If you're bored of doing the same old thing on the weekends, check out the SF MOMA. They have a really cool pop art exhibit going on right now through September, as well as diverse collections of other art. I must say- going to art museums isn't really my thing. Not that I have anything against art, but it's just something I don't usually do. However, the art was very interesting and it made me think a lot of things.

My favorite painting from the exhibit is the following:



This is just a small snippet of part of the painting; the actual painting is much bigger than this and scales an entire wall. Weird, huh?

A couple of Frida Kahlo's paintings were also on display, which of course reminded me of the movie Frida with Salma Hayek. I wonder why Frida painted so many self-portraits. One reason why I find art frustrating (especially modern/contemporary art, where it's more about semantics than style or technique) is that there are so many possible explanations for what the painting means. Of course, I want to know what the artist was trying to portray with the painting, but most likely you won't be able to know that information because the artist is no longer alive or they wanted viewers to come up with their own meaning. So I looked at all these weird paintings wondering how in the hell it could be considered art. For example, one of the pieces I saw was something like a clothesline with a whole bunch of water bottles hanging from it with metal hooks. The water bottles were of different size and shape but all contained a light blue liquid. Now, what is the significance of that?? I read the summary of it, but it just looked like trash to me. I saw some paintings that looked like something I could have done- canvases with paint thrown on them. I prefer artists who painted real-life things, most of which are NOT modern and from more classical or romantic periods. For example- Degas, Van Gogh, Monet, Vermeer (ok he's from an even older period, but his paintings are neat).

My taste in art is definitely reflected in other forms of art, particularly dance. For instance, I absolutely loved seeing the Miami City Ballet perform Balanchine's Jewels. However, I fell asleep and left at intermission for The White Oak Dance Project. You'd think that Baryshnikov being in it would save it, but it was just way too avant-garde and 'out there' for me. Ballet is innovative, creative, and artistic, but still has a solid technique behind it. Everything is choreographed, even warm-up, and all the moves have names. Modern, on the other hand, is less predictable and pretty much anything is fair game. Some types of modern have shades of ballet mixed in, but for the most part there are no rules. Not my kind of dance, unfortunately.

My preference for structure is also echoed in which fields of psychology I liked. I loved my neuropsych class in college- it was so interesting to learn about the brain, the neuropsychological and physiological reasons for diseases such as Alzheimers, Parkinsons, strokes, etc. I never found a single lecture boring. However, I was so incredibly frustrated with my abnormal/clinical psych class (which is where you study the stereotypical mental diseases such as depression, schizophrenia, multiple personality disorder, etc) because there were about a million different theories and treatments for a single disease. In other words, there wasn't really a definite correct way to treat a disease- it all depends on what theory you believe works. In other words again, it seemed like there was no right answer to anything. That, I did not like.

"Which would you rather be? Divinely beautiful, dazzlingly clever, or angelically good?" -Anne of Green Gables