DAY TWO, Pt. 2: Remember the first part of our day, when we visited The Metropolitan Museum of Art and I absolutely loved it? Well, we went to the Museum of Modern Art a little afterwards, and my experience is laughably the complete opposite.
I love art that tells a story. I love seeing characters, seeing landscape, seeing the details and intricacies of the art pieces, and just the sheer amount of effort that the artist has put into their artwork. To me, a lot that modern art has to offer is so abstract and “thought provoking” that .. I can’t even deal.
The building is very modern in that it’s white walls, bare, and minimalistic. The entrance fee is $25, but if you have a student card, you get a discount. Yay for student cards that have no expiration dates!
I try to keep an open mind about modern art. I try to study pieces that confuse me to see if there is a bigger meaning in it all. I actually do try. But seriously. What the heck is this piece above?!? O_O”
Seriously. What the heck.
I mean, I can totally understand if the art pieces that contemporary installation artists make are just things that look cool. But I just get really cynical when they try to put meaning behind their art pieces. So much of art is subjective, and that’s what I really don’t like.
With renaissance paintings and similar style pieces, I know what I’m looking at. I know that for the most part, the artist has studied and understood the basic art principles of composition, lighting, the human anatomy, etc. I know they’ve put in a lot of hours to master these basics. So even if the painting doesn’t have an underlying meaning, I can appreciate the piece for the technical aspect of it, if nothing else.
However, with contemporary art, so much of it is so abstract and out there, the artist really relies on the idea behind the piece. The thing is, ANYTHING can be an idea. I can say that my art piece of stacking a bunch of empty Starbucks cup is an art piece because it’s supposed to represent how I’m a conformist in that, even though I hate the taste (aka the empty cups), I still buy it because society tells me to buy it (aka why there’s so many cups).
Does this make me a contemporary artist?!
I cannot lie. While I walked through the floors of the building, I had to suppress the many eye-rollings I would have let out.
But finally, we came to an area that I was familiar with – paintings.
If anything else, this trip to MoMA was worthwhile just to see The Starry Night by Vahn Gogh. Just like the Mona Lisa, I’m surprised at how small the painting actually is! If it wasn’t so crowded, I would have liked to have stared at it some more and just appreciate it as a whole. But alas…
