Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) New York City - the Fifth Floor

This really was an artistic treat.  There are 6 floors of exhibitions with lounges and cafe’s and expresso bars.  Lonely Planet tour guide recommended we get tickets on line but I had no way of printing them so decided instead to get to the museum early.  This was a good idea. It opened at 10 am and when we left around 12:30 there was quite a line up for tickets.  $25 for adults and well worth it for the 5th floor alone.  This was the collection galleries 1880 to 1950’s.
I love Paul Klee. I love Marc Chagall. I love Gustav Klimt.    I love the impressionists. I love the post impressionists.  I love the surrealists especially.  It’s all so inspiring.  So we walked around the gallery full of favourites like going to a concert with dozens of stages.  Visually this modern art is like seeing live, Sinatra, Elvis, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, Dylan, Joni Mitchell. It’s that sort of experience.
I love Picasso’s early paintings and his later cubism.  Without knowing what an incredible artist he was in pictures the boy with the horse or his blue period I’d not appreciateh is abstract art.  He’s so accomplished.
Starry Nights by Van Gogh.  There’s the song and here was the original.  Wow!  I loved seeing the surrealist Salvador Dali’s clocks.  Wow!
Seurat and Monet.  So many greats, a generation of artists to choose from and there were a whole lot of lesser known but equally or almost equally as exceptional.  As a result of the world wars there was a lot of repudiation of the modern.  Lots of soul searching and trying to express this.  Surrealism was a dream like exploration with elements of Freud.
A whole room of Matisse.  Matisse’s dancers and the dancers of Degas.  So uplifting. I forgot how much I loved Rousseau until I saw his pictures, thought I love that, and found out it was Rousseau.  And Gauguin of course, The Frenchman’s dream come true. We just fell in love with the Fifth Floor and had more floors yet to go.  Unbelievably rich eye candy, mind changing, soulful experience.

Pushkinsky Art Gallery, Moscow

Barrett’s friend, who produces military uniforms, recommended this museum as having ‘great art’.  He really encouraged us to go.  I’m so glad he did.  We’d considered going to the sauna instead.  High art won out as it should.
I was so moved by the paintings. First there were Cezanne’s.  So many in one place. I’d studied art history at University. I’m fairly learned. I visit museums around the world.  I just haven’t seen so many of these greats in one place.  Several Paul Gaugin’s.  Then the Renoir that I bought as a poster, back in undergraduate,  and had frameless on my student digs wall.  I loved that poster. And here it was, the real thing. I had tears in my eyes.  Lots of it was nostalgia for those romantic years. That time of innocence.  Renoir is so soft and sensuous.  He gives life to the mundane.
Then came Degas. The dancer in me was thrilled by the perspective.  Van Gogh. The good stuff.  And a blue period, Picasso. I’d never seen a real blue period.  In books I’d read about it.  I saw so many of his later Cubist works in Spain. Here was the great Violin. But this blue period painting moved me.  Then Matisse flashed out at me.  I was alive in the summer fun of all that colour. Chagall took me to another place. All around Rodin Sculpture showed up as a surprise.  There were so many different paintings, different periods, but all great art.
So much.  I loved this museum. I loved this art.  I felt so blessed to see originals.  I tried to explain to Barrett the story of the Impressionists, how their works weren’t accepted in the annual referreed 1900 art exhibit, how they had to have their own show. How this show was a success and eventually we don’t know the artists who were chosen most by the ‘referees’.  But we all know these Impressionists.  The same revolution that hit art is happening all over again with the internet, self publishing, INDY music.  The middle men are being sidelined and the audience is directly expressing their preferences.  Unknowns are showing up all over just as the Impressionists once did.  They wanted to ‘see’ things ‘differently’.  And they did. Now we all see differently .  Art expands our horizons and we’re never seeing things, or knowing things,  the same .
I was moved by the art in this museum, moved as I’ve sometimes been, by the finest of art and best of exhibits. I love the curator. I love the way these paintings were placed.  I loved everything about this museum.  After I had to go to a cafe, sit, drink coffee and let it all settle, that emotional soulful shaking up.  What an experience.
!