INSIDE/OUT: A MoMA/MoMA PS1 BLOG

The five teams have been working over the past week to incorporate feedback from their public Open Studios presentations at MoMA PS1 on June 18. Starting this week, you will be hearing from each of the teams every week until the next Open Studios on September 17, 2011, at MoMA PS1. Read more

Beatriz González. Acuerdo bancario (Bank Agreement). 1980

While preparing the exhibition I Am Still Alive: Politics and Everyday Life in Contemporary Drawing, Christian Rattemeyer and I had a conversation with our colleagues Luis Pérez-Oramas and Geaninne Gutiérrez-Guimarães about the premise of the exhibition. They immediately suggested that we look at the work of Beatriz González, a leading figure among Latin American Pop artists and currently one the most influential living artists in Colombia, whose work explores sociopolitical subject matter specific to her country’s history and vernacular culture.

Beatriz González. Turbay condecorado (Turbay honored). 1980

Like many of the works in the exhibition, including Marine Hugonnier’s series Art for Modern Architecture (Homage to Ellsworth Kelly), Robert Morris’s untitled gouache paintings on newsprint, and On Kawara’s storage boxes for his date paintings lined with local newspaper clippings, there is a direct link between González’s work and the newspaper and print culture. When Julio César Turbay Ayala became president of Colombia in 1979, González turned her sketchbook into a visual diary of sorts, producing a simple, stylized drawing each day based on the daily media coverage of his presidency. Her stated intent was to become a type of “court painter,” and to critically document the spectacle of leadership. Made between 1979 and 1981, these drawings—fragmentary depictions of Turbay attending sessions of Congress, meeting with church, government, and military personnel, and engaging in leisure activities—provide an intimate look at the disparate public aspects of power. These works are prime examples of the artist’s straightforward use of drawing in her artistic production, and mark a significant and more politically charged change in her work towards a more explicit reflection on the growing violence and turmoil that engulfed Colombia throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

Beatriz González. Turbay esquiando (Turbay Skiing). 1980

Visitors tour MoMA's galleries. Photo: Martin Seck. Shown, from left: David Smith. Australia. 1951. Painted steel on cinder block base. The Museum of Modern Art. Gift of William Rubin. Mark Rothko. No. 5/No. 22. 1950 (dated on reverse 1949). Oil on canvas. The Museum of Modern Art. Gift of the artist. © 2011 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

In a city like New York, it’s pretty easy to become jaded—we live in one of the most dynamic places in the world and can easily fall into a “tell me something I don’t know” attitude. And after nearly 30 years here, 13 of them working at MoMA, I definitely am prone to it myself at times; when you can walk past The Starry Night on your way to the staff caffeteria or sit in the shade of Barnett Newman’s Broken Obelisk on your lunch break, it’s easy to start thinking of your surroundings as just that: surroundings. Read more

Ninotchka. 1939. USA. Directed bu Ernst Lubitsch

Oops! I almost left out Ninotchka. Somehow, this 1939 masterpiece slipped through the cracks. I apologize for whatever inconvenience this violation of my self-imposed chronology may cause, although I don’t think the Prime Directive has been threatened. Read more

What do you get when you put a group of artists together on a condemned pier beneath the Brooklyn Bridge? No, this isn’t a joke, but the colorfully bizarre origin story of that renowned laboratory of contemporary art, MoMA PS1. Read more

In this final installment of our two-part campfire chat, artist Laurel Nakadate cozies up and talks to the MoMA Teens about growing up in Iowa, the rights of teenagers vs. adults, what her family thinks about her art, and her personal and artistic reaction to the events of 9/11. Read more

New look homepage of MoMA blog

INSIDE/OUT Wants to Know What You Think!

Please take our 10-minute blog survey to help us improve our interaction with the MoMA and MoMA PS1 online community. Read more

In Heaven There Is No Beer? 1984. USA. Directed by Les Blank

Sally Berger interviews documentary filmmaker Les Blank on the occasion of his MoMA film retrospective Les Blank: Ultimate Insider Read more

Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream is a collaboration between MoMA and Columbia University’s Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture. Jointly conceived and curated by Barry Bergdoll, MoMA’s Chief Curator of Architecture and Design, and Reinhold Martin, Director, the Buell Center, the workshop and exhibition will examine new architectural possibilities for American cities and suburbs in the context of the recent foreclosure crisis. Read more

Bye Bye Birdie. 1963. USA. Directed by George Sidney

As a regular contributor to Inside/Out, I endeavor to bring topics related to MoMA’s Department of Film and cinema history to you, the reader. I am always interested in talking and writing about films, debating their aesthetic merits, content, form, performances—and I am also very curious to know which films my colleagues across the Museum are seeing, and why. Read more