Seagreen Serenades

A museum visit is a wholesome way to top off a weekend. So we headed to MOMA on the latter half of Sunday afternoon to see what all the hype is over this Jeff Wall guy. There's something about the institution of MOMA that makes it very difficult for me to take anything seriously, unlike when I am inside the Guggenheim, the Met, or even a 7pm Thursday cheese fest on W. 25th.

In any event, it was pretty easy for me to accept Jeff Wall's work even though I was not immediately WOWed. I hear it takes Wall an entire year to craft one of his glossy light box/back lit color transparencies, which is not at all surprising given there is nothing improvised in his photos. In some of his staged photos, it's almost as though he made his subjects pose for an entire year. However, I do like the sociological slant he lends to his subjects and the magic realism of his imagery. Also, the over sized proportions of his pieces give a cinematic flavor to his themes that you definitely don't receive two floors down when viewing a Dorothea Lange portrait.