Bing: “I’m sorry, but Pi and Bard are both wrong. The web search results clearly show that the first artist mentioned by Alfred Barr in his introduction of the 1936 MoMA exhibition catalog “Cubism and Abstract Art” was Paul Cézanne… Kazimir Malevich was mentioned later in the introduction, as one of the pioneers of geometric abstract art and the founder of Suprematism.”
Category Archives: MoMA
Once when Salon was Salon
AI Remembering Salon de Fleurus
Bing:“The Salon de Fleurus was a fascinating and mysterious place, where art and culture converged in a simulacra of the past. It was a place where visitors could experience the beauty and mystery of the Parisian salon in a New York apartment.“
AI Modern Art
Some time ago when became possible to have AI generated images I tried it with the names of some well-known artists of modern art, Malevich, Mondrian and Duchamp. These were images vaguely resembling works of those artists, and it didn’t occur to me to try some chat box that was available, to generate text that would accompany these images Instead I made a few copies of AI generated “Malevich” and “Mondrian” on paper using color pencils and presented all this in my post “Modern Art” Made in AI. These days with all the excitement regarding Chat GPT and improved image generating algorithms thought I could try again AI relation/ interpretation of Modern art using both, a conversation with Chat GPT and images produced by the Stable Diffusion. This time I was focused on modern art in general, the Museum of Modern Art and the Russian-Soviet Avant-garde movements.
A Story of Two Museums
Unlike a tale or a myth, in which time could be undefined or cyclical, history is a story about the past organized chronologically and populated by unique characters, objects and events. And unlike a tale or a myth, it is presented as objective recollections of events from the past. Most of the museum exhibits today are organized chronologically along a linear time line having an open end toward the future.
However, there is no such thing as an objective history. Histories are constructed from a certain perspective and we should not confuse a history as a story with the event that it’s describing.
What is Modern Art?
One day, a long time ago, when young Alfred Barr, Jr. was in Paris, he visited Gertrude Stain in her Salon. During the conversation he told Gertrude about the plans for establishing the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Puzzled she looked at him with a smile: “That’s nice, but I don’t understand how it can be both, museum and modern?”
Remembering Modernity…
The old wunderkammer was a collection of (usually) disconnected exhibits, each one with its own specific story. The new one could be a graph-like structure with some of its exhibits connected in certain ways, either through their narratives or the way they are put on display and in this way getting additional layer(s) of meaning. And new exhibits might be added to the network or removed from it. The main question remains: what kind of vision of the future might be presented/ articulated through this kind of the display? Most likely, it could, one way or another reinterpret/ reinvents the Middle Ages and at the same time remember the Modernity, the way previously Modernity reinvented and actualized Antiquity while remembering the Middle Ages.
Modern Art – Unfinished
“I dislike a picture that is too suave or too skilfully done. But contrariwise, I also dislike a picture that looks too inept or too blundering. I noticed in looking at the Carre(gallery) exhibition of young French painters who are suppose to be close to this(our) group, that in “finishing” a picture they assume traditional criteria to a much grater degree than we do. They have a real “finish” in that the picture is real object, a beautifully made object. We are involved in “process” and what is “finished” object is not so certain.” – Robert Motherwell
MoMA Made in China
…Since this Museum of Modern Art consists of copies, it is not a museum of the past. It is rather a museum of the future. Moreover, by being modern and non-modern at the same time, it is the only real memory of modern art, the only true Museum of Modern Art in the entire world. This is how it happened that this Great Nation unexpectedly got not only its Modern art, but at the same time its first Museum of Modern Art as well…. From the Tales of the Artisans
The Making of Modern Art
Once, in the early age of modernity, there was a civilization that invented the art as a way of reflecting the world. Art was understood as an intellectual activity expressed through painting and sculpture by specially gifted individuals named artists. In order to show works of art, first the galleries and exhibitions had to be invented. Then, the art market and the museums emerged and a notion of art spread to all epochs and civilizations.
Walter Benjamin – The Unmaking of Art
The departure beyond the art domain will most likely take some time, until the new categories, new concepts are established and new stories about the past (re)invented, stories that will offer different visions of the future. But not all the stories will take us to the same place. A story like the Art History brought us here and from now on it would be wise to understand the choices we make and the consequences of the stories we decide to follow. Who knows, perhaps the future will always remain a prelude.
What was Modern Art? 