A broad, sweeping show is on now through May at the Museum of Contemporary Art in downtown Los Angeles;
MOCA- the first 30 years. My goal with this post is to get you to go see it. And to take your kids with you.
First let's address a few reasons you might have for not going:
"My kids won't go for that" This one's easy. You're the parent. They don't want to go? Tough. If it helps you can promise them a treat from MOCA's branch of
Lemonade - a cupcake or a cookie or something. And tell them there's a room in the show made out of chocolate. It's true, scroll down...
"It's going to be boring. " The show is anything but boring. Important, exciting, bewildering, frustrating, gross, cool, troubling, informative, disgusting, scary, interesting, fun, and weird, yes. But not boring.
Then there's the most common reason people have for not going to a museum - "I don't like all that stuff, especially the modern art. And I don't get it anyway. I mean I could do most of that for God's sake!" Or - as my 9 year old said more than once, "Why is this in a
museum.
It looks like a baby did it!" He loves to be dramatic but his perspective is totally fair, and not just because he's a kid. To be honest, there were a few things I don't get myself...
Sometimes I think Jeff Koons is one of the great hoaxes of the 20th century
Putting personal feeling aside for a moment ( back to these later) there are a few things it helps to know as you approach a show like
MOCA, the first 30 years. If you have an art history background this next part is not for you - skip down to the parent suggestions on how best to approach the show.
First, a lot of contemporary art is what is called conceptual. This means, simply, that you need to know what the artist was thinking about, what her concept was, when the work was created. If you don't understand the concept, you won't get what the artist is trying to do. You might like (or hate) a piece of art on its own, simply because of what it looks like or what feelings it evokes in you, but you won't fully understand it.
Sometimes the intellectual ideas behind the art will be easy to get, like when Andy Warhol made his silk-screened multiples to comment on advertising images and their power in popular culture and to revisit Marcel Duchamp's challenge to the viewing public that anything, elevated and called art, suddenly was art.
Easy and fun, right? But sometimes trying to get the concept feels like a lot of work. Like when you take the time to read the museum's wall plaque laying out the artist's thought process and you can't make heads or tails of the art lingo gobbledy-gook. This can put a lot of people off art.
Secondly, it really helps to know something about the
context.
Franz Kline
Knowing the context of a piece of art means knowing both what came before it and what else was being done at or around the same time it was made. Why, for example, was Jackson Pollock's work so important?
While it's true that Pollock did the physical work of painting in a totally new way, often laying the canvas on the floor and standing over it splashing, splattering and squeezing paint, in a technique that came to be known as "action painting," much of the real significance of the pictures themselves is in their context. Pollock is famous in part because of what came before him and what else was going on at the time he was working - namely,
nothing like the work he was compelled to do. His stuff matters because there wasn't anything else like it, it was totally new. If you don't know that, how fresh and original and even shocking his pictures were, you might just see large canvasses filled with colorful, dripped paint. You might like it, you might not, but unless you are aware of the context you won't understand how significant the work was and why it continues to hold a place in history.
Now, while there is no doubt in my mind that taking the time to learn a little something about what you can see at MOCA will give you a richer experience, if the idea of "having to learn something" puts you off museum going - don't do it, just go to the museum.
You don't need to work hard to have a
good experience, either at MOCA or any other museum. And don't let anybody tell you differently. You know that old saying "I know what I like?" This is a totally valid way of experiencing art. You don't need to understand something intellectually to have an authentic experience with it, whether we're talking about painting, music, dance, whatever. You will have a
different experience if you know something about what you're looking at. You may, often will, have a better experience. But in some cases (whether artists and curator like this or not) conceptual/contextual info might actually
lessen the emotional impact a piece has for you. And, for me, at least initially, the emotional reaction is the most important one. So please, don't let "I don't understand it" keep you from MOCA. Go to the show, walk around and see how you feel. That's it. If you find something you love and you want to learn a little bit about it MOCA has done a wonderful job of placing the exhibit's catalog on benches throughout the show. But if you don't, you, and your kids, will still enjoy yourselves. Your feelings are enough.
This, in my opinion, is as good a way to enjoy and experience art as any other.
Rothko usually makes me feel very peaceful, but kids have their own ideas...
This is the chocolate room!
How to approach the show with young kids-
There are some things in this big show that make it especially appealing for kids. This is one of them.
Chocolate Room, one of several kid-friendly installations, is a space paneled in silk-screened chocolate. You've got to smell it, it's wonderful. This work, by Los Angeles based artist Ed Ruscha, is reason enough to take your kids to MOCA and I can practically guarantee that no matter how much they complained about having to go to a museum they will love this room.
Another of my kids' favorites was an installation by Bruce Nauman called
4 Corner Piece. It's a series of white hallways, video cameras and TV monitors that's really fun to spend some time with.
And there is a really cool and slightly chilling work called
RM 669 by Doug Wheeler. You need to take you shoes off to enter.
Let your kids stay in there as long as they want to (as long as they are not wrestling or something) Ask them questions and see how they feel. The piece is designed to change your perceptions, to shake them up. See what happens for you.
My older son loved the pieces by Robert Rauschenberg known as "Combines." These pieces incorporate painting, sculpture and collage and they are both kid-friendly and kid accessible. Bright, clear and easy to get.
Now a
parental warning. Not everything is kid friendly. MOCA has, for example, a large collection of
Diane Arbus photographs. Depending on your child's age you may want to avoid them (as with my 9 year old) or use them to have a brief but interesting conversation with an 11 year old about the difference between art and exploitation (Diane Arbus annoys me.) Actually there is quite a lot of photography that kids under 12 don't need to see at all so be aware of what's coming up as you move along. Helen Levitt and Robert Frank - yes.
Catherine Opi and Larry Clark - no.
MOCA the first 30 years is happening at both museum locations. The largest section, 1940 to 1980, is at MOCA 250 South Grand Ave. Direction and hours are available here -
http://www.moca.org/museum/visit_home.php
The other section, 1980 to the present, is at the Geffen Contemporary - 152 North Central Ave.
http://www.moca.org/museum/moca_geffen.php
At the risk of sounding totally uncool I suggest that unless they really want to go you don't take you kids to the Geffen Contemporary. In my opinion there is not enough worth seeing at the Geffen to drag already tired kids to a part 2, and quite a bit that would be upsetting. Bear in mind that I am no prude. We happily took our boys to the Murakami exhibit with its huge breasts and giant ejaculating figures. But there are a few things that kids just shouldn't see and Paul McCarthy's Santa/Christmas installation is one of them.
While I am cautioning against the Geffen I must mention an artist I love whose contribution to the 30 years show is found here.
Felix Gonzalez-Torres' piece,
Untitled (corner of Baci), is exactly what it says; a corner of the floor loaded up with a pile of Baci chocolate. I first saw Gonzalez-Torres' work years ago at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He had created two portraits of lost friends, one a pile of red candy and one a pile of green. I was so deeply moved by this simple, beautiful work. How much more dear to a person could you be than to be envisaged as a pile of candy? How beautiful to be seen that way by strangers who are then invited to take a piece of the work, a piece of someone's idea of you. To unwrap you and savor you and find that you are so familiar and yet, now, totally new. These works have stuck with me for years and I was happy to see another Gonzalez-Torres piece. At the Geffen Contemporary you are invited to take a piece of the Baci, and it was great to see my kid's faces as the guard told them to do it. If you do decide to take in the Geffen be sure not to miss the experience of this piece.
I hope you will take advantage of the treasure Los Angeles has in MOCA. MOCA, the first 30 years runs through May 3, 2010. Hours etc. available here -
http://www.moca.org/
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