Yay! The holidays are coming! When I think of the holidays, I think of all the decorations. Whatever holiday it is, every holiday has an art to it. Have you guys ever thought of that before? Especially around Christmas, I feel that there’s art is everywhere. For example, this sculpture is decorated for the holidays. Also, the tree for the Rockefeller Center went up. The lights, the angels, they’re all art. The decorations people put up for the holidays are art. They express the holiday spirit. The art is what lifts the people’s spirit to get them into the holiday spirit. The art of decorations have a strong influence towards the people. I know it does to me. It makes me happy as I spend it with the people I love.

How about you guys? Don’t you feel happy looking at the holiday decorations?

I’ve noticed that in the night, Manhattan has much more beauty. For example, this Empire State Building. Honestly, during the day, I just look up and say, “Wow it’s the tallest building here in Manhattan.” I didn’t see the beauty of it except how long it took to build the building. However, when I was walking down the street, I was amazed. The different fluorescent colors at night made a real difference. The tallest building was shining so brightly. It looked like a piece of art in 3D form. It was really cool to see this. I wonder why they choice to light these specific colors. Then I thought that it was very patriotic since the colors are the colors of the American flag. I also remembered when they lit up the Filipino’s colors as well when the Philippines were hit with the Earthquake. The Building delivers a message through the use of its colors and lights. I never came to thinking this until I saw the colors of this building.

What do you guys think about the lights?

The Museum of Modern Art is always an interesting place to visit. Although, I did not have the opportunity to see the “Soundings: A contemporary Score,” exhibit, I did have the chance to see the work of René Magritte. Simply put, his work was very distinctive and unique and yet, at times seemingly familiar. This comes at no surprise especially since the description of his work, which was on the wall outside of the room, mentions that his technique is to “defamilarize the familiar.” Besides this technique, his work has more to it than we see on the surface.

Let’s start with his work titled, Le Faux Miroir. What we see is an eye with clouds in it.  What we can easily depict is that the person is looking at the sky and sees clouds. However, it could also be you looking at someone’s eye through a window and he’s looking at you. Although, at first glance it may look like a mirror reflection of an eye. An interesting detail to note is that the eye has no eyelashes. Even though this painting is nothing but an eye, looking at it I sense that the owner of this eye is deep in thought. To me this would also make sense because people, many times, are deep in thought when they look out of windows. Although there is no evidence to prove anything except it is an eye, it is much more than an eye to me.

 Then there is the work titled, The Interpretations of Dreams. This was very familiar because it was on the cover of Ways of Seeing. My favorite thing about this work is that I have the opportunity of seeing it in real life after seeing it on the cover of a book. There always that feeling of accomplishment when you see a real work. This work shows the difference between words and pictures. It’s hard to understand and I have little idea of what it should mean. It’s mysterious to me and I actually like that about it. It has the word “door” under a picture of a horse’s head. There is a clock above the word “wind” and so on. The words and pictures do not seem to match. It enhances the idea that things aren’t always what they seem.

Another notable painting to me is one titled, Not to be Reproduced. This painting shows a man and book in front of a mirror. The oddest thing is, the back of the man’s head shows up in the mirror but the book is correctly flipped. It took me a while just to realize the book was correctly flipped because the attention is on the person. It makes you wonder why Magritte decided to do that. According to the description the museum gave, it has a connection with Poe. Regardless, I think the title fits because perhaps the face cannot be reproduced.

The paintings in the whole exhibit showed a deep connection with each other. I noticed recurring ideas and pictures, such as the sky, a tuba, the human body, and mirrors. The idea behind Magritte’s work is perception. The things we see are not always what they seem. He makes even the most familiar things foreign and distorted, yet there is no doubt that they are also noticeable.

And here’s a rose for all of you.

I really enjoyed the performance. I remember watching the videos of performances during class that day and thinking, “Nope, this doesn’t really interest me.” Maybe I was just really tired and didn’t look forward to anything at all that day. But I think sitting up front really helped me keep awake. I couldn’t stop staring at the dancers because they were just amazing. We were so close that you could literally see the sweat flying off their heads as they danced across the stage.
First off, I found their costumes interesting. For the performance, they were wearing very simple and tight clothing, which makes the viewers pay close attention to their bodies (for example, there was one dance where two/three men were wearing nude leggings). As mentioned in class, modern dance has several attributes such as the focus on the body (as opposed to the limbs, which is emphasized by the high jumps of classical ballet, but we did not see many high jumps during this performance), the coordinated breathing and movements (the audience could hear their loud breathing and I remember they all breathed at certain times at a certain beat), and the relationship with the floor. The fact that the dancers were all moving closely together with close contact with the floor really supports the ballet’s claim: “The company’s foremost innovation is that dance should be about removing boundaries, not reinforcing them.”
For me personally, the most interesting part was the second part. I remember it began with no music playing; if I remember correctly, it sort of sounded like a steady ticking or beeping. Because there wasn’t any background noise at the beginning, the audience could clearly hear the dancers’ steady breathing. The more solemn dance was also emphasized by the dancers’ black outfits. I particularly liked this act because I felt that the quieter performance compared to the other two made it more intense and it gave it a suspenseful atmosphere. I also remember a part where there were two dancers in the front, while a lone male dancer was in the back and behind him was a white screen. It was interesting how there were two different things happening at the same time; I remember there were other parts where there were dancers on both sides of the stage and they weren’t doing the same dance. I found this a bit confusing, but perhaps it would have been easier for people who were sitting more far back since they would have a wider view of everything that was happening on stage.

I liked the last part too, especially since I found it more relevant. Their outfits were more like those that we would wear, and the music was also more familiar. I remember during class that day, Professor Eversley mentioned how many of the modern dances that we see today in music videos actually use a lot of the movements used in ballet. I definitely saw the resemblance during the last part.

Overall, I really liked this performance, considering it the very first ballet I ever attended.

Today, I walked out of school unsure of what to do, or where to go. I was headed towards the High Line Park, until I bumped into a few art galleries. One of them was called Galerie Richard, and the works of William Bradley were exhibited there. Bradley’s work is exceptional. It looks simple at first, but if you take the time to stare at the paintings a bit longer, a lot can be discovered.

For example, this image up top is one of his works, and the reason why its so interesting is because no one knows what’s going on. Of course there has to be a meaning associated with the colors, and different shades of red and blue. When it comes to color, I always associate it with emotions. Considering the amount of red in the painting, one could say that the artist is angry, or is upset about something. Or maybe he thought these were the best three colors to use to grad the viewer’s attention. So that’s that for the colors. How about the fact that there’s so much overlapping going on in the artwork? How come things weren’t more spread out? I don’t like seeing all of that congestion in the center, so I think the artist should have used all the space in the painting. Now there’s too much red in the painting. But there is in fact one thing that I like: the different hues of color is something that makes this painting stand out. The light blue and darker shades of blue, and bright red and crimson, make the panting look bold. What I mean is, I believe this painting isn’t just an example of paint splattered on a paper. There’s more to it, but to find out, we’d have to go through Bradley’s imagination. This painting is called “Fun and Games.” It does look like some of the drawings I made when I was younger, so I guess Bradley really did use his imagination.

I didn’t know what to think of this one when I saw it, but all I knew was that it was real cute. Many thoughts came to my head upon seeing this image. First, I thought of Pacman, then I thought of a fetus, and lastly I thought of a person’d head, too consumed with the problems in the world. I tried to make sense of what I saw, and I came up with that last conclusion, because I saw blue and green on the sides of the giant circle. Those colors and dripping from the person’s mouth, so it could portray greed too. Its a weird drawing, and I feel even more weird trying come up with explanations for the weird painting. I wish Bradley could explain what he was drawing and why.