Carol Ducan

Brooke Marcy

 

A summery of the essay Museum of Modern Art as Late Capitalist Ritual: An Iconographic Analysis by Carol Ducan and Alan Wallach

 

 

In the beginning of their essay, Carol Duncan and Alan Wallach, look at the role played by the Museum as an architectural space. They draw comparisons between Museums, churches, and shrines, arguing that the structures similarly house specific ideologies and are viewed as embodying high moral belief systems.  Each structure allows an individual to escape the everyday world and enter into a sanctuary, where history and the individual experience is celebrated.

 

The relationship between Museum and artwork is a reciprocal one. The purpose of the museum is to act as a neutral space where art can be viewed and contemplated by the individual, giving artistic thought a voice.  This is not saying that it doesn’t affect the work, which depending on placement can change the language of the art.  The arrangement of art functions as an “iconographic program” of the Museum.

 

The architectural structure of a Museum can embody the period in which it was created.  The example of this embodiment is the Museum of Modern Art in New York.  The sleek exterior reflects the ideology of the 1930’s, celebrating capitalism and individuality, and epitomizing the future while surrounded by the past. The glass entrance acts as a portal into an educational and physical labyrinth where the individual is introduced to the history, development, and achievements of Modern Art.  Here daily thoughts and worries are over shadowed by a carefully selected ideology.

 

The collection is arranged with a beginning, Cezanne, and an end, American Abstract Expressionism. As the individual walks through the labyrinth of rooms, they are introduced to the history of Modern Art through carefully place iconic images. Each style, Abstraction, Surrealism, Cubism etc. is represented by the finest examples, which have been deemed so by curators, donors and history books.  The viewer is introduced to a new and exciting language where increasingly intangible ideas and modes of expression become a tangible reality.  A person who has experienced the labyrinth will emerge enlightened and liberated.

 

Yet the authors note that everyday existence is not as removed from the individual experience of the labyrinth as one might think. In reality each piece of artwork is a reflection of the human condition.  Artists are not gods and goddesses, and their work is not exalted and spiritual entities that the Museum strives to impart on the viewer. The work itself is a reflection of the ideology of an artist who is dealing with social and environmental influences of everyday life experienced during a particular time and in a particular place.