I just returned from a Maine cabin by a large freshwater lake, where I was frightened of the water. Sharks might maul me, or if not sharks, then perhaps a large snapping turtle out of a Roger Corman film (not that I can recall a Corman film with a killer turtle).
Posts tagged ‘MoMA collection’
August 12, 2011
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Five for Friday
Five for Friday: Tying the Knot
By the time you read this I will be roughly 36 hours away from getting married. Not that I’m counting. Needless to say, I have weddings on the brain. To call it a momentous occasion is something of an understatement; recent political and ideological debates over the very definition of marriage attest to the concept’s enduring impact. And it certainly seems like a big deal to me.
August 8, 2011
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Artists,
Collection & Exhibitions
Sol LeWitt’s Colorful Cubes
Sol LeWitt. Cubes in Color on Color. 2003. Portfolio of 30 linoleum cuts. Publisher: Arte y Naturaleza, Madrid. Printer: Watanabe Studio, Brooklyn, New York. Edition: 50. The Museum of Modern Art. Roxanne H. Frank Fund and General Print Fund
It must be the energy of summer that has thrown me into a general state of elation in which anything with a splash of color elevates my spirits. For instance, a recent trip to Dia:Beacon to see the exhibition Blinky Palermo: Retrospective 1964–1977 instantly brightened my experience there, in the same way that MoMA’s recently acquired work by Sol LeWitt, Cubes in Color on Color (2003) made my heart race with excitement.
August 5, 2011
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Do You Know Your MoMA?
Do You Know Your MoMA? 8/5/11
How well do you know your MoMA? If you think you can identify the artist and title of each of these works—all currently on view in The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden and the Painting and Sculpture galleries—please submit your answers by leaving a comment on this post. We’ll provide the answers—along with some information about each work—in one month (on Friday, September 2).
July 8, 2011
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Do You Know Your MoMA?
Do You Know Your MoMA? 7/8/11
How well do you know your MoMA? If you think you can identify the artist and title of each of these works—all currently on view in The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden and the Painting and Sculpture galleries—please submit your answers by leaving a comment on this post. We’ll provide the answers—along with some information about each work—in one month (on Friday, August 5).
July 1, 2011
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Five for Friday
Five for Friday: Life Was a Cabaret
Five for Friday, written by a variety of MoMA staff members, is our attempt to spotlight some of the compelling, charming, and downright curious works in the Museum’s rich collection.
Even though there are advantages to living in this day and age—not dying of consumption or syphilis, transporting money in a wallet, rather than a wheelbarrow—I still fantasize about living in interwar Germany. Maybe it was far too many viewings of Cabaret as a child, but I’ve always carried an imagined nostalgia for the Weimar Republic (1919–1933): its loose social mores, the competing senses of optimism and doom, the passionate political struggles, and of course the edgy art and design. With MoMA’s German Expressionism: The Graphic Impulse exhibition closing July 11, I thought we should have a look back at some of the great Weimar-era works in MoMA’s rich collection. This post is dedicated to Paul Jaskot, the professor who inspired my love of German art and design.
1. Unknown artist. Poster for Berlin, Die Sinfonie der Grosstadt (Berlin, Symphony of the Metropolis). 1927
Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (1927) lent a soundtrack to the Weimar Republic. This film, which MoMA screened in December 2010, portrays the life of a city mainly through visual effects and music, not narrative content. The impression it conveys of daily life in Berlin is dynamic, anxiety-ridden, cacophonous—and a helluva lot of fun!
2. Rudi Feld. The Danger of Bolshevism (Die Gefahr des Bolschewismus). 1919
This lithograph, included in German Expressionism: The Graphic Impulse, features a terrifying Death figure gripping a dagger in his teeth. The work reflects a common fear in the aftermath of the First World War—that the 1917 Bolshevik revolution in Russia might spread to Germany, like a plague.
3. Marianne Brandt. Ashtray. 1924
The liberal Weimar Republic inspired a surge of radical experimentation in all the arts. Marianne Brandt was the head of the metal workshop at the German Bauhaus in Dessau from 1928 to 1929. The Bauhaus was a school, founded in 1919 by architect Walter Gropius, famous for its visionary integration of technology, art, and design. This elegant ashtray from 1924 was based on pure geometrical forms, cylinder and spheres.
4. George Grosz. .a (recto): Circe .b (verso): Untitled. 1927
In this watercolor, also included in the German Expressionism exhibition, George Grosz critiques the ongoing economic disparities of Weimar society, in which the bourgeoisie could afford every pleasure—even the bodies of the lower classes. The unsentimental style of New Objectivity, pioneered by the likes of Grosz, Otto Dix, and Max Beckmann, emerged in Germany in the 1920s to rival the utopian and romanticized sensibility of Expressionism.
5. Oskar Schlemmer. Bauhaus Stairway. 1932
Oskar Schlemmer’s Bauhaus Stairway, an oil painting on canvas, depicts the interior of the Bauhaus. Schlemmer painted this work just one year before Hitler assumed power and the Nazis closed the visionary school. Schlemmer was among many Weimar-era artists persecuted by the Nazis for producing so-called “degenerate” art.
June 17, 2011
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Five for Friday
Five for Friday: Happy Father’s Day
Five for Friday, written by a variety of MoMA staff members, is our attempt to spotlight some of the compelling, charming, and downright curious works in the Museum’s rich collection.
I’m no artist. For Father’s Day, I typically buy my dad a funny card, we go out to dinner, and I make sure to get in a hug. Not the most creative, but hey, it’s the thought that counts, right?
June 10, 2011
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Do You Know Your MoMA?
Do You Know Your MoMA? 6/10/11
How well do you know your MoMA? If you think you can identify the artist and title of each of these works—all currently on view in the Museum’s Painting and Sculpture galleries—please submit your answers by leaving a comment on this post. We’ll provide the answers—along with some information about each work—in one month (on Friday, July 8).
ANSWERS TO THE MAY 13 CHALLENGE:
June 8, 2011
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Artists,
Collection & Exhibitions,
Intern Chronicles
I went to MoMA Cuba and…
Old Havana, Cuba
Admittedly, I was extremely anxious about traveling to Cuba. But now, having returned from a trip to Havana made possible through MoMA’s 12-month internship program, I feel enlivened. Although complicated politics still surround Cuban-American relations, Cuba has much to offer. The beaches are as beautiful as the vistas in Old Havana. Music and dance can be heard and seen in the city as well as in its surrounding regions, making for a lively experience despite the visibility of poverty. Havana’s charmingly dilapidated urban landscape is speckled with a mix of Lada automobiles from the 1970s and modern Peugeots. And while Cuba’s backdrop may sometimes seem a little dated, its arts culture, and more specifically its contemporary printmaking scene, is far beyond its time.
May 27, 2011
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Five for Friday
Five for Friday: A Walk Through the Sculpture Garden
Five for Friday, written by a variety of MoMA staff members, is our attempt to spotlight some of the compelling, charming, and downright curious works in the Museum’s rich collection.
Memorial Day weekend marks the unofficial start of the summer season, and fiiiiiinally the weather around here seems to be cooperating. It also marks the resurgence of my recurring fantasy of uprooting my cube (yes, we work in white cubes, too) and dragging it out to The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden, where I’d be happy to work among the gurgling fountains, rustling trees, and beautiful sculptures. I’d be productive, I swear! [Boss reads blog post, rolls eyes.]
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