I apologize for spamming people’s dash with pictures, but there were a lot that I’ve been meaning to post…!
This is from my trip with NHIA to the Society of Illustrators back in March. After we got a tour of the Society itself, they let us do whatever we we wanted until the reception, so a group of us decided, HEY! Let’s go to the MOMA!
We were going to share a taxi until we realized that it was a fairly short walk away, and I had a map on my phone, so we just ended up taking a stroll along fifth avenue. I don’t think any of us had really been there before, so it was kind of exciting seeing the horse drawn carriages and the fancy stores and the ARCHITECTURE…! (although whatever that Trump building was, fuck was it ugly)
I remember very clearly that at one point, we were stopped at a crossing when someone looked up at the skyscraper next to us and said quite solemnly, “…three-point perspective.”
We all nodded.
Anyway, when we got to the museum proper, we were about to head in when we heard someone call out, “Who wants free tickets!?” Turns out, every Friday, you can get a free ticket after a certain time. Specifically, about five minutes after we’d shown up. The line hadn’t had time to get very long, so we seriously scored in getting in~
Starry Night is… god. It was the main reason I wanted to go to the MOMA, and I just… it was worth everything. I’ve seen so many copies and reproductions before, but in person… the color, the energy in his brushstrokes, the motion and texture and gloss… it’s amazing. If I had JUST gotten to see that one picture, nothing else, I would have been satisfied.
But, I didn’t! I took some photos of other works that I really liked. It’s kind of interesting to look back and see what I really wanted to remember and share, ehehe… I guess my obsession with color becomes really apparent? I know a lot of people don’t like abstract art, but I’m constantly mesmerized by what you can do… what you can suggest, and create, and produce when you focus only on color and shape and line.
This has already gotten kind of long, so I’ll finish it up, but I just want to mention the last photo.
They had an entire room in the museum that was devoted to Monet. The moment you walk in, you’re faced with the most amazing, huuuuge painting of water lilies. It was easily 40 feet long. And when I saw it, I… ehehe, I actually kind of began to cry.
When I was really little, Monet was my favorite artist. I had a bunch of books of his paintings, and I could happily spend hours looking at them, because they were pretty. And I guess at some point, I just stopped liking him as much. I gave away the books. I actually forgot how much I’d loved him. It wasn’t until I saw his famous water lilies in real life that it came back to me… and… and now that I knew so much more about him… now that I knew so much more about ART… I guess the tears kind of make sense. Hehehe!
Ahhh shoot, this post got away from me.