I went yesterday to the Museum of Modern Art to see their big exhibit of photographs and photo montages by Cindy Sherman. Ever helpful old friend "D" by my side…certainly the visually impaired exhibit hound can use some inspired kibitzing when at the museum. Mostly I'd trouble the guards by leaning as close as I could, getting my nose just inches from the works. & by turns much of Cindy Sherman's work demands standing at a distance.
Her work is aggressively homely–her oeuvre, stylized, tricked out self portraits that feel like grand guignol meets the city of the Etruscans– every version of Cindy is overly determined, too much makeup, fright wigs, haute couture gone to seed, Miss Havisham shopping on the upper East side and the daylight that illuminates her, unmerciful.
So affecting is Cindy Sherman that she colonizes everything you subsequently see. Leaving MOMA we saw massive window advertisements at the children's GAP and Lo! The "tween" girls presented there, as if dressed for spring, looked starved and looted, just as any of Sherman's steroidal, late Capitalist self-portraits. All day Cindy Sherman was everywhere, casting a pall over the optimism of Fifth Avenue.
Planet of the Blind 
…and did I mention that she’s also strikingly beautiful? If I didn’t, it’s just because I don’t generally put too much stock in such things.
LikeLike
My dear, sweet, wonderful, intelligent niece, when she was just a wee, small lass visiting the Boston MFA, attempted to clean-up a sloppy shard of paper hanging off one of Jasper Johns’ “Flag” Collages. The guard came down on her like Godzilla death-beamed the inhabitants of Tokyo. I blame all of her current teen miseries on this one defining and devastating moment in her past. Had we only known the inherent dangers of art museums, we would have left her at the motel that afternoon!
LikeLike
Not too long ago, the low vision rehab specialist on her day off visited LACMA for the Monet/Lichtenstein at Rouen Cathedral exhibit.* I was sitting on a bench next to a guard who was repeatedly and patiently imploring people not to lean so close to the paintings that they would set off the (unmarked and annoyingly loud) audio alarm. The problem was this, I explained to her: The captions next to the artwork are small enough that they can’t be read from farther than a three-foot viewing distance. The alarm is set to go off when people are 18 inches or closer to the artwork. The average person over the age of 75, wearing their correct distance correction doesn’t have the ability to focus on objects closer than three feet away. But the bifocal segment in their eyeglasses usually demands a viewing distance of 14-16″. Hence the guard was systematically harassing most of the inquisitive people over the age of 75 years.
She looked at me, marched off, and came back with a comment card, asking me to please write-in my comments so that the people who set up the blankety-blank security system would read them.
Really, what’s more important: jillion dollar artworks or people’s appreciation of them? If they wanted me to, I could easily replicate most of the art that might possibly be damaged by overzealous viewing, so what’s the big deal?
*http://www.lacma.org/art/exhibition/monetlichtenstein-rouen-cathedrals
LikeLike