Visiting the Broad

I have a love/hate relationship with Art Museums. Like most, I love to visit them, flow through the rooms, and look at pieces that are either iconic or evoke something inside me. That’s what Art is about right? Expressing something and making it feel somehow.

When it comes to contemporary Art, I am starting to be fed up. It seems to become more and more experiential, but not in a genuine way, more so in a “selfie-worthy” type of way, adding yet again, a block to the wall of Art becoming a Product. It’s not new, but I met my limit the day a tapped-up banana was sold for $6.2 million.

The Museum

The Broad museum is failry new, it opened its doors in September 2015, barely 10 years ago, and unlike many others in the USA, it is absolutly FREE. Yes, no hidden fee, it is totally free, and that alone is amazing.

You might meet a short line at the entrance, because they do limit the amount of visitors per hour, so it is a good idea to get a ticket online for a time slot, even though it is not necessary to enter.

More advisable though, is to reserve a spot for the Instragramable exhibit like the Infinity Room of Yayoi Kusama. You wont see a piture of it here, but I am sure you have seen hundreds of the same one over and over again all over the internet.

The Pompous

Right when you enter the museum, following a long-lasting escalator, you are welcomed by Jeff Koons, of course. I used to love it when I was a late teen in Art School, but today, I can’t but feel it pompous, even pretentious, and rather ugly.

The more pompous pieces, even self-righteous at times, seem to be the more popular, the ones that trigger most of the selfie actions. I usually roll my eyes and move on. But I might be missing a crucial part of the experience, who knows. Maybe it’s just the people I just avoid, you tell me.

The Questionable

One of the busiest part of the exhibition is the Warhol area, and understandably so. Just like the Monalisa, some of Warhol’s work is so known and iconic that the idea of seeing the real one, in real life is to good to miss.

But in between soup cans and Marilyn, there he was…. Mao Zedong, the man responsible for the death of 40 to 80 million people. I am not questioning why Andy Warhol produced a portrait of the man, he was a significant figure of his time, and the aftermath of his revolution were not yet evaluated to their right proportions… My question though is, if he had depicted Adolf Hitler, would the Broad display it so lightly?

What I learned about myself

Leaving the Broad, I realized a few facts about myself, and Art.

I do enjoy a massive work made of a lot of smaller pieces. It has an effect of me that inspire patience, and collection. I enjoy imagining the slow process behind it, and pay attention to each details in its own, as well as passing from a macro to mirco attention that somehow make the experience more dynamic and enjoyable.

Joseph Beuys

I also realized that I am more interested in dedicated exhibit that focus on one artist, or at least one theme. The seasonal show at the Broad presents the lifework of German artist Joseph Beuys. Suddenly, you are dipped into the universe of one’s brain, you follow his life through the evolution of his work, it is like reading his diary.

I like Beuys very much because of his love for the natural world, but also because of his rigorous German design, and strong inflence from the mountain life that was his for so long. I loved the wool felt, the kelly green, the wolf, and the early work in defence of our earth.