The Arts in NYC

Our visit to MoMA really opened up my mind to a connection. While Drew, Lara and I were exploring the paintings I noticed Drew and Lara making all of these connections to the art. “This painting evokes ______ emotion”, “This gives me a sense of ______” etc. I turned to them in disbelief and said sarcastically “My kid could paint that”.

Of course I have no children to compare to the artists but I was quoting a documentary I once saw called “My Kid Could Paint That”. The documentary follows a little girl, Marla, whom her father one day sat down to a canvas and some paint. Soon after, Marla’s abstract expressionist paintings were selling for thousands of dollars.

Below is a trailer for the documentary, but the trailer doesn’t include my favorite scene. In this scene an acclaimed art critic is examining one of Marla’s paintings and sees a man emerging from a door of light and she said she felt some very powerful emotions behind that image. When the critic turned to Marla and asked her what she saw in that corner of the painting, Marla shrugged and responded “blue?”

Sorry to be the cynic of the group, but if a three year old could paint it, I have a hard time calling it art.

The Tate Museum in London, England is featuring a new exhibit from Chinese artist Ai Weiwei. The exhibit, called “Sunflower Seeds”, is an installation piece in the Turbine Hall. The seeds cover the entire floor of the hall, creating what Smith calls a sort of “indoor pebble beach”. This piece is a Unilever Commission piece of large-scale installations. Initially, visitors were allowed to wade into the sunflower seeds and interact with the piece. However, the piece was closed to public interaction after it was realized that the dust from the porcelain covered seeds could cause potential health problems. However, the dust has been sent to be tested for its “hazard level” in the hopes that it will be reopened to the public – physically.

The entire purpose of this piece was how it made you feel when wading through the seeds. Smith, who had the privilege of being able to experience the piece physically, described it as, “…the crackle produced by moving through the seeds, [and] the way they slow your progress. Their quite un-sunflowery weight in your hand. The slightly overwhelming sense that each one is unique, like a fingerprint or a grain of sand, thanks to the three or four strokes of hand-painted black on both sides.”Although the question, however trite it may be, of what defines “art”, poses itself, I think Smith answered that question in these few sentences. The art was not necessarily the beauty of the piece, but rather the physical sensations derived from experiencing the piece first hand.

If only the Tate Modern weren’t in England we could all go see this piece as one of our mandatory “outings”. That is, if it were reopened to the public….

Check out the review!
A video about how the seeds were painted. Watch it in English OR Chinese!

I had a stage in my life where I wanted to be a photographer and I still find that photography is the form of visual art that draws my attention the the most. Bing Wright is a photographer who captures movement in a delicate and beautiful way in my opinion. I came across his photography when I saw his name in the New York Times (here). The article doesn’t say much about him but clicking on the link for his photography and browsing through his photos really caught my attention. His work is located in predominantly in three galleries in NYC which I learned from his personal website- Paula Cooper Gallery, James Harrris Gallery, and Ochi Gallery, but he also has photographs in many group exhibitions in various other galleries.

Here are some of the photographs that I liked the most.

go to this link to see more 🙂

Sometimes when I go to restaurants the food almost looks too pretty to eat. Since many, many of our posts on this blog is about what is art, I thought we should include food into that category! There are many reasons why our food sometimes look like it belongs in some type of museum, if it doesn’t look good, would anyone really want to eat it? The presentation of the food is a very important part of our meals, but I find something pretty interesting that give me a whole new meaning of food as art.

Bento, is the japanese word for lunchbox. They serve them at various Japanese restaurants around the city, so I’m guessing that quite a few of you have eaten a bento before. But I bet, you’ve never eaten one like this:

These bento food art comes in many different forms, not only a kitty but also the Mona Lisa, a Starbucks coffee cup, the Simpsons, and a few others. I’m not exactly sure why they make their lunch to look like a cat, but it sure is cute. It may not be a painting or a sculpture, but I definitely think this is art. It looks good and it feeds you!

If you want to see a few more of these Bento art, click here

I went and visited Big Bambu last month, and was actually amazed with what I saw!  Honestly, I did not think that I would enjoy it as much as I did.  The sculpture was much bigger than I imagined, and I can’t even describe how cool it was to walk underneath and through it.  There was actually a lot of space underneath to walk, but there was one really cool area that I kept returning to.  Right in the middle, there was one sort of circle area, and if you looked straight up, there was a big opening in the bamboo, allowing you to see straight through to the sky.  It was absolutely breath-taking!  There were so many people there!  As I was waiting on line for the elevator to the roof, I stood in front of a few mothers who were taking their little children to see Big Bambu.  I overheard them telling their kids that they were going to be seeing lots of bamboo, and the kids were excited about it because they had apparently been learning all about it in school.  I never knew it was so popular!

I took a bunch of pictures, but only included 2 in this post.  The one on the left is the best photo I could get of the whole artwork.  I wonder how many pieces of bamboo this consists of!  And the photo on the right shows the rope used to tie all the bamboo together.  I found it so amazing that these colorful ropes were the only things holding the sculpture together!  I really don’t know if I would have the patience to build this.  All in all, I was really glad to have gone to see Big Bambu.  It opened my eyes to something totally new and unique.  I can’t imagine the sadness the artists will feel when they have to take the sculpture down!

I arrived at MOMA an hour ahead of schedule two Mondays again, and decided to read all the posters in the lobby which described the exhibits that were currently showing.

So how did I not catch the news about the “small scale, big change” architecture show at MOMA, which opened the day before we visited?

This show focuses on eleven projects around the world. Not only are these projects modest on the budget, but they also have positive social impacts. There have been complaints throughout the years that architecture focuses too much on aesthetics and not enough on how it affects the citizens, and this project gives a great response to that. Organized by Andres Lepik and Margot Weller, this exhibition strives to show that it is possible to create “work that is both socially uplifting and architecturally compelling.”

It starts with a picture taken in Burkina Faso, an African village. A practically empty scene with a mud-brick primary school designed by Diébédo Francis Kéré. Then to the left, a picture of Michael Maltzan’s Inner-City Arts Complex, which houses a children’s arts program. It stands white and gleaming amongst a greyscale street in Skid Row Los Angeles.

The point? That even from an obscure village in Africa to a town that’s right outside the heart of L.A., architecture can socially improve ANYWHERE. It’s not restritcted to developing nations.

School in Burkina Faso

Children's Housing Center in Skid Row, Los Angeles

Another interesting project is the cut-and-paste approach that Frédéric Druot, Anne Lacaton and Jean Philippe Vassalused to renovate a low income apartment tower in Paris. Instead of demolishing the building (which would disrupt those who live around it), they simply use the building itself so change it. They rip off walls, remove interior walls for more space, one floor at a time. A much better method than starting from scratch with new expensive building materials. Ripping off the walls is also symbolic; ripping off facades is a way of revealing the poor and their problems, not hiding them behind scenery.

I don’t think I managed to properly portray just what makes this project so fabulous. But it saves time, money, and the environment. It helps society while still being aesthetically pleasing. It’s improving your community without the loud drilling outside your window. the whole idea is really well thought out, and positive overall. It’s a great response to all the problems we face today. Reusing old materials, helping the less fortunate, exposing that a less rich and magnificent side of society exists.

I think the exhibit itself is just pictures of the project. I’m not sure what else there is to expect, and MOMA’s website suggests that that’s all there is to it.

I’m not sure if the thought of a group of us returning to MOMA to see some pictures is a great idea, but I’ll definitely go and post my thoughts.

Click here for enlightenment. 🙂 (The NY Times Article where I learned about this)

But regardless of the exhibition itself, you can’t deny the figurative and literal beauty to this idea. It’s plans and projects like this that restore my faith in humanity.

Our class went to the fourth floor of MOMA last Monday, and saw some extraordinary pieces. Okay honestly, not all were extraordinary. I laughed at the friendly banter between Greg and ToniAnn (and Beth as well) about the creativity of some of these pieces. As Greg said “No Beth, you know what it looks like this guy did? It looks like he painted one half of the canvas black, and the other half of the canvas gray.”

Yeah, you had to be there to find it funny.

But the talk of gray and black art is a nice way to get into what I really wanted to talk about. While there at MOMA, I came across a section dedicated to black and white abstract art. I was immediately reminded of what had been my recent blog at the time “Black and White and 15 feet long!”

The work of Aaron Siskind interested me especially. I realized while browsing the abstract pieces at MOMA what it is that attracts me to colorless art; color speaks. We live in a society where black and white and gray are all mundane. Color holds so much more significance in our lives than we may realize. Red means stop, green means go. Pink blankets are for baby girls, blue blankets are for baby boys. So when black and white and grey get a chance to speak volumes on a canvas, it feels more powerful and persuasive in a world where color holds so much meaning.

Aaron Siskind explored all types of art, but it wasn’t until the 1940s that he began exploring abstract visual language over representational artwork. His art inspired many painters such as Willem De Kooning, Franz Kline, and Robert Rauschenberg.

Aaron Siskind's "Chicago 206" 1953

One of the pieces that I admired at MOMA. The grungy feel is compelling, and I like the recurring pattern in the back that looks like something dripping from a cave wall. The X and the splattered specks of white on the left can be interpreted so many different ways.

To learn more about Siskind, you can visit this link, which also has a wide variety of his art.

More of Aaron Siskind\’s abstract works

Franz Kline was also another black-and-white artist that struck me. I don’t find his works as creative or as well thought-out as Siskind, but I still found that his simple work “Painting Number 2” invoked feelings in me as I smiled and tried interpreting his slashes of black paint.

Kline's "Painting Number 2" 1954

A couple of days ago, I was shown a youtube video of sand art, something I have never seen before, which I found extremely amazing. Sand art is also called sand animation and it is the creation of images with sand using one’s hands.

I was first amazed by the images that were created with the sand. The images were so precise and detailed that you would think took hours to create, yet it only took a few simple movements by the artist’s hands. While watching the video, it makes this art seem even more impressive because it seems that mistakes are bound to occur, yet the artist never makes a mistake. It is also amazing that the artist is able to create images over previous images without starting fresh. I wonder if the artist practiced with the same technique before or is it freestyle. This constant change of images is the reason for this art to be called sand animation.

Many times, this art is portrayed on top of a overhead projector so the animations can be seen clearer and it only makes sense with gravity and all.

Death is not an easy topic to cover, but Jay Rosenblatt does so anyway. A master of found footage form, this San Francisco based artist “splices” neglected or discarded educational or industrial films, commercials, news clips, and home movies into a seamless moving collage, with subtly layered soundtracks that range from poetry readings, journal entries and personal memoirs, to music by Benjamin Britten, Arvo Pärt, and other composers. In his hour long exhibition, The Darkness of Day, Rosenblatt’s recent films are premiered in New York. The main film is The Darkness of Day (2009) which is a “stoic yet tender meditation on suicide,” influenced by the death of a friend. Other films share the theme of a grim reality such as the award-winning Phantom Limb (2005), which touches upon loss and grief in a chilling manner, and is influenced by the early death of Rosenblatt’s brother. Afraid So (2006) is loosely based on a poem by Jeanne Marie Beaumont, featuring a series of closed yet paradoxically open questions that share the same answer (hence the title), while I Just Wanted To Be Somebody (2006) is a sardonic depiction of singer and anti-gay rights crusader Anita Bryant and Prayer (2001) focuses on the anxiety and blind faith present in a post-911 America.
Rosenblatt manages to bring out the significance from the mundane in his artwork. His skill is so immense, that I have goosebumps from encountering a snippet of Phantom Limb. In this excerpt, advice is given for grieving parents in the gentle voice of a woman while the eerie violin piece of Arvo Pärt’s Silentium gives the sense of a rocking embrace. The visual aspect shows a man shearing a sheep, who at first struggles to be freed, but later succumbs as more wool is removed. With this scene, Rosenblatt provides the analogy that the death of a child leaves a parent as vulnerable as a sheep that is losing one’s identity with the removal of wool. Both are left exposed and emotionally wounded, but both the parent and the sheep have to accept life’s events despite the hurt it causes. It is a message that tugs on the heart strings of the viewer, accompanied with a haunting sequence, for the truth lies within the sounds and moving images.

Darkness of Day is showing at the Museum of Modern Art from October 13 to October 18.

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