I woke up fairly early today, and by early I mean before noon. don't judge. There is such a peacefulness of not having to get up for anything or anyone in the world. I had the window open and was getting a nice breeze. I was finally woken up by the growl of the garbage truck who hissed its "get the hell up" with the release of the air brakes. "Okay, okay i'm getting up. Geesh."
I had to start getting ready to trek to 53rd street for MOMA (Museum of Modern Art). It was a disgusting $25 for an adult ticket but I was okay with that. A wise man recently told me, "Money is meant to be spent." Well, of course this sage just happened to be rich but I'm following his advice nevertheless. I justified the purchase because I had chips and hummus for lunch that i had bought at the grocery the day before. That's saving money, right? Anyway, I love modern art and I needed this date with all the wackadoo genius's that make you look sideways, sigh "hmmms," and chuckle at the giant, penis lying next to a giant pair of scissors-- all that outrageous modern art.
I checked in my bag, and took a final gulp of my water bottle then took out my journal to jot my notes. That's my favorite thing to do, write about what i see...mainly poetry. The technical term of this type of poetry is called Ekphrasis poetry.
I spotted a cover of a book in the Architecture section and this image was the first that grabbed my eyes and ironically ended up being the image of the day for me. Go figure. Let me paint the picture for you:
The image was a bedroom scene. The Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building were stretched out on a bed after a good romping in the sack. The top sheet was off the foot of the bed, and a rubber was on the bottom sheet, hanging off the side---weathered and used. If you looked close enough to the rubber you could see it marked with "Goodyear." The night stand had the Statue of Liberty's arm and torch as the lamp. There was an area rug underneath the bed which was a grid map of NYC. Your eye moved up to the bedroom window where dark night was lit up by the giant heads of people situated on the top of sky scrapers staring into the bedroom where this raw sexual encounter of metal, concrete and glass took place.
It was quite the image and i'm sure you can see why it stuck with me. The image was entitled "Delirious New York."
I think it's the sex that really gets people to go to modern art museums. Its how the upper crust and "educated" get their rocks off. Don't get me wrong, the traditional museums have sexual themes. But back in the day, a ladies elbow was "sexy." Christ, imagine if someone else got elbowed on street in the 1800s. It would be the equivalent of a sexual harassment law suit today.
The traditional museum has naked women. Plenty of them. But that is just a painting, or a sculptor.
Modern art has photography :) and films, and live nude models. Everyone knows its the pictures and films that have the sex. Just ask the pornography business. Cezanne, Renoir, or Monet could never capture a penis or a vagina with their infamous brush strokes like a camera can. Fact.
And in a modern art museum, it's not just pictures of genitalia. It's penis in mouth, or a vagina being clipped by sheers, or a penis on a block of ice, or a vagina holding a rose, or a penis, vagina, butt, vagina, penis. Its a big orgy of body parts in unusual places. And sometimes its just a penis, and a vagina. A real penis. A real vagina. You can be naked in public you know, if it's "art." If you stand there and don't move and have a skeleton at your feet or whatever artistic artifact it may be, you can be just plane naked. People will come up and stare at your weiner and va-jay jay in the name of art.
And it's all deemed intellectual because it's in a museum.
We are a funny species.
We have to put white walls and captions and high browed discussions around a naked body to sooth our guilt ridden conscious.
I want to go up to the people and say, "Go look at porn, or have a one night stand, or look at your naked butt in the mirror. It's flesh. We are flesh. You don't need a museum to see it."
We just have to become comfortable with ourselves. Thats all.
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