Guggenheim Experience

This past Saturday I visited the well-known New York museum, The Guggenheim, and had quite an enjoyable experience. It was helpful going with someone with a little background knowledge in art as well as having the free audio tour device that discussed certain pieces throughout the museum. The audio device often pointed out things that I would have otherwise overlooked. That is one reason I love art--one piece can mean something different for each individual, and there are some pieces that are so intricate that the meaning may change each time it is viewed and new things are discovered in it.

There are a few pieces that stood out to me in particular:

* Julie Mehretu: Grey Area Exhibit - On a huge canvas she combines precise architectural lines with abstract forms. The use of different materials creates texture and adds density to her paintings. As the Guggenheim pamphlet states about Mehretu's work, "The images seem to exist at a horizon where the work could either plunge into dense obscurity or nearly disappear into an ethereal cloud of dust. Yet a remarkable sense of pictorial space always exists in Mehretu's paintings, created not just by their layering but also by the contrasts inherent in them." My favorite painting of Mehretu that was displayed actually reminded me of the movie Inception the way the buildings folded into one another.

* Pablo Picasso's Woman with Yellow Hair - At first glance I was not impressed with this piece, but it is with thanks to the museum's audio player for giving some of the background story that made me see it with new eyes. The girl in the painting is Picasso's mistress and it shows the girl in an innocent, vulnerable state of sleep. What is also unique about this painting is the few lines used to create the body of the girl. Every line and brush stroke is fluent and precisely round. The gentleness of the strokes resembles the peacefulness of the girl at rest.

*Vincent van Gogh's Mountains at Saint-Remy - Something about this 1889 painting intrigued me. Perhaps it was the rounded mountains that seem to be melting and the quaint tucked-away house and flower garden with his signature sunflowers located at the base of the mountains that give life to the painting. Or maybe it is oddly van Gogh's struggle with mental illness that makes me look more carefully at his work. Either way, I liked seeing Mountains at Saint Remy in person at The Guggenheim, and it may or may not have led me to do a little biography research.


Of course I did not like every painting I saw at The Guggenheim. In fact, I didn't really care for the entire abstract section at the museum. But overall, I was very pleased with the wide variety of artwork displayed. I definitely recommend it to others who are into art or are at least curious to learn a little about art. I also recommend picking up the audio device as it was very helpful.