The Art Of the Brick

Legos are fun. Legos are a toy for kids. Legos allow you to create.

But are Legos art?

Nathan Sawaya seeks out to answer that question with his latest exhibition at Discovery Channel’s gallery in Times Square. I was skeptical about Legos being art; I believed that they are a toy and nothing more. They can create but to compare it to the work of oil and canvas, or marble and a chisel, simply preposterous. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Legos can be art within twenty minutes of being in the building. The exhibit had a dark and intense feeling which I found shocking due to being surrounded by children. This exhibit is more than just a thing for children to look at, the art was coming to life with what he made, the first section of the exhibit was just copying of famous pictures and paintings, some 2D, some 3D. I really enjoyed the 3D paintings taking simple paintings and making them literally materialize before you.

One painting that sticks out in my mind that I watched come to life was “American Gothic”. I never particularly enjoyed this painting, I always thought it was bland, boring, and kind of pointless. The way Nathan successfully gives it 3D depth to the woman is beyond my imagination. She is looking slightly left, a small detail in the painting that would otherwise be ignored, but Nathan represents it beautifully with Legos, no small feat.

But nothing could prepare me for what I saw next. The next section of the exhibit was famous sculptures recreated. Now for some background, I went to France two weeks before college started with my family. We visited The Louvre, is the best museum I have ever been to. Everything about the museum is grand, and beautiful. But one piece, one piece just stuck with me. I was walking up the stairs to go to the Mona Lisa- touristy I know- and I saw the sculpture known as “Winged Victory”. It is beautifully sculpted depiction of a female body in robes with immense wins coming out the back of it. The feeling of Awe, Power, and honestly a little intimidation was something I thought I would never feel from looking at a stone. Because when you get down to it, it is a stone. But it quickly became my favorite sculpture of all time.

And wouldn’t you know it, Nathan recreated it. Personally I think it could have used to be about 4x the size he made it, because I believe that it is more important than say, the giant totem head he made. The piece count on it was still in the thousands, so impressive nonetheless. He was able to accurately capture the feeling of awe, the same that the unknown sculpture in Greece was able to do so long ago. I am thoroughly impressed that he is able to do what he is able to do with Legos.

Now there are impressive parts of the exhibit as well as not so impressive. There was a few times I took a step back and said, hm, I could have done that, and once or twice that I said, I could have done that better. I don’t know if I could honestly but when I am at an exhibit I expect to be awed. I expect to be shocked. I expect the entire time me to have my mouth wide open, gaping and wondering how it is physically possible the artist created this piece. That may not be fair to artists, that I have such an intense hard task for the artists to accomplish without pause, but that is how I feel. For the most part when I look at the pieces I was impressed, but like I said earlier, some could use, more effort, more time, larger scale. Other than those few cases I was thoroughly captivated during my time in the exhibit.

Another criticism I have is the volume of pieces presented. I stopped read on the pieces and what made him do it, gazed at each one for a decently long time, and still was in and out of the entire place in under 2 hours. I did not expect for the exhibit to take my whole afternoon but I paid to see his work and when I have to look in a book and see the other amazing things he created in the gift shop not being able to witness it myself is terrible. I was almost pouting looking through the book going, oh that would have been cool, or wow I wonder what that looks like up close. If you aren’t going to show me what he created up close don’t mock me with a 25.99$ book on his other works.

One last concern of mine. This exhibit is good. This exhibit is great! This exhibit is deeply artist with deep meaning behind some pieces, some deep and even dark symbolism at time, see the mask below.

This is clearly showing someone removing a mask that removes their face along with it. It is saying if you wear a mask long enough you lose who you were underneath it to start.  There are numerous examples of this tragic beauty and dark messages throughout the exhibit. And then there are 5 year old children screaming about how everything is stupid. About how they want to go home NOW. And to sit there and try to discuss with Evans about how amazing a piece is while a child is screaming because they did not get to eat all their candy made me feel like an ass. I want so badly to take this exhibit seriously as art, and want to truly look into the meaning but I felt almost childish at times being there. But Legos are “toys” not art in eyes of most of the population so children fill the place and take away from the immersion. I think there should be separate times for families to go, or maybe minimum age after say 9pm, so that this exhibit could be taken seriously.

Call me cranky, call me cynical but I cannot help that I feel the presence of children retract from the art Nathan worked so hard to create.

All in all, I would recommend to anyone who: enjoys art, doesn’t want to commit a crazy amount of time, and be in too serious of an environment.