Modern art is really a crazy trip. People scoff at it, laugh at it and always say "I could do that!"when they view it. I recently spent some time at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, or SFMOMA as it's known and all those things went through my head or passed my lips while I was there. But there is something energizing and fresh about modern art that makes you crack a smile as opposed to viewing the great masters of old with their solemn portraits, still lifes or gory battles. I'm not taking anything away from the beauty of the classics and their ability to provoke emotion, I love art of all kinds but modern art was what I was there to see.
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The Coffee Pot by
Picasso |
Modern art is considered roughly the time frame from the 1860's to the 1970's so it takes in Picasso, Chagall and Klimt as well as the 60's bad boys Warhol, Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Pollock and the like. Anything newer than that is considered contemporary or post modern. The "old" modernists were just as irreverent and ground breaking in their smashing of tradition as the group from the sixties were for their time. We are so used to Picasso and his Cubism, and Dali with his melting clocks that we don't stop to realize sometimes how shocking their work was to their audience. Chagall's dreamy visions were no more appreciated by the masses when they were first seen than Warhol's can of tomato soup was.
In walking though SFMOMA's wonderful collection I was really struck by the irreverent attitude and "in your face", raised middle finger aspect of the work from the fifties to the seventies. It felt like the artists weren't even trying to be "painterly", they were just doing what they wanted and daring you to like it or buy it. It was my first time seeing one of Richard Rauschenberg's White Paintings series. It consists of three large panels, a triptych, each one painted all white. There have been many jokes made at its expense over the years. While my brain was thinking 'now THAT I could do', I was laughing at the sheer audacity of it. It seemed to say, "I'm a painter, I painted it, its art so f*** you." And there is no point in trying to do it now, it's been done.
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| Andy Warhol, Self Portrait 1967 |
Andy Warhol was well known for his portraits, using Polaroids he took of famous people and reproducing them with screen printed colours on top. Elvis, Dolly Parton and his self- portraits are among the SFMOMA collection. He had many people help him with the work or do it under his direction further breaking down the image of what an artist was or was not. He is the biggest selling artist after Picasso so obviously he did something right, love him or hate him. The sixties were a turbulent time of great change in America and the art work of the time truly reflects that. Boundaries and barriers were coming down everywhere. It was an "anything goes" era, and the artists were the conduit for it. The massive canvases with their bold colours almost leap off the walls, demanding attention, energy made visible. They cannot be ignored.
From the powerful work of Diego Rivera to the striking and delicate colour block abstractions of Mondrian to the elegant moving mobiles of Alexander Calder, through to the polka dot cartoon images of Lichtenstein the SFMOMA has much to offer. The building itself is a thing of beauty, open spacious and modern, filled with light coloured, wood floors and high-ceilinged rooms. The pugnacious energy of the modern art bounces around the rooms and invites you to dare to say it's not art. I loved it but there was one piece that stood out in my mind, Untitled (1971) by Cy Twombly. A large piece that looked exactly like a blackboard that had been erased many times and then scribbled over. Standing in front of it all I could think was, "okay, Cy, now you really are having us on."
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| Untitled, 1971 by Cy Twombly |
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