Vincent and I

Photos: Fayeka Zabeen Siddiqua

The lobby of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) seemed to be an organised chaos - hundreds of people standing there in a serpentine queue, talking art and waiting impatiently to grab their ticket to get into the magical madness of this place. There was impatience, but no rage.

Located in midtown Manhattan, New York City, MoMA's collection contains almost 200,000 works of modern and contemporary art by over 13,000 artists. Considered the largest museum of modern art, this place owns an extensive permanent exhibit of all the famous artists you could have heard of. Also, you'll find the ever changing special exhibitions being organised in the many galleries of the sprawling art museums. Starting from architecture and design, drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, prints, and books on illustrations, artists, films, and electronic media - it houses art in every possible form. And when you know what is waiting for you in those six floors of the museum, which frustratingly close at 5:30 in the afternoon, it's very normal to feel impatient to get going!

Once I had the ticket and the map of the museum in my hand, I spent another few minutes on planning out my dream tour. "You need my advice? Take the elevator to the top and ride the escalators down," suggested a kind museum employee at the information desk. 'Starting from the top', I said to myself, and held my breath as I entered the elevator. In a blink, everything that I have seen on the pages of books, everything that I read about, the works of people who inspired me, all of it came to life.

Suddenly, I found myself wandering from Pollock's artwork to Picasso's. I was transfixed by the unavoidably large Reflections of Clouds on the Water-Lily Pond by Claude Monet. The next moment, I found myself perplexed by Henri Matisse's Red Studio and Dance, and amused by the oddity of Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans.

There were Salvador Dali, Henri Rousseau, René Magritte, Frida Kahlo, and many other artists I haven't ever even heard of-- all of this, in one building. I felt excited and blessed. I felt restless to see everything at the same time, willing to take my time and enjoy them slowly. Then there was one spot swarmed by museum visitors taking pictures of themselves in front of a painting. I joined the crowd and had to stand on my toes to see for myself what the fuss was about. My heart dropped a beat as I saw the swirls and the dark tip of the cypresses. I wanted to go ahead and feel it all.

It was Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night.

In a matter of seconds, I found myself standing in front of it in wonder and disbelief. I almost heard Vincent telling his brother Theo, "I must have a starry night with cypresses." But I could not figure out how to view a Vincent painting up close and do proper justice to it. Do I get really close to feel the intensity of the colours and the meticulous details of every little stroke? Or do I stand at a distance to take in the sheer spectacle of his magical night sky in its entirety? How could I just give it a single glance and move to the next painting just so that I could finish my tour?

Like every Vincent fanatic, I felt compelled to take a picture with this masterpiece. But I was nervous- I didn't know how to pose with a Vincent artwork without ruining its magnificence. It felt like a dream to say the least - unreal and magical.

You want to live every little inch of MoMA, but you don't want to rush from one artwork to the other and kill the true essence of this life-changing experience. The aesthetic of each of the masterpieces exhibited there was surely mesmerizing, but what made the tour so intriguing for me was the notion of encountering a surprise in every corner of MoMA and feeling the adrenaline rush to see the art come to life.

On my way back, in a cab, I immediately updated my bucket list: Visit MoMA a second time. Because I knew that I would be coming back here again, not just to relive the experience, but to create new ones.