This morning, after the gym, we took the 4/5/6 subway from 86th and Lex to 51st and Lex and walked back from there a short way to MoMA. As we walked to the subway today we took as many shots as we could of the spring flowers. The Callery Pear trees that line the many streets on the East Side are in full bloom.
They are particularly pretty as there are no leaves yet, just the blossom on a black branch. The garden beds around many of the curb side trees are planted with tulips, hydrangeas, pansies, daffodils and hyacinths or a mixture of these. What a glorious sight and smell. Shame – that the dogs that pee on them are having such a great time altering the smell!
No photos of the exhibition allowed - so have some flowers instead.
Today at MoMA we took in the ‘Inventing Abstraction’ exhibition. Picasso was strongly of the view that there can be no such thing as ‘abstract’ art as all things – art, inventions or ideas - are and must be based on something!
But if you believe the curators of the ‘Inventing Abstraction’ exhibition there came a time in history, prompted by the evolution of film and photography, that allowed for a cross fertilisation of artistic mediums and an escape from pictorial art to truly ‘abstract’ (non-pictorial) arts of all kinds. For example we saw musical works by Schoenberg and Wagner that had no fixed ‘form’ at all but was simply sound arranged to convey emotion. 
These works so inspired the artist Kandinsky he went home and painted what he was feeling – this was abstract art at its birth. Kandinsky was excited about the future of this medium and others soon followed. There followed a synthesis of artistic disciplines.
Francois Kupka, a Czech painter and graphic artist, has been credited with the first abstract painting - ‘Noctune’ (1911). Since that time key exponents of abstract art created hubs of creativity and the movement quickly spread. Artists such as Picabia, Stieglitz, Delaunay, Terk, Picasso, Kandinsky, Leger, Arp, Apollinaire, Larionov and Goncharova all made major contributions to the collection of work. The legacy of abstract art is that expression is no longer tethered to fixed form or meanings.
Upon reflection – I think I am with Picasso.
Note – it was nice to see Brancusi’s ‘Endless Column’ again – so good to have seen it first in Perth!
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