MOMA visit

My first museum visit in New York City. For the number of times I've been to New York, it's actually quite shocking how I haven't been to a museum yet. During my Europe trip, I developed a taste to take pictures (See pictures from museums in St. Petersburg and Paris) inside museums. Finding the hidden art within an art is quite fun.

In fact, when I was taking pictures, my friend PL who went with me asked why I was taking pictures from the side. Well, if you do it from the front (like the following Van Gogh and Matisse paintings), there isn't much besides "here's the painting".

Van Gogh's postman... (forgot his name) he picked up VG from the hospital after he cut his ear off

Well, I was asked (more like challenged) to find PNGF's favorite painting in the MOMA. Here's my final answer: Dancers, by Matisse. And yes, I was right.

Here's another Matisse piece. Notice the painting behind the sculpture: it's Matisse's studio... which has the same sculpture in it! Pretty cool picture, I thought. Oh, and I used my Benro monopod for the first time. Not the best way to get stable pictures though, but I guess it's good enough.

MOMA only had one piece of Monet... but it was a big piece. Having a person looking on from the side gives it a better sense of size. Too wide even for wide angle lens!

When I saw this painting, I immediately thought I liked it a lot... and now I can't believe I thought that. It was a Joan Miro piece. Arg... I went to Miro's museum in Barcelona and really wasn't impressed.

One reason I don't enjoy contemporary art is this:
Here's another reason:
The weirdest thing is that MOMA anticipated my feelings (certainly not just me!) and had a narrative for another piece of contemporary art: so modern art is more abstract (me thinks plain and simple) because back in the days, people didn't have many different perspectives and their senses were relatively simple. Hence an impressionist painting was a big step forward for the audience. Nowadays, people have much more art experience and utilize more of their senses... therefore artists turned to more abstract forms to express those senses. I.e. to challenge their audience.

Um... I guess that makes sense. I think more of it is famous artists thinking if they can fool the world by making pieces of crap. And yes, they did fool the world. In the narrative for the above red thing, the person says "it wasn't until years later where people finally appreciated..." I think it's cus people stopped arguing on whether it was good or crap instead.

When I saw this piece of sculpture, my first instinct was that this was an Aussie artist... to my disappointment, when I looked at the description, it was an American artist. Oh well. But then when I started to listen to the audio guide, it says that the piece is named "Australia". See, my instincts were right! (too many trips to Australian bars in HK)

This one reminded me of the Chu Ming pieces I've seen in Taiwan last month. More like a fake.

I wasn't overly impressed by MOMA's art. Seems like the collection were mostly donated, which could explain why it was so limited. A Van Gogh here, a Monet there, a few Matisse, and that was about it. There were more exhibits on the first few floors but were more modern art (MOMA, duh!) and didn't interest me too much. I guess I need to head to the MET some day!