Yes. It really happened, this "Happening."
Not having visited New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in ages, I recently decided to attend a private party there.
Only a couple hundred people attended the after-hours event, so I could review the "art" without tourists and with some wine to brace myself for what to experience "art-wise." After all, I had been to the museum before and knew what to expect in principle.
Many offerings were quite a chuckle, like the paint-scratching (or scratch-painting?) maybe 20'x 30' by a famous contemporary "artist" in the reception area where I got my first glass of warm white wine.
A notecard on the wall explained how the "artist" sat on the shoulders of his assistant, who then moved back and forth-up and down — some on a ladder, I presume — while the "artist" brushed on paint while riding the ups-and-downs-and-all-arounds of his assistant’s gymnastics.
The building was renovated since my last visit, so it’s now spacious and well-designed to show off its huge "things."
The high ceilings, wide walls, and fast-moving escalators serve both the displays of "art" and the museum’s visitors just fine.
The most interesting space is the design floor, featuring all sorts of wonderful 20th century objects like furniture, kitchen appliances, and such.
That exhibit really is a worthwhile tribute to American ingenuity and imagination in creating useful things that make using them an aesthetic and pleasurable experience.
I won’t bother describing the rooms with typical "paintings" by the to-be-expected, household names of modernism or contemporary concoctions adhered to the walls familiar to everybody, or the piles of "whatever" sculptures by "whichever" other famous names strewn about or sticking up or hanging down, with plenty of room to walk around and wonder, because what I want to tell about is the "Happening," the evening’s piece de resistance: The map — meaning the paper map they give out at the information desk with a layout of the exhibits.
Well, someone had accidentally dropped one dead center of a large room with "sculpture," "installations," and deconstructed "constructions" parked here and there.
The map had lots of floor space surrounding it, and it lay there all by itself and sort of important-like. It wasn’t wrinkled or wadded up or anything like the paper "sculptures" I had seen elsewhere in downtown galleries.
It looked fresh and pristine.
So, I walked over to it and called excitedly to my husband: "Come look! Isn’t it wonderful how your focus becomes riveted on this small but oh! so crucial piece of paper? But they don’t even have a little fence or anything to protect this piece of art, and it’s so little in outward form but filled with such big inner meaning. . . "
My husband joined in with similar jargon, and gosh! we got really exercised over this incredible find.
Soon, a whole bunch of other guests were gathering around.
Some smiled at both the map and us, but truth be told most actually tried to "understand" it because their insecure facial expressions revealed whirling brain waves and synaptic staccatos.
Was it supposed to be humorous, or did it signify something they just didn’t grasp?
There was no descriptive card anywhere to explain it, so I called over a guard and asked him about the safety of this exquisite little work because it seemed someone might walk on it and cause damage
Still, I mused, lots of contemporary art is meant to be walked on or kicked around.
Was this one of those?
The guard looked uncertain. Most guards just stand around like potted plants, but this one. . . He shuffled his feet in place for a minute, seemingly unable to decide what to say.
A tangle of twine or a fan-blown, hanging sheet or car parts twisted and welded together, I suppose, he could cope with because they were common, but. . . Well, he just looked sort of stumped.
Finally, my husband and I could stand it no longer.
We cracked up.
I picked up the map and handed it to a newcomer joining the rather large group that had assembled by then to contemplate the "happening." "Oh, sir," I said, with concern.
"You look lost. Here take this and relocate yourself."
Very few people laughed with us.
Some seemed shocked, others offended, and some looked so lost I wished I had more maps to offer. Funny . . . but revealing and sad culturally because it reminded me of a time years ago while doing research for my novel "CROSSPOINTS A Novel of Choice" when my husband and I entered a well-known SOHO gallery.
That exhibit space was full of empty wood boxes dumped here and there, but nothing else was in the room.
After many minutes of being ignored, I called over a typically snooty young female "artist representative," who coolly asked if she could be of assistance.
With a look of bewilderment on his face, my husband said, "Oh, I see you must be between exhibits here. What’s coming in?"
With undisguised boredom she answered, "Sir, this is the exhibit."
"Oh, I see," he replied with a straight face. "Well, I don’t know much about this kind of art. Could you please explain it to me?" Disdain replaced boredom.
"If you see empty boxes in an art gallery, Sir! it’s obviously a metaphor for the enigma of existence." True story.
We nodded and made it out the door before bursting with laughter.
But that incident, too, also brought sadness to me for the depraved state of our culture and the stuff that, unchallenged by most (including critics), passes for art in it.
Nevertheless, it was great research fodder. As a writer of fiction, I could not have made up that story. So, it went into the novel exactly as it happened. Gosh, if only the "Happening" of "The map" at MoMA had "happened" then, I could have included too.
Gosh darn. But, I suppose if I put both incidences into a novel, nobody would believe me.
Alexandra York is an author and founding president of the American Renaissance for the Twenty-first Century (ART) a New-York-City-based nonprofit educational arts and culture foundation. She has written for many publications, including "Reader's Digest" and The New York Times. She is the author of "Crosspoints A Novel of Choice." Her most recent book is "Soul Celebrations and Spiritual Snacks." For more on Alexandra York — Go Here Now.
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