Visit to MoMA

I spent the afternoon at MoMA yesterday in order to go see the Richard Serra Exhibition with my son Sebastian. There can be no doubt about his mastery and brilliance as a sculptor and a craftsman. He's one of our best and it is a treat to be living in New York with access to this show and many others just a few train stops away.

I have a confession though. I found the work physically nauseating. From the moment I walked into the interior space a was hit with a wave of nausea. I would have attributed it to the bad pizza my son and I shared while waiting for the line to go down, but he began to spin around saying how dizzy he was. The vertigo created by the shift in spacial reference upon entering them was physically overwhelming.

Favorite piece in the show though is upstairs on the 6th floor. It's titled "Dilineator". It is as if Serra was issued an impossible challenge: Two steel plates, no welding, no finishing-must tranform a room. It's quiet solemn dignity and opulence in one package.

The trip also served as a research trip. I was able to look at an Ellsworth Kelly that in part inspired the "portrait" I have done. I've got a few things wrong. One, there are no perceptible brush strokes in his surface-mine is full of them. Two, the colors were separated by painting them on separate canvases and the joined together. I also was able to look at one Chuck Close, though not a painting, in the "What is a painting?" exhibit. Three; my Jasper Johns needs more collage, plywood, and gesso. That will have to be for the next study.