MoMA2000
Modern Starts
Cycle I (1880-1920)

          The first cycle of MoMA2000, titled Modern Starts, focuses on art created from 1880 through 1920, juxtaposed with examples from later periods. Running from October 1999 through mid-March 2000, it comprises three broad sections: People (through February 1, 2000), Places (.through March 14, 2000), and Things (through March 14, 2000). Beginning with the traditional three-part division of subject-matter into the representation of figures, sites, and objects, the exhibitions trace the transformation and mutation of these genres. Each is seen as a form of "resistance" against which modern forms emerge, opening onto new experiments, techniques, and styles, in the pioneering period when many modern starts led to the creation of many different versions of modern art.

          ModernStarts: People examines the great period of early modern figurative art, ranging from the figure compositions of Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso to the photographs of Edward Steichen and Ernest J. Bellocq to the prints of Odilon Redan. Modern Starts: Places considers the geographical sites represented in works of this period, including images of the French landscape by artists such as Georges Seurat and Paul Cezanne, and of the modem city by Giorgio de Chirico and Fernand Leger. Modern Starts: Things addresses the influence of the object--from Gerrit Rietveld and Frank Lloyd Wright chairs to Marcel Duchamp's readymades to the sculpture of Constantin Brancusi--and of the representations of things, from Cubist still-life etchings and collages to advertising posters.
          Each floor of this exhibition features an installation work by a contemporary artist. In addition, the installation Making Modern Starts, mounted in the first-floor Garden Hall Gallery, examines, via an in-depth appreciation of selected works, the multiplicity of early modernist visions and innovations.
          

Film Programming

           As part of each cycle of MoMA2000 there will be an active film exhibition program in the Museum's two theaters. The program mounted by the Department of Film and Video as part of Modern Starts will be the most comprehensive survey of early cinema (1893-1920) ever presented from the Museum's Film Archive. In concert with central themes in Modern Starts, many of these films will deal with issues surrounding the human figure and gestural codes (people) and landscape in early cinema (places), especially in the Wester.
          These screenings will feature the enormous number of films from the period that the department has restored in the last decade, including many recently restored 35mm copies of previously unseen titles from our Edison and Biograph studios collections. There will also be several shows that highlight core strengths of the Archive, including works by D. W. Griffith, Douglas Fairbanks, Thomas H. Ince, Mary Pickford, William S. Hart, early Pathe, and early slapstick comedy.