As I began to understand and appreciate New York City’s world class museums, I got more energized and enthusiastic by the day. It started with Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural marvel, the Guggenheim Museum of Art. Then I graduated to the Whitney Museum of American Art in its own unique building. My next step was MOMA – The Museum of Modern Art. Its architecture was not unique. It seemed like just another multi-story office building. But I was in for anything but “just another office building.” I was entering a whole new world.

As I began to explore MOMA’s vast collection permanent of international modern art, I was struck dumb. All I could do was look. And look and look and look. As I read the captions, I had never even heard of the vast majority of these painters and sculptors. So many of the pieces were totally arresting. I could only stare and try to absorb each extraordinary experience.      

As I worked my way through literally hundreds of pieces of world class modern art, about a dozen rivetted me. Sometimes I literally had to sit down to recover from the impact of a piece. The first painting that struck me was a self portrait of a painter I had vaguely heard of but I had never seen even photographs of the 2 that grabbed me. His 1889 self- portrait was like the Dutch artist Vincent Van Gogh was staring at me from eternity. He had died in 1890. So, this self-portrait was done near the very end of his very short life. He died at age 37. The other painting “Starry Night” was strikingly vivid. It pulsed with energy. The painting was so graphic and vivid it practically leaped off the wall.

The next painting that grabbed my attention was “Les Desmoiselles d’Avignon” painted by the Spanish painter Pablo Picasso. A very large painting, painted almost 60 years before I saw it, was so stunningly modern it could have been painted the day before I got there. The painting is powerfully and disturbingly haunting.

In the next room was a huge painting, it covered an entire wall, was “Guernica” – painted in 1937 by Picasso as a protest against the massacre and genocide of Germans bombing a defenseless Basque village during the Spanish civil war. Picasso graphically captures the brutal atrocity.

The next piece was actually a large sculpture by the Italian artist Boccioni. The sculpture embodies the Italian art movement Futurism.

The next piece was a painting by the Belgian painter Rene Magritte. It was part of an art movement I came to love: Surrealism. This painting “This is Not a Pipe” embodies the humor and clever fun of the movement. In the same room was another surrealist paint “The Persistence of Memory” by the Spanish artist Salvador Dali. The photo does not capture the exquisite draftsmanship and the vivid colors of Dali’s painting. To this day, it is one of my favorite paintings.

The next piece is another huge painting by the American artist Frank Stella. I love the vivid colors and the clever design.

On another floor was a cubist painting by Pablo Picasso. It is like a Van Gogh on steroids.

On yet another floor was another huge painting by the American Abstract Expressionist painter from Montana Jackson Pollock. The painting “Blue Poles” is the epitome of energy made visible. A powerfully tormented alcoholic, Pollock was instrumental in shifting the center of the art world from Europe and Paris to New York City.

On another floor, in another room were the works of two American artists who became two of the greatest artists in American history: Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. To give you some sense of the instant impact of Johns, at his very first show, MOMA bought 3 of his paintings. He is still alive today and his paintings sell for tens of millions of dollars. “The Target” is one of the three iconic paintings MOMA bought in the mid 1950’s.

Bob Rauschenberg took 2 methods originated by Picasso (collage and combines) and revolutionized them into stunningly beautiful works of art.

To this day these artists and their works are an integral part of my life. To give you an idea I have been several times to the Picasso Museum in Paris and seen “Guernica” which now resides in the Prado in Madrid. Been to Dali’s home and studio in Barcelona. I saw a phenomenal Jackson Pollock retrospective at MOMA in 1999. Also, in the 1990’s I saw a huge surrealist exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. I saw an awesome Jasper Johns retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1977 and saw it again at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1978. And a saw a huge and fantastic Rauschenberg show called “Combines” at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles in 2005.

Openness. After Vietnam, I became a literature major and graduated with Honors. In 1971 I spent 4 months traveling all over Western Europe in a VW bus visiting great art museums. Also, by then, I could speak fluent French. If we are open to life, there is no telling what wonderful, life-changing experiences we may have. This solo trip through 46 states in general and my museum experiences in New York City, in particular, literally changed my life. The key is openness, being open to life. To new experiences. To new ideas. That is one reason I have been a voracious reader for over 50 years. I read an average of 2 hours a day – virtually all non-fiction. For years I inhaled novels. I read a Sartre trilogy in Vietnam. I am a life-long learner. Just like we need to feed our body with quality nutrition (like a JDD shake) we need to feed our mind with quality ideas and information.

So, keep learning and keep growing.

As always, I wish you the very best of health. As the song goes... grow old along with me, the best is yet to be.
Joe