Hi all, so Joanna and I visited the David Zwirner gallery in hopes of visiting the Infinity Room but because of time we weren’t able to. But we were able to visit the other parts of the gallery that displayed some of her paintings. Her paintings are all very colorful and portray abstract images:

To give a background of her works: her main interest is in the cosmic realms and she focuses on pop art and minimalism. This would explain the abstract images in her paintings, which are all drawn in different directions and colors. We were wondering why she was drawing in all different directions and at first hypothesized that since the canvas she drew on was quite big (I believe at least 6 feet), she might have painted like this for convenience, but after doing a bit more research, this may have been her original intention. According to a biography, her works focus microscopic and macroscopic universes; I wonder what she was thinking while painting these? Was this her perception on different “universes” and “cosmic realms?” We also noted that for the third picture, the yellow paint looks like different pathways; did each of the different circles represent different cultures or people that she encountered throughout her life? Or perhaps different places, etc. There was a lot going on through my mind, mainly because I did not really understand the meaning behind the paintings.
Some of her pictures also showed signs of depth and dimension, as shown in the last picture. The eyes are spaced closer together as you move towards the center and left. A lot of the paintings made me think of optical illusions; especially since there was definitely a repetition of the eyes and circular looking faces in most of her paintings.
We also got to visit the Tentacle Room.

She also explores many aspects of form, space, and content. Since this room had mirrors all around, it  made me feel as if I was like in another world

Definetely recommend to check this place out

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.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wcl9NPl481k

Hi all! So Michele’s post about the house in the bottle reminded me of this video, which describes how a man supposedly lives inside the Cube on Astor Place (obviously, this is not true. If you actually have seen the Cube in person, there aren’t any openings) but I just found it interesting how people were able to come up with such interesting ideas involving a sculpture that people pass by every day. As for me, I never took notice of the Cube until this video. I actually checked it out, with a couple of other classmates, before we headed to watch the play “Fun Home,” (we were actually able to make it move a little!!) and even though I was a bit disappointed that there was no one living in it, I was glad it made me more aware of a sculpture that has actually been existent for quite a while. Also, I was pretty amazed at how creative this video was; it was so descriptive, creative, and sounded like it made so much sense so people including myself actually believed there was someone in there.

Tuesday was a very interesting experience, since I’ve never gone to the Met before. I had no idea it was so big; narrowing the visit down to a specific exhibit was very helpful. A few of us decided to go to the exhibition Balthus: Cats and Girls. I honestly had no idea what the exhibition was going to be about, but the name itself sounded interesting.
First off, it took us a pretty long time to get there. Not that we got lost or anything.. but the map was pretty confusing. It was nice though, since we had to go through several parts of the museum. We went through American History, the Egyptian Wing (which was personally one of my favorites), and maybe a few more. In the Egyptian part, there was a beautiful temple surrounded by water. The design is very unique, since Egyptian temples were not only houses, but also were representations of religious and mythological concepts, which is shown in the architecture and carvings on the temple. Professor Eversley brought up an interesting point as to how this might be the closest we could be to experiencing Egypt for a while, especially with the current situation Egypt is in right now. Looking at the temple that day made me realize lucky we are to have easy access to art from all around the world.

When we finally got to the exhibition, I was a bit surprised by the paintings I saw there. Balthus was a French painter whose interest, as shown in the exhibition, was girls who were on the threshold of puberty, “hovering between innocence and knowledge.” Many of his pictures had sexual connotations to it, since they portrayed girls as young as 14 posing in ways like shown in this picture

One picture that was of great interest to me was “The Victim,” which shows a young woman’s body that has been thrown on the bed. If you look closer, there is a knife on the floor an it happens to be pointing to her heart. It’s hard to tell if the woman was murdered and died, or if she is in a trance, especially since there is no sign of blood anywhere. I found this interesting because after our discussion of nudity from John Berger’s book, this painting shows nudity in a different perspective; the subject of this painting does not have a seductive look like the other paintings of nudity that we saw. Balthus finished this painting after he came back from serving in World War II, so this may be a reference to the horrors that he saw during the war.

Another observation that was made while walking through this exhibition was the amount of paint Balthus used; if you look closely at his paintings, you can see the thick layers and strokes that he made. He used a lot of paint, which implies that he was rich (something new that I learned that day)

After reading the novel, I was a bit surprised at the musical… in a good way. Personally, I love musicals so I was very interested to watch it. The atmosphere of the musical was definitely a lot more cheerful than what I expected; the musical aspect of it made the show have a more positive tone in some parts. There was also a lot more humor to it compared to the novel so it was very enjoyable to watch. In the novel, Bruce is portrayed as a father who didn’t care about his children and only seemed to “use” them when he needed help, but on stage, I felt that he was more of an ideal father. He actually smiles and seems to be more present in Alison’s life. For example, in NYC before he sneaks out, I could really see the fatherly aspect of Bruce when he sings Alison to sleep.
I also liked how it was a nonlinear narrative in both the book and the musical. During the show, it was interesting seeing the grown up Alison looking back at the young Alisons in childhood and college. Actually seeing Alison develop throughout the show made it more clear to me as to how Alison was changing. I personally liked the show more because on stage, there can be a lot of things happening at the same time while in the book, the author must draw a new frame in order to portray another scene. In the show, the audience is able to see Alison writing her story and also see the scenes that she is writing about. Also, I liked how they used the stage curtains to show that Alison was drawing while certain scenes were playing. Many times, we see the current Alison looking over the small Alison writing in her diary, which again shows two different things happening; Alison looking back at her childhood and the actual scene of when small Alison was writing.
I was talking to other classmates and we were a bit surprised that the show did not mention about how she used to write, especially in her diaries, with lines and indecipherable writing. I thought it was quite important as she was developing during her childhood, but I guess they thought only the mention of her writing in a diary was important enough.
Lastly, I really liked how they started and ended the show. The show started with Alison and her father playing “Airplane,” and the show ended with the same song, which brings the story back to the beginning, except Bruce wasn’t there anymore. It was also very interesting how the show ended with all three Alisons singing, which I thought was a great way to conclude the show. The show was able to bring out more emotions; when I was reading the book, I didn’t really feel sad that her father had died but at the end of the show, I was quite sad and even sympathetic for Bruce.

http://youtu.be/isxSZ3wAZU0
So right before we started walking to English class, Joanna and I got to see this person perform. It’s pretty cool how it happened right at our campus at the plaza. When I first saw him, I had no idea what was happening but the first thing that caught my attention was his outfit. It was quite interesting; as you can tell from the video, he cut out pieces of milk cartons and connected them with strings in a way that when he wore the costume, he sort of looked like a robot, which was his goal since he was doing a robot dance. I never took a big interest in robot dances, but his outfit was just so catchy. Hope some of you guys got to see it live; it was definitely worth my five minutes before class haha.

When I went to 5 Pointz, I saw this wonderful work of graffiti. I really like the original painting; Vincent van Gogh used oil on canvas to make this painting and I thought it was interesting how someone decided to use graffiti to imitate this painting. It was really cool because I only got to see the painting online, and when I went to 5 pointz, I was able to see it cover a whole wall, even though the two pieces of art are not exactly the same. Comparing the painting with this graffiti art, we see that the artist was trying to imitate the brush strokes that van Gogh made, which is why we see the streaks so clearly. The artist also drew Vincent van Gogh and a bunch of letters on the wall, but I couldn’t quite decipher and undertstand what the letters say. All I could read from the pictures were “Panic xmen….” Perhaps that is what the artist(s) go by. Anyways, I just really liked how this combines modern graffiti art with post-impressionist art.

This series of black and white photos in the Rox gallery caught my attention. The first photo consists of a man placing a big rock on the floor. I assume he was in Egypt, since there are pyramids behind him in the background and he is standing on sand. The next photo shows more rocks on the floor. What confused me was the third photo, since there seemed to be less rocks compared to the previous photo. It didn’t make sense to me; the series of photos should be showing the process in which the man is building a pyramid, so there should be more rocks on the sand as the order of the photos increases. Where did the other rocks go? Did the photographer intentionally do this? The fourth photo shows the man placing the last rock on the top of the pile of rocks he had made. The fifth photo shows a complete pyramid made of rocks; the pyramid is a bit tilted and uneven but we can see that it is a pyramid. We see the man in the distance walking away. The sixth photo is a closer image of the pyramid made with rocks.
I really have no idea what the photographer is trying to convey here. To me, looking at the series of photos in detail, especially at the second and third photo, the photos showed how progress and life in general can be very difficult. We don’t what happened to the rest of the rocks in the third picture but I think it represents how in life, even though we try very hard, there will always be obstacles that keep us from reaching our goal. In the series of pictures, the man continues to build his pyramid. I believe this represents our determination to keep going on even though there are many obstacles and problems we must face. Finally, the man finishes his pyramid. Even though the pyramid is made with uneven rocks and we can see how imperfect it is through its structure, we can see that it still stands. To me, this shows that determination and the will to keep going on will get us to our goal; even if we end up tired and broken at the end, we know that we have still succeeded. I also found it interesting how the photographer was able to capture the man’s small pyramid next to the big, majestic ones of Egypt. To others, his pyramid may be insignificant compared to the actual pyramids behind it but I think the man is satisfied, since he reached his own personal goal of building a pyramid of rocks.