Louisiana. Louisiana. They're Tryin' To Wash Us Away

Modern art. It's all about The Me

Today is the day for an out of town adventure.  But which direction?  West?  To Roskilde, with its one-of-kind (except for the one other one in Oslo, Norway) Viking Boat Museum?  Or to the village of Humlebæk, to Denmark's world famous modern art museum, the Louisiana.

Everybody I ask for an opinion speaks with one voice:  Louisiana.  Louisiana.  They're tryin' to wash us away.

So it looks like it will six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline!

Humlebæk train station

Sorry for being deliberately obscure by repeatedly referencing Randy Newman's awesome "Louisiana 1927," far and away his best song not "Short People" or "I Love L.A."  At the Copenhagen Central Station, you can buy a combined round-trip train ticket / museum admission (at the Lost & Found, weirdly enough).  You can't do that with a Viking Boat Museum.  So off to the Pelican State I head.

At the Louisiana border

Let's get the main question everyone wants answered out of the way first.  No.  I don't know why a modern art museum in rural Denmark is called the "Louisiana."  And I didn't learn the answer on this expedition.

Still outside

Did I say this was a "modern" art museum?  I'd call it more of an "ultra-modern" art museum.  Lots of pointless weirdness masquerading as art.  There is no celebration of beauty.  The skill and talent of the artist is not confined by outdated concepts of "skill" or "talent."  It's all about successfully marketing oneself as transgressive and not confined to thousands of years of art history.  My scene!

So why visit?  Three reasons.  It has a beautiful physical location alongside the Øresund, the narrow sound that connects the Baltic and North Seas.

Closer view of the Øresund

Looking out at the Øresund

Second, despite my cynicism about ultra modern art, there are some interesting pieces.  Such as these Max Ernst sculptures.

A couple of Max Ernst statues

Third, and finally, it is wonderful fun watching the people try to impose "sense" on the works they're viewing.  Let us mosey through the collection.

They had a few obscure Warhols.

They also had this black-on-black painting.  I swear I saw this very work at the Corcoran in D.C. in the 1980s.  If you stare at it long enough, a black cross emerges from the canvas.  I had to have seen it before.  How many all-black paintings of crosses can there be out there?  Well, and still have this be transgressive?

They had etchings from the artist Freud.  No.  Not Sigmund.  Lucian.  A grandchild.

His people etchings are grotesque, ugly and bordering on hideous.  On the other hand, his etchings of his dog Pluto are beautiful, evocative and lovingly done.  What they're doing in an ultra-modern art museum I haven't a clue.

And they had some interesting pre-Columbian statuary that was just like what I saw in the museums of Bogotá and Cartagena.

But as I said, I decided it was more interesting to look at the people looking at the art.

Like the Picassos.

And definitely like the Pollocks.

Ask me someday what I think of Jackson Pollock.  You will gallons of Nature's Miracle to clean up the filth I will spew.  Although, getting back to Picasso, I do subscribe to the theory that art died the day Picasso discovered the cube,

As the art got more "ultra modern," the more fun the people watching became.

The collection rotates very frequently.  So what I'm making light of today will be gone tomorrow and replaced by something even more transgressive.

It's going to get weirder as we get deeper into the art of Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama.  Her target audience is people who believe the art of Yoko Ono is too "Thomas Kinkade" for their tastes.

This one is called "Working on the Sea of Death."  Of course it is.

This section left me feeling like I just walked onto the set of "Laugh-In".

I half expected Jo Anne Worley to pop out of one of the balls screaming,

Or perhaps Judy Carne saying "sock it to me."  Is that too much to ask?

It was all so transgressively beautiful when I finally beheld the ultimate objet d'art in all of Louisiana,

Me.

I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille.

Looking more bored than a Warhol model at a Factory party, I am.

One more me of me, this time in a room that was more Dr. Seuss than Rowan and Martin.

So did I like any of the art at the Louisiana?  Yes.  They had Arp.

I have an art poster of an Jean Arp exhibit in D.C. from the mid 1980s.  I liked the above.

But that one was a little too turd-like for my tastes.  I liked this guy, whoever he was.

And as I said the grounds were awesome.

I did not go down the slide.  I'm not that whimsical.

So what was my favorite piece?

Joan Miró.  Personnage.  Seriously.  Surrounded by all this other ultra-modernist stuff, I can appreciate the talent, creativity and craftmanship in Miró.  That cinches it,  I am absolutely definitely going to the Joan Miró museum in Barcelona when I go there next week.

Second favorite?

This guy (or gal) guarding the exit.

Walking to the Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales (Through a Mini-Disney)

They sell mate in vending machines in Uruguay!

After the morning stroll through Cuidad Viaje, I took an afternoon stroll to the Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales (MNAV) in Parque Rodó.  I learned many great things about Montevideo on this walk.  Including the fact that they sell mate (pronounced MAH-tay) in vending machines.  I hadn't brought my gourd, so I couldn't fill up.

My hotel is located on a side street named Juan Benito Blanco (it doesn't seem to an "avendia" or a "calle" or anything -- just "Juan Benito Blanco") in the Pocitos neighborhood of Montevideo.

Front entrance to the My Suites Hotel

The Pocitos neighborhood has the feel of the not-quite-upscale-but-definitely-not-anywhere-close-to-downscale residential neighborhoods in Washington, D.C.  Except, as you can see from the view from the roof, there's an ocean nearby:

Rooftop view from the My Suites Hotel

I'm only three blocks inland.  There's a beach-like area in the waterfront, but it's not a lay-on-the-beach type area.  So I really didn't need to get closer to the Rio de la Plata (which, technically, is an estuary and not an ocean).

So I take a walk to the MNAV and there's a fair of some sort happening in Parque Rodó where I'm expecting an art museum to be:

This ride obviously was designed by trippin' hippies

 The whole thing has a Disney-on-acid feel to it.  Such as these ticket booths:

Take a ride courtesy of the magic mushrooms

Mushroom ticket booths.  There are about a seven or eight rides at the fair, including this beautiful old-style carousel.

Carousel

I love old-fashioned carousels even though it would make me nauseous to step aboard.  Not from the sweetness and innocence, mind you.  From the circular rotation.  I'm still mega-bummed that they tore down the carousel in the old Belz Mall outlet mall where I buy all my high fashion haute couture.  (I'm such a frickin' Pennsylvanian when it comes to that mall.  It hasn't been called "the Belz Mall" for over 10 years.  Yet I still call it by a name that no one who didn't live in Las Vegas last century would know.)

So, yeah, I like merry-go-rounds.  This is the "flying elephant ride"

This mottled elephant seems to have some sort of skin disorder

Weeeeeeeeee!  Flying elephants!  Where would someone get that sort of idea?

Fly away, elephants.  Fly away!

Apart from the LSD, of course.  And look at this ride features spinning cups.  With a teapot in the middle.

The cups of tea ride

Something tells me that no one contacted Disney to secure intellectual property rights for these rides.  So don't call those elephants Dumbo!  Life beyond the immediate reach of U.S. intellectual property law!  Actually, since this is Uruguay, I am quite disappointed that the spinning cups of tea ride is not themed around mate gourds.  You could use the bomba (the metal straw/filter) to make the gourd spin.  Weeeeeeeeeee!

I walk behind the fair, past the tennis courts, and I see an ugly building that looks like a middle school built in the 1970s.  Which means?

The MNAV in Parque Rodo

 A modern art museum!

Entrance to the MNAV

Even though the MNAV is billed as "the" national art museum, it's a modern art museum.  And you know how I feel about modern art!  Well, if you don't, you'll learn soon enough.

The first floor collection

The museum is just two floors.  The first floor houses the main collection, which is probably less than 40 pieces in total.  All modern art.  Such as this diptych:

I'm guessing this is some sort of cartoonish Greek/Roman gods sort of thing going on

Too wide to all fit in one camera shot!  The MNAV has the largest collection of art from Uruguayan artists under one roof in the world. Can you believe that?

The second floor is the rotating collection. The MNAV is now featuring the works of Manual Aguiar.  Let's take a look-see at some of the works of Sr. Aguiar, shall we?

Perhaps that one's from De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period.  Perhaps you prefer your art to of cut rope:

OK.  I'm having fun at Sr. Aguiar's expense.  I genuinely believe that most modern art (i.e., art produced after the Treaty of Versailles was signed ending World War I) is fecal.  Pablo Picasso and all those eyeballs on the same side of people's heads?  Fecal.  Kadinsky?  Fecal.  Jackson Pollack and his drips?  Massive wet stinkin' mess of fecal-ality.  Salvador Dali?  OK.  Dali I love.  I'm inconsistent with my middlebrow tastes.  And that is why I'm not in love with this one, which I call:  "The Moon is a Lemon Wedge in the Iced Tea Sky"

The actual name escapes me.  I was having fun walking through the gallery, making fun (in my head) of the art, but then I came upon this one.

The artist is Amelia Nieto.  I actually liked this one.  You can't tell from this photograph, but the shapes really "pop" from the canvas.  I may not know art, but this is one where I could really see that it took talent to produce.  And, no, I am not being facetious.  I actually liked this one.  There were a few more works by Sra. Nieto, but the others didn't grab me like this one did.