Guggenheim, MoMA, Met, Oh my!

This past spring quarter I was able to take a class called Post War Art and Culture. I’ll admit I have some bad art opinions on modern and post modern art. For example I LOATHE Jackson Pollack. But this class really opened my eyes to the joys of art being whatever people want it to be. So while in the midst of learning about the modern art capital of the world (and a depressive episode) I decided that this summer I would go to New York City. I told this idea to my lovely friend Amaya and she decided to tag along with the pretense that this would be a museum trip. My goals were to hit the MoMA, the Met, the Guggenheim, the Frick and the Whitney. I had big plans. Before we even got to NYC we went to Minneapolis for a week to see my family. A red eye flight to immediately going out downtown for my birthday was not our best idea but thankfully we planned one full day for complete hangover exhaustion. After that I dragged Amaya to nearly every need to see location including a 10 hour trip to the State Fair. We had one final relaxing evening on the boat and then we headed off to MSP to fly to Newark. I didn’t tell Amaya this until after we landed but no one has nice things to say about Newark, apparently they have a reputation. Finally, we made it to the hotel. Sleep was in our sights.

Day 1- Guggenheim, Neue, Frick We started the day off strong with some bagels and of course coffee. The bagels were stellar but the coffee was mostly milk. It really was unfortunate. But no matter we had to get to Park East. The subway system is surprisingly easy (if you can read a map) and the walk through the park was just what we needed to get over the city smog. In the distance I saw it, the most Frank Lloyd Wright buildings to ever exist. I really appreciate that he was having fun with this one. The Exhibition on view was Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers. He not only shows his meaning in the image but with his materials. His use of untraditional medium like soap and shea butter clearly spoke to his experience as a black man in the US. Many of his sculptures looked like transported walls of a bathroom inviting viewers into his intimate spaces. The pieces that I was most entranced by was his mosaic work. Looking back I wish I took more pictures of his work but I don’t ever want to be the guy who only looks at art when I’m taking a picture of it (more on that later). The one mosaic work that I captured was called The Broken Five (2019). The men standing in the portrait are visibly in anguish engulfed by the chaos of the surrounding tiles. He included many broken mirrors in his pieces, which only makes me a little anxious about the bad luck he is pilling up but, visually it adds more movement and chaos and forces the viewers to reflect on their own impacts on black communities. Other notable works in the collection Vasily Kandinsky’s Painting with White border (1913) which had a stunning color composition and makes me wish I was an abstract painter. Kandinsky also had two Russian lubki (small popular prints) on display that despite their size (and terrible location in the gallery) I really enjoyed. Fauvism really had me in a tight grip on this trip and Alexel Jawlensky’s Helene with a Colored Turban (1910) was the perfect kick off, same with Franz Marc’s Yellow Cow (1911). I did genuinely enjoy this collection but if I’m being honest Peggy’s collection in Venice was better.

After winding our way to the top of the Guggenheim we were exhausted but the day wasn’t even close to being done. We made our way down 5th ave towards the Frick. On our way we got distracted by a sign that promised us Klimt who happens to be Amaya’s favorite artist. So we headed into the Neue gallery which promised us premiere German and Austrian art. Hung prominently in the ballroom the Woman In Gold (1907) commanded the room. The portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I is actually the first piece from his gold period I’ve ever seen. My favorite detail was the green block in the bottom left corner. I think it balances out the whole piece without it the gold would be overwhelming. Unsurprisingly his work is even more amazing in person. I have been thinking about how he paints skin against his flat background and dresses for weeks. Behind the painting there was a room that contained posters from the Succession group. In this instance I would have loved to have been able to take photos of every piece in this room. Alas no photos allowed and unfortunately my mental photos are very blurry. The posters themselves are pieces of art. every single one of them is completely unique. At this point I decided I needed to start writing works down. The first piece that caught my eye was Egon Schiele’s Current of youth (1908) followed quickly by White Interior (1905) by Carl Moll. I think Moll’s piece really drew me in because of how perfectly the lines were placed on the half and third lines it made the interior feel clean and controlled. Up on the third floor we found German expressionism. I love how free this style is and I would love to adopt it in my work. Of the work on the third the most compelling was called Two Girls (1928) by Christian Schad. We are presented an intimate moment of two women touching themselves. While it is completely risqué the painting removes any male intervention which as two single women who are currently anti man this was very empowering. We left feeling inspired but still completely exhausted so when we arrived to the Frick and saw the line to get in with tickets and an even longer line to try and get in without neither one of us were particularly bummed to go back to the hotel. But not before we had a stop in the American Girl Doll store and Rockefeller center and a 25 minute walk home.

Day 2- MoMA I woke up ready. This was the day I had been looking forward to for months. We headed out and got slightly worse bagels and similarly milky coffee and we were on our way. I don’t think I’ve been this giddy to go to a museum in my life I only knew so much of what to expect. The first exhibit we went into was Hilma af Klint: What Stands Behind the Flowers. breaking with traditional botanical drawings she accompanied her studies with precisely drawn diagrams reflecting her abstractions that she is best known for. We moved on to the next gallery where we were immediately entranced by Carlos Almaraz’s Solo Crash (1981). Something about the vibrant colors depicting a brutal car crash made the entire scene that much more visceral. The next piece that caught my eye was an untitled work (1981) from Martin Kippenberger in his Dear Painter, Paint for Me series. The painting is huge and to make it even more impressive it an acrylic painting. Which makes me feel less silly about not wanting to switch to oils. At this point my memory of what I saw when is getting very blurry so going forward I am only 70% sure this is in the right order. At some point we came across some hand painted animations by Tala Madani which were all beautifully grotesque. All of a sudden I was standing in front of Henri Rousseau’s The Dream (1910). The colors and flat space of this piece really drew me in. I also knew I had seen it before but could not place where. It wasn’t until later when I realized we have a post card of the painting in our bathroom.

Up on the third floor we found Woven Histories an exhibit dedicated to the fiber arts. This is where the first tears of the day were shed. On top of my Post War class I was also taking an intro fibers class where I learned how to weave. I fell in love with weaving and over the course of the quarter took to researching the master weavers of the post war period. As soon as I walked in to the exhibit I saw a piece by Anni Albers, THE master weaver of the Bauhaus and the Black Mountain Collage. On her arrival to the Bauhaus she was told that woman could only take part in textile production, she took this as a challenge to reimagine the technique and completely revolutionize weaving. Safe to say I was very excited. Of course Sheila Hicks, Lenor Tawney and Ruth Asawa had their work shown. Unfortunately Shelia Hicks’s Evolving tapestry was not on display but it was still very cool to see the main focus of my research on display. It was amazing to see the appreciation for this art in such a grand exhibition. One of the piece that I saw called The Walking Wounded (2011) by Liz Collins very humorously put slashes and cuts in the fabric and crocheted them the fabric back together with red yarn, I particularly liked this concept but maybe that because I like the look of blood in art. Another work that I really liked was a woven recreation of an Intel computer chip by fouth generation Navajo weaver, Marilou Schultz. As a novice weaver it is hard to even warp my mind around how this piece was done (get it? warp), the amount of planning and dedication to detail is actually insane. I slowly walked back to the entrance to look at the Anni Albers piece one more time and then we headed up to the 4th floor.

This is where things started to get even more crazy for me. Before we even got into the main exhibit I noticed Christina’s World (1948) by Andrew Wyeth hung unassumingly by the elevators as if it wasn’t insane at all. In the actual gallery we were presented with a massive Pollack, our second of the day. Amaya was very excited about this, I remained unimpressed. Next on the list of insane things we saw, Andy Warhols’s Campbell’s Soup Cans (1961-62). I believe there are 32 of them and they are all hand painted. That’s right, not prints, paintings, absolutely insane. As tomato soup is my favorite kind of soup I am partial to that particular painting.

It was at this point in our journey where we started to notice this pre teen girl going up to every single piece taking a picture of it then walking away. I understand wanting to capture pictures of what you saw, lord knows I was doing the same. What I don’t understand is how a person can just take a picture and walk away without actually looking at it with their own eyes. This museum is filled to the brim with some of the most important work of the century and a good chunk of people are experiencing it through their phone camera. It didn’t even seem like she was taking pictures of pieces she particularly liked. Anywho she continued to pop up and annoy me but not my circus not my monkeys.

We were then presented with James Rosenquist’s F-111 (1964-65). For reference this painting is 86 feet long and covered all of the walls in the gallery. Comparatively to seeing this piece in a photograph you become enveloped by the the fighter plane and the commercial items that are depicted within it. The painting comes to represent the militaries heavy involvement in the economy and how those two things practically envelop everything we do.

One more floor to go. This is where I started to get nervous (and hungry). Around every corner there was going to be a piece that could send me into cardiac arrest and I was not prepared. I was so scared in fact that I had to stop myself from looking in the next room so I could properly appreciate the art in the room I was in. First a stop by the elevators to see Morris Hirshfield’s Inseparable Friends (1941). The sliding doors to the gallery opened and I immediately turned back around. I saw the top of The Starry Night (1889) and I nearly passed out. I grabbed onto Amaya and proceeded with caution. I made sure to look at everything in the room before joining the crowd to look at one of Van Gogh’s least favorite pieces. It was a weird feeling looking at a piece that I have known since elementary school. I remember when it was the lock screen on my iPod and now here I am 12 years later looking at it in the flesh. I had a similarly hard time walking into the next room. Because of my rule that I wasn’t going to look into the next room until I looked at everything in the room I was in I did not notice that the ladies in Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) were staring into my soul. When I finally did notice I let out a yelp and turned right back around. I had thought about this piece a lot in the months prior. It was one of those pieces that I had to know top to bottom for class. Did you know in the original composition for the piece there was a sailor and a doctor included? Now they are represented if the form of a melon and grapes (for reasons I cannot remember). Another Picasso that I enjoyed was his Still Life with Liquor Bottle (1909). I am quite fond of ships so this was no surprise. In the next room they had posters from the Vienna succession that I actually could take picture of (and I did) and another glorious Klimt. Moving swiftly along we came across Marcel Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel (1951). In retrospect I should have looked at this one for wayyyyyyy longer in order to appreciate what Duchamp was communicating about the nature of art itself but I was so jumpy thinking about the surrealism that I knew was somewhere ahead. But what is surrealism without Dada? Soon we came across Jasper Johns’s Flag (1954-55). In person the layers of collage, and wax and paint are so much more apparent. Another gigantic masterpiece was in the next room. Claude Monet’s Water Lilies (1914-26). This is a gigantic triptych is centered with shimmering lavenders, greens and blues being enveloped by darker hues which all border on abstraction.

The more we walked the more nervous I became. I did not know where the surrealist wing was but I knew I had to be getting close, there was only so much museum left. Then I turned down a long hallway and The Lovers (1928) by Rene Magritte was hung welcoming me in. I couldn’t move. The only thing I could do was look away. Walking down that hallway I felt like I was in a trance, with each step I grew more and more overwhelmed. I had to sit outside of the collection for a few minutes before I could collect myself and enter. It was surreal (literally) looking at this piece. Let us start off with the colors, stunning, dark, moody. They perfectly capture the sweet yet distant embrace that these two are locked in. The piece is strangely comforting to me, I feel understood by the work. Other insane works that were in this gallery included Meret Oppenheim’s Object (1936) and Dali’s The Persistence of Memory (1936). Even though I knew that there would be works that I had seen before it is a wildly different experience seeing them in person. There were two other Magritte’s in here that I hadn’t seen before. its funny how even though I had never seen them before I can immediately tell they are his. Another surrealist that I really like is Giorgio de Chirico, mainly because Magritte once saw The Song of Love (1914) and credits that for his surrealist inspiration. I am quite fond of his deep turquoise and red he utilizes throughout his pieces. One work of his that really stood out was his The Nostalgia of the Infinite (1912-13).

We stopped by the gift shop and with that we made it though the MoMA. It only took us 5 hours. We had some over priced burgers and fries and went back to the hotel for a nap. We had big plans for the night but unfortunately the good clubs were only gay in a way that Amaya and I are not. So we found our way to a sports bar and played some pinball. She got a rum and coke and I got a gin and tonic. Our mission became to find a pool table. But no dice, not even the bartenders knew of any places. So we were defeated. I was determined so I took us to one last spot that turned out to be a hookah/ sports bar. We thought when in Rome and got a pipe, and what we learned by the end of the night is that hookah tastes bad and there are no pool tables in NYC.

Day 3 - The Met

We were hungover. Like ill. All I could stomach was a plain bagel. So we pushed off our plans until about 2. Honestly I wasn’t sure that I was going to make it, but we persisted and got ourselves to the Met. We met up with our roommate’s little brother and a long time friend who had both moved to Brooklyn about a week before. It was nice to see that they were still alive. We started in the Egyptian wing. While all of this was amazing to see I couldn’t help but feel that all of these artifacts were not rightfully removed from their homes. But such is life in our globalized world. I always admire the skill these people had and it makes me sad to know that we have lost the ability to create like this. We made our way around to the Asian wing and this is where I saw how little museum etiquette people have, I straight up saw some one put their full hand on a stone carving. Thankfully she realized there was a huge sign that said no touching on it. With my map skills I brought us to the early European section. There were lots of white guys doing stuff and religious guys also doing stuff. But every once and a while I would see a piece that I knew. The first was Marie Denise Villers’s Marie Joséphine Charlotte du Val d'Ognes (1801). This work breaks from traditional portrait painting. The figure is faced away from the light and there are figures in the background out of the broken window. The next piece that I saw that caught my eye was another Picasso called Seated Harlequin (1901). the harsh black lines mixed with a thick paint application make this piece really interesting to look at. This section also revived my love for a modern take on a triptych. It’s such an easy way to bring up religious imagery without having to be overt about it in the subject matter. Next was a piece that I had never seen before. it was painted in a realistic style but the subject was completely surreal. I looked closer and it was none other than Dali’s Crucifixion (1954). Christ is depicted levitating above a vast landscape in front of cubes in a cross formation with no signs of torture. the artists wife is posed as a devotional figure looking at Christ. the work feels triumphant but also very dark. Christ’s faces is turned away from us but still not showing signs of pain.

After a quick stop through the musical instrument wing and the restaurant Amaya and I departed from our friends and went into the later European section on the hunt for another Magritte. We finally found The Enterally Obvious (1948) and my god is he good a rendering skin. Also in this wing was Self Portrait (1937) by Leonora Carrington. As for most things in the art world surrealism was a boys club so it is always inspiring to see women working with this idea. At this point we were exhausted but Amaya, ever gracious and loving, followed me up stairs to one last gallery. There was a small space dedicated to more contemporary works and one of the artist featured was Phillip Guston. I’m not sure when I first came across his work but his cartoonish depictions of the KKK always fascinated me. He uses these subjects to represent everyday evil and casual racism. And with that we were finally done. We headed back to the hotel to sleep then headed to Newark at 4am to fly home.

Would I recommend trying to hit every single art museum in New York city in 4 days? Short answer, no. Long answer, while I did not get to hit everything on my bucket list Amaya and I had the time of our lives. Next time I would allot more time for the MET (to look though the full MET I would say about 4 days). I would also plan a day to go to the Whitney and visit Ground Zero. I would also love to go to MoMA PS1 in Brooklyn and the Frick. But that is all for another trip.