OGT DAILY Day One Hundred and Seventy Six TRAIN TRAVEL

My father was enamored of trains.   I love the feel of traveling by train even if it is only the Metro North from my home to the city.   Sitting on a train I am acutely aware of time because the tail of the train can be viewed in the distance always following, always several minutes behind me in space and time.  The forward movement and the passing landscape reminds me that it is a passage through space and time, which will bring me to another time entirely.  Trains always make me sleepy too.  I fall into dream time and never know quite what will be at the other end.

Today my travels took me to the MOMA with my friend Nancy where I discovered many new things. We saw Making Space: Women Artists and Post-War Abstraction which explores the ways in which women in the post WWII era really had to carve out a place for themselves in the art world, which was so male dominated that women were often not accepted.  One way they made space, according to the curator, was by creating abstraction and female sensibility really had a huge influence on the abstract expressionist movement, which women were not given credit for.  

I discovered a collage artist I had never heard of before named Anne Ryan who was influenced by Kurt Schwitters.  Her work is so carefully done that it looks casually random in the same ways Schwitters work does. But while his works often seems to rely on random juxtaposition - happy coincidences - for their form, Anne Ryan's seem careful in composition which then creates the illusion of natural disorder.  A paradox.

Anne Ryan Collage 353

Another important aspect of women's influence in abstract expressionism was fiber art.  Many important artists were represented in the show:

Anni Albers' Tapestry 

Magdelena Abakanowicz's Yellow Abakan

In some of the works the shadow was as important as the object itself.

Ruth Asawa Untitled

Lenore Tawney's Little River Wall Hanging 

Speaking of shadow was also saw the Rauschenberg retrospective, which was just overwhelming in content and raw energy.   I was exhausted by the time we walked out, but one painting had a wonderful configuration of wire which looked as if it were casting a shadow on the painting, but he had actually painted the shadow rendering it a solid and permanent aspect of the painting; rendering the ephemeral solid.

It feels an aspect of everything he did; taking that which might be otherwise unseen and making it seen, real and solid.  A response to impermanence and loss perhaps.  Whatever the intent the emotions are raw and palpable in his work.   It is no wonder he is so imitated and so much art could be considered derivative or appropriated from him.  I don't view this as a bad thing, but rather a legacy of a certain type of truth telling about our material and spiritual world.

The MOMA show was research for my friend and I as we are contemplating curating a show around the notion of weaving in all its possible meanings - fiber, paper, paint.  I left my friend and walked west toward the subway with eyes alert to anything that could be considered a weave.

A window dressing on West 55the Street