Come on, MoMA!

I decided on Monday to head to the Museum of Modern Art and become a member so I could go as much as I'd like while I'm in town. I haven't been feeling great these last few days and really wanted some soup, so I stopped first at their cafe on the second floor. It's one of my favorite museum cafes: relatively inexpensive, comfortable and delicious. Yes, I spent quite a while sitting there looking out over 54th St, reading Jurassic Park and sipping my soup and hot tea. I loved it.

I planned on stopping in on a few of my favorite pieces and save the special exhibitions for another visit but I was drawn in by an installation immediately outside the cafe by Aernout Mik. To be brief, Mik is a video artist. Each of the works I saw showed one scene on multiple screens from a slightly different perspective. MoMA's official literature says: Mik—whose work encompasses motion picture, sculpture, architecture, performance, and social commentary—interrogates the nature of reality and subverts the traditional relationship between viewer and viewed.

Okay. What on earth does that mean? Well, it's obviously motion picture because it's video. As for the sculpture, architecture and performance side, maybe this will help:


Vacuum Room, 2005 Six screens and moving image loop

Sculptural? I don't know about that one. I guess in the way it's set up it's sculptural. But I'd put that more under architecture...obviously I'm missing something. Anyone have an idea of what I'm missing? As for performance, I totally get it. The people in the videos seem like real people being recorded by a news crew but their erratic behavior suggests they are definitely performing.

Much more interesting than all that is how the work "interrogates the nature of reality and subverts the traditional relationship between viewer and viewed." Like I said above, these look like raw news footage. The first thing I thought of was when the Cowboys' training facility collapsed recently and the news stations kept showing unedited video. Each of the works feels like something catastrophic has happened yet no one is really acting out that much. In Vacuum Room there are two clearly defined spaces: some kind of parliamentary looking setting with professionals behind desks and then the ruffians in the middle, acting out. You would expect these two spaces to have a distinct border but they don't. They interact with each other, but their interaction feels removed. What I think Mik is trying to do here is really mess with how we perceive video. You can't help but try to tease out who the professionals are and who the troublemakers are. The trouble is, there are no characters. You try to figure out what actions are happening (for instance, why does that guy in a suit keep waving those cards at people? Why does that guy in overalls keep smashing eggs on himself and that poor sculpture?) but there is no plot. You feel like you are watching a news reel but there is no news. Eeesh. It's disorienting.

One more interesting thing about this work: as seen above, it's set up so that people can walk into a kind of room with six screens. The level of the video makes it feel like you are one of the people in the middle, causing trouble. I thought it was interesting that Mik would want you to be in the middle until I walked out and actually laughed out loud when I realized the video was also visible on the outside of the room- you could be the professionals as well. You choose which set of non-characters to be a part of in the non-plot! I like it.

(Maybe don't tell my grad school professors that I tend to sum up shows I see with "I like it." They would not approve. Also, here's one of my favorite articles about collecting video art).

I wandered a bit more and found myself in the contemporary galleries and show called Compass in Hand: Selections from the Judith Rothschild Foundation Collection of Contemporary Drawings. Again, I wasn't really in the mood to pay close attention to this show and I promise I'll go see it again and give it a more thorough look. But here were my first thoughts:

1. I understand that MoMA makes most of its money from tourists. And I'm not complaining that hordes of people are taking the time to go look at art. Obviously, I think art is important. But I really, really wish that MoMA would give their audience more credit. If you walk into a show called Compass in Hand, I'd like to think you'd stop for a second and wonder why it's called that. You might even come to the conclusion that maybe it has something to do with the direction of the collection or maybe even using a compass to draw! But MoMA doesn't let you figure that out. MoMA slaps you over the head with it in its wall text before you've even seen a single work, saying "The title, Compass in Hand, refers to the collection's ambition for geographical exploration and discovery (the navigational compass) and its attention to modes of making (the compass as a drafting tool)."

I've got loads of expressions running through my head and none of them are fit to print. Also, what exactly does it mean for a collection to aim for geographical exploration? Is that possible? Also, how many artists use a freaking compass? Ugh. I'm okay with the title of the show, to be honest. Just don't force its meaning on us with a really poor description. (Not that mine are any better, but of course, MoMA doesn't pay me to come up with this stuff.)

2. These galleries were designed for showing things like Richard Serra's major retrospective in 2006. Art then could still afford to be big. But even as that show was going up, contemporary art was becoming relatively smaller and more intimate. These gigantic galleries overwhelm anything other than this:




So....let's put drawings in there. And to make up for these massive walls, let's hang a beautiful Ellsworth Kelly about 25 ft. up, just to make sure no one can really see it.



3. On another wall, they decided to hang about 25 works salon style. I'm completely fine with salon style hanging. It can be refreshing. (Salon style refers to the way paintings were hung in 19th century salons- generally floor to ceiling, making the most of the walls. These days it pretty much means anything outside of the usual one piece on a wall with plenty of space separating it from others.) This arrangement looks a little too Pottery Barn for my taste, but that's okay:



Until you get closer and realize that these are drawings by Agnes Martin, Donald Judd, Dan Flavin...in word, Minimalists. I know most people won't know this but the curators at MoMA should so brace yourself for some caps lock. THE MINIMALISTS ARE TURNING IN THEIR GRAVES AT THE THOUGHT OF THEIR WORKS BEING HUNG LIKE THIS. THIS IS WRONG. ANY ART PROFESSIONAL KNOWS THIS. ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND??? JUDD IS GOING TO HAUNT YOU FOR THE REST OF LIFE FOR THIS. WHAT ON EARTH WERE YOU THINKING???

3b. Hey MoMA, I didn't take a picture of it but painting a gigantic wall gray doesn't make it look any smaller.

Anyway, I really do love MoMA, even if it's more for their permanent collection. That and things like this:


Jack Strange, Untitled, 2008. Lead ball, Macbook.

Yep, it's a ball sitting on a computer, typing the letter 'g' over and over again. All day. It made me laugh.