"Psycho killer"? Qu'est-ce que c'est?

We went to the Museum of Modern Art today. It was awesome. I hadn't been in there since they re-designed it and upped the prices, but even if I hadn't got in by claiming to be a student (and therefore paying the $8-cheaper student price) it would have been worth it.

They were having a Richard Serra mini-retrospective, though I guess it's as big as any Richard Serra retrospective could ever get (what with his work over the last twenty years being huge). The show took over the sculpture garden, part of the second floor, and part of the sixth floor. The urge to touch fifteen-feet-tall ribbons of rusting metal was great indeed. You wouldn't think so. You'd think, "Touching fifteen-feet-tall ribbons of rusting metal? I'll take a pass." But you'd be wrong.

Sleepy guards were posted throughout the show to make sure nobody touched the Serra works. That, and the ban on photographing his works, reminded me of a photo in the NY Times from several years go. The article was on the Dia:Beacon, a simply awesome museum located halfway between NYC and my mom's house. It was a simplistic "Museum attracts art lovers" fluff piece, and the photo was a huge, half-page image of a young woman grabbing both sides of a massive Serra piece and leaning in for a look. I remembered it because it was a few weeks after we'd gone to the Dia (why look, here's my blog post about it!) during which I remembered the constant admonitions against touching the Serra pieces. Today, considering the ban on photography, I wondered if Serra had flipped out after seeing that Times photo and decided that cameras should not be allowed anywhere near his work.

Elsewhere in the MoMA were a few pieces of art which were little more than Flash programs on computers. I saw one which was almost exactly like one of the assignments in my Human-Computer Interaction class last year. Apparently there is more that can be done with my degree than I'd imagined.

This piece was fucking awesome. On a table there is a small circular landscape with miniature cars and people and sheep stuck in traffic, just a complete circular loop of traffic spinning slowly on a motor. Elsewhere on the table, there are separate miniatures of a man and of a woman sitting in theatre seats. Elsewhere elsewhere on the table there is a miniature row of theatre seats, where a man and a woman sit and watch a miniature movie screen. About the table are placed several cameras focussed on the miniatures. The images from these cameras are projected onto the wall in a random order. The audio is of honking car horns, as would be heard in a traffic jam. It was quite lovely, especially considering the piece depicted the artists' second date.

There was a retrospective of photographer JoAnn Verburg's photographs. One photo was of Talking Heads singer David Byrne, taken in the mid-1980's. An hour later we were leaving the museum when I saw the real David Byrne in the lobby. That was pretty cool. I was wondering if he had come to see the photo of himself. I regretted not having my camera, otherwise I'd have staked out the Verburg show and tried to get a picture of the 55-year-old David Byrne looking at the 33-year-old David Byrne. Then in 33 years I could try to get a picture of the 88-year-old David Byrne looking at the 55-year-old David Byrne looking at the 33-year-old David Byrne. I bet he'd be game for that, too.

Today marked the second time I'd seen David Byrne in person. The first time was in a discount liquor store in Greenwich Village in the late 1990's. Just so you know: I was emulating him, all those years I was drinking St. Ides malt liquor.