Cultural spelunking

If I don't do something culturally relevant once a week or so (okay, since grad school hit, once every two weeks), I feel under-stimulated. By this, I mean going to a museum, gallery; local festival or celebration, or seeing an independent/artsy film. I'm talking about getting out in my community and engaging with the pop cultural artistic output.

The weekend before last, I took a long-awaited trip to MoMa, the museum of modern art. There is currently a Japanese art and design show that finishes up late in february, and I'd been eager to see it since i first heard about it in October. I only have pictures of the exterior, as photography wasn't permitted inside. The show dealt with art emerging from Tokyo between 1950 and 1970. Fascinating! Asian art is an area where my knowledge is lacking, so I entered the museum with a mind to get schooled. I was familiar with only two of the artists-- Yayoi Kusama (whose retrospective I have incidentally and accidentally seen in three countries, but that's another story) and Terayama, an avant garde film director. The show was a treat! A lot of the pieces dealt with the direct aftermath of the war: Hiroshima, cultural trauma, and a rapidly changing society. A lot of the works featured fantastical, amorphous forms that you just don't see a lot in western art, apart from the likes of Hieronymous Bosch. If you're in NYC, definitely check this show out! MoMa Is also doing a corresponding film series.

An unexpected surprise while at MoMa was their show about abstraction, running until April I believe. Lots of Kandinsky, Mondrian; and a painter named Kupka. The latter is truly a great painter, utilizing bright kaleidoscopic colors and geometric rays. However, his name is hilarious. See, in Polish "Kupka" (pronounced just like the artists name) means poop. So there you have it!

Another VERY special treat at MoMA is the copy of Edvard Munch's The Scream on view. It's not the best or most iconic copy of the work, but hey, it's The Scream, i'll take what I can get--it pretty much never leaves Norway. The real treat of this was that when I looked at the exhibition site, I was expecting to see JUST The Scream. Oh, no. There were prints of Madonna and Child, and The Vampire, and about ten other works. It was just TOO COOL! So, if you're in NYC or planning to come in soon and are a spectator of the arts, do take a visitor MoMA!