Luka's Arts In NYC

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.

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.

I think the way the Starns brothers changed our way of art is that they changed the way we experience it. In a lot of art you’re usually able to see the whole piece at one point at least. In the Big Bambu piece it was impossible to see all of it. There was no upper level and it was too big to see all of it from just one side. For example, when you first walk in you see the wave, which is the main part of the whole piece. But as you go into it you see every individual branch of Bamboo and how they differ. You see different shades, different thickness and even different strings that were used to tie up the piece. It changed our perspective of the piece because it gave into the idea that there is more than meets the eye.

The Starns brothers change our perspective of the city by making it a backdrop of the piece. When I walked through the whole bamboo structure and looked at it from the other side what I saw was the city. It seemed as if it was the background of the actual piece and as much a part of the piece as was the bamboo that it was built on. But the city also in this case takes a secondary role. It is a tool as opposed to a focal point. When we think of the city we think of it as big, something that would be focused on and less complimentary and more taking away from other things, but in this case it is complementary. I think the reason why the artists did this was to show that the city is really a tool that can be used whichever way you want it. They are saying the city is what you make out of it and how you utilize it is your own choice.

The Starns changed the way we perceive the Met because they gave the museum a new layer. Big Bambu added a whole new floor almost to the Met. Not only that but it added almost like a roller coaster amusement ride type of feel to the Met. It didn’t feel as if that part of the museum was more like rather than like something similar to the Wonder Wheel or the Cyclone. Like the fact that you had a line for the elevator that went up to it gave me this sense of waiting online for a roller coaster. The anticipation and excitement of waiting to see what you were going up against and the simple fact this was a huge wooden structure adds to that similarity in correlation.

While looking at the “Big Bambu” I saw a piece of art that was not only art but a representation of the city. It was a ride for children to play on. A Jungle gym of sorts and this really made me see that art can be literally interactive. When I saw this piece only one thing truly came to mind. It was this Jungle gym in front of the Guggenheim Bilbao. It was very well done artistically. But it was also a playground. I’d put this type of art in a genre. I would call this physical art. In a lot of forms of art the audience has visual interaction with the piece. In music you have audio interaction. But there are very few pieces with physical interaction.

This is only the side you see when you first enter the exhibit

The Chrysler Building

When one thinks of New York they think of the empire state building, the Brooklyn Bridge and the new York Skyline. But the lesser mentioned structure that is a big part of New York and New York City Culture is the Chrysler Building.

The Building is located on 42nd Street and Lexington avenue and stands at a height of 1046 feet. It was created in 1931 by an architect named William Van Allen. It is an Art Deco building and was the tallest building in the world when it was created but was surpassed when the Empire State Building was built.

When i think of Manhattan this is the building that always stick in my mind. out of all the buildings in New York I’d have to say that this one is by far my favorite. i like the different shapes and the intricacy of the building. it looks like it’s layered. As you look higher and high it starts ti become less and less until the only thing that is left is the core,which is the antenna at the top. but my favorite thing about this piece is the top glass structure of the part. i just think it’s beautiful. The design just reminds me if an actually art piece, like something you would see in an exhibit. When i see this building i don’t think corporation, i think art.