Alexa Neal
Visual Art Conservatory
25 February 2018
Art Museum Visit Essay
For my art gallery/museum visit assignment, I wanted to travel to someplace that was one of a kind, and not just any average exhibit, which is usually comprised of similar art styles in a more classical era. So, after much deliberation and scrolling through various museums near my house, I decided on The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art(MOMA), one of the largest museums of modern and contemporary art in the United States. The building is located in downtown San Francisco in the SoMa district and the exhibit is seven floors tall, and has both temporary and permanent exhibits. MOMA closed in 2013 for an expansion project and reopened on May 14, 2016, three years later where the new building doubled the size of the old one and opened new opportunities for art-filled public spaces. It was founded in 1935 by a person named Grace L. McCann Morley and until 1995, it took residence in the War Memorial Veterans Building and moved to 151 Third Street, its current location. The museum contains various mediums and styles of art with works by Henri Matisse, Frida Kahlo, Paul Klee, Andy Warhol, Jean Dubuffet, Jackson Pollock, and many more.
The museum of Modern Art contains countless pieces of work, some even close to realism while others are questionable and “emotion-provoking”. A piece by Jean Dubuffet called Visage Scarifié or The Scarified Face was painted with oil paint in 1951. It is supposed to portray a face, filling he entirety of the canvas with almost unrecognizable facial features. This is one of the many paintings that the artist made in the style of Art Brut or raw art where its goal was made to narrow the gap between normal and abnormal and provoke feelings of passion, violence, paranoia, and instinct. Another painting that I found interesting was Femme au chapeau or Woman With a Hat by Henri Matisse. The piece was first shown in Paris in 1905 and created controversy with its bright, distracting colours depicting his wife Amélie. It is known to be one of the first painting to almost define modernism, straying away from more classical and dull toned works. The majority of the third floor showcased a woman named Vija Celmins and her work in a temporary exhibit. She was born in 1988 and has been making paintings, prints, and models for more than 60 years. Celmins started her career in Los Angeles and moved to New York and constantly switched between mediums, making well-known works in the way. She is best known for referencing and reducing large expanses of the night sky and the oceans into small pieces. Some pieces in modern art may s...
