My trip to the MoMA
Today's Saturday adventure was to see the MoMA, or the Museum of Modern Art.
Yeah, I know what you're thinking. Modern art is really not my thing at all. Frankly, I was pretty skeptical. However, there was an exhibit I was wanting to see that's on special display. The display on the top floor is that of Dadaist art.
Politically and philosophically, it's definitely not my thing. The movement was very anti-structure, anti-aesthetics, and frankly anti-art. The Dadaists strove to be against all convention, form, and tradition. In doing so, they came up with some insanely absurd art.
However, it was actually pretty enjoyable to view.
Here's a look at the building. It's on 53rd Street between 5th and 6th avenues. It has five floors inside, but it's certainly more than five stories tall. Today admission was free, so that tells you something about the choice of days.
The above piece was by Ernst, a German. The movement started up simultaneously in New York City and Zurich. Disenfranchised by World War I, the two groups started the art movement independently, and largely without realizing the other was doing the same thing. This piece shows the structure so despised by the Dadaists. The idea was to create a machine that looks structured on the surface, but is obviously without function or stability. The Dadaists viewed the world as without redemption, and as an empty facade of structure and rules.
Creating themeless, unstructured art was their goal. However, the idea seems in my estimation to be like trying to empty your head of thoughts. When you try to not think about anything, you simply end up thinking about NOT thinking. That's what I kept thinking while viewing this... The artists became so consumed with their anti-art that they started factions, fights, and debates over what exactly their non-art should be.
In one case, an artist had a machine pick out letters and symbols at random. He then recorded himself saying the series of characters. A recording was playing next to a selection of letters. It sounded something like this, "ahhh-da-da-daaa... uh-uhhh, bah! bah! bah!" When he came across a symbol, like that of a hand pointing or a square, he would make whatever sound he thought that symbol represented. Pretty bizarre, if you ask me. The idea was to de-structure language to such an extreme degree that only true human emotion was involved, with no pretextualized ideas, associated with words. However, all I heard was "ba-ba-baahhh, laaaa".
Another big part of the Dadaist movement was that of photo collages. They'd take post cards, bank notes, or every day items like screws, tiles and lace, and put them together in very attractive fashions. However, it's almost as if they got worried that their 'anti-art' was becoming too artistic. Notice that in the picture above, the artist included the word "dada" in big letters, as if to convince viewers and himself that this was nihilistic anti-art they were involved with!
The last piece I'll show you is a painting done in Berlin. Frustrated with the nationalistic, autocratic pride they thought existed, they pictured those in the machine as machines themselves. "1 2 3 Hurrah" flows the text from the character on the right. The Iron Cross, and German flag make this work very easy to read, which I liked. Some of the art in the exhibit was just too plain bizarre to even interpret.
A faction of Dadaists who called themselves "Stupid"... (I'm not making this up) decided that much of Dadaist art was too vague, cryptic and weird to do any good. They decided that since their goals of Marxist revolution needed action, they should engage in more forceful art. One piece was an outright advertisement for Lenin in Cyrillic characters.
However, I really enjoyed what I saw of the museum. Classical art will always be my favorite, but today was definitely fun.
Yeah, I know what you're thinking. Modern art is really not my thing at all. Frankly, I was pretty skeptical. However, there was an exhibit I was wanting to see that's on special display. The display on the top floor is that of Dadaist art.
Politically and philosophically, it's definitely not my thing. The movement was very anti-structure, anti-aesthetics, and frankly anti-art. The Dadaists strove to be against all convention, form, and tradition. In doing so, they came up with some insanely absurd art.
However, it was actually pretty enjoyable to view.
Here's a look at the building. It's on 53rd Street between 5th and 6th avenues. It has five floors inside, but it's certainly more than five stories tall. Today admission was free, so that tells you something about the choice of days.
The above piece was by Ernst, a German. The movement started up simultaneously in New York City and Zurich. Disenfranchised by World War I, the two groups started the art movement independently, and largely without realizing the other was doing the same thing. This piece shows the structure so despised by the Dadaists. The idea was to create a machine that looks structured on the surface, but is obviously without function or stability. The Dadaists viewed the world as without redemption, and as an empty facade of structure and rules.
Creating themeless, unstructured art was their goal. However, the idea seems in my estimation to be like trying to empty your head of thoughts. When you try to not think about anything, you simply end up thinking about NOT thinking. That's what I kept thinking while viewing this... The artists became so consumed with their anti-art that they started factions, fights, and debates over what exactly their non-art should be.
In one case, an artist had a machine pick out letters and symbols at random. He then recorded himself saying the series of characters. A recording was playing next to a selection of letters. It sounded something like this, "ahhh-da-da-daaa... uh-uhhh, bah! bah! bah!" When he came across a symbol, like that of a hand pointing or a square, he would make whatever sound he thought that symbol represented. Pretty bizarre, if you ask me. The idea was to de-structure language to such an extreme degree that only true human emotion was involved, with no pretextualized ideas, associated with words. However, all I heard was "ba-ba-baahhh, laaaa".
Another big part of the Dadaist movement was that of photo collages. They'd take post cards, bank notes, or every day items like screws, tiles and lace, and put them together in very attractive fashions. However, it's almost as if they got worried that their 'anti-art' was becoming too artistic. Notice that in the picture above, the artist included the word "dada" in big letters, as if to convince viewers and himself that this was nihilistic anti-art they were involved with!
The last piece I'll show you is a painting done in Berlin. Frustrated with the nationalistic, autocratic pride they thought existed, they pictured those in the machine as machines themselves. "1 2 3 Hurrah" flows the text from the character on the right. The Iron Cross, and German flag make this work very easy to read, which I liked. Some of the art in the exhibit was just too plain bizarre to even interpret.A faction of Dadaists who called themselves "Stupid"... (I'm not making this up) decided that much of Dadaist art was too vague, cryptic and weird to do any good. They decided that since their goals of Marxist revolution needed action, they should engage in more forceful art. One piece was an outright advertisement for Lenin in Cyrillic characters.
However, I really enjoyed what I saw of the museum. Classical art will always be my favorite, but today was definitely fun.
posted by Brett at 9:05 PM
