This modern art exhibit has been installed at our local museum from the New York Museum of Modern Art since the middle of the year. I wouldn’t say I’m that heavily into art and some of the modern art draws even less of my attention. But I couldn’t resist the chance of seeing a real Picasso and even the Warhol pieces. The exhibit includes fourteen masters of modern art and is the first of several exhibits coming to Perth from MoMA. Seeing that Lego Lover is homeschooling, I decided it was time for him to have some exposure to art in the form an an art gallery.

I think it was late August when my plan to visit the museum finally took some shape and Lego Lover and I took the train into Perth to see the exhibit. We didn’t start all that early that day so arrived in early afternoon. Once in Perth, Lego Lover was hungry so we had to get some lunch. Finally at about 1pm we walked over to the museum. It was closed! It seems the exhibit is closed on Tuesdays and it was Tuesday. Lego Lover was delighted because he had no interest in seeing this modern art. I was sorely disappointed though as I’d got myself all worked up to see it.

As we’d gone to the trouble of going into the city, I decided to make the best of it and take Lego Lover to the WA Museum. This, it turns out was an excellent idea and he had a wonderful time there. By this time my knee was tired out and I ended up sitting down quite a bit. But Lego Lover enjoyed going around to see the exhibits and would have happily spent the day there, I think. Unfortunately it was getting late in the afternoon so we had to make our way back home as peak hour was soon upon us. As it was, the school kids were all out and the trains were pretty full the whole way back.

Last month, we finally went back to see the art exhibit, going straight from dropping the car off for its regular service in the morning to the bus station, and then catching the train into Perth. I was a bit worried about the crowds and hoping I wouldn’t regret not buying tickets ahead of time but it was all fine. There were some crowds there but it wasn’t horrendous. The first part of the exhibit was the Picasso section and there were probably 15 pieces. Lego Lover wasn’t too impressed by the style of most of the paintings but there were a couple that sort of resembled the real world a bit more, including a self-portrait of his from 1901. I found it quite interesting to see the paintings up close and even liked a couple of them quite well. One was a large mural piece  called Night Fishing at Antibes and I must admit that part of the appeal was the strong use of the color purple which is my favorite.

The next artist was Henri Matisse and I found the art style in the works on display really didn’t appeal to me all that much. This surprised me as I was sure I was familiar with some of his work and liked it. I need to do more research and determine whether I was just mistaken or if there really are some of his works that I like.

On to Brancusi who seems to have been a painter and sculptor. He had a drawing that I think maybe have been called something like Newborn with a rather egg-shaped image used to represent the newborn. Later on we found a bronze sculpture that seems to be based on the painting. Or maybe the painting was based on the sculpture. They weren’t the same but seemed quite similar in style. Another sculpture was called Endless Column and Lego Lover was quite annoyed with it as it appeared anything but endless. I must admit that for something that should have been endless, it seemed a bit lacking in height to provide that illusion. I found his sculptures Bird in Space and Young Bird more interesting, especially the latter as it did look like it could have been a bird in a nest of sorts if you used some imagination.

A couple of Mondrian’s works, or perhaps his style, were instantly familiar to me when I saw them. I think the piece called Trafalgar Square is something I’ve seen in books or represented in film or somewhere. While familiar I didn’t find the style that appealing. But he did have a painting called View from the Dunes with Beach and Piers which did appeal to me with its sea theme. My first thought was it seemed like an impressionist style but an online search reveals it is a naturalistic style. Just goes to show how little I know of art.

Possibly the least impressive part of the exhibit was the Duchamp portion which starts off with a fairly ordinary snow shovel just hanging from the ceiling. Apparently it was purchased at a hardware store and the artist signed and inscribed it and this is art. Lego Lover was quite scathing of its value as art and this is one area where I find I mostly agree with him. There were also less everyday items on display but I couldn’t find any connection with any of it, much as I tried.

The de Chirico works also seemed rather familiar to me so I must have encountered his work at some time in the past. I liked his works more than most of the others on display which I suppose isn’t too unexpected as I do find some other surrealist art interesting. I think the painting on display  that I liked most was Enigma of an Autumn Afternoon. 

There were several paintings by Fernand Léger which were interesting to see look at but I didn’t really warm to his style of painting. I find it a bit too busy and it reminded me of being in a noisy place with the sound overwhelming and exhausting me. Further, we ended up delayed at seeing all the pieces in this section due to a guide drawing a group of students around and monopolising the painting for several minutes. It’s a shame we had to wait so long to see a work that neither of us liked.

There was only one woman represented in the collection and that was Louise Bourgeois.  I don’t recall that much of her work except that she had a series of drawings displayed and I think that was of some interest. Right now I’m struggling to recall what it was that appealed to me. I suppose it might evoke different feelings when seeing it in person than seeing it on a two dimensional image. I noticed that she was still creating art far into her life with a couple pieces within the past decade. If I recall correctly, she only died a few years ago.

There were some works by Miro and whose style seemed familiar to me even though the the works on display were not. There was also Calder and several of his sculptures and jewelry on display. Most interesting were the wire sculptures of some faces. I was surprised to find some familiarity with Romare Beardon´s work but it seems appropriate as I believe he was from North Carolina originally so I´m sure some of his work would have popped up at some point while I live there. I quite liked a couple of the paintings by Jasper Johns, who is most familiar to me with his painting called Flag. The painting I liked most was one called Map and was his take on the map of the US. He also had a painting all in white of numbers that was kind of interesting but I didn´t particularly like it all that much.

I found myself a bit underwhelmed by the Warhol part of the exhibit. It was notable that I now have seen the famous soup can paintings as a whole series, I suppose. It didn´t impact me quite as much as I expected. His Brillo box and Heinz boxes were particularly underwhelming for me and upon further contemplation I though about the people who created the designs on the boxes that Warhol copied. I´m not quite sure what I think of that but it left me questioning the whole point of it. They also screened a film of his but I only watched for a short while as it was the end of the exhibit and Lego Lover was impatient to be done and out of there.  I did like seeing his S&H Green Stamps painting and the self-portraits done in the style of the famous Marilyn Monroe ones but that was the extent of my connection with his work. This really surprised me as I thought it would be more exciting to see his work than it was.

We saw this much earlier in the exhibit but I saved it for last due as the big surprise for me was Jackson Pollock. I first came to be familiar with his work in Art 101 back in college. The memory of sitting in an auditorium looking at images of art works and seeing Pollock´s work for the first time is still quite clear. I couldn´t see the point and it seemed like a work that many of us could easily imitate. I wasn´t particularly excited to see his work at all. But then I did see it and was surprised to find it far more interesting than I would have believed it could be. There were only five or six paintings on display and one of them was clearly in the category of painting that left me quite cold. But I didn´t see that until later. There were two paintings I found rather interesting. One was his painting called The She-Wolf and I was surprised at some of the images I could see hidden within the mess of a painting. It was quite large and I could have looked at it far longer but my impatient companion didn´t allow it. The other painting I found interesting was called Shimmering Substance. While I don´t know if I would be right in saying I liked it, I found it quite fascinating in the way there were so many layers of paint. There were thick layers upon layers and it was almost a three-dimensional work in the way the paint was so textured. I´ve since seen images of the painting and it doesn´t quite capture that texture very well. While I still wouldn´t say I like Pollock´s work as a whole, I certainly got much more out of it than I´d ever have dreamed.

And so we came to the end of the exhibit and I found my way to the service elevator as I wasn´t confident about taking the stairs down at this point. After the suffering Lego Lover went through, I treated him to another quick visit to the WA Museum and his mood improved massively. We plan to return to the museum again and spend much more time there. I´d really like to look more closely at the Aboriginal gallery and also see the exhibit on wedding dresses that is currently being advertised.