The holiday season is here once again!! All the stores along 5th Avenue and Soho are dressed up for the holidays, with their display window mannequins all decked out in holiday clothing and gear. Whether its a snow yeti or nutcracker figurines or white-winged angels, the holiday store displays all signal one thing: it’s the holidays!! I love going window shopping especially this time of year, because all the windows are so pretty and intricate.

Although one might not think of store window displays as art, that quality is highlighted for the holiday season. This year, Saks Fifth Avenue has a series of iconic windows featuring their mascot, the Saks Yeti. Each window depicts a scene from the Saks Yeti’s life, from his humble beginnings as an unappreciated snowmaker in Siberia to his starring role as a true snowflake artist in New York. The heartwarming story is coupled with a daily 3D light show projected onto the side of the Saks building on Fifth Avenue. Using 3D projection through 6 projectors, the light show is truly a sight to behold. The light show and the Saks Yeti “exhibit” will be on view all through the holiday season.

I highly recommend you guys to check it out, especially if you are looking forward to getting into the holiday spirit! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! 🙂

Here’s the light show spectacular: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8vwrz4fZJw&list=UU_97RTgW61rYhBo46f1PsuA#t=99

–Joanna Huang

Every day I am reminded how lucky I am to live in New York City. First of all, because of the city’s energy, second of all, the interesting people I meet, and last but not least, the art! That’s certainly not a comprehensive list, but you get the point–New York City is definitely one of the biggest cities for art. A few weeks ago, me and Karen decided to use our Thursday club hours to visit an art gallery. I had heard about a super cool super awesome infinity mirror room a gallery down in Chelsea. After some research, it turned out to be part of Yayoi Kusama’s gallery exhibition, “I Who Have Arrived in Heaven” (on view until December 21). Apparently, the line was supposed to be an over 2 hour wait on average to get into the infinity room, but we just wanted to check out the place even though we might not have time to get on the line.

When we got there, the line was indeed very long, so we decided to see some of her paintings in the same gallery exhibition and the other infinity mirror room instead. What we saw was pretty interesting. Up until that point, the only thing I knew about Kusama was her crazy polka dot motif. It turns out that she has many other motifs in her work, including Egyptian style profiles, eyes, and faces. To be honest, when I first saw her paintings, I thought to myself, “Wow, what does this even mean? It makes no sense.” All of her paintings give off a hallucinatory vibe because it doesn’t focus on one thing at a time. Everything seems pretty much thrown on the canvas all at once. After studying one of her paintings for a while, I came to the conclusion that Kusama must be very connected to her subconscious, because the things that she draws look so random and spontaneous. I just kept thinking, “Is this what she sees when she looks at the world? Is this always happening in her mind? Like how does she even think of this stuff???” Although looking passively at her work may give you the idea that she does not have any meaning behind it, I think the idea may be to make the viewer stop and think with their own mind to come up with a meaning that relates to them and speaks to them.

Besides seeing Kusama’s paintings, we also visited her infinity mirror room, “Love is Calling,” which features a mirror lined room that has glowing, orb-like sea urchin tentacles coming out of the ceiling and the floor. Combined with the mirrors surrounding the rooms on all sides, the viewer is given the illusion of an infinite world where there are tentacles as far as the eye can see. This visual effect is paired with a audio component, where Kusama herself recites a love poem of hers in Japanese. It is interesting to note that the New York Times says the tentacles are phallus symbols, but the whole time I was in that room, that never crossed my mind once. I just thought that the visual effect that the ever-changing colors on the tentacles gave were very vibrant and symbolized the fickle and colorful nature of loveand life. 

Even though I was not able to see the mirror room that literally everyone is talking about, I still enjoyed myself very much at Kusama’s gallery exhibit. It gave me fresh insight to what art means in the contemporary world and also showed me how art is defined differently for each and every artist. The viewer does not only see art through the artist’s eyes, but their own eyes as well, and that is what art is all about.

I recommend everyone to check out the exhibition review on New York Times if you want to learn more, or even go to the exhibit and experience it yourself! It is on view at the David Wirner Gallery until December 21, so hurry! 🙂

Here is the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/06/arts/design/yayoi-kusama-i-who-have-arrived-in-heaven.html?_r=0

–Joanna Huang

It was my first time at an opera and I found the physical setting to be somewhat weird because we were a bunch of kids while the theater was filled with well-dressed adults. However, all the awkwardness aside, I felt that the opera itself was really grand to say the least. The huge stage was filled with massive sets and the opera singers sang really well alongside the talented orchestra that did not receive as much credit. I also liked how enthusiastic the audience was, they would always clap where it was due, well I guess it’s because most of them actually came because they wanted to see it and knew about it.

I didn’t really know what to expect from the opera and how it would work out. The tale in itself seemed interesting but relatively short. I had no idea how they were going to make the story into a grand opera that would last three hours. My favorite part was act two. I actually don’t know why, but I felt that act two had a great deal of action in it, despite Tosca killing herself in the final act. I was really amazed at how quickly they were able to change the entire set during the intermissions. The Opera definitely made a bigger impact on me than just reading the story had. I didn’t really picture that much emotion and expression until I watched the actual opera.

The only problems I had with the opera isn’t really about the opera itself. One thing that distracted me a lot in the beginning was that I found it annoying to look down at my seat to read the translation and then look up at the acting going on in front of me. I wanted to just speak Italian and understand what they were saying so that I wouldn’t have to miss parts of the acting while I was reading the translations. Another annoying part was one of the kids from Staten Island who would constantly complain about people clapping during the opera. He would rant about it every intermission and it ruined my break. However, I feel that the opera was a great experience for me and a great way to end the class because it was such a great one at an amazing place.

I happened to notice this work of art particularly because it reminded me of a much more famous piece. Although very different on what the pieces portray and signify, the two seem to have a resemblance on how there is a reproduction of a certain type of iamge. The piece I saw is by Rob Pruitt, a collection of different smiley faces. The piece it reminded me of was Andy Warhol’s Campbell Soup Collection.

I don’t really feel that the two are directly related, but I found the concept of making a project out of a collection of similar art pieces. After looking up Rob Pruitt, I found out that he is a really big fan of Andy Warhol. One of his latest pieces include “The Andy Monument” which is a 7 feet tall chrome-finished statue of Andy Warhol.

Maybe it’s just my lack of understanding, but what defines art as art? For example, I find it very hard to appreciate pieces like the one I posted below. Even after discovering that the piece is not just a canvas covered in black, I still can’t seem to consider it ‘art.’ Shouldn’t there be a difference between art at a professional level compared to, let’s say, my horrible artwork? I value abstract art to a certain extent in that it shows a great deal of creativity and expression once you really learn the story or history behind each piece, but I don’t really know what to say about this.

This piece is part of Ad Reinhardt’s Black series and it just blows me away, dumbfounded on how I am supposed to react or even look at the work. Although it made me feel a little bit better once I did my research and found out it wasn’t just a single black, I find it hard to believe that a piece like this goes on display. The piece actually consists of smaller squares that are made up of different shades of black. People say that works like this are timeless, relationless, changeless, etc.. I find it rather bland.

Big. That’s the first word I can think of to describe Tosca. Everything about the whole evening was big and dramatic. From the moment we got off the subway, there was this huge building, which conveniently happened to be Lincoln center. (it was actually the wrong building, but if you don’t get the idea, check out Teresa’s post.) The inside was big and grand, clearly designed as much to be impressive as it was to fit all the people in. You could tell it was really intended to impress because all the people working there were dressed in fancy clothes. Once you got inside, all the seats were red, a very dramatic color, and we could walk up to the orchestra and see all the instruments there. I’ve never seen a full sized harp before! It must have taken months of practice to get all those instruments to play together, and no one even clapped for them! And all this, of course, was before the curtain came up.
When the opera started, it was more of the same. Every gesture, every phrase, every note was just slightly exaggerated beyond what a normal person would do. That’s really the whole point of the opera, to give people their fix of drama. The two main characters, Tosca and Cavaradossi, are both people who see things through the artist’s lens, meaning they see how everything could presented in an excited way, which makes them the perfect people to have a dramatic love affair. (Incidentally, that’s probably why Tosca is so jealous; she sees everything in the most dramatic way, i.e. as evidence of Cavaradossi’s affairs. Either that or she’s just fishing for compliments.) Watching the fireworks of their relationship helps people understand their less dramatic lives better. All in all, a very exciting night.

I recently met up with a friend of mine who graduated from Parsons, an art school in NYC, this past spring. I asked her about college and the different things she was required to do. I was really surprised by some of the weird things she had to do in certain classes.

One specific class that she described to me was what i was most fascinated by. She said she had a very ‘creative’ professor who would give her a number of different tasks, much of which made no sense to the students. For instance, the sketchbook they were required to draw in consisted of old newspaper articles. The professor made sure no one was using a blank, white sketchbook to do their drafts and doodles. The next task they were given was one that I did not even realize was possible. They were required to draw using charcoal….underwater. They placed a white canvas within a tank full of water. They would then continue to draw a portrait of a friend or someone in the class using the charcoal they were given. The end result looked something like this (luckily she had taken a picture of it).