travelswithalice

The lecture on Sculpture covered a lot of ground (as well as a lot of museum floors): from an early Picasso bronze head to a recent MoMA acquisition, Richard Serra's steel floor and ceiling.

Matisse, The Serpentine

Brancusi, The Cock

I love the twisted, awkward female figure by Matisse,  the primitive, sophisticated, clean lines of Brancusi, Giacometti's surreal stage-set-model interpretation of a dream, and Aleksandr Rodchenko's plywood and wire mobile (surely predating Alexander Calder's "invention" of the art form.)  Serra's floor and ceiling, in hot rolled steel, not so much. Even if the museum very solicitously invites the viewer to "please feel free to step on the floor component of this work."

Giacometti,  The Palace at 4 a.m.

Richard Serra, Delineator

I find Meret Oppenheim's fur-covered cup, saucer, and spoon set quite repulsive. But it's also provocative, courageous, and original.  Our lecturer, Joan Pachner, herself a sculptor, declared it her favorite. I think it could be mine too.

Like most really smart people, Ms.Pachner knows how to talk to not-too-smart people. She picked out the most representative subjects, as well as most memorable I guess, to represent the various periods covered.  From an early cubist Picasso to the steel floor-and-ceiling present of Serra.

She may have bristled at my question ("Did she think the artist intended to do all she said the art piece evoked?"), probably finding it smart-alecky. But she'd have been wrong if she thought I lacked respect or appreciation for all these giant icons of art.

I don't subscribe to my late father's oft- expressed disdain of all things modern and abstract in art. (His outburst of "Do these people really think we're all idiots?" is the stuff of family lore but it really does sound better and funnier in Tagalog!)

But neither do I fully subscribe to a lot of the esoteric meanings and significances ascribed to a lot of unimaginative and uninspiring products of mere hype and myth-making in today's art world.