The MoMa Experience

Visiting MoMa

This Saturday, Mun, my classmate, and I went to visit the MoMa together.

We had a great time and tried to see as many exhibitions as we could, but unfortunately many rooms were closed to the public.

What is interesting in that museum, is that we have the opportunity to see the work of very renowned artists as Andy Warhol or Vincent Van Gogh but we also get to discover some upcoming artists.

Mun and I wandered around the different rooms for a little more than an hour. She was mostly looking for paintings, when I was more looking for installations and 3D works.

The very colorful rooms were those that attracted me the most. I am definitely into bright colors.

Visiting with a classmate makes the experience so much more interesting because we can spot the different elements of an artwork and talk about it together. We both were trying to figure out which work we would like to teach someone about. We took pictures all over the museum and I ended up picking the following artwork for my teaching experience.

The Teaching Experience

The Sunday following my visit to MoMa, I asked one of my friend to sit down and I taught him about a paint made in 1960 by a French artist named François Morellet. The tittle of the paint pretty much describes it all, as it is called "Random Distribution of 40,000 Squares Using Odd and Even Numbers of a Telephone Directory"

I started my teaching by explaining that the form of this art was 2D because it is an oil on canvas painting. I also explained that it has a non-representational abstract style as it does not represent anything. I pursued by talking about the geometrical shape of the painting since it is a multitude of squares, I explained to him that it was the opposite of organic shape. I also explained that this painting had no negative space, which represents the "empty" space. It is totally filled. I moved on by talking about the colors. I explained that the artist used only two of the primary colors, red and blue. I asked him if he knew what was the third primary color to which he gave me the right answer, yellow. I ended up my teaching by explaining how this work was made out of a pattern, which is the repetition of a color or shape. Here, what we see is a repetition of squares in the colors red and blue. Red being a warm color and blue a cool one. As my friend did not seem to have too many questions to ask, I did the questioning. I asked if his eyes were more into warm or cool colors. I asked if this particular painting touches him in any type of way and what was his favorite form of art. He said that he was more into the warm colors range. He did not particularly feel  touched by this painting but thought it was interesting because anyone's mind could interpret it in their own way. And his favorite form of art is photography.