Day 6 - NYC to Atlanta
Monday, January 12, 2015
Since we had to stay in NYC until Monday, we decided to get an evening flight and take another excursion into Manhattan on Monday. We rode the airport shuttle to JFK and left our bags with the bag check service again (because it was too early to check them with the airline) and then took the train into Manhattan to visit the Museum of Modern Art.
I'm not much of a fan of really modern art, like where the artist just glues some trash to a canvas and calls it a day, but the early modern art (Renoir, Monet, Van Gogh, Picasso, Mondrian, etc.) is right in the wheelhouse of stuff that I enjoy, so I really liked most of the art at MOMA. It's hard to get good photos of paintings in a museum, and there are of course much better representations of this stuff online, but these were some things that really stood out to me and Julie, with that "hey, we were standing in front of that!" realism.
- I loved the soft, blurry colors in this painting by Cezanne.
- It was cool how the painting continued onto the frame in this pointillist painting by Seurat.
- Van Gogh's Starry Night has been a long-time favorite, so it was awesome to actually stand in front of the real thing.
- I don't know where I first saw this striking Rousseau painting, but it was very familiar to me.
- Apparently this Boccioni painting is a representation of a soccer player. I dunno, I just thought it looked cool.
- I've always liked Dali, and The Persistence of Memory is one of his best known works. Another one where it was exciting to see it in person.
- This Magritte painting caught my eye because of the light, and the solidity of the buildings, and the puffy clouds.
- Mondrian: art engineers can appreciate.
- A giant Monet water lilies painting.
- Another very familiar painting, Christina's World by Andrew Wyeth.
- I like Warhol, and I also like soup.
- This simple painting by Edward Ruscha expresses a lot.
- My former boss, Brad, had a print of this Lichtenstein painting, based on a comic from the 1960s, on the wall in his office.
- Finally, the point where I lost interest in the exhibits: a chair made of penises.
The museum's not so large as to be overwhelming – we went through some of it, had lunch in the museum's restaurant, and then went through the rest of it. (It helps that the stuff that I'm less interested in is at the end.) Then we took the train back to the airport, got our bags, and flew home from a short but very rewarding and successful trip.