Modern art museum visit

Key facts · Part 1 Essentials

• Big idea: modern art stopped copying reality, so ask what it is trying to do
• Each movement is an argument with the one before
• Van Gogh: Post-Impressionism, The Starry Night, feeling over accuracy
• Picasso: Cubism, many viewpoints at once, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon
• Duchamp: Dada and the readymade, Fountain, the idea makes it art
• Dalí: Surrealism, dreams, The Persistence of Memory, melting clocks
• Pollock and Rothko: Abstract Expressionism, action versus color, New York
• Warhol: Pop Art, Campbell's Soup Cans, irony and mass production
• How to look: thirty seconds before the label, far then close, pick five to ten works
• How to talk: What strikes me is the..., and is it the idea or the object that matters here?

Key facts · Part 2 Deeper

• Matisse: Fauvism, wild beasts, bold color for feeling, next to Van Gogh
• Mondrian: pure abstraction, grids of primary colors, Broadway Boogie Woogie, next to Picasso
• Magritte: Surrealism, everyday objects in impossible situations, the pipe, next to Dalí
• Lichtenstein: Pop Art, comic-book dots, next to Warhol
• LeWitt: Conceptual art, wall drawings from written instructions, next to Duchamp
• The why: cameras pushed painters to feeling and structure, war produced Dada, Freud fed Surrealism, New York led, then Pop irony and conceptual ideas
• Check the label date, and expect rehung galleries that mix eras and include more women and artists of color

Key facts · Part 3 Drill

• Modern art stopped copying reality, so ask what it is trying to do
• Each movement is an argument with the one before
• Six names plus neighbors: Van Gogh and Matisse, Picasso and Mondrian, Duchamp and LeWitt, Dalí and Magritte, Warhol and Lichtenstein, Pollock and Rothko
• Look for thirty seconds before the label, far then close, and check the date
• Say: What strikes me is the..., or, is it the idea or the object that matters here?