New York City MoMA

If you haven’t seen the Color Chart exhibit yet at the Museum of Modern Art, it is time to plan a visit.

Pictured above is the floor from Jim Lambie’s ZOBOP! Watch the video online before seeing the floor in person. Industrial vinyl tape transforms the floor into colorful rectangles.

The exhibit includes 44 artists using various interpretations of color. A favorite in the exhibit is John Badessari’s (1977) silent film “Six Colorful Inside Jobs”. He got the inspiration for this video from his past. His father was a landlord and John spent his days painting the apartments when the tenants moved out.

The film is a bird’s eye view of a painter in a small room. The film begins in a white room and the painter starts to paint the walls and the floor red. It takes 3-4 hours to paint the room, but it is compressed into a five-minute segment. The painter continues to change the colors of the room: red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet. It is such a simple idea, but it is highly entertaining to watch.

Jennifer Bartlett’s (1971) “Binary Combinations” is a 64 x 88-inch piece made up of 30 squares. From afar the piece almost looks like textured material and Sol LeWitt’s (1971) 12” square filled in by using all of the 12 Crayola crayons in the pack is amazing.

Andy Warhol’s “Do-it-Yourself Paintings” make me smile. In 1962 he made five of these paintings. Two of them are on display in this exhibit. They are his last hand-painted works. They are based on the popular “paint-by-number” kits where he has partially completed the picture.

Damien Hirst’s “Colored Spots” was first done in 1988 and twenty years later there are over 600 paintings. He completed the first few paintings and then employed others. The artists use household gloss paint. The rules for the paintings are simple: 1. The distance between the spots must be the same size as the spots. 2. No color can be used more than once and 3. The color is random. The paintings are given titles after they are complete. They are named after pharmaceutical drugs. Watch the on-line video before seeing it at the Museum of Modern Art.

Enjoy New York City.