The queue at the American Museum of Natural History (is that where Ross worked in Friends?) was so long we decided to cut across the park and go the Guggenheim. We had intended to make this a relatively restful day, but we ended up walking about as much as we have on the previous two days. I must be getting fit, at least I would be if it wasn't for the burgers and beer.
The Guggenheim was dominated by a display of the works of
Kandinsky, an artist that I am not overly familiar with, who was one of the pioneers of abstract art. Once again we were given audio guides, which I was really hoping might be narrated by the same Tony Soprano style character that had informed us about the sights from the top of the Empire State Building, but instead we got some dry and serious academics taking us through the paintings. I was glad of this as it really helped make sense of what was going on. The paintings that had commentary about them made a lot more sense than the ones that didn't. I wish all art galleries had this for all paintings, to inform numbskulls like me what we are looking at. I suspect that at some point there might be an iPhone application that will give details of every painting and tourist attraction in the world.
I preferred the building to the paintings, which winds upwards like the inside of a shell. It's actually a great way to see a retrospective of an artist's career starting from the bottom and circling ever upwards. I also enjoyed the way you could look back down where you'd come from and see the paintings from a distance. Kadinsky's stuff seems to make more sense viewed from a distance. I got into mild trouble for taking a photo of the opposite end of the building. "Absolutely no photos," said the young guard gruffly.
"Oh sorry. I was taking a picture of the building not the paintings," I offered.
"You can only take photos from the ground floor."
"I didn't realise. Sorry sir," I concluded without sarcasm. This little mark of respect seemed to confuse the younger man or at least placate him and he melted a little. Meanwhile a camera flashed every five seconds. No one else knew about the policy either and the other guards seemed to have wearily accepted it.
I warmed to Kadinsky a little, even though the sheer volume of paintings was overwhelming. I started seeing things amongst the strange daubings, planets or imaginary protazoa or exploding space craft. I don't think much of it was what I was meant to be seeing, but maybe the point of abstract art is that you see whatever you see. It is interesting to strip an art form down in such a way and try and usurp all previous rules. There is something to learn from that perhaps for whatever branch of art one works in, even if it is the cock joke.
Kadinsky lived through interesting times, displaced from country to country by the Russian Revolution and the rise of the Nazis. My favourite thing about him was that his final works, painted in Paris during the Nazi occupation were bright and colourful and gave no indication of the horrors going on in the world. I liked that contrariness or at least not going down the obvious route of bleak horror, maybe showing that even in awful times there is beauty and lightness. Or that you don't have to go down the obvious route. I don't think Kadinsky ever did that. I found most of his work baffling even with the commentary. But in the end was responding to it emotionally which I believe is partly what he was after.
