Luka's Arts In NYC

Music, to me is any sound that creates emotion to a person. I think that music can be anything from the tapping of a window sill to the sounds of the subway. The most important thing is that it brings emotion and evokes something in a person. There also has to be a rhythm to music. Music has to follow a certain flow to me. This rhythm is part of what affects people. It is what helps them groove to the music. Whether it be the swiping of metro cards on a train or actual singing for me to consider it music it has to follow some sort of rhythm or time. A lot of people have definitions of music that are similar to noise, but to me music and noise are different because of this rhythm. And this rhythm is what sets the type of emotion or reactions that people get from the music. If the rhythm is up tempo and upbeat people will feel more of the need to dance to it and it is more uplifting. If the tempo is slow and chilled out it will relax people and make them want to just sit down and listen to it.  So i guess what I’m trying to say is that music is noise with a rhythm.

LeWitt was born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1928. He took classes for art as a child in the Wodsworth Antheneum. He graduated from Syracuse University in 1949. Then in the summer of 1950 traveled around Europe. Afterwards he was drafted for the Korean War and was assigned to make posters for the war. He then worked for an architect named I. M. Pei as an architectural draftsman. he is considered one of the most important and influential artists of his time.

His art is very geometric. He works with patterns and cubism. He does both painting and sculpting. His color palette including really bright colors, or white. His pieces were never different from the colors of the rainbow or black and white.  He was considered part of the Minimal and Conceptual art movements.

Tomaseli is still around and currently doing a show at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. He was born in Santa Monica, California in 1956 and grew up there. This place is near Disney Land. He graduated from California State University in 1982 with a B.A. in painting and drawing. he currently lives in Brooklyn.

His work is usually associated with psychedelia and drugs. For example, the piece we saw had many drugs and marijuana leaves imbedded into it. And it also had a creature made out of almost human eyes. He also does this work on wood panels. He is very big on psychedelia since he grew up during the 60’s and 70’s in a town so close to Disney Land. A lot of his work reminds me of space because it has a black background and these colorful dots all over it. a common theme that has seemed to appear in his piece is this idea of space and also a use of circles is very vivd in his piece.

The sources of inspiration for all these pieces in these five galleries are technology and the advancement of man, as he grows older. They all focus on some sort of depiction of either old, vs. new or nature vs. industry. This is shown through the materials or subject matter that the artists use. For example, Roxy Raine’s Distillation blends aspects of nature with industry by making natural things that connect with these gigantic industrial pipes. He creates mushrooms and kidneys, for example, to go along with these gigantic pipes. Also, in Mary Temple’s Screentests she uses a five-dollar bill and silk screens Obama’s face on it next to Lincoln’s. It portrays this contrast between the old and the new, the old being Lincoln and the new being Obama.

The reason why they do this? It is because this is a common theme in society. Are we destroying the world as life goes on? As man progresses and invents more and more technology does it not make the world worse itself? This is what the artists want to get across to people. They want to show this relationship in their piece. They want to show that as we progress we pollute.

They also look at this theme of throwing away anything old. For example, in the piece Waste_Generation by Chris Doyle, there is this image of a junkyard of used outdated computer and technology. It gives the audience this sense that we get rid of something as soon as it is old. That regardless how old it is as soon as something new comes along we throw out what’s obsolete.

I would have to say that my favorite piece in whole play would probably have been the Kleinzach piece, which was in the prologue and epilogue. It was a very comical piece, but in the epilogue, when you realize that the main character Hoffmann makes himself Kleinzach, who is a dwarf. This piece happens when Hoffman, the main character of the opera, enters the bar. This piece is a bar song. The whole ensemble in the bar sings it but Hoffman leads it.

The music for this piece is repetitive, as in it follows the same groove and melody thorughout thewhole piece. The Vocals are conversational; when Hoffman says something the audience repeats the last word/phrase. The sound of the music is very playful but and reminds me of a bar scene.

The reason why this was my favorite piece was because i liked how the music went along with the vocals and the performance on stage. I like how the motions imitated the content and noise from the vocals. I also just thought it was a very comedic, yet sinister part of the piece that was very entertaining to me.

“Vistaar”

Choreography by Madhavi Mudgal

Music by Madhup Mudgal

Costumes by Madhup Mudgal

Choreography – With this piece I really enjoyed the choreography. The performers often moved as one unit make different almost geometric shapes. The dancing was also a part of the music since the costumes had beads or coins attached to the dresses their movement worked as a sort of percussion instrument. The dancers were all female. There were five of them. They each had an outfit that was the same except for the color.

Set/Stage and Light Design – The light played a big factor in this. It helped set the focus of the audience by shifting around the stage from musicians to dancer. The rest of the stage is dark except for the one spot light and there is not backdrop. The costumes were traditional very traditional and heavy looking dresses with things that made sounds on them.

Music – It sounded like traditional Indian music. Every person on stage is a part of the music from the dancers to the musicians. There is a lot of movement in the music and it is very up beat. It was live. The relationship was that they all moved in unison, dancer and musicians. The dance was part of the form of music.

The feet of the Monument

The narrative of the film follows the rise and fall of the Empire of a man named Soho Eckstein who bought half of Johannesburg. Soho Eckstein is a greedy man, who is always wearing a dark suit and is portrayed as angry, over worked, isolated from regular society and glutinous. Another of the main characters is Soho Eckstein’s wife. She is represented as often bored and unattended to, which leads to her promiscuous affair with Felix Tittlebaum. In the end though, after Eckstein’s empire falls, he ends up back with her. Felix is viewed as a captive. He is forced to be where he is and wants to escape it as much as possible. His only way of escaping it is by his affair with Mrs. Eckstein. Only when he is with her is he truly happy. I think Felix and Soho represent two parts of the artist, the workaholic and the more natural one. When he is at work he must neglect everything he loves. He therefore is more angry and greedy and is darker of a human. But when he is with the person he loves he is happy and less dark. But only when he can destroy his original corporate work can eh go back to what he loves, in this case it was a woman. I think that woman in the artist’s mind represents art. I don’t fully know Kentridge’s biography so I’m not sure if this is the case, but he might have done this by just saying that this dilemma follows every person. Only when one person can shed and destroy the shackles of skyscrapers and corporate world can one go back to what they enjoy most about life. That is what the big fight between Felix and Soho is. It is the dilemma between these characters of whether a man should be married to his job or the woman he loves.

My favorite part of all the four movies was the monument. When it showed this man bound to be under a burden that he may want to break but can’t because it weighs him down while bound him by the feet I thought this was a great metaphor for how in the modern world often people are forced by the corporate and capitalist world to pursue careers that are more profitable instead of more enjoyable. People seem to ask themselves nowadays what is a better career choice instead of what they truly enjoy doing. And the monument represents the mistake the man has made by focusing on this career. Now he is shackled and bound, never to be able to pursue his true dreams and to only be carrying the burden of a job he doesn’t enjoy.

The Artwork:

Andy Warhol “Orange Disaster 5”:

The image is of the electric chair. I think he found the image and then by silk-screening it made it his own. He repeats the picture 15 times. This makes the picture almost seem vague, like a brick in a house. At first glance one doesn’t see each individual picture and sees the piece as a whole, but as you closer you see the image and subject matter. I think the title is meaning to show how sinister the image is. The image is sinister, with the orange making the electric chair seem even more eerie and creepy, and since the electric is by itself it shows the solitariness of one who has to suffer from this. It is also saying that this isn’t the only disaster. The image is one of five.

Robert Rauschenberg “Untitled”:

Subject Matter:

. Radio

. Advertisement

. Rocket

. Buildings

. Shady Characters

I think he found these images in mostly newspapers. They all seem very much about the current events of the world during that time. I also think he got a couple of them from magazines, like the Coca-Cola billboard advertisement. The meaning of this work, I feel, is that the current would is chaotic and that the only things in the world that can be distinguished from the chaos are the aspects of life that control the chaos such as the images of shady characters (politicians), advertisements, technology and corporations

Materials:

. Paint

. Paper

. Plastic Container

. Hand Dryer

Sarah Charlesworth ”Herald Tribune”:

The relationship between the white paper and the images is confusion. In a lot of the images the people are making faces of confusion or faces of someone who doesn’t fully understand a situation. The white pages add to the confusion because there is no explanation of the images, so the observer is forced to focus on the images by themselves. The artist took out the body of the text. The layout is almost like a linear timeline, as if the piece seems to be following a storyboard of sorts. There are 25 pages. What this tells me is that the piece is trying to tell a story without the words. It shows the piece has a chronological format, which seems to add order to the otherwise confusing and somewhat random pictures.

Materials:

. Marble

. Concrete

. Gold Metal

. Tinted Glass

. White Paint for the inside

. Red Paint for the Elevators

For the inside the architect chose white as the main color, while the outside was mainly a gray/ off-white. The sidewalk seems to have an alien-like quality to it. It is very futuristic. It reminds me of almost crop circles. The ground on the inside is the same. It seems as if a bunch of pieces of a puzzle are coming together. The shape of the main building is a round cylindrical spiral, whereas the extra building is rectangular. The inside is the same in shape. The elevators are also shaped in semi-circles.

Shapes:

. Circle

. Square

. Cylinder

. Cone

. Semi-circle

. Spiral

. Rectangle

My Experience in the Building:

I walked up the ramp as I moved through the exhibition. There were a lot of people from each angle as you went up because as you curved around you could see the previous levels. When I walked it the ramp made it feel like I was staying on the same level as I was going up because even though you’re going up the level are smoothly transitioned and connected. They are not separated by stairs. Plus the incline of the spiral is not strong so it does not feel as if you are walking up. The lighting as you go up seems to get darker, as if it were making the transition from day to night. I was alone when I was walking. In the Guggenheim I heard walking, people dragging their feet, indistinguishable chatter from all around and an echo similar to that of when you are in a gigantic cathedral.

I think that Sigurdardottir changed my perspective of art by showing that it is never truly finished. She did this because she re-created pieces that were made previously that were hundreds of years old. She repainted them and put them in different set ups and made these pieces have a completely different visual affect and tone than the originals. For example, the room that she painted all white with mirrors was completely different from the original version. The older version was very colorful and had a sense of old age. It gave this sense of the eras when kings and queens still existed. The piece stuck out. But for her version she made it all white with mirrors. This first gave the room this sense of the stereotypical future. Everything is white and bright. But it also gave this sense of uniformity. In the original one while there was a pattern there was a general color. Whereas when she painted it she made the room completely white as if to say that there is nothing to distinguish it from any other room. She was proving that art changes with time and that by changing a few simple things, such as color; art can be formed into something completely different.

The way that the Boiseries changed the way I looked at the museum by messing with my idea of space. You never think of a room being able to fit inside of a room. She was very good at making space almost seem like an illusion. Like when she did the piece where every wall got small and smaller it give you the sense that the room that you are in is huge because it can fit this whole mass of a room in it. She really made the space of the Met seem different and made our interpretation of space warp with the difference in the size of the room and the size of the piece. Rooms are supposed to be large and life scale, but these were at most a few inches taller than me and not very wide at all.

I don’t really see how this piece in particular changed the way we viewed the city except for if we use it by saying since the piece represent the idea of ever-changing and never permanent, you can say the city is like that. The city is never permanent. There always people moving in and out of it. There are always store closing and new stores taking place, the MTA changes the schedules even. There is no such thing as something in the city that is completely unchangeable. I think that is what this piece is saying. Nothing is ever truly finished. Nothing can ever truly stop changing.