Art: MoMa, Oldenburg, and Other Works

Did you like Mickey Mouse as a kid? OK, I'll ruin that for you.

I was cleaning off my iPhone to make room for the new iOS update, when I found a bunch of old pics from a trip to MoMa (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_of_Modern_Art), back in the Spring. I'd gone to see the infamous painting "The Scream", by Edward Munch (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-scream.html). It sucked. So did this big weird Mickey Mouse flag (totally creepy) and an installation piece by Claes Oldenburg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claes_Oldenburg. Useless, and so much time and money spent on it! I'm no snob, and I have a wide range of artistic tastes, but I'll admit I have a bias towards beauty. That's the nature girl in me.

For weird stuff, I'm usually looking for a sense of humor, but all I found in the big dumb Mickey Mouse head installation that I walked through were a bunch of sandwiches made out of clay and stuff, painstakingly recreated for God Knows What, when a real sandwich would have made me so much happier. Not big on the whole tongue-in-cheek hipster rich kid Pop Art scene. I don't get it. Why blow your time and money on this?!

Barbara Kruger and The American Identity. Who the @$ck are you?!

Other works were as powerful as the first time I discovered them, like designer/artist Barbara Kruger (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Kruger#Career_in_magazine_design), and her graphic works that take a searing bite out of American Commercialism. Now that's irony I understand because, you know, it actually says something meaningful.

Riffing off type. Cool! I dig it.

Years ago, I did a freelance stint for a museum, and it gave me a keen appreciation for exhibition graphics. The coolest shots I got were abstractions based on wall graphics for various shows. And that's why I design books, I guess.

Oldenburg exhibit wall graphics.

What jazzes you? 

Take and look and see: http://www.pinterest.com/mariedoucette/art/.