Do You Know Your MoMA?
Do You Know Your MoMA? Can you identify these six works in MoMA
How well do you know your MoMA? Above are images of works from the MoMA collection that are currently on view in the galleries. If you think you can identify the artist, title, and location of each work, please submit your answers by leaving a comment on this post. We’ll provide the answers—along with some information about each work—next Friday, along with the next Do You Know Your MoMA? challenge.
Keep in mind that we’re starting with some easy selections, but they’ll get harder as we go along!
19 Comments | Tags: MoMA collection
Arthur Freed, Vincente Minnelli…Tim Burton?
Corpse Bride. 2005. USA/Great Britain. Directed by Tim Burton and Mike Johnson. Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
This year’s Academy Awards telecast paid tribute to horror films—a genre cited by the presenters as often neglected by the Academy—with a clip reel that featured select masterworks of cinema by directors such as Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, and Roman Polanski. As I watched the montage, I caught glimpses from Beetlejuice (1988), Edward Scissorhands (1990), and Sleepy Hollow (1999). Although I found their inclusion to be a bit incongruous among films like The Exorcist, Carrie, Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream, The Ring, and The Blair Witch Project, it nevertheless reaffirmed the popular perception of Tim Burton as a dark, gothic, and macabre filmmaker. Certainly, with Tim’s affinity for skeletons, graveyards, severed heads, and iron maidens—some of the recurrent motifs in his work—the classification of his films into the horror genre would surprise few. However, I propose another genre to be considered when examining Tim’s oeuvre: the musical film. Read more
0 Comments | Tags: Academy Awards, musical, Tim Burton
The Documentary Expands
Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life. 1925. USA. Directed by Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack
These notes accompany The Documentary Expands, which screens on March 10, 11, and 12 in Theater 3.
Calling Merian C. Cooper (1893–1973) and Ernest B. Schoedsack (1893–1979) auteurs may seem like fudging a little bit, but I don’t think it is. Yet the doubt creeps in on two levels. First, while film is undeniably a collaborative medium, the auteur theory argues that there is a singular dominant creator. The bond between these guys, however, seems so seamless in their films as to be almost unique. The other reason for hedging is that they first made their collaborative mark in documentary film, a form that presupposes that the director cannot mold his material as freely as can the maker of narrative films. (It has become obvious in subsequent decades that even the most “pure” cinéma vérité is subject to manipulation at the hands of masters like Jean Rouch or Fred Wiseman.) And it is, of course, true that immediately after Grass, Cooper and Schoedsack began to move away from authentic actuality. Read more
0 Comments | Tags: auteurist, documentary film, Ernest B. Schoedsack, film, Joris Ivens, Merian C. Cooper
Eavesdropping and Poetry in the MoMA Galleries
Matthew Rohrer and Joshua Beckman
“You know who has a really cool Christopher Walken impersonation? Oh wait, you don’t know this person…” “I’m a real bot…” Do you ever catch the tail end of a stranger’s conversation, then begin to weave the rest of the tale on your own? How much do you embellish what might be a very simple story? And have you ever eavesdropped on other people’s conversations at MoMA?
While you might imagine that a lot of the discussions taking place in the Museum galleries have to do with the art on the walls, poets Matthew Rohrer and Joshua Beckman have discovered otherwise. Roaming the Museum and riding its elevators for three days in February and March, they have been snooping on other people’s chatter, and they found that it’s not so much about the art. Many of the conversations are incomprehensible to them, not because Rohrer and Beckman only understand art-speak, but because so many MoMA visitors these days are speaking other languages besides English Read more
0 Comments | Tags: Eavesdrop, Joshua Beckman, Matthew Rohrer, Modern Poets, MoMA Teen Voices Project
Claes Oldenburg: Conservation of Floor Cake (Week 5)
In our previous posts we discussed the materials and methods used by Claes Oldenburg to create Floor Cake, the artist’s unique and popular piece of painted cake currently undergoing conservation treatment here at MoMA. This week, we investigate the properties of Floor Cake’s surface dirt, to help us prepare an optimal cleaning solution to remove dirt and grime from the sculpture’s painted surface.
Floor Cake disassembled during treatment
0 Comments | Tags: acrylic paint, Claes Oldenburg, conductivity, Conservation, Floor Cake, pH, Richard Wolbers
Cubicle Critic: Oscar-Nominated Documentary Shorts
The prized Academy Award® statuette. Image courtesy Oscar.com
“The Oscars are my Super Bowl”—it’s something of a cliché in our media-obsessed world, especially among twenty-something women such as myself, but there you have it anyway. I’m not a football fan, and to me March madness refers to the stir-craziness that inevitably accompanies the last weeks before spring. But a celebration of the silver screen, of stars established and emerging, of glamorous dresses and fashion flops—that I can get behind.
So it’s with particular relish that I see the annual screening of Academy Award–nominated short documentaries at MoMA each year. Apart from being an invaluable research tool for my local, all-in-good-fun Oscar Pool, seeing the nominees in some of the smaller categories is a great way to add some interest to the ever-lengthening Oscars telecast (not to mention the serious cinematic cred it garners you among your friends). Read more
2 Comments | Tags: Academy Awards, documentary filmmaking, film
