The MoMA

April 12th, 2016 was my first time going to the MoMA and I would describe it as okay but interesting. A lot of the artwork in the beginning of the  museum was abstract art and I felt myself saying 'this doesn't interest me. Where is the good art'. I also saw a couple of art pieces that were kind of mind blowing having me ask the question 'Why is this art? I can do this.' For example, there were these blank canvas just hanging the museum. They are worth something for nothing in my opinion. I kept making more comments about how I can do this or so can a little kid. What makes a blank

canvas art? Me. So I had my boyfriend take a picture  of me in front of the blank canvas. (It's the picture to the left with him holding my hand while I'm in front of the canvas). To also add on to my 'what makes this art rant', there was this long canvas painted red with different variations of red going down the canvas periodically. I just wish I knew what the artist was thinking when they define their pieces as "ART".

             I would also describe my time at the MoMA as okay because out of all the floors, I only found one floor that was really interesting to me. It was what I called "The Hippie" floor. It had artwork from about the 70's with hippie posters, concert posters, drawings of cruisers, artwork on the Beatles, and more. It even had this separate room which was panoramic. (The picture is below. I used the panoramic feature on the iPhone) It was a collage of things like an aircraft, tire, cake, a light bulb, a girl under a hair dryer, etc. The vibrant colors made me like it even more.

            I kind of did this assignment differently because I took my boyfriend with me so he can see everything first hand instead of me taking a picture of art works and teaching him later. I took notes that I needed such as the vocabulary in order to convey what the artwork was expressing, how it was made, and characteristics it was showing. We walked through all the floors stopping at the art that had interested us the most. We were able to have a conversation right then and there about the work. This made teaching him a bit more interesting. I felt as though talking about the art work was hard as first because I'm an artist and he's not. I had to put all the things I knew somewhat naturally into specific words for someone who had no clue what these words meant. For example, he knew the basics such as 2D the differences between 3D, what portraits and landscapes consisted of, foreground, middle ground, and background. He knew the primary colors but once I asked him about secondary colors, warm and cool colors,  he was a bit confused. Knowing him he was interested to learn this but it's going over his head because we still have arguments about what we consider red and burgundy or purple and lavender.

             The only style of art he knew was abstract. He can pick that out in a minute but didn't know what representational and non-representational was. There was also a picture within the museum that showed a great example of linear perspective. I took my chance and explained it all to him. After showing him the vanishing point on the horizontal line and how everything on the sides got smaller he understood very well. Last but not least, I spoke to him about the ways of looking. I explained to him what each one was and he said the ones he does the most was formal and stylistic. The trip to MoMA was good overall. I just hope the next time I go, more exhibitions are open because I noticed some were closed or being renovated.