Out of Lascaux

The MoMA

I spent the holidays in Connecticut with my sister and her family this year. Loved the snow. My son - who has never really seen a good snowfall - got to experience the unique pleasure of walking on snow so cold it crunches beneath your feet like cornstarch. He also got to walk on ice, though only on the very edge next to the bank - I would not let him go beyond a point where I could not reach him with an outstretched hand. The next day, the weather warmed up and everything melted. Then we got to experience the not-so-unique sensation of bleary, gray days. We don't get many of them in El Paso.

My son initially didn't want to go - he's not so keen on that set of cousins - but I bribed him with a trip to New York to see the new Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Surprisingly, he was very excited about this. So was I, since it has just opened after a long bout of rebuilding. At $20, I think the tickets are way overpriced. And of course, it was crowded.

The building is amazingly cold and sterile. Big, empty white and gray spaces accented with abstract art. Somehow, it felt like everything should have been behind plexiglass. While I was happy to see things like Van Gogh's Starry Night, and a work by Clyfford Still, my son was inspired by the Picassos and Brancusi's Bird in Flight. That boy does surprise me sometimes, but I am delighted that he takes pleasure in these things. We were particularly taken with the modern design section: chairs, tables, computers, musical instruments, cars, etc. The 60's produced some wonderfully unique designs, perhaps more so than the 30's and the whole Art Deco style.

I read an article (I don't remember where, my husband showed it to me) which basically called the MoMA a mausoleum for modern art. The author has a point. We have reached a stage where "modern art" is now only art history. It was a jumping off point, and we left those shores long ago. Now we're drowning in contemporary conceptual art, and stuff that just isn't original anymore. I mean, how do you top all that shock art when we can't be shocked anymore? Where do we go from here?

So, don't go to the MoMA looking for avant garde art. That's not what it's for. Go to see the masters of the 20th century. They are reasonably well represented.