The Museum of Modern Art! (MoMA)

Museum of Modern Art Experience

The Museum of Modern Art, located on 11 West 53 Street New York, NY, is a place that fuels creativity, ignites minds, and provides inspiration. With extraordinary exhibitions and the world's finest collection of modern and contemporary art, the MoMA is dedicated to intriguing the minds of all personal taste. With so much to offer, the MoMA showcases countless artists with exceptional talent. I feel I can honestly write about over ten artist whose work that I loved, but to key in on just a few of my very favorites, I'm going to concentrate on: Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, and Renee Magritte.

What attracts my eye to Jackson Pollock's work, is his simple free spirited design on canvas. Pollock (1912-1956) is most famous for his pouring technique and for painting his large canvases on the floor using heavily loaded brushes, sticks and turkey-basters to disperse the paint. It seems like such a simple concept, but very intriguing and enlightening at the same time. You can truly get a sense of emotion through his work, by the colors and stroke lines dispersed amongst the canvas. In Pollock's piece "Easter and the Totem"- 1953, offers a more figurative style going on instead of his dramatic paint splatters. He uses colors such as black, white, green, pink, yellow, brown, and blue. The figures are unidentifiable, which gives the painting a mysterious side. I can almost make out faces within the canvas. "Number 1A, 1948," is a perfect example of the "drip," or pouring, technique, the radical method that Pollock contributed to Abstract Expressionism. Moving around an expanse of canvas laid on the floor, Pollock would fling and pour ropes of paint across the surface. "On the floor I am more at ease, I feel nearer, more a part of the painting, since this way I can walk around in it, work from the four sides and be literally `in' the painting.” 
- Jackson Pollock, 1947. "One" is among the largest of his works that bear evidence of these dynamic gestures. The canvas generates great energy: with strings of enamel, some matte, some glossy, weave and run in an intricate web of tans, blues, and grays lashed through with black and white." (MoMA Museum) The way the paint lies on the canvas can suggest speed and force, and the image as a whole is chaotic and dense. The details of Pollock’s style and facture, whether in major canvases or in his drawings and mixed-media works, all seem to derive from limitations of education and experience.

Another famous artist who I happen to love is Andy Warhol. I like the simple design and technique he uses in his work. Warhol would often paint the canvas with a single color—turquoise, green, blue, or lemon yellow, then silkscreen an image on top, sometimes alone, sometimes doubled, sometimes multiplied in a grid. The inverted colors of the images is what really makes Andy an abstract pop artist. His work is intriguing and dramatic in nature. "Gold Marilyn Monroe" 1962. Silkscreen ink on synthetic polymer paint on canvas. In this piece, Warhol uses the commercial technique, silkscreening, which gives the picture a crisp, artificial look. "Even as Warhol replicates Monroe, he reveals her public image as a carefully structured illusion." (MoMa Museum.) In memory of 1950s glamour, the face in "Gold Marilyn Monroe", is much like the star herself - high gloss, bold, compelling, yet elusive. Surrounded by a huge void, it is almost like the fadeout at the end of a movie. This piece is pretty dramatic. Another famous work of Warhol's put on display was "Campbell's Soup Cans"- 1962. Synthetic polymer paint on thirty-two canvases. When Warhol first exhibited these thirty–two canvases in 1962, each one simultaneously hung from the wall like a painting and rested on a shelf like groceries in a store. The number of canvases corresponds to the varieties of soup then sold by the Campbell Soup Company. Warhol assigned a different flavor to each painting, referring to a product list supplied by Campbell's. There is no evidence that Warhol envisioned the canvases in a particular sequence. Here, they are arranged in rows that reflect the chronological order in which they were introduced, beginning with "Tomato" in the upper left, which debuted in 1897. I love how Warhol uses such simple objects and manages to bring them onto canvas in such an intriguing manner. His expression and use of color is what really attracts his fans.

The last artist who always catches my attention is René Magritte. He was one of the major figures of Surrealism and perhaps the greatest Belgian artist of the 20th century. Surrealism was a movement in art and literature that revolved around several artists and authors in France. I would say Surrealist art is characterized by complex images that portray objects as unstable or illusionistic in nature. I love René's work because there is almost always a sense of mystery in each piece. Everything tells a story and provokes great, almost confusing, though entertaining thought. In René's "The Menaced Assassin" -1927 oil on canvas, a murder story is told through the painting. A woman's naked body is lying on a couch, while blood is trickling from her mouth. There is a well–dressed man, who is most likely from the looks of it her killer, the "assassin" of the painting's title, stands ready to leave with his coat and hat on a chair but distracted while he listens to a gramophone. Meanwhile you see two men who wait outside the room ready to ambush him, holding a club and net. And behind him, three more men watch from over the balcony, witnesses outside the action's frame like reflections of the painting's viewers, peering in from the other direction. A real murder scene mystery is portrayed like from a movie in this painting. Magritte's brand of Surrealism seems to deal in clear visions with unclear meanings, which is why I'm so attracted to his work. It always gets you thinking with your mind going in so may directions. I also love Magritte's "The Lovers"- 1928, for the same reason. This painting depicts a man and woman nicely dressed embracing each other in a kiss, only they're not truly touching because they're oddly separated by some sort of sheet or cloak over their heads. Once again, this painting evokes mystery and sense of wonder as to why these "lovers" are separated from one another and what the true meaning behind the sheets over their heads is about. There is a gloomy background behind them as well. I think the sheets smothering their faces sort of symbolizes death and though they seem to obvious lovers, I think all together the theme I take away from this painting can be the death of love.