Nov 18 2012
A Mix of Modern Art
Maybe people can identify themselves with this bald-headed, open-mouthed man standing on this bridge over the water. It could be a calm, serene painting, maybe something Emerson or Thoreau could describe in terms of nature, but Munch painted a swirling storm and a brightly colored bridge with artificial colors. I think his use of colors is what makes this picture tick. The yellow pool in the sea, the red and pink and purple tones in the bridge, and the gauntly tone of the person all make this picture scream. It doesn’t really matter if people live in the nineteenth, twentieth, or twenty-first century. We could be in the middle of a hurricane, or just living in total peace. As Much himself wrote, “I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.” Sometimes, all we want to do is scream.
We also saw the New Photography exhibit. Professor Davis asked us what makes something a 21st century picture. I happen to love photography. I have a DSLR camera and I love taking pictures of everything. I didn’t really like this exhibit so much. Some pictures were really cool, but others seemed really mundane and there was nothing special about them that struck me. I think today, in the 21st century, the term “artist” demands a lot less talent than it used to. Today, people can post videos of themselves singing and dancing and become an instant YouTube star. Today, people can digitalize their faces and voices and pictures and videos. There is more room for creativity, but more of the computer’s work and less of the artist’s. I was unimpressed with most of the pictures I saw. I didn’t like the collages, where it looked like the artist just pasted a bunch of unrelated-looking people or pictures together. The pictures didn’t really speak to me. There were pictures of regular, everyday scenes, like garbage, people smoking, and shots of New York city. These pictures didn’t really have anything special about them. I could walk to school one day and see the exact same scene outside. Today, if people take pictures with a digital camera and edit them on a computer, they can make them so “artsy.” I think this term is so hackneyed in today’s world, and in a sense, rather than the photographer, the cameras and computers have become the artist. After visiting this exhibit, I was a little disillusioned with what today’s photography may have become. People can just take pictures of anything, edit them a little, and call this art.
Later, we went to the Barnard Fall Project. I wasn’t such a huge fan of this performance. In the beginning, I thought it was really cool. I thought, those girls have some real guts to go out there dressed like that. I liked how in the beginning there seemed to be two different dances going on at once – all the girls were moving in sync except for two, who were doing their own sort of dance. I thought this dynamic was cool, but as the show progressed I started to like the dance less and less. I really didn’t understand when the girls came out in dresses and kept repeating their names, and mixing up each person’s name. I couldn’t tell if that was some sort of private joke between the girls, but I don’t know any of the girls and I was so confused as to who was who. I liked it at the end, when they all changed their outfits to either the white or brown outfits. Everyone looked kind of like oreos.
Overall, I enjoyed the experience. I especially liked seeing The Scream. I would recommend it to others.
I like how you described Scream as a swirling storm. That is without a doubt the best description of the painting I have ever heard. The Barnard Experience was very confusing, I didn’t understand much of it either. But I like how you compared the costumes of the people in the last dance to oreos.