Carry the world's greatest art collection around in your pocket with MoMA's iPhone app

New York's Museum of Modern Art launched a new iPhone app yesterday and being the art fanatic I am, I downloaded it immediately.

I became not upset and am left pining for my next ride to Manhattan.

The app opens with a calendar. It's updated with the day's events at the museum, you can see upcoming events, preview the modern-day exhibitions, see the present day film schedule and get statistics on museum programs.

There's a separate tab for tours. Under Tours, you may browse the museum by means of floor and concentrate to a lot of museum-particular audio, including the whole audio tour.

Under the Art tab you'll find the museum's entire collection, all cataloged and cross referenced. It's in this extensive catalog that you'll find everything, and I mean everything, that MoMA holds; whether it's on display or not.

In thumbing via it, I found a number of my favorites works in that museum with out a trouble. If you ever need to see me reduced to a puddle of giddy, weepy awe, stand me in this museums galleries in the front of any of these artwork.

First up is van Gogh's The Starry Night. He completed it in 1889 and it's his recollection of his view from the window of a sanitarium. To stand a few feet away from this painting allows a viewer to see the full fury and passion of van Gogh's painting technique. I swear, the paint's slathered on in layers that appear to be inches thick. I cannot look at this painting and not see the man Vincent van Gogh in all his broken glory.

Mark Rothko's another perennial favorite of mine, he's probably my favorite painter of the 20th Century. His No. 10 knocks me over for reasons I can't quite describe. I understand what he's doing and I can feel his mind working through this painting. But just barely. He gives me just enough to keep me wondering but never lets me in fully. I find his paintings mesmerizing.

Paul Cézanne's The Bather from 1885 is another one that rocks my world. I say the subject of this painting is the first real anti-hero in western art. He's in a classical pose but this man is no classical beauty. It's his plain-ness and everyman quality that makes this painting so modern. In 1885 this painting was a shock to the art world. Nobody glorified the non-heroic. The industrial revolution was ramping up and humanity was going to conquer all. There was no room in the popular psyche for a wan man in a desolate landscape.

Sorry to go all art school on you, but this is a great app. Go download it here and carry around the world's greatest art collection.

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