Museum of Modern Art

So today I went and visited the Museum of Modern Art in the center of the city right next to the cathedral of the city.  When I first found out that we had to visit the art museum I was not all that excited because to be perfectly honest I am not usually that into art.  I mean I love to draw and things like that but I never got into the whole scene of going and looking at other peoples artwork, but I guess that there is a time for everything.  When I first got to the museum and went in I found out that picture taking is not allowed, which kind of upset me because if I was going to look at all of this artwork I would have liked to take at least a few photos to remember it by.  So the overall layout of the museum was pretty symmetric.  The first one or two rooms that are there are mainly sculptures and normal paintings just giving the artists view of the world and it is pretty much what one would expect to see in an art museum.  After the first two rooms there are a few rooms that contain abstract art.  This was pretty interesting because a lot of the paintings were not proportional and there were so “optical illusion” paintings as well, I very much enjoyed this segment of the museum.  After the abstract room there was a room that started a series of rooms that were, well to describe it briefly, odd and somewhat disturbing.  The first image that you see when you enter the room is a giant three panel painting of death and torture.  The first image is of a man hanging by his bound hands and spears and arrows being cast at him, the middle image was of three men standing with machetes trying to shield themselves from the flames there were consuming them, and finally there was a painting of a man being impaled by a giant plant with thorns.  The next few rooms contained strange paints of all different sorts and then there was a room that contained pictures of what seemed like bondage and torture.  There were paintings with men tied up and hanging from the ceiling with ropes, and others showing blood and torture devices scattered throughout the picture, and still others depicting men struggling against an opposing force whether it was physically another individual or the struggle within the man.  I found this room very interesting because of the types of paintings that were done.  Thinking about what occurred in this country, and in most countries come to think of it, there has always been struggle, death, and torture.  While I was looking at these paintings it seemed as though the artist could have been showing the pain and suffering that the Mayans had felt at the hands of the conquistadores because of some of the elements of the works, including monks and elegant headdresses.  What occurred here also made me think about what was done to the Native Americans in the United States during the flourishing of our culture.  It seems that no matter where you look there are times during which one civilization overpowers another and causes pain and suffering of a certain people.  After this room there was a room that basically had the same painting 20 different times, except the same two people were in different positions with the inclusion of or deletion of other people/objects in the frame.  Some of these seemed to show happiness, others sadness, and still others fear.  This room led me to think about the fact that there are definitely many ways to look at life and depending on which road you take is the way that you will view things.  Every person, no matter what culture that they live in, has the power to view the world as they want to and no one can change that.  This I something that I have really experienced since coming here because being in a new culture definitely gives you the ability to think about your life and everything in it.  I used to let things get to me pretty easily, and that definitely isn’t the way to live life.  As an example if I would ever be back at home or at school and happen to get on the wrong bus and go somewhere that I didn’t know I would get so worked up that things weren’t going as planned and would need to think of a solution right then and there, but why?  Here I can’t say how many times I got on the wrong bus and just went with it, I got to see so many new and exciting places that I probably would not have gotten to see if I didn’t just relax and go with the flow.  There is a big difference between not caring (being lazy) and just taking what life gives you and turning it in to the best things possible.  That is definitely one lesson that I have already taken from this trip and hope that it will stay with me for the rest of my life.