during the 1960s.” (May I ask that we start banning the word “iconic” from discussions of anything other than Russian religious paintings? If I see it one more time, especially in an art context, I may start banging my head against the wall.) To be honest, Saar’s work now looks pretty tame compared with the ferocity of younger black women like Mickalene Thomas and Kara Walker. But it’s a nice tribute to an artist who’s been around for nine decades and never received her due.


One of several studies for Betye Saar's Black Girl's Window (1969)

And so I continued to wander, stumbling across John Baldessari’s painting What Is Painting? with text lifted from a book about art appreciation and realized by a professional sign painter. Says Baldessari on the MoMA website: “the wonderful irony about this piece is that it’s text. But in fact it is a painting, because it’s done with paint on canvas. So I’m really being very slyly ironic here in saying, ‘Well, this is what painting is.’” Duh? Get it? I’ve heard “knock knock” jokes with more wit and resonance than this.


John Baldessari, What Is Painting? (1966-68)


I did finally reach Amy Sillman’s show, which looked somewhat like an indoor yard sale though the goods happened to be art, laid out helter-skelter on the walls, on pedestals, and on a low-lying shelf. So we find a large and rather subdued Albert Oehlen canvas jostling Lee Bontecou’s untitled relief; a big airy Frankenthaler hovering above a diminutive painting by Jasper Johns: a Matisse “Bather” plunked next to Chris Ofili’s canvas The Raising of Lazarus; Edward Avedisian sharing a wall with Ron Gorchov….and on and on. I don’t know what the point of this exercise is other than to demonstrate that many works of art depend on shape (double duh?), and I was starting to get a headache.


Amy Sillman's "Artist's Choice"

The rest of my visit, aka shopping expedition, took me from Grete Lihotzky’s 1926-27 fully equipped kitchen from a Frankfurt housing project to a roomful of gorgeous late Monet water-lily canvases, where you can get some idea of how thick the crowds were but you could also get close enough to enjoy the bravura brushwork.


The new MoMA has everything, including the kitchen sink


Visitors with Monet "Water Lilies": Sometimes the dead white males draw the biggest crowds. 


A detail from Monet


And by now I was really starting to suffer optical overload and so I breezed through the other galleries in a semi-stupor, happy to note that Matisse got a room of his own and Salvador Dalí’s Retrospective Bust of a Woman, with her baguette headgear and corncob collar, got a place of honor inside a protective vitrine. A nice contrast with Eva Hesse’s untitled anxious self-portrait from 1960, though I do hope Hesse is better represented elsewhere in the museum so that people can understand the audacity and power of her so-called mature works (can an artist who died at 34 have “mature” works?).


Dali: Much funnier than Baldessari, if you ask me


Hesse's haunting self-portrait from 1960

Reconstructing my visit through photos, I see that I somehow made my way to a cheery glass-enclosed playroom known as the People’s Studio, where visitors can mess around with crayons, pencils, glue sticks, paper, and magazine pages to make drawings and collages. Says the website: “Open during regular MoMA hours, the People’s Studio encourages visitors to experiment with artists’ materials and strategies, and weekly conversations and workshops place visitors in direct contact with artists, educators, and other creative thinkers.” You can join others at tables seating six or so, or you can commandeer a solo desk at windows overlooking the street. I found it a great place to park my butt without having to pay 10 bucks for a latte in one of the cafes.


The People's Studio: One way you can honestly claim to have made a work in the Museum of Modern Art


As carols softly played on invisible speakers, I gazed out over the lobby and wondered what the hell most visitors would learn about modern and contemporary art from this 450-million-dollar makeover. If you plug into your smartphone or take one of the museum’s audio guides (I eschewed both), perhaps you could make sense of all the thrilling revolutions in art that have occurred since the early 20th century. I personally think you’ll do a lot better working your way through the most recent edition of H.H. Arnason’s History of Modern Art in one of its several incarnations (some of which feature female art historians as co-authors). Read the book, then go see the pictures. But NOT during Christmas week.

We will resume our regular programming after I return to Taos on January 7th, when I will have the usual line-up of members' shows.

Remember: There is still time to rsvp for the post-holiday party in SoHo on the 4th. Email me for details.

Happy New Year!
 
 
 
 
Top: Visitors were locked out of the sculpture garden the day I visited, even though it was a mild afternoon. The only way to admire the art was from inside. Bummer.

 
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