Walking Around: Like a Glock With Them Fries?

One: Number 31, Jackson Pollack

©copyright2011TWMcDemott

"Those who understand the mysteries of art are made happier by doing so"- Roy R. Neuberger

There is a planet on which inhabitants feel a real sense of comfort in being able to grab a cheeseburger, fries and a Glock with ammo in the same store with little difficulty. They just never know when some rabbit or deer is going to jump their nuclear pickup on the way home. They want to be prepared for all eventualities, of course, but it also just feels great for them to know they're packing and can blow something to smithereens. This gives them a sense of clarity in a chaotic universe. Talk about aliens.

Reportedly, these folks live in our galaxy. I am one Silly Rabbit who hopes they don't visit Earth anytime soon.

Admittedly though, we all live in that same chaotic universe. When I get a little frazzled, I grab the 9:46 to the city, rather than my holster, and head for a museum. This week it was for a return visit to MOMA's Abstract Expressionist show. Funny thing, but the more abstractly weird our "real" world gets, the more these AE artists seem to be painting with focused clarity.

Where I once saw confusion in Jackson Pollack's One: Number 31, shown above, I now see more rhythm than blues. Where it once seemed like a canvas full of questions, it now seems like a google full of answers. It looks to me like a picture of life, true love,  a snow storm, landscape of bare trees, and just colored lines of paint perfectly dropped. Well, after all, it took 31 tries.

Above right,  is a picture of a piano I saw at MOMA. If you look closely, you will see that it has a hole in its middle. The hole allowed Guillermo Calzadilla to stand inside the piano. Why would he want to do that? To play the 4th Movement of Beethoven's 9th Symphony backwards and upside down that's why.
Did I mention that he does this while walking around? He does. Talk about Silly Rabbits.

Is this great art? Who cares, it's fun, like the circus. Performance art is the reality TV of the museum world, and much of it is pretentious, boring or downright sacrilegious. It is the product of having too many curators with too much time on their hands and too many other curator friends to impress.

But, following a live Walkman, while he plays Ode To Joy works as long as we keep in mind that Beethoven's music is the real real thing and Guillermo is but a clever gent with an unusual talent.

If you do not have the time or the extra cash, a visit to MOMA is a very inexpensive way to visit Europe. Many of the visitors one encounters are actually Europeans and many others are Americans, who want to appear European.

You can feel pretty certain that nobody in this crowd is packing a weapon despite the amazing fact that there is absolutely no real security whatsoever at MOMA, as there is in every building lobby surrounding it.

That is the way we use to live. Talk about another planet. That alone is worth the price of admission. Ode To Joy, indeed.