exhibit #3

CLAES OLDENBURG: THE STREET AND THE STORE/ MOUSE MUSEM & RAY GUN WING; THE SCREAM; ET AL (MoMA)

Painting & Sculpture Galleries

Jacob Lawrence- Migration Series- great as always. A beautiful story of adventure and ambition, those American colors, the simple, dynamic depiction of grit and resolve. The next room, all the old hits- Miro, the Dadaists, Picasso's Girl Before a Mirror. I like Piccabia's M'Amenez-y, a goofy work with a lovely balance of gold and green. Magritte's The Empire of Light, II- a lovely and haunting, placid evening work.

Ernst's The Blind Swimmer- love the green and the detailed lines. Looks a bit like a wheat field. Is it a bisection of the eye? Is this what the blind swimmer sees? I like it. Next room, Modigliani, Picasso's Three Women at the Spring and Three Musicians. I'm liking Giorgio de Chirico, his comic book palette. The lines remind me of Dali- an odd, haunted evening city, like a dream.

The Mondrian room… I'm drawn to Composition with Red, Blue, Black, Yellow and Gray, 1921- the blue tint on his classic look. Lovely. Stepanova's Figure (1921)- love it. Looks like late-stage Kandinsky, pulled together and animated in a living form.

The Monet Room, lovely of course. The meditative pastel beauty of Water Lillies,(1924-1925) particularly dreamy. The autumn fire of The Japanese Footbridge draws me too. An interesting point- MOMA got these Monet panels in 1955. Timing was key- Pollock's style and scale made the abstract expressive qualities of Monet's work hip and relevant again. That's why MOMA got these.

The Klee room- Pastorale (Rhythms) reminds me of the Rosetta Stone. sigh… Fire in the Evening is a beauty- I'm virtually certain I've noticed and noted it on a previous trip (the Bauhaus, I believe.) Or the Mocked Mocker is pretty great. Reminds me of Lite Brites. Klee is probably the closest, among legendary artists, to my mother's style. He's just fun- and so detailed. I love so many- Introducing the Miracle, Demon Above the Ships (reminds me just a bit of a Chinese dragon, some sort of east asian myth), The End of the Last Act of a Dream, the Angler, Around the Fish- so many terrific pieces. Augustus Vincent Tack- Dunes, a pretty canvas. Almost like a satellite map. Kupka's View from a Carriage Window- a hint of a tropical dream. Kandinsky's four panels, and Kirchner's Street, Dresden, in the corner by the stairs. Lovely.

The Matisse room. The Red Studio is my favorite of his. Also I'm drawn to the beautiful grays and firm vertical lines of Woman on a High Stool.

The Scream

Here we are- The Scream. One of those pieces that gets the Mona Lisa treatment. Love the red sky. It's 3 shapes- the red divides two traingles and the sky creates a rectangle above. A nice balance of elements here. It reminds me of Nirvana- Nirvana brought the dark and unsettling into the mainstream, but they did it by crafting highly accessible, pretty pop music. Likewise, The Scream is a dark and unsettling piece, but it's that highly accessible, pretty balance of elements- the melody of the painting- that makes it a compelling classic.

Oh, I love his painting, The Storm- dreamy, dark gray rain, the white figure. So compelling. Munch's Madonna, set at the moment of conception- sexy and scary. A compelling piece. Could be a '70s punk flyer.

Painting & Sculpture Galleries, Continued

The Futurist room. My favorite is Carras' Funeral of the Anarchist Galli, the dazzling, kaleidoscopic drama of reds, greens and darkness.

Ellen Auerbach- Elliot Porter in New York. Oh, I love this photo. I'm such a sucker for 1950s NYC photography. A room of Porter's bird photography. Love it. A bird's look does not change with the seasons- a cardinal in 1800 is the same as a cardinal now. I wonder if any animal besides man has "fashion," in that pop evolutionary sense. I love the intimacy of the feeding scenes and the exultant free spirit of the Blue Throated Hummingbird.

The Cubist room. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, the most famous painting whose name I never remember. Picasso's Repose- haven't seen this one before. Love the caramel palette, the sense of peace. Reminds me of a poetry club in Washington Heights.

Another classic room. Henri Rousseau- The Dream, an old favorite of mine. Takes me back to my childhood doctor's office. The Sleeping Gypsy is here, my other love. It's only just now occurring to me, his two classics- the Sleeping Gypsy, the Dream- could exist in the same moment of reality, if one chooses so.

Odilon Redon, beautiful as always. James Ensor, some fantastic, creepy stuff- Boschlike. And Starry Night of course, fabulous. Such rich blues. The green golden moon. The village at peace, the Heavens turbulent. The marvelous motion in each line, each one a little sweep of a dream. Gaugin's Still Life with Three Puppies- charming! And they close out the floor with Warhol's cans. nice.

4th Floor- all the geometric minimalist stuff… I like Richard Hamilton's Pin-Up. The Johns & Rauschenberg room, always one of my favorites. Two Rauschenberg combines are here- Canyon is the star, a recent acquisition. Slowly but surely I'm getting through my lasting NYC art regret- missing out on his combines show at the Met.

*K

L and I love Green Target.

Next room, some Joseph Cornell boxes. Central Park Carousel, In Memoriam, (a wondrous dream of the stars), and Untitled (Hotel Beau-Sejoir) Mondrian and Newman. Pollock, de Kooning. Fernand Leger- The Three Musicians. Stoic, elegant, an image of dignified strivers. I like it. Humble and hopeful in the same motion, and a parallel to Picasso's dynamic musicians too. Picasso gets them in the heat of performance; this is their family portrait. (I zipped through that floor pretty quick, want to assure time for some other things.)

(Miscellany)

Dieter Roth- Six Piccadillies- pretty. Six interpretations of a postcard, Warholian. I particularly like the flat, bright, late 60s/70s piece. Applied Design floor- there's a minty teal-green setup that Katie would just love. Also on this floor- lots of video games, popular with the kids. I like the Pig Wings project. Kinda creepy, but aesthetically beautiful.

9+1 Ways of Being Political

An activist architectural design exhibit. Being Political here meaning 'an interaction with the urban realm.' I like Aldo Rossi's Urban Construction. I'm getting too tired to draw anything from this exhibit, it's got less politics and more dioramas than I was hoping for. I think it's about time I pack it in…

Claes Oldenburg: The Street and The Store.

"I am for all art that takes its form from the lines of life itself, that twists and extends and accumulates and spits and drips, and is heavy and coarse and blunt and sweet and stupid as life itself." Love it.

The Street

Dirty, the Rauschenberg palette of cardboard, burlap browns. Street Chick is particularly striking. I like Street Sign I- looks a bit like a unicorn, or a chess knight. The little Letter Tenement, tiny, lost in the shuffle, clothed in rags- the city's orphan. The Big Man- reminds me of the Met's tribal art. He leans casually, confident, and blank, and stupid. A false God. Funny. A dirty, dripping exhibit. Everything he touches becomes a gruesome parody, overblown, ugly, fat, dripping, silly. he's one of the funniest artists I think I've ever seen. It's funny to imagine somebody back then, appalled and annoyed by this exhibit, and now- joke's on them. This is all in MOMA!

Flags (summer 1960)- Johnslike, though I like Johns' more. My two favorites- corklive flag (I think?) and Landscape with flag and moon- a bit of a dream. American Flag and Street Chick- a lovely blur of color, that turn of the head. It reminds me of a woman looking back just as a bomb explodes… shades of Boston darken my imagination.

The Store

(he had it all set up 107 E 2nd Street- Ray Gun Manufacturing Company.) Suddenly color enters his palette. Commercial objects, depicted in a saggy, vile, comical way. Mannikin with One Leg looks like fireworks, or Starry Night. a very pretty piece. Candy Container with Candy (looks like paint tubes to me), Upside Down City- an octopus.

Breakfast Table- it's fun to take all this in as the living embodiment of the real-time rejection of Mad Men- This is what was going down in the village, when the surface was all suburbs and gloss. Oldenburg's blunt, unimpressed depictions expose the emptiness of the dream.

His classic Floor Burger. There's a guard here, and her sole responsibility is to watch that burger. Cigarettes in Pack (fragment), 7 Up… it's all- there's not too much I feel like saying about it. It's a funny exhibit, a crude parody, it almost makes me laugh at these objects and ideas. It blows up the store. Bacon and Egg 1965- the colors of this one- particularly nice, lovely.

His big, soft sculptures- to draw aparallel to the vast car showrooms of the day. This big floppy piece of cake is pretty hilarious. It changes what a sculpture can be- no longer "rigid, austere"- and it brings the every day to fine art, blows up the pedestal a little bit. He's not just mocking consumer culture here, he's mocking the art world. and in a way, this is a retroactive parody- my classic critique of the Chelsea galleries is that it's all scale, no insight- gigantic magazine covers. You can consider Oldenburg a predecessor and inspiration to these guys, but I think he still mocks them- it's just so big, dumb and whimsical. a big dumb floppy hamburger. He's Showing us it's a silly idea.

Watch in a Red Box- like an alligator's mouth, or a turtle's. Sewing Machine- love the colors. Nice triad here- Mu-Mu, Sewing Machine, Auto Tire with Fragment of Price. The rule now is 'do not touch,' but I wonder if Claes allowed it back then. I can see how it would play with the relationship of work to artist to Allow the touch- but also it's a tighter parody to gravely, self-seriously disallow it.mall I can think about is how much I want to sneak a touch.

Mouse Museum & Ray Gun Wing

I'm gonna give Mouse Museum a try- Oldenburg's collection of objects. It's shrouded, a mystery, yet there are videos playing on a loop, showing off glances of the interior. Feels like a violation of a church's secret scrolls- or on the flipside, it's creating a celebrity effect, the replicated media image creating the hype of familiarity for the presence of the real thing. Two thoughts here- (A) if I were to organize a show, maybe I'd start with video screens to comment on exactly this. (B) That's exactly the effect it had on me- I was charmed by a little seal with a crystal, from the video; I was discouraged not to find it on my first visit, and came back, waited in line again, studied the video, for the specific cause of catching this celebrity.

Inside, pretty cool- felt like being in a submarine, warm, dark, an eerie waterlike soundtrack. Food, anatomy, toys, commerce, plastic- these seem to be Oldenburg's preoccupations. It reminded me a Lot of Mark, or Mom's things. It's fascinating to think of all the beautiful, incredible, intriguing pop culture deritrus collections there are- this one is in MOMA, but probably everyone knows somebody with a similar collection- we each have that one compellingly odd friend. My favorite object- the pink turtle cigarette dish! (and of course, the famed seal.)

Ray Gun Wing- fine.

*NOTE- email Mom about this! she'd love it.