I have a great but weird poster of a painting I think came from the
store in the New York Museum of Modern Art.  It shows in realistic
form in greens and greys  a cow in an art gallery, surrounded by
experts (one white coated).  The cow is apparantly studying a picture
of another cow.  Who is the artist and what is the name of the
painting?

Hello.

I believe that you're describing "The Innocent Eye Test" (1981) by Mark Tansey.

From ArtLex:
"Mark Tansey (American, 1949-), The Innocent Eye Test, 1981, oil  on
canvas, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY. Mark Tansey is known
particularly for his monochromatic  paintings which are often humorous
mock-historical scenes that refer to art historical subjects  and
concern art criticism. This picture depicts a group of official
looking men observing and recording a  cow's reaction to a life-size 
painting of two cows in a pastoral  landscape. The men are dressed in
lab coats and business suits, and they are all wearing eyeglasses,
with the exception of one man holding a mop -- in anticipation of the
cow's digestive progress. The cow is looking  at an actual painting:
Paulus Potter (Dutch, 1625-1654), The Young Bull, 1647."
http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/s/images/seeing_tansey.innocent.lg.gif
Large image:
http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/s/images/seeing_tansey.innocent.lg.gif

----------
search strategy:
"cow standing " "art gallery
cow "art gallery" mop

I hope this is your painting. If not, please request clarification.

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Clarification of Answer by juggler-ga on 16 Jan 2005 15:13 PST

The first ArtLex link should have been:
http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/p/pastoral.html

woo hoo!  My cow has come home.  Thanks

Well done juggler-ga. 

You can find this painting in "The American Art Book" published by
Phaidon,  which is a thick square book of 500 artists' works, often
seen in the shops. To judge by the [UK?] cover it would seem to be
called "ART USA".

The commentary is as follows: 


Tansey Mark    The Innocent Eye Test

A crowd of scientists unveils a painting of a bull for an audience of
one, a real cow, whose "innocent" eye will be tricked if the painting
is illusionistic enough. The bull is a copy after a 1647 work by
Paulus Potter, nearby is one of Claude Monet's famous haystacks
(another subject of interest to cows). Tansey's comical painting has a
serious purpose. It is a comment on the modern condition of art, in
which what we see depicted in an artwork has less to do with its
eventual meaning than the cultural and intellectual worlds that
surround it. (It could, however, also be construed as an indictment of
uneducated art audiences.) Tansey's allegorical paintings attempt to
bridge the gap between philosophy and studio art, and can include text
in their surfaces. They are created with photocopy machines and the
grisaille technique, a method of painting in grey monochromes that
resemble the photogravures in old history textbooks.

[related artists:] Michals, Pratt, Troye, Wegman

Mark Tansey. b San Jose. CA, 1949. 
The Innocent Eye Test. 1981. Oil on canvas. 
h 78 x w 120 in. 
h 198.2 x W 305 cm. 
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY