Art...the modern kind

After visiting only a few of the major historic sites in Istanbul, I decided to journey down to Karakoy to the Istanbul Modern...on the waterfront. Like many areas in the city, walking there proves to be an exercise in exploration...one can see the building in a distance but as one gets closer it disappears behind new construction, barbed wire fences, and street sellers. The only real entrance is a driveway leading to the car parking.

Yet it is a fine museum (and excellent restaurant)...but it did cause me to wonder what makes modern art modern. And if it is a time dimension, well, at what point does "modern" become historic or just, well, old fashioned?







What is modern, after all, about a piano suspended on wires. Or a, for some reason very moving, a wall video of a hand slowly moving toward a shadow of itself? Something about that latter work reminded me of Michelangelo's creation...God and Adam reaching out for one another...yet here was just a human hand...searching for its own meaning?

Besides the excellent sea bass lunch, I was struck by a few other pieces. The glass enclosed entrance to the stairway linking first and second levels...pierced as it was by bullet holes...some reference was made to "radical feminism"...





The suspended ceiling of books which form a cover for the library...struck me for its outside thinking and its humor...




And a lengthy video of a woman slowly unwinding a series of scarfs...multicolored and in a wide variety of patterns...until she finally reveals her face. And she smiles.





Something modern about that one.

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Location:Istanbul