Reactions to the Modern Wing

Last weekend, I finally made it to the Art Institute to see the new Modern Wing. It has that wonderful newly-constructed smell, and I found the layout and architecture very open and aesthetically pleasing. The third floor houses my favorite modern art, including the Picassos. The first two floors house some very enjoyable art, as well, but I sometimes have difficulty with modern art. Sometimes, I have difficulty accepting some modern art as “art,” and my friend Bala and I are like-minded on this point; frankly, we had a hard time keeping it together in there. We tried to keep our jokes to ourselves, but I’m quite sure I saw some exasperated glances shooting in our direction as we struggled to keep our laughter under control.

There’s a fine line between splattering paint on a canvass and calling it art, and creating a work that actually means something. For instance, some artists really know how to “splatter paint” in a way that creates a profound effect on the viewer—they are deliberate but make it look effortless. There is such a painting housed in the Walker Museum in Minneapolis. I wish I remembered the artist’s name, but it was a completely abstract painting about human atrocities and it created a sour feeling in the pit of my stomach before I even read the placard. That painting has always resonated with me.

But sometimes, I am wide-eyed at what we consider worthy of housing in a museum. During our stroll on the third floor, I overheard a museum guide discussing Duchamp’s famous fountain (which is where my ambivalence to modern art began at the Tate Modern in 2002), and the artist’s challenge to the question “What makes art art?” I never actually knew that the point of a signed urinal, according to the museum guide, was to challenge whether a signature on an object would make it a piece of art (in fact, from what I've read, that wasn't exactly the point of it). How ironic that a replica of the urinal (no one seems to know the location of the original) is now housed in a famous museum. Maybe a signature can make anything art.

Of course, strolling through other areas of the Art Institute, including the ancient Greek, Egyptian, and Asian exhibits, many of those pieces of art are household objects that were used in day-to-day tasks in their respective cultures, as well. Were those household objects considered art in their day? Are they only worthy of that status now because they are rare? It makes me wonder if my manufactured plates, dug up hundreds of years from now, will be considered worthy of preservation in an art museum.