Aesthetic Accomplishments…
On Friday I went to the gallery that Hunter has on the first floor of the West building, and the exhibit that they had there was called Aesthetic Accomplishments, Political Commitment. I think that this title was perfect for this exhibit, or at least for the way I experienced it. The exhibit was a colllection of prints from Puerto Rico that expressed their desire for political independence. Now, as someone who isn’t exactly fluent in Spanish - I couldn’t understand what the slogans and captions on many of the prints said (There were also prints without words on them, but many, if not most, did) so I didn’t quite understand how several of the picture I was seeing had anything to do with political independence. This is when the appropriateness of the tile of the exhibit struck me, because although I didn’t understand, I was still able to enjoy these prints aesthetically. In general I think that this is something that is often lost or overlooked in art when trying to see and/or determine the greater idea behind the work. We should never underestimate the value of things just being pretty (aesthetically pleasing).
One particular print was of a woman in a blue dress, just standing there and staring. I thought that this print was truly well done in terms of the artist’s color choices - the blues of her dress and sky background were truly striking. the turquoise was beautiful and reminded me of Spain. there were also patches of canary yellow, which was stunning next to the blue…. the politics there - I couldn’t tell you, but this print and others were just really enjoyable to look at - some were pretty and colorful and some had interesting and curious shapes and images (for example a guitar that had a fist at the end) - and really displayed the skill and craft of the artists.
There were also a few prints (one by Camino Verde) that were really reminiscent of the Rembrandt prints that we had seen and I was reminded of the conversation we had then about the conservation of classical forms of art. Here was an example of modernization of an older form of art that maintained some of that same feeling, the methods and technology of printing have changed and advanced but the overall look was similar - these pieces were black and white and made up of many lines (unlike the other colorful prints in the gallery) there was one such print that I felt I may have been able to interpret (it didn’t have any words either) it was a picture of what looked like a parade that was marching on its merry way but if you looked at the end of the road you saw that they were marching right off a cliff! there was a woman in this parade who was wearing a fruit-covered hat. to me this represented the Puerto Rican culture and how they felt that without independence their culture would evenually get lost in the American culture and die.
pretty much I was impressed and pleasantly surprised with the things you can find around school