Draped to the Ankles

Industrial Art

Several days ago, I discovered Industrial Art. The artist posts very interesting paintings and sketches of mining complexes in Canada. I started digging a bit more when I discovered the artist is a woman who teaches art. Her stuff is great. When you've finished digging around the archives in Industrial Art, check out the other three blogs listed at the bottom of the page and see what else she does.

The MOMA Revisited

In an article titled A Modest Proposal in the Village Voice, Jerry Saltz says he's been to the MoMA 14 times since it re-opened. 14 times?!?! I guess he's not paying for his own tickets. Anyway, he proposes that the museum should exhibit the works in strictly chronological order. That way, we could see who influenced whom and who did what first.

As it is, the museum is divided by floors - and they assume you will start on the 5th floor and work your way down: Special Exhibitions; Painting and Sculpture I; Painting and Sculpture II; Architecture and Design; Contemporary Galleries; Sculpture Garden. The rooms are devoted to major works by a few artists like Pollock and Picasso. The set-up works, especially when it's crowded, but I like Saltz's "75 Years" better.

He also presents "Nine Ideas for a Better MoMA" which are reasonable. Not enough women represented, and too many contemporary white guys and Germans.

However, I would like to take a moment to think about the function of the MoMA. Is it a museum of Modern Art? Or is it a museum of Contemporary Art? The two are not the same, not for a long time now. How long will we call something "Modern" once it has passed it's 100th birthday? I have a feeling we will be calling Picasso's work Modern Art for centuries to come. This means we need to re-think the meaning of the term Modern Art. And perhaps the MoMA should consider concentrating on Modern Art and leaving Contemporary Art for galleries and museums of Contemporary Art. Although I suppose the MoMA could be seen as a bridge between the two.

I was going to go on to say something like this before I started doing a little web surfing:
The art historian in me says, "Oh, but to understand a contemporary artist, we must look at what came before." But, that isn't necessarily true. Contemporary Art is light years away from its moden predecessors. To say that to understand Mark Dion you must look at Picasso is like saying to understand Picasso you must look at Michelangelo. It doesn't work.

But I was wrong, and my art historian voice has triumphed. Mark Dion can only be understood once we realize that Duchamp came first. And Sigmund Polke is better undestood after looking at Picasso and Warhol. Contemporary Art is often too difficult a concept to grasp without looking at how classic art was deconstructed by the Modern Masters of the 20th century. Those not emersed in art history need some kind of wading pool before jumping into the deep end. Otherwise, it's all nonsense.

Now, whether an artist was actually influenced by older masters is another matter. Some will claim they were not at all influenced, and some will make direct references. Whatever the case, they will never be completely fee of that "cultural baggage." Not every artist looks at it as "baggage," I'm sure. I know of at least one artist who studied art history with diligence before launching himself into the world of Contemporary Art. Bob Melzmuf felt he needed to understand his predecessors before he could truly break away from them.

But, back to the MoMA. I still believe there is a fundamental schizofrenia at work there. One way to get around it may be to say, "Look at what all this art and innovation has led up to today!" But then you have relegated the Modern Masters to mere predecessors useful only in their ability to help us understand what's being produced today. I don't hold with that idea at all. So, the Museum for Modern Art = Museum of Modern Masters. Notice the word "contemporary" gets left out completely.

UPDATE: A certain blogger pointed out that I neglected to do two things. 1) I neglected to mention that he was the one who pointed the Village Voice article out to me. Yeah, he did, but I didn't have anything to link to over there. He's too busy being a rocket scientist. 2) I neglected to link to my earlier article on the MoMA in which I discussed an article from the American Conservative - also kindly pointed out by said blogger. The aforementioned article would be here if they had deigned to publish it online. Anyway, go to my earlier article to read what it said.

The Green Quilt

My second quilt is finished. It's made for my son's bed, so it's smaller than the first, and I learned from mistakes I made on the first quilt. Here it is.

NY Gates

I will be really interested to see how this turns out in February. The drawings are wonderful. I hope the actual project compares favorably.

My First Quilt

Way back before I went on hiatus I started making a quilt. Now, conventional wisdom says you should start with something small for your first quilt, something you can finish. I, however, have never been known for following conventional anything. So I decided to make a Queen Sized quilt for my bed. Alex wisdom says if I could finish that, I could finish anything. 8 or 9 months later, I did.

The top was pieced mostly on the machine to better my chances of actually finishing before the next millenium, but the quilting was entirely done by hand. Lots of it. It's just a basic 9 patch, again to keep it simple enough to finish. I am quite pleased with it. And now, I'm almost done with a quilt for my son's bed - a twin this time. I decided to go easy on myself and made the quilting pattern a lot simpler. I'll show that when I'm done with it. Hope you like green.

Kudzu City

Apparently, kudzu turns abandoned houses into giant chia pets.

Via Reflections in D Minor.

My Blogger Twin

This figures. At least I'm not Glenn Reynolds (shudder).

Your Famous Blogger Twin is Wil Wheaton

You're a friendly, funny guy (or girl) next door With more than a touch of geekiness

I only wish they hadn't used that STNG picture. Blech! I much prefer him as a blogger than a weasel Wesley. Thanks to The Anger of Compassion

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.

Readers & Such

Ok, so I'm checking my sitemeter, and I'm still finding myself on blogrolls of blogs I never heard of! What the heck? For instance, there's Absolute Uncertainty, February 30, and phaneronoemikon. So, maybe I should just carry on. Wouldn't want to disappoint my hordes of readers, now would I?

UPDATE: I have discovered that February 30 used to be Cinderellabloggerfella, so that's cool.