My Favorite Paintings at New York Museum of Modern Art (MOMA)

One of my favorite museums is the New York Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), of whose early 20th century European painting collections I am particularly partial.

My most favorite was a triptych by the German painter Max Beckmann, the mystical and political Departure (1933-35). These beautifully rendered hallucinatory, menacing, foreboding, and just slightly hopeful and redemptive panels, aptly and sadly captured one of the most horrifying moments of human history. These paintings were the answers to the art's existential question.



Less tense, yet no less disquieting, an early Picasso, Boy Leading a Horse (1905-06) from his Rose Period, also registered with me highly. Without any covering and protection, a slender youth and a lean and graceful horse, both economically outlined and modeled, wandered in an abstract landscape — a pale pink expanse of a barren field under a grave and leaden sky.  The high horizon enabled the pink boy fully merged with the pink field thus a harmony, and that also contributed to make the atmosphere less menacing; rather, a prevalent melancholy and a tinge of sadness permeated the canvas. The subtle and subdued beauty, the quietly riveting drama generated by the contrasting colors and moods, made one's heart ache.




My Favorite Museum Collection Series
>> My Favorite Museum Collection Series 139: My Favorite Paintings at The Frick Collection, New York City
<< My Favorite Museum Collection Series 137: My Favorite Sculptures at Han Yangling (Han Dynasty Yang Tomb) in Xianyang, Shaanxi, China

List of My Favorite Artworks in the Museums I've Visited

Other Related posts on Art · 文化 · Kunst:
- Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), New York City 
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- Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele in Wien (Vienna)
- Sunflower Seeds by Ai Weiwei at Tate Modern, London
- Last Trip to a Museum in 2012 - The William S. Paley Collection: A Taste for Modernism at De Young Museum in San Francisco
- "The Steins Collect" Exhibit in San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)
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My Favorite Paintings from Musée Picasso, Paris

On the busiest day of my first trip to Paris, I "raided" five museums and was only able to visit four of them, since the fifth was closed for renovation.  One of those five museums was Musée national Picasso Paris, inside the Hotel Salé, located in the Marais, one of the historic districts of Paris.

There were works from many periods of Picasso's long career in the museum.  Being partial to his more figurative works, my top choices went to his portrait and his figurative paintings.  My top choice was a portrait, named "Olga pensive", which was marvelously understated, yet charged with inner tension, manifested by the angular angles formed by his bent head and arms.  The outline of the figure, particularly her left arm, was fluid, eloquent and engaging.  Her pale skin, setting off her maroon hair and the deep blue dress dramatically.  I also liked the way Picasso cast the shadows on the sitter's arms, neck and chin - gently gradated, and beautifully textured.


Olga pensive, 1923, 1933

The second piece was a dramatic curtain he designed for Diaghilev Ballet Russes.  It showcased two monumental women, with impossibly round and strong limbs and torsos, running in the most excited fashion and in impossibly wonderful poses.  I loved the sheer immensity of the figures and the weight they carried about.  They were the primal goddesses, the essence of the existence of the earth and the human race.


Deux femmes courant sur la plage (La course), (Two Women Running on the Beach (The Race)) 1922 (été)


My Favorite Museum Collection Series 

>> My Favorite Museum Collection Series 34: My Favorite Sculptures at Cimetière du Père-Lachaise, Paris
<< My Favorite Museum Collection Series 32: My Favorite Sculptures at Musée Rodin, Paris

List of My Favorite Artworks in the Museums I've Visited