Day 4 in New York City, Sunday November 20 2011

This is it!  The day of the big event!  Tonight I will become famous, get discovered, and galleries will be standing in line to represent me!

But first….we had the whole day before us.  We decided to go straight to the top … the pinnacle of the art world …. the MoMA. “If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere, its up to you New York, New York….ta tatatum”

Stopped at Starbucks for an “Americano” to get the blood flowing.  I walked into the MOMA as a researcher, trying to figure out what pieces get it, why, how they are presented etc…  what I will show you now, are a few pieces I found interesting – as in, “I really like the piece”, and “What the ***?” and “what lessons can I learn from this” .

The first exhibit we saw was NEW PHOTOGRAPHY 2011-

“The artists featured in New Photography 2011 showcase the countless ways that photography can be used and made during an exciting time in the development of the medium.”  It showed 6 artists: Moyra Davey, George Georgiou, Deana Lawson, Doug Rickard, Viviane Sassen, Zhang Dali.  

The MoMA has a great interactive site that lets you see all the works and bios of all the artists.  I highly recommend seeing this, in order to get an understanding of the importance of photography in art today, and how it can be used.  Also pay special attention to the Biography’s about the artists, to see the professional way it should be done.

Click here to see the online New Photography exhibit 

my favorite:

Deana Lawson (American, born 1979) received an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2004 and currently lives and works in New York. Lawson refers to the subjects of her photographs as “her family.” Although she is not related to them by blood—in fact, they are nearly all strangers—the pictures are remarkably intimate. Lawson composes almost every element, often sketching scenes out on paper before working with the camera. Reflecting Western and African portraiture conventions, the works examine “the body’s ability to channel personal and social histories, drawing on the various formal and informal languages of the medium and its archival capabilities,” the artist says. The result is an alphabet of body compositions demonstrating humans’ seemingly limitless variety. The size of these photographs ensures that although they are intimate, they are also confrontational; viewers are invited into the world they depict, but strictly as spectators.

For me, the work of art in the next piece is not the photos (which you can see here), but in his biography:

Doug Rickard (American, born 1968) studied United States history and sociology at the University of California, San Diego, before moving to photography. He has drawn on this background in research for his series A New American Picture, which focuses on places in the United States where unemployment is high and educational opportunities are few. On a virtual road trip, Rickard located these sites remotely using the Street View feature of the website Google Maps, which has mapped and photographed every street in the country. Scrutinizing the Google Maps pictures, he composed images on his computer screen, which he then photographed using a digital camera. The resulting pictures—digitally manipulated to remove the Google watermark and cropped to a panoramic format—comment on poverty and racial equity in the United States, the bounty of images on the web, and issues of personal privacy.

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Katharina Fritsch. Figurengruppe. 2006–08 (fabricated 2010–11). Bronze, copper, and stainless steel, lacquered

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“He (Cy Twombly) composes his sculptures from found materials, small objects, scrap wood, and plaster, and typically covers the assembled forms with white paint, unifying the various humble materials and giving them an ethereal presence. Intimate in scale”

Debi’s note: I know its conceptual, but what happens when you don’t understand the concept?????

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Number 31, 1950 by Jackson Pollock – Now this is an example where dripping paint onto a canvas, can be magical!

Vir Heroicus Sublmins Serigraph by Barnett Newman.

I wonder what Newman would have to say about the poles roping off the painting.

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Marilyn at the MoMA – by an icon of an icon

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There was a whole section dedicated to conceptual art of the 60’s and 70’s.  No point in showing pictures.

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There is huge De Kooning exhibit that you can see here if you like.  What I liked best about the exhibit was  part of the curatorial statement (I wish I could use these lines for about myself 🙂 )

“The cumulative picture of de Kooning’s achievement differs a great deal from conventional notions of ‘action painting’ and ‘abstract expressionism.’ It makes clear that de Kooning never followed any single, narrowly defined path; he repudiated the modernist view of art developing toward an increasingly refined, allover abstraction and found continuity in continual change. ‘Art should not have to be a certain way,’ he insisted, and over the course of his career, he explored many apparently contradictory ways: Figuration and abstraction did not have to be opposites but could simply be different options, to be explored simultaneously or consecutively or merged in the process of a single work….Either way, he said, ‘I never was interested in how to make a good painting….but to see how far one could go.”

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CONCLUSION from my trip to the MoMA?  : CONCEPTUAL, CONCEPTUAL, CONCEPTUAL!

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THE BEST DELI IN NEW YORK! – yeah I know everyone has their favorite, but Carnegie Deli, on 7th Avenue at 55th Street, is pretty damn close to perfect!  Lazar and I shared this masterpiece!

after all the hard work it took to finish the sandwich, we took the subway back uptown to Kenny’s were we each crashed on our respective couches for an hour.

O.K., ….. Time to get ready for the Show!   The GLADD OutAuction startes at 16:30… and its now?  Shit!  its 15:45… well we’re gonna be a little late:-)

NEXT POST: DEBI IN THE BLUE WIG!