The Modern Art Museum

The Modern art museum is one of my favorite places, so when I found out we had to go there for class I was excited. I really enjoyed the Ed Ruscha exhibit that is on display right now.  I got to go on a guided tour of it when it first opened, so it was nice to go back and see it again on my own.  I love his works that involve the Hollywood sign because I think they are easy to understand and accessible to all viewers, unlike some Modern art.  His book of photography called Every Building on the Sunset Strip that was in a glass case in the exhibit was one of my favorites because it was a fun and interesting idea.  I liked how he put the buildings that were on one side of the street upside down, so that if both of the sides were folded up it would be like driving down the street. A project like that must have taken a long time to finish.  I also stopped to watch the short film in the Ed Ruscha gallery.  It was about a car mechanic who went from being a typical, greasy mechanic to acting like a scientist while he was trying to fix the car.  It was filmed well and I enjoyed it, but I think that film is a different type of art than the paintings and sculptures that are normally in museums.

This time at the museum, there were some works on display downstairs that I hadn’t seen in a while.  There are many different styles of Modern art in the museum.  I think the green candy sculpture is always an interesting one to see.  The way it works is the artist writes down how many candies and what kind of candies the sculpture needs to be made of, and then he lets the museum interpret how the candies should be displayed.  Part of what makes it interesting is that visitors can take the candy, and it makes me wonder how often the museum has to add more candy to it.  It is always funny to see people’s faces when they realize you can actually eat the sculpture.  The candies taste pretty good too.  I was disappointed because the work by my favorite artist, Mark Bradford, isn’t on display right now.  It is a huge collage work made with magazine pages, foil, and posters that the artist finds in Los Angeles.  I enjoyed seeing the Birth of Venus painting.  I love its bright colors, and it reminded me of our discussions of modernism in class because the artist was using an allusion by using this subject, just like many modernist writers do.  Roy Lichtenstein’s painting is another one of my favorites. 

There are some works in the museum that make me understand why Modern art is confusing to some people.  Dan Flavin’s fluorescent light bulb mounted diagonally on the wall is one of them.  A few months ago when my boyfriend and I saw that work in the museum, we joked that we should go to Home Depot and buy some “art.”  That one light bulb is not too impressive, but I’ve seen pictures of some of Flavin’s other work with colored lights and shadows that are much more interesting.  Modern art definitely includes a lot of different things that can be considered art, but I think “art” is something that everyone has to define for themselves.  Personally, I think almost anything can be art if the artist has a specific meaning in mind or a statement he or she is trying to make with it.  Since I love Modern art, I hope everyone enjoyed their visit to the museum!