I have a friend who lives in an exotic and wonderful place. This city is NYC and of course it has lots of exciting attractions and is one of the most sought after tourist destinations in the world. It is also very expensive to buy anything except slices of pizza.
Since my pal lived there and lets me stay on his sofa for free I had the opportunity to visit some museums which are meant to be world-class. I have to admit, i am not terribly cultured when it comes to art so upon deciding to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art (MOMA,) I didn't really know what to expect. I mean, they have an entire massive building dedicated to modern art so it is probably pretty special right?
what is this?
The above picture is only a brief representation of the collections they have in this massive building. I mean, what is going on here? It appears as though the artist got to his studio and asked "where are my blank canvases" and his or her assistant said "oh, those weren't finished? The museum picked those up this morning and left a check for $700,000."
I was there and saw these. I looked closely. There is nothing on the canvases, i was thinking maybe you have to shine a black-light on it so I asked a staff member if that was the case... no, it's just three blank canvasses. It's finished. I had hoped maybe later someone was going to come in and do a live painting... no, it's finished already.
How does this require any talent? I can go to a framing shop and have hundreds of these made in an afternoon... perhaps i missed my calling in life.
While i wasn't there for it, this next monstrosity recently sold at auction for over forty million dollars.
please explain to me how this is special
When i see "art" i want to be bewildered at the talent and vision of the artist. Paul Joseph Watson commented
Cy Twombly's "untitled" looks like exactly what would happen if you left a toddler alone with a bottle of ketchup for a few hours
Here are some other pieces of work by the artist Cy Twombly.
someone left the toddler some mustard as well
looks like a tablecloth at a Mexican restaurant after a kids party
I didn't bother to take many pictures while i was in MOMA because honestly, it was all crap. One display had a bunch of pieces of cut glass stacked up on top of one another - it looked like the refuse pile at a shop that makes custom windows. My exceptional disdain for this sort of junk just makes me wonder who is this for? Who thinks this is talent?
There is a funny story about how some college students put a pineapple on an empty table at a modern art exhibition only to return 4 days later to find that a glass display case had been placed over it and it is now art. It wasn't the staff taking part in the hi-jinks, people really thought it was art. There is another instance where some reading glasses were left behind on a table and soon after patrons began taking photos of this wonderful work of post-modern blahbity-blah!
The only good pieces in the museum aren't even classified as modern art. The main reason I wanted to go is because Van Gogh's "Starry Starry Night" was on display. I saw a few Picasso's while i was there and the dude who made the artwork with the melting clocks (sorry, I'm not artistically cultured - if you know who that is please do tell.)
this is art
Before attending MOMA a few years ago, I didn't know what modern art is. I now know that it is a bunch of pretentious crap made mostly by people with no real talent. I encourage you to prove me wrong, but I distinctly remember not really finding anything inside of MOMA that you wouldn't just decide to throw out if you were moving to a new house.
Do you feel differently? If so I implore you to prove me wrong. What is the value in all this? How are the creators talented? How are these things worth millions of dollars? Is this a income tax evasion scam in plain sight? I just don't know what is going on or how we even have multi-million dollar buildings dedicated to this stuff.
As always, i encourage you to respond... and in this instance to argue with me if you feel so inclined :)