An Experience Unlimited
Visiting Mueums and writing about them is my passion. I visited MOMA in October 2001. I find the place easily accessable that is one pre-requisite for any museum to become the soul of the city. Undoubtedly the modernity lies in the naming of the MOMA itself. So you enter the museum with a mind to experience what has not been experienced by you in the past. As I stepped in the veins in my blood got warmed up. I was truly excited to encounter the modernity. I looked around with thousand hearts and million eyes. At that time Giacometti' retrospective was also on view.A part of display of MOMA collection was removed to facilitate the amazing retrospective. Though the loss was mine but then Giacommetti truly desrve this honour. Nevertheless I could see some of the finest masterpieces by Matisse,Cezanne, Gaugin, VanGogh Picasso, Kandinsky, Leger, Pollock, De kooning, Rauschenberg, Rousseau and so forth . So many visionaries' vision of art displayed together. I felt truly enriched. An experience unlimited indeed. It also reinforced the artist in me. Though Ajanta and Ellora in my country superbly manifest the divine powers and supreme genius of the Indian artist but this creative world was quite different. Different in terms of place and time that determines the creation in the mind of the artist.Every work on display there speaks about the truth realised by its creators. An artist who is true to himself does not look for people around to respond to his work. Their artistic expressions evoke a spontaneous response That is the strength of the artist and the statement he has made through his respective medium.
The security staff on duty is very vigil but also sensitive enough that they keep a respectable distance so as to give the viewer necessary freedom to contemplate over the artworks on display for true aesthetic experience.The lighting is right enough to enjoy the display though at places one craves for more viewing space. I sorely missed Picasso's Guernica May 1937 which was on loan for quite sometime. Some of the technology oriented art takes one beyond the perception of the truth and really tests your culturing of art
What I envious is that the significant collection mostly belong to the artists of the west and is confined to MOMA only. I wish the works of some of the contemporary master artists of the east could easily be displayed alongwith these artists so that a world view of art could be seen and experienced in the true spirit of the creativity that knows no bias and bounds.
It's my review of the view of MOMA which has not only renewed me intensily but energise me to have more such encounters. MOMA certainly deserves a pat on its back for their creative vision and understanding of new art for its preservation, projection and promotion and that too at a time when it was surrounded by hostility and uncertainity.
Prem Singh, Painter
Kala Kutir, Garhi, East of Kailash, New Delhi 110065 India