Digesting the 5th floor: (Of the Museum of Modern Art in NYC)
By Middleton O’Malley
Your first artistic greeting is Wyeth’s, “Christina”. As you walk into the entrance of the fifth floor gallery it’s straight ahead of you, you can’t miss it. Christina, who looks a bloody state I can tell you, is apparently dragging herself across a treeless field to a lugubrious looking mansion in the background that screams hot and cold running insanity. I’m glad I never had to have sex with Wyeth; I feel leather in his work. A more innocent Hooper, “Gas”, painted in 1940 hangs in the same entrance alcove, as well as Sheeler’s, “American Landscape”, painted in 1930. American Landscape is very pleasant because it’s an industrial scene where everything is clean. There’s a giant factory with railroad cars, a canal, huge crane, smoke stacks, and piles of really clean looking dirt. In fact, everything about this painting was delightfully antiseptic. It greatly appealed to something neurotic in me.
The feeling of newness inside New York ’s recently remodeled Museum of Modern Art is inescapable. I think Sheeler’s cleaning lady must have done most of the work because there’s not a mark on any wall, nor a scuff on the floor. But it did seem as though the men’s room had already suffered a substantial amount of leakage around the urinals. Why do some men need to pee on the floor of public rest rooms? Is this really necessary? Do they pee on the floor of their bathrooms at home? Aside from that annoyance, the whole place glistens with its ambitious refurbishment, and a very pleasant 5th floor snack bar provided an exceptional cappuccino, pecan tart, and fabulous chocolate truffle.
Once suitably caffeinated for the event, I launched a full scale assault on the gallery and was immediately confronted by Dali’s “Persistence of Memory”. After staring at his clocks, painted as though they were deflated pancakes drooping from tree limbs, I decided there was plenty of acid being taken way before 1960, and moved on, albeit with a pleasant contact high. The Picasso collection is huge, and though there’s little of his very interesting and technically brilliant early work, there’s plenty of other eye-popping stuff where everything’s way outta whack. Pieces of ears, limbs, eyes, lips, and bottoms, all tacked together by a space alien who was instructed to assemble the pieces minus ever having seen a human being. The sheer magnitude of his talent shouts you into acceptance of your own stupidity; and the only moment during my tour when I had any real thoughts about art theft was when I saw “The Card Player”. I actually thought about stealing it for a while. I did.
A couple of Max Ernst pieces were quite pleasing as I very much enjoy collage and photomontage art. Unfortunately there was but one piece, (that I saw), of my favorite artist in this genre, Hanna Hoch. Her work, in photomontage in particular, is better than any wild dream you ever had as a child. Her art takes your mind on involuntary rides through previously unused portions of the brain, making you feel a little like white water rafting through your intellect. I made do with the Ernst.
I’d say the Dutch painter Piet Mondrian had little sense of humor and a fascination for checkers. He was a bit off, I suppose. Though highly regarded for his early work as a landscape and flower artist, word has it that he did that stuff just for the crust, and once suitably endowed with sufficient Guilders he then turned his back on the Amaryllis, Windmills, and Gray Tree's of his life, and commenced to paint lines and colors. I kept on staring at them looking for the one thing a bright chimp might not be able to do; finally taking my leave of his work still wanting the answer. “Broadway Boogie Woogie” was so inorganic that it left me wanting to eat a large salad.
Though I sincerely wanted to steal Picasso’s “The Card Player”, it was Giorgio di Chirico’s, “Gare Montparnasse, The Melancholy of Departure”, that came in a close second. I like architectural art and this painting had all of that plus a dreamy surrealism with mismatched objects that kept me entertained for a good long while. It is beginning to occur to me that I like Dadaists and Surrealists, and I’m concerned.
I hate, hate, hate, Mexican art, and the Diego Rivera’s hanging from the walls did nothing to change my mind. A dopey painting of Zapata that any 4th grader with a good set of crayons might crank out, took up a lotta space that other more deserving artists could have used. And by God, you can tell ‘em that I said so! The only thing I actually liked about the humongous Orozco painting called “War”, was its uncanny resemblance to the opening scenes of Industry on Parade, a 1950’s series of televised industrial propaganda.
I think I want to be a painter in my next life because a lot of them seem to live forever. Picasso died at 92, Mattise at 85, Bonnard was 80 when he croaked, and Georgia O’Keeffe almost made the ton before sliding off to glory at 99! Have you ever seen the black and white nudes taken by her long time lover Alfred Stieglitz? Yummy, yummy, yummy! I know that’s not a particularly cultured approach to his art and her beauty, but in her youth, Georgia was built, as they say. But Stieglitz never let her smile, the swine.
After several hours of Kadinsky’s, Cézanne’s, Picasso’s, van Doesburg’s, and all the others, and then getting completely lost in the meaning of Matisse’s “Five Busts of Jeanette”, I decided it was time to leave, go for a walk, and let it all sink in. I strolled a short distance down 53rd, and hung a right on Broadway, but only after looking to my left and deciding that the spectacularly surrealistic view down The Great White Way is lots better than all the neon in Tokyo.