Afterthoughts on MoMA: When is a painting not just a painting?
Plus, see works from Dali, van Gogh, Matisse, Magritte and more.
When I visited the Museum of Modern Art for the first time in my life, I did not expect to see so many works from celebrated artists, nor the emotions that would overwhelm me from the pieces on display. The main reason I had it on my to-visit list this trip was because I had never gone.
Thanks to the cold and rain in NYC last week, I ended up visiting the museum twice within days. The first visit was lacklustre—I had no background knowledge of the artists whose works I glazed over (but also deeply appreciated), and the only reason I had gone in the first place was because house keeping was here (I stayed at Sheraton Times Square) and I had nowhere else to go in the rain.
So why did I go a second time?
Well, again, the cold was a big reason for me to stay indoors. But something else pushed me to give the museum a second chance. That something else was me finding out rather belatedly, after my first visit, that there were works from Picasso, Dali and Matisse on display that I had completely missed. How could I fly 18 hours all the way to New York without seeing the original The Starry Night and The Persistence of Memory that were less than 500m away from where I was staying? There was simply no excuse, even when I was extremely jet lagged and had woken up at 4am that very day for a few hours’ photoshoot in the wind.
Most of the great works from artists from van Gogh, to Monet, to Magritte were housed on the same level of the museum (level 5), and so the most of my second visit was also on this level.
When is a painting more than just a painting? True appreciation comes when you peel back the figurative layers and land upon the story of its becoming.