MOMAfreefriday....

Friday afternoons between 4-8pm, the Museum of Modern Art is free!!!  And there was a lineup all the way down 54th Street  to 5th Avenue and around the corner till I could no longer see all of my fellow free loading art lovers.   It was an unseasonable warm late March NYC afternoon, sunny,  in the mid 60s, and perfect for having to stand on a long line.   The crowd was mostly young and NY artsy,  and the special exhibits were alluring... Diego Rivera murals painted for MOMA 80 years ago, exhibited at the time and then stored away, to be "lost" or forgotten or disregarded or whatever, but were "found" and here they were, on exhibit seeing the light of day for the first time in 80 years and we were there to see them.  Big, beautiful flowing rivers of color and texture,  political, urgent and engulfing beyond words.  Rivera is the most important and under appreciated artist of the last hundred years, but he is Mexican after all, and an unapologetic socialist, so what should you expect from the culturally effete critics who we depend on to define our tastes.   But no photos allowed.

There was an Atget exhibit on the 3rd floor.  An old friend who is always nice and reassuring to see again, quiet, understated, and workmanlike, someone who never even considered himself an artist, and always an inspiration to an old photographer who is finding it increasingly hard to find the energy to get back in the dark room.  Someone who reaffirms my belief that photography is not so much art, as the process of documenting reality artistically.

And then there was the Cindy Sherman retrospective mentioned in the last entry.  A Long Island girl who has made it bigger than big.  375 photographs of herself in various guises and costumes and personas.  Creative early in her career, but one who becomes increasingly/irritatingly tedious, repetitive, and trite after a while, in spite of the many greatly oversized and overwrought later images that dominated the show, but she is described by some as one of the most important artists of the 20th century.  HUH????  One tepid photograph of herself, nothing I would want on my wall, recently sold at auction for 3.1 million dollars!!!  For a mundane photograph by contemporary artist???  Somehow I kind of understood it when a Gursky photo sold for 1 million a few years ago.  Just a photo, but it was spectacular.  But a Cindy Sherman image of herself???  I don't get it.  Was talking to the director of photography at an auction house in NYC recently and asked her about the 3.1 mil sale.  She said it was Cindy Sherman after all, did not seem perplexed, and looked at me like there was something wrong with me for not getting it.  Sorry for going on about it, but..

MOMA for free...But no photos allowed in the exhibits, so here is my take on free Fridays...Pretty cutting edge, huh???

I like it, but I didn't know how interesting it was till I got home.  The idea is good, but the execution could be a bit better.  I need another MOMAfreefriday soon.

                                                                  Pablo