Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

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Monday, July 23. 2007

The "What is Painting?" show

Made it to the MOMA "What is painting?" show yesterday. Their new building is excellent. As usual, the place was packed.

Do I love Modern Art? I dunno - I just like to look at stuff and to think about it.

I learned that "painting" is anything man-made (or man-altered), based on a flat surface which engages the eye when you stand and look at it. I could have thought of that, but it seems overly-broad: would not that definition apply to a Men's Room sign, when one is in need of one?

Anyway, it's a very eclectic show, with the predictable and silly all-white canvas which makes you wish you had a magic marker in your pocket. I liked this very large piece by George Baselitz, "Woodsmen."

Posted by Bird Dog in Our Essays, The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation at 05:03 | Comments (6) | Trackbacks (0)

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Interesting. Sort of looks like a new camo pattern blended with Wizard of Oz.
#1 retriever (Link) on 2007-07-23 06:39 (Reply)
Is it upside down?
#2 Patina on 2007-07-23 08:50 (Reply)
No - it works both ways but this is the way it's intended
#3 BD on 2007-07-23 10:00 (Reply)
Found that it is deliberately upside down.

Publication excerpt....
Deborah Wye, Artists and Prints: Masterworks from The Museum of Modern Art, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2004, p. 204

Growing up in East Germany, Georg Baselitz was isolated from the latest art developments in Western Europe. In 1956 he emigrated to West Berlin, where the dominant style was tachisme, a form of painterly abstraction that corresponded to late Abstract Expressionism in America. Baselitz rejected that style as decorative and instead evolved a vocabulary of disturbing figurative imagery that caused a scandal when it was exhibited. Eventually the figures in his paintings were depicted as fragmenting apart and soon thereafter were turned upside-down in what has become his hallmark.
#4 Patina on 2007-07-23 10:00 (Reply)
Yeah, that's kinda what I figured. And that is right - it is sort of abstract expressionism.
#5 BD on 2007-07-23 14:07 (Reply)
Personally, I prefer Constable and Turner's depiction of lightin nature. But I am impossibly old fashioned [fond of Landseer and Sir Joshua Reynolds and Stubbs and all those endless British painters of horses and hounds. I like seeing devoted dogs at the foot of their master's graves or carrying a bird...Nothing modern in my house except tech toys and my dead mother in law's very good late life paintings, some sort of abstract, one in soothing blues is okay [would be good in an er for soothing the agitated, frightened, belligerent and agonized].. But I still prefer the Woodbury.
#6 retriever on 2007-07-23 15:16 (Reply)

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