Blog essay for the field trip to “The Long Run”

The Moma Museum’ special exhibition “The Long Run” is a purposeful collection of the art pieces that narrate a linear storyline of time and emotion. The works show an impressive sense of experience and development from the creators. There are three artists’ work stands out to me particularly in this exhibition since they all have a sense of serition within their content. These three artists are respectfully Philip Guston and Lee Friedlander.

Philip Guston’s paintings in the exhibition are like a reflection of how he feels split during the 1960s. He starts questioning his true self under the brutal society. The reality has dyed the things he believes in faith in a completely distinct color; He attempts to express this lost feeling and reveal these external and internal conflicts that happened in people’s lives through his works. The use of repetition in his drawing somehow conveys the viewer with a sense of development,and alteration within a linear wordless story. Guston’s painting style is very cartoonish and abstract, and his works are mostly focused on the object instead of the overall composition of the images; The repeated objects he drawing has constructed a living story already with a fine set of the background.

The photo collection shotted by Lee Friedlander is the other piece amazes me in the exhibition. These photos are all alphabets and words on the street during the late 90s from different cities of the US. Although the images are printed in different sizes and randomly placed to fill the wall, They are all in black and white. This use of color emphasizes the contrast between light and shade within the images, so the letters immediately pop out towards the viewers. The entire art piece almost looks like a message that the creator tries to convey to the audience, which also appears as a map of the artist’s journey.

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