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Masterworks from MoMA, 1900-1955

by John McGee

The Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA) defined modern art. Because it continues to be the tastemaker and ultimate arbiter of modern art and design, visitors may feel compelled to like this show. They will have reason enough. It is good—concise, instructive and powerful. 

Paul Klee, Sunset (Image courtesy Museum
of Modern Art, New York)

Since 1929, MoMA has devoted its efforts to the collection and preservation of modern and contemporary works of art. Today MoMA’s collections offer an unequaled overview of artistic achievements from the end of the 19th through the 20th century. This is the third in a series of shows spread over the last eight years that "explore the breadth and the depth of the MoMA collection." 

This exhibition serves several functions: It displays popular favorites, it sketches the development of key players, and it points out some of the major junctures in the growth and maturation of modernism. Fitting over 50 heady years of art history into the limited space of the Ueno Royal Museum (“Ueno no Mori” in Japanese) means the show is select. 

Famous masterpieces like Dali’s surrealist The Persistence of Memory (1931), Matisse’s life-sized Dance (First Version) (1909) and Duchamp’s inflammatory Bicycle Wheel (1951, after the original of 1913), are complemented by one or more pieces by the same artists. Matisse and Picasso, both incredibly popular in Japan, get a perhaps disproportionate amount of attention. But this affords a mini-retrospective of each. For example, Matisse’s experiments with sculptural form—realism turns to exaggeration, deformation and abstraction—are revealed in small nudes and the “Jeannette” series of five bronze heads (1910-16). 

Beyond the sheer pleasure of viewing such a concentration of influential work, this tracing of the artists’ development is the most compelling part of the show. How did the vision of some of the modern masters shift over their most creative periods: Brancusi from 1920-1933, Braque from 1908-35, Mondrian from 1913-43? Most museums would be happy to exhibit one Jackson Pollock. Here, four paintings clearly sketch Pollock’s transition from his “stenographic figures” to his signature drip paintings between 1942 and 1948. 

Significant single pieces—van Gogh’s The Olive Trees (1889), Cezanne’s Turning Road at Montgeroult (1898), de Kooning’s ab-ex Woman 1 (1950-52), Malevich’s Suprematist Painting (1916-17), Boccioni’s futurist Development of a Bottle in Space (1912), and Rousseau’s primitivist The Dream (1910)—mark major creative turning points and help flesh out the zeitgeist of different periods. 

One of the reasons MoMA can share such abundance is that the New York museum is currently undergoing a major expansion. The new MoMA building, designed by Japanese architect Yoshio Taniguchi, is due to open in 2005 (Taniguchi is also responsible for the Museum of Horyu-ji Treasures, near the Tokyo National Museum in Ueno Park). But don’t wait until your next trip to New York. This is a fascinating art history lesson in the form of a once-in-a-lifetime exhibition. See it now.

This exhibition was held Nov 2001-Feb 2002 at Ueno Royal Museum in Ueno Park, Tokyo, Japan.

©2006 John McGee

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