Author: Danielle Saad

As I stepped into the show “Martha Rosler: Irrespective” in the Jewish Museum, I came across a variety of different art forms that were very new and unfamiliar to me.  There was a huge mobile prosthetic leg, a set dinner table, videos, photomontages, hanged diaper cloth, and more. The entire show presented me with a whole new experience as an observer, since my previous museum experience only consisted of paintings. Martha Rosler’s art can be constituted as avant-garde art since her art is both experimental and unconventional in the art world. Rosler’s art was pushing the boundaries of traditional art works, and causing observers such as myself to reevaluate our understanding of “what is art?”

The piece in the show that grabbed my attention was the artwork titled “Point and Shoot” from the House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home series. This piece was made in 2008 and  is an antiwar photomontage during the American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Rosler’s unorthodox materials consisted of a series of cut-and-pasted printed paper from magazines on photos from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. In this piece, we see a war-stricken area in which American soldiers are directing the civilians to move ahead from a tank by pointing their weapons at them. The civilians in the background of the the photo are predominately male and are all looking back at the scene in front of them. There is also a male civilian beginning to walk across the tank, but the American soldiers’ attention lies elsewhere. Rosler had pasted a black and white cut out of a mother and child hand in hand coming face to face with the American soldiers. The mother and child are both holding papers, and the mother’s body language looks as though she is desperate to keep moving forward. Another obvious magazine cut-out pasted on this photo is the model posing in a white dress and black bag. The whole war scene brought before the viewer’s eyes is sort of interrupted with the large cut out of the posing model. The model’s presence is grabbing our attention and the way the model is pasted into the scene seems as though this is just another runway. This avant-garde art is also abstract art since its not following the traditional art guidelines, but rather creating its own rules. The combination of the model cut out and devastating war background do not coincide with each other and that works since it is abstract art. This piece goes beyond imitation art in order to raise awareness to issues that seem ignored or forgotten.

Rosler’s method of cutting out pictures from magazines and pasting them onto photos from the Iraq and Afghanistan war is meant to convey a political statement. This form of photomontages shares similar visual strategies to Rosler’s previous antiwar art on the Vietnam war. She is using her art as a way to criticize the country’s repetitive geopolitics and continuous engagement in one war after the other. Her art is powerful and its experimental aspect helps bring social awareness to the war going on out “there,” by pasting a picture  that we are looking at “here” in a typical American magazine. Everyone in the art work are focused on the mother and child and our attention veers off to the model on the left. The photomontage is presented in a way that our attention lies on the model, while there is a whole war in the background that goes unnoticed. Rosler wants to get the political message across that the experience we have viewing this art is similar to the way Americans are viewing the wars. We are spending our time focusing on materialistic things like clothes and magazines, when we should be aware of the politics and wars taking place.

On a Friday afternoon, I was on the B train back to Brooklyn and was arriving to my last stop: Kings Highway. For the entire duration of the ride, I had been standing. The train was full of people.  There was barely any room to breathe. Everyone was anxious to get off the train and escape the unbearable heat caused by the amount of people. A man dressed in a brown leather jacket and blue jeans was talking on the phone right next to me. I overheard him complaining to the person on the other end of the phone, “If these people do not start getting off this train, I am going to lose it!” As I was the one who stood the closest to this man, I decided to move two steps back to keep my distance. I was unwilling to exit the cart, walk down the platform, and enter the distant cart. I was almost there. The train doors opened up and I thought we were still at Newkirk Plaza, but the conductor announced, “this is Kings Highway, the next stop is Sheepshead Bay, stand clear of the closing doors please.” At that moment, I ran out the train and pushed anyone who was in my way. I missed my stops countless of times before and I was not ready to miss my stop again.

Once I exited the hot train, the cold brisk air outside hit me like a slap in the face. The bright artificial lights of the train were replaced with the dark and gloomy sky.  Once I got out of the train station, I was thinking about taking the bus home. The B31 was across the street, right beside the bagel store. I decided to ditch the bus and walk home. Before I began walking, I stood by the train station entrance for a minute and watched the scene unravel before me. People pacing across the street to get on the bus, the headlights of the cars driving in front of me blinding my eyes, and a group of people congregated by the entrance complaining about the rain.  The wind had picked up and water poured down from the sky into the the sodden pavement in small drops. I zipped up my jacket, put on my hood, and began my walk from Quentin towards Avenue R. I was walking around in the residential area of my neighborhood, so all I saw were houses and apartment buildings. The rain had kept most people off the sidewalks, but there was a middle aged couple walking right ahead of me. Despite the cold rainy weather, the couple were walking at an alarmingly slow pace. Were they immune to the cold? Was the freezing rainy weather their idea of a nice afternoon stroll? I crossed the street to pass the couple and picked up my pace.

I was beginning to lose feeling in my fingers and was shaking from the cold. I wished I had wore a heavier sweater that day. I had my recurrent worry on how cold it was this fall season. How would I survive the intense cold winter? I looked up and saw the green sign by the end of the block indicating that I reached East 19. That was quick. As I continued on my walk, I noticed the masses of leaves dying off in bright colors on the wet pavement. Every step I took would make a loud crunching noise from the leaves and combined with the honking of the cars made it difficult for me to think. I walked another five blocks and finally reached the block of my house. Before I would walk down the block to my house, I decided to walk an extra block down to Bedford just for the sake of walking. I came across a house with a big flower garden in the front. I remembered biking past this house all the time when I was little on the way to Marine park and coming across different types of flowers with beautiful bright hues. I even fell down one time because I got lost in the scene of colors and forgot to look where I was walking. However, those flowers only come out during the spring season and now all I see was wet grass. The flowers always made me happy and I needed that happiness against this gloomy Friday afternoon. I walked back to East 24 street and finally made my way back home.

On Wednesday, October 31st, I attended the Fall Poetry Revel at Baruch College. The Poetry Revel was held on the 14th floor in room 270. By the time I arrived at the event all the tables and chairs were full, but I was still able to hear and see everything from the back row.  The event attracted a great gathering of Baruch students and professors who all share the same passion to share and listen to great works of poetry. The atmosphere of the room was very upbeat and inviting, and provided the students and professors a safe place to perform their poetic works. Professor Kelly works in the English department and  seemed to take charge of the event. I viewed Professor Kelly as the “host” of the Poetry Revel, who is in charge of starting off the event and introducing each performer to the “stage.” There were students and Professors who volunteered to perform a poem they have wrote for class, or a poem written by someone else. In the spirit of Halloween, a few students had taken it upon themselves to dress up for the occasion. Nevertheless, the performer I decided to draw my attention to as a spectator was Professor Kelly.

Professor Kelly welcomed everyone to the event and was the first individual to perform a poem. She was dressed in a professional composed outfit; she wore a floral print blazer, white bottom down shirt, and black pants. Before she began sharing the poem she composed, she stated that it is okay to be nervous and that she was nervous herself. The point she made had led me to look out for any cues that would reveal any nervousness she may be feeling like  hands shaking, stuttering of words, or absence of eye contact with the audience. The first poem she shared was inspired by the poet Mary Oliver and was  titled “Ombre.” She stood at the front center of the room and held a couple of sheets of paper in front of her. She stood tall with good posture and began reciting the words of the poem. The poem’s overall theme was about love, but she spoke at a fast pace, which made it a bit difficult to absorb all that words she was sharing. The way she said the words of the poem was in a calm tone and sounded the same way she may have a casual conversation with a friend. She never made any hand gestures or dramatic body language to emphasize a point like a few performers have. She stood grounded in her spot of the “stage” and would constantly look up and down from her paper to make eye contact with the audience. All the student performers after her would only stare into their phone or paper and read aloud. Professor Kelly would make sure to keeping looking up and down from her paper to enhance her performance and connect with the audience.

Professor Kelly finished with her first poem “Ombre” in a short amount of time since her poem was not long. She made some funny remarks and jokes to keep the audience engaged before she continued on to perform her second poem. The second poem was called “Zombie Love Poem” and was six-parts long. She wrote this lengthy poem in the spirit of Halloween and shared with the audience in advance that the poem’s language was gory. She went into her craft of writing with a theme in mind, and let her thoughts of Halloween work their way into writing. The poem included mythical creatures like zombies and vampires, and gross things like torn flesh and profuse amount of blood.  As she began reciting the poem, she stood in the same manner she had with the last poem. The soothing and tranquil tone she used for this poem did not match the gruesome and frightening language of her second poem. I would have expected her to speak in a more powerful and booming tone as opposed to the more casual tone she had performed the poem in. Despite the absence of dramatic body language, she was able to emphasize certain points of the poem by making dramatic pauses in between lines or slowing down to dramatize a point. For example, one moment that remains clear in my mind was when she said the words “sweet sweet flesh.” She was able to bring those words to life by saying those words slowly and looking point blank at the audience. As I stated earlier on, she said she was nervous, but her posture and composure did make that feeling evident. The only thing I can note was her hands shaking a little when she was holding the sheets of paper in front of her.

Overall, I enjoyed my experience as a spectator at the Baruch Poetry Revel, and I hope to attend other readings available in the future. I believe hearing a poem spoken out loud by a performer is so much more powerful than just reading a poem silently by yourself. Performers are able to bring the words to life with their voice and body language, which  undoubtedly helped augment the words of the poem.

New York Grenades by Russell Young

As I stepped into the Taglialatella Galleries, there were many colorful paintings and sculptures that have been put on display against the white walls. The painting was labeled “New York Grenades” painted by Russell Young was the first that had caught my eye.  At first glance, you see a marvelous blown up image of a World War II grenade that takes up most of the canvas. The  body of the grenade can be visualized as a vase with the boxy and grid-like skin of a pineapple. There are five rows and four columns of twenty boxes that can be seen from the painting. The boxes on this “pineapple skin” get smaller and smaller as it goes down the columns and reaches the end of the grenade.  The top of that “vase” contains a smooth and circular opening that looks like a huge chocolate rolo, as seen below.

Chocolate Rolo

At the very top of the grenade, there is a rectangular piece of metal covered by a handle, as long as half the grenade. Attached to the long handle, is a large circular ring that takes up majority of the top half of the grenade. The first thing I was reminded of when I saw the colors of this painting was the thermal camera effect found on the photo booth application on my Mac Laptop. The thermal camera effect has four colors captured in the camera: red, yellow, green, blue. However, I need you to focus only on three colors: red, yellow, and black. Now, picture the large grenade described earlier with the thermal effect on only the grenade, contrasted against a solid yellow background, almost the color of mustard. The artist uses all the three colors to bring out the shape of the cubes and outline of the grenade. Other than the unique color choice and blown up image, the diamond dust covering the grenade lures the observer to come closer. The light in the gallery hits the painting perfectly in a way that the grenade was sparkling and makes one almost forget that this is a destructive and deadly device.

The gallery was quite empty when I came in, and that allowed me to take my time with each painting and sculpture. The atmosphere in the gallery was very calm and quiet, that even a whisper would seem like too much noise. All the walls were white and the floor was gray. All the colorful paintings and sculptures provided a pop of color to a plain and dull environment. The white background  lets the whole world fall away and make you feel like its only you and the painting. There were a good amount of space placed between each painting on the wall, which allowed me to focus on one painting without being distracted by another. By the left side of the gallery, there were four employees sitting by two long desks and working. Overall, the environment ends up enhancing our perception of the artwork by providing a clear white contrast against the colorful pieces of art. All the artworks on display shared the common playful and vibrant colors that makes the gallery space all the more enjoyable. It’s as if the paintings are able to speak for themselves and provide all the “noise” with its different colors in the quiet gallery space.

FIT College Mural

The Fashion Institute of Technology mural is painted on the bricks of the building and is quite tall that you would require a ladder to touch the top. The background color of the mural is a baby blue pastel color painted directly on the building, and you are still able to see the outline of the bricks.  The image depicted by the artist that takes up three quarter of the mural is a large New York City 23rd street sign. The street sign is positioned diagonally and is closer to the bottom of the mural. The street sign is so zoomed in that only the center of the sign makes it into the mural. The sign has the traditional dark green color and two thick white lines outlining the top and bottom of the sign. The artist also outlined the sign and letters with black to make the shapes stand out. The numbers 23 are written in a way that the outline of the number starts out thin from the top and gets thicker towards the end. There is a pigeon sitting on top of the street sign with a small olive branch in its mouth. The artist used the colors purple, teal, blue, light gray, dark gray, and white to depict the top portion of the bird only seen in the mural. The pigeon’s pink feet is painted on top of the sign as well, three toes for each foot with short claws extending at the end. The small olive branch held in its beak contains one green olive with two leaves, and a small white crescent shape on the olive to represent a glare.  Directly behind the pigeon’s head, there is a circular sun made up of two shades of yellow. The inner circle of the sun is a yellow-white color, and the circle encompassing the small circle is a light yellow shade. At the bottom right corner, the instagram account @LITTLEFOXLIFE and name of the artist, Kara, is written down.

Murals on FIT building

All the murals painted on the FIT walls were the same size and lined up one after the other. As opposed to the art gallery, the  public artworks are attached to one another and I ended up looking back and forth from artworks, instead of focusing on just one. The atmosphere outside by the murals was completely different than the one in the gallery. When I was viewing the mural, there were people who kept walking in front of me and there were trees placed in front of the art that kept obscuring my view. The murals on the brick wall and the paintings in the gallery are able to alter a space because it transforms a bland and ordinary wall into a masterpiece worthy of people’s attention. However, the noisy and crowded environment by the murals took away from my experience and caused me to lose interest in the art. The mural’s use of the olive branch and light pastel colors was supposed to evoke feelings of peace and tranquility, but the city’s boisterous atmosphere did not match with that aesthetic.

The painting “The Repast of the Lion” was painted by the French painter Henri Rousseau in 1907. This artwork was first displayed in the Salon d’Automne in Paris, France, but is now found on the second floor of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The medium of the painting was oil paint on canvas and the dimensions are 44 3/4 x 63 in.

In the painting, the first thing that strikes me is the lion centered at the bottom with the head of a jaguar in its mouth. The lion is standing with its knees bent towards its prey and there is blood dripping from its mouth. I can also see blood found on the bodies of both animals, since both of their claws are pressing into each other.  Everything in the painting is concaving towards the middle. The large flowers and leaves are leaning towards the center and the moon is perfectly aligned with the lion. There is a lightness to darkness contrast that can be seen between the light colors of the flowers and the dark green color of the jungle. The painting also depicts the lion in relation to its landscape, as opposed to the representation of just a lion. The entire landscape contains unusually large flowers and leaves in proportion to the lion and jaguar, which makes the lion and its prey the smallest in comparison. Even though the body of the lion is stylized very small, the artist still depicted its features realistically with the big mane of hair and light brown and beige hues.  As a viewer, the situation captured in the painting is authentic since this is how lions typically eat their prey. The painting represents the lion in a fearsome way because of the blood present and the fact that it is looking directly at the viewers, as if to say, “You are next!”