Thursday, March 31, 2005
First visit to the reopened MOMA
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
This is an easy trip to T&V Country people, take the BMT R&N line to 57th Street, exit at the rear on 55th, walk two blocks east to 54th below 6th Avenue, to the new entrance to the reopened Museum of Modern Art.
At the new MoMA, the immense clinically light, industrial-looking lobby feels like the Grand Central station turned upscale, with masses of people, standing still or purposefully moving in all directions. New York has really turned into an art town. But the crowds, ugh (it was a Saturday during school break, I admit). Hemmed in and directionless, I turned to an attendant, who advised to go to the 6th floor and start there
This notion of being surrounded persisted on all of the six exhibit floors, people in streams on the escalator banks, moving to exhibit areas and to the crowded cafeterias – there are two, on the 6th (coffee $3, baked goods and view) and 2nd (coffee $2, sandwiches, salads and pasta). Quite a few stopped to gasp and capture the breathtaking atrium views, at strategic wall break points, showing each floor open, all the way down to the ground floor.
On the 6th floor, a wall announced Contemporary Voices, works from the UBS art collection. What, are the thrifty Swiss into modern art? It turned out to be the collection assembled by Donald B. Marron, former CEO of PaineWebber (absorbed by UBS), who has also been the president and still is a vice chairman of MoMA.
It is a comprehensive collection, destined to enhance MoMA’s own holdings with art from the second half of the past century. Upon entrance all the icons and the forgotten nihilist messages of the 1960s New York School greet you – a Robert Rauschenberg, charming in its Klee-like simplicity, a Claes Oldenburg cartoon of an exploding Nelson monument, a Roy Lichtenstein mirror of doom. Andy Warhol’s James Cagney is a gangster, the placard of Ed Ruscha, the Pop art pioneer, spouting nonsense phrases, Cy Twombly’s scratches, barely discernible as words. An industrial panel of cogs by Donald Judd, looking like rosewood, turns out to be metal, painted with Harley –Davidson paint (he gets his art built by a factory). The old-timers, Willem de Kooning, Philip Guston and Jasper Johns, offer some dignity, as do Chuck Close’s self-portraits, and Frank Stella’s winged aluminum wheelbarrow.
Masses of messages: Joseph Beuiys’s letter, illustrated with gold- painted dollar-bill like panels, Anselm Kiefer’s angry slogans (lots of other German contemporaries there, Gerhard Richter, Georg Baselitz, and the late Blinky Palermo) Bruce Naimann’s crossed READ/REAP banners, Jenny Holzer’s proclamation of impending doom.
More of the bizarre: Kiki Smith’s hanging hands, and the Brits’ epater le bourgeois bits, with Richard Ney’s Avon mud on paper and Damien Hirst’s provocatively titled spun disk of colors. Of the younger generation, Susan Rothenberg’s six-panel series of dancing figures in motion, done in 1988 for the Pine Webber corporate dining room, is impressive (I doubt the bankers chose her other piece, of dogs tearing up a rabbit). Lucien Freud’s self with dog is almost refreshing in this company, as is a coy Cindy Sherman photo, and David Selle’s half nude, half pegboard panel
Another exhibit on the 6th floor, Groundswell, 29 urban architects’ designs for landfills (Staten Island), industrial waterfronts, war-torn areas (Beirut), exemplifies MoMA’s other missions, of showing developments in architecture (and furniture, industrial design, drawings, prints, stage designs, photography and films). This brought back memories of the old MoMa, founded in 1929 by Lillie Bliss, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller and five other trustees, who gave their fine family collections and money to stock a neat museum on 54th Street. As donations grew, it expanded onto the first six floors of a residential tower, acquired an annex in 1984, and in 2002 moved to MOMA QNS (still an annex), to ramp up for the current giant structure, reopened in November 2004.
Exhausted, we managed to run through the 5th floor, crowded to capacity, where the old favorites, 20th century greats, were on view. Picasso’s stubby Demoiselles of Avignon, Matisse’s explosive Red Studio, stood out among the masses of their contemporaries. Young people were trying to decipher the ying-yang of Joan Miro’s symbolism, the spiders and strange fruit, and of Salvador Dali’s limp watch. The European Expressionists – Ernst Kirschner and Vasily Kandinsky, tube-like people of Ferdinand Leger, a murder mystery by Giorgio de Chirico, the interlocked squares of Piet Mondrian, all had masses of enthralled spectators, with telephone rods in hands, avid to hear the docents’ words.
By contrast, the 4th floor, panting and sculpture of 1940 to 1970, was quiet. The quality art covers a lot of the names shown in the UBS collection. The Minimalists, pre- and post-Minimalists (a new name for Abstract Expressionists), Shaped Canvas and Pop art leaders are present, with the added pleasure of Jackson Pollock’s splattered best, and Barnett Newman’s wall-long statement.
The 3rd floor, with a special photography show, and the prints and contemporaries, on 2nd floor, will have to wait for another occasion. I regret not visiting the Sculpture Garden on 1st, the favorite of my youth, but better weather will come soon.
There are also two theatres on basement floors.
This is an easy trip to T&V Country people, take the BMT R&N line to 57th Street, exit at the rear on 55th, walk two blocks east to 54th below 6th Avenue, to the new entrance to the reopened Museum of Modern Art.
At the new MoMA, the immense clinically light, industrial-looking lobby feels like the Grand Central station turned upscale, with masses of people, standing still or purposefully moving in all directions. New York has really turned into an art town. But the crowds, ugh (it was a Saturday during school break, I admit). Hemmed in and directionless, I turned to an attendant, who advised to go to the 6th floor and start there
This notion of being surrounded persisted on all of the six exhibit floors, people in streams on the escalator banks, moving to exhibit areas and to the crowded cafeterias – there are two, on the 6th (coffee $3, baked goods and view) and 2nd (coffee $2, sandwiches, salads and pasta). Quite a few stopped to gasp and capture the breathtaking atrium views, at strategic wall break points, showing each floor open, all the way down to the ground floor.
On the 6th floor, a wall announced Contemporary Voices, works from the UBS art collection. What, are the thrifty Swiss into modern art? It turned out to be the collection assembled by Donald B. Marron, former CEO of PaineWebber (absorbed by UBS), who has also been the president and still is a vice chairman of MoMA.
It is a comprehensive collection, destined to enhance MoMA’s own holdings with art from the second half of the past century. Upon entrance all the icons and the forgotten nihilist messages of the 1960s New York School greet you – a Robert Rauschenberg, charming in its Klee-like simplicity, a Claes Oldenburg cartoon of an exploding Nelson monument, a Roy Lichtenstein mirror of doom. Andy Warhol’s James Cagney is a gangster, the placard of Ed Ruscha, the Pop art pioneer, spouting nonsense phrases, Cy Twombly’s scratches, barely discernible as words. An industrial panel of cogs by Donald Judd, looking like rosewood, turns out to be metal, painted with Harley –Davidson paint (he gets his art built by a factory). The old-timers, Willem de Kooning, Philip Guston and Jasper Johns, offer some dignity, as do Chuck Close’s self-portraits, and Frank Stella’s winged aluminum wheelbarrow.
Masses of messages: Joseph Beuiys’s letter, illustrated with gold- painted dollar-bill like panels, Anselm Kiefer’s angry slogans (lots of other German contemporaries there, Gerhard Richter, Georg Baselitz, and the late Blinky Palermo) Bruce Naimann’s crossed READ/REAP banners, Jenny Holzer’s proclamation of impending doom.
More of the bizarre: Kiki Smith’s hanging hands, and the Brits’ epater le bourgeois bits, with Richard Ney’s Avon mud on paper and Damien Hirst’s provocatively titled spun disk of colors. Of the younger generation, Susan Rothenberg’s six-panel series of dancing figures in motion, done in 1988 for the Pine Webber corporate dining room, is impressive (I doubt the bankers chose her other piece, of dogs tearing up a rabbit). Lucien Freud’s self with dog is almost refreshing in this company, as is a coy Cindy Sherman photo, and David Selle’s half nude, half pegboard panel
Another exhibit on the 6th floor, Groundswell, 29 urban architects’ designs for landfills (Staten Island), industrial waterfronts, war-torn areas (Beirut), exemplifies MoMA’s other missions, of showing developments in architecture (and furniture, industrial design, drawings, prints, stage designs, photography and films). This brought back memories of the old MoMa, founded in 1929 by Lillie Bliss, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller and five other trustees, who gave their fine family collections and money to stock a neat museum on 54th Street. As donations grew, it expanded onto the first six floors of a residential tower, acquired an annex in 1984, and in 2002 moved to MOMA QNS (still an annex), to ramp up for the current giant structure, reopened in November 2004.
Exhausted, we managed to run through the 5th floor, crowded to capacity, where the old favorites, 20th century greats, were on view. Picasso’s stubby Demoiselles of Avignon, Matisse’s explosive Red Studio, stood out among the masses of their contemporaries. Young people were trying to decipher the ying-yang of Joan Miro’s symbolism, the spiders and strange fruit, and of Salvador Dali’s limp watch. The European Expressionists – Ernst Kirschner and Vasily Kandinsky, tube-like people of Ferdinand Leger, a murder mystery by Giorgio de Chirico, the interlocked squares of Piet Mondrian, all had masses of enthralled spectators, with telephone rods in hands, avid to hear the docents’ words.
By contrast, the 4th floor, panting and sculpture of 1940 to 1970, was quiet. The quality art covers a lot of the names shown in the UBS collection. The Minimalists, pre- and post-Minimalists (a new name for Abstract Expressionists), Shaped Canvas and Pop art leaders are present, with the added pleasure of Jackson Pollock’s splattered best, and Barnett Newman’s wall-long statement.
The 3rd floor, with a special photography show, and the prints and contemporaries, on 2nd floor, will have to wait for another occasion. I regret not visiting the Sculpture Garden on 1st, the favorite of my youth, but better weather will come soon.
There are also two theatres on basement floors.
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 4:46 AM 
