After seeing Jerome Bel’s piece with the Disabled Theater, I had a lot of difficulty in constructing my opinion based on the piece. While my instinct told me that what I had just seen was great, there was something in the back of my head that just didn’t feel right enjoying the performance that I had just seen. I had no idea what to expect going into the performance and towards the beginning I didn’t think the performers were going to do more than just stand idly and some nervously onstage. However as the show progressed, these people that often times get ignored and out casted in society became alive and it was one of the most unique performances I’ve ever seen. To be able to watch them just be happy in dancing and doing what they liked to do as actors and actresses, entertaining, made me take into consideration everything that I do and all of the little things in my life that I let affect me. If those 10 people who have had a rougher life than I could ever imagine could go up on a stage and be so carefree, laugh without worry and just be themselves was amazing. I’m almost ashamed to say that I, a healthy person with a stereotypically normal functioning mind and body, have insecurities and might not have been able to do what they did on that stage with whatever conditions they had.

They were very entertaining and I loved the show up until the part where one of the men explained how his mother felt about the performance. He said that she felt it was a freak show and compared them to a circus act. It was this statement that made me realize in a way that these people may have been being exploited. Yes, if I went up on a stage, a person with no disabilities, and did what they did it still would’ve been funny at times but I’m not 100 percent sure that the audience didn’t laugh a little bit harder subconsciously because they did have different disorders. I’m still very undecided as to how I feel about this performance however, my first thought is to say that if the performers were happy then it shouldn’t matter how anyone else receives it. Just like we previously studied in more visual styles of art like paintings and sculptures, art is a form of self-expression and isn’t necessarily for the enjoyment of the viewer or audience rather than for the enjoyment and release of the artist or in this case artists.

Even though I do have my concerns I think Jerome Bel doesn’t have responsibility over the performances and while he did create a controversial work I don’t think he purposefully exploited the performers. I think subconsciously people who are viewing this performance automatically feel guilty for doing the first thing you are taught not to do when faced with people with disorders like down syndrome: stare and laugh. Because of this fact it’s easy to feel like Jerome Bel is exploiting them but we have to realize that they are people who make choices and their choice was to do what they love and perform. Maybe as people we’ve progressed in that we don’t make fun of people with disorders but maybe we’ve begun to treat them in such a special way that they’ve ceased to remain as people in our minds. Its hard to accept things and people that you don’t understand but I think this show was a great way to enter into their minds and have them enter our hearts in order become more real and less of a scary thought that you can just push into the corners of your mind.

-Yasmin

When first looking at Andre Kertesz’s
Rue des Ursins
(1931) I couldn’t see any direct use of the Rule of Thirds, the Golden Ratio or any of the other rules that I was looking for after reading the articles. I’m not really sure what it is about this picture that caught my attention. Some of the other photos that were part of Kertesz’s gallery were far more interesting and pleasing to look at but I guess what made me stop after seeing “Rue Des Ursins” was its simplicity. In my eyes this was just a plain photo that anyone who was in that particular time and place could’ve taken.

When I tried to apply the rule of thirds, I picked out the two probably most typical possible subjects, the woman with the cat and the doorway of this building. These two things seemed to be close enough to the lines but not enough to really draw my attention. Then I realized that I was ignoring the vocal point of the photograph, the sign. After I realized that the sign was on the upper right intersection of the horizontal and vertical lines that make up the Rule of Thirds I realized some other parts of the rule that the photographer knowingly or even accidentally incorporated.

If you look at the picture the doorway takes up the right portion of the frame, most of the alleyway takes up the left portion of the frame and that the place where the bottom of the building meets the sidewalk is also the bottom horizontal line. If you turned the photo you could also see how the Golden Ratio is expressed with the sign, also the title of the photo, being the beginning of the spiral, then moving on to the lettering at the top of the building, to the doorway and then ending with the woman next to the cat.

I personally think its an art how the photographer was able to use these rules and take a photo that followed them without it being outwardly apparent that this was his objective. I’ve always considered photography as an art form and while I consider myself a very creative person, I never understood how to be creative with this medium. Without directly modifying and editing a photo it seemed impossible to express anything, which I think art should do, by simply taking a picture of something that already existed. Reading about these techniques has changed that and while preparing my shot for Snapshot day my goal will be to try to recreate what is already right before my eyes in a way that is unique to me.

-Yasmin

Watching the Pascal Rambert piece was a very unique experience. I wasn’t expecting the type of performance that I saw and while my immediate reaction was a wave of confusion, after seeing the whole thing, while still disappointed, I at least understood a little of what I saw. The piece, instead of a dance, was more of a theatrical lecture on some of the basic principles of economics. It began very dramatically with one French woman speaking about what I interpreted as the death of her father. I actually liked this opening scene and it got my hopes up to see something very intense but after I saw what looked like everyday people walking on from different sides of the stage mimicking her actions like zombies I was quickly let down.

During the performance there were various demonstrations where a man would come out and explain some theories. It was interesting how in the beginning he stated that he didn’t want us to feel like we were being lectured however that was exactly what he did. Surrounded by people doing the oddest movements, I guess in the directors opinion, dancing, he would get out his notebook and give a lecture. The informational sessions seemed to drag on and on and it was very easy to block him out and watch what looked like people mimicking everyday activities, or writing for some unknown reason. It may have interested some people but what he was saying didn’t catch my attention enough to correctly process all the information that was given.

At what I thought was the end, the performers read what they had written during one of his final speeches and then after a strange change in music choice, they acted out a scene of an angry man whose family had just been evicted. While it was one of the most clear scenes in the whole piece and very striking, still after expecting a dance performance and then seeing all that I had throughout the whole thing I still wasn’t very impressed. Honestly I think that if we had been properly informed in what we were about to see, I would have appreciated it more. How can economics be expressed though dance was our classes question and after watching the Pascal Rambert piece I still don’t know.

-Yasmin

Having the opportunity to watch and learn about the process that John Jasperse goes through to choreograph his pieces was one of the most enlightening dance experiences that I have ever had. I thought that the two men featured were beautiful dancers and even though all three of them were very similar on the surface, as John mentioned towards the beginning of the rehearsal, as they danced they took on different personas that I think brought them together and differentiated them at the same time. The movement qualities that they were able to accomplish were very different and their ability to change those qualities to match with what John wanted was very impressive to me. One of the greatest characteristics that a dancer can have, in my opinion, is to be able to change the dynamic of how they move. Anyone can move their limbs around and maybe execute choreography technically correct but it’s the feeling that a dancer puts into his or her movements that makes them a dancer.

It was so interesting to see how professional choreographers face some of the same problems that people with less experience face when trying to create something. While listening to John explain how he created a whole process, somewhat like a puzzle, to attempt to ensure that he created movement that was unlike himself, I realized how much that related to more generalized things in life. Writers often struggle with trying to move away from their comfortable writing styles, composers and musical artists struggle with trying to create a new type of sound, one unlike the things they’ve done in the past, and painters or other types of visual artists often reach a point where all of their work starts to look the same. Listening to John speak made me really think about the possibility that maybe it isn’t possible, when trying to be creative, to make something not characteristic of yourself.

If art is supposed to be a representation of some type of essence that comes from within the artist, how could it be anything different from what you usually do? After John went through his whole process, if he creates something that is no type of representation of himself, I’m not sure is that could really be called his work of art as opposed to a work of chance. And if somehow through the whole process he did manage to present himself in the choreography, then would the end product look any different from what he has done in the past? In life you learn more about yourself and what you can do everyday but sometimes without some form of inspiration it’s hard to stop the fall into a comfortable and monotonous lifestyle and I believe that the same thing could happen in dance. I would be really interested to see how this new piece John is choreographing differs from his past work.

All in all I think seeing John’s rehearsal was a very valuable experience for our class. Being that many of the students in our class are artists, whether they are dancers, composers or musicians I think that observing the rehearsal rather than the performance provided us with an understanding of the creative process that we wouldn’t have otherwise gotten. In a way, it’s like we got to be shown multiple performances as we saw each run through change and develop and its amazing to imagine all of the work that leads up to a performance that takes up only a fraction of the time that is spent preparing for it.

-Yasmin

http://www.villagevoice.com/2011-09-21/dance/no-eacute-mie-lafrance-would-like-to-push-you-around/

 Apollinaire Scherr’s dance critique, entitled “Noémie Lafrance Would Like To Push You Around” was a very candid and straightforward representation of his disappointment after seeing Noemie Lafrance’s new project, “The White Box”. Seemingly a very experienced critic, he didn’t adhere to the rules of the Feldman Model of Criticism, however he was very effective at painting a picture of the performance in my mind and conveying the reasoning behind his disappointment.

He began with a brief background on the artist by describing the works that Lafrance had done in the past that evoked a completely different and more positive response from critic and audiences. For him this was an advantageous approach because the contrast between Lafrance’s debut performances which were exciting and suspenseful and the new piece that he conveys as being boring and diluted makes the readers more susceptible to agree with his opinion.

Before he begins the description of the piece, he states the advertised interpretation, which he agrees with. Then he begins a combination of a description, analysis, interpretation, and evaluation throughout the main body paragraphs of the critique. As he recounts his experience, he uses descriptive language that elicits a negative connotation on the things he saw. By mixing his emotions and ideas with the description, as the reader I felt somewhat skeptical because I wasn’t given an unbiased portrayal of the performance and then presented with his opinion but instead forced to accept his perspective as irrefutable.

In closing he adds that while reflecting on the performance he felt that he was left empty and the feeling he expected surpassed the one that he was left with at the end. Even though he didn’t stick to our student format, being a professional I assume he has developed his own personal style of reviewing dance that has proved itself very effective. I think most people would be at a little hesitant before seeing this performance. 

Surrealism was an artistic movement that delved into the unconscious and expressed things that weren’t commonly seen in paintings during the more traditional artistic periods that preceded it. Knowing this prior to my trip to MoMA, I had no idea of what to expect from the works of art that I would see.  In my experience, most of the time the creations that I’d seen in museums hadn’t made much sense anyway. So my question even before my visit was, what would make these surrealist works of art any different just because they claimed to be psychological and not just “abstract” and illogical?

After reflecting on all of the surrealist paintings and sculptures that I saw, one of them stuck out to me. All of the paintings were very unusual but through all of the abstract ideas and images, there was only one that really stood out to me as what I think surrealism is. Nothing was clear and even though it was apparent that there were different concepts and intentions present in the painting, they all seemed to blur together just as thoughts do in your mind. In my opinion this painting embodied its artistic movement. It seemed to pinpoint all of the ideas that surrealism represented.

The name of the painting is “The Vertigo of Eros” by Roberto Matta (1944). From one perspective it looks like nothing, just shapes, lines and shadings all combined into one piece of “art”, similar to most of the other paintings I saw of this period. However, when I took a second look at the painting as a whole and not just as the ambiguous figures floating in space I realized that this painting was actually what I would expect the inside of an artist’s mind to look like. The more I looked at it the more I felt as if I were standing in the unconscious of Matta himself. Coincidentally I later found out that this was a painting that Matta called an Inscape, which in his words was the “interior landscape of the artist’s mind interconnected with his external reality”. It was captivating how he had recreated an internal vision through a medium as simple as paint and a canvas and that even though it was his interpretation I could almost see the world he was trying to express.

The second piece that I chose was from a period called Dadaism. It was one of the artistic movements that almost directly preceded surrealism and had a great influence on its formation. One of the main things that separate Dadaism and Surrealism is their intention. Dadaism purposely strived to go against tradition while Surrealism was supposed to be an honest expression of what the artists felt subconsciously. Even though it did break the conventional rules of art, it wasn’t intentional. The name of the second painting I chose was M’Amenez-y or in English “Take Me There” by Francis Picabia. The reason I chose this was because of its bold and deliberate effort to go against the grain. The words painted into it literally made fun of artists and art itself. I thought it was interesting to see the progression from works like this to that of Roberto Matta and the other surrealists.

Reading Berger and Barnett did change my experience at the museum the way I thought it would. I appreciated seeing the original works and made myself more open to think about more than the typical assumptions made about things labeled as art. One of the most important things I realized was that even the most aesthetically pleasing things are just shapes, lines and colors so its up to the people enjoying the art to find beauty and meaning in it even if its not what you would normal conceive as beautiful.  “Works of art have nothing to say except what we say to them.” (James Elkins)

-Yasmin Jones

Prior to reading The Ways of Seeing, John Berger, and the Barnet reading, going to a museum and analyzing works of art weren’t of any particular interest to me. I couldn’t get past the point that anything that I could see in a museum I could see in picture online or in a book from any library. In my eyes, going to a museum always had led me to the daunting task of interpreting a work of art that frankly had no meaning to me or in the worst case, a work that didn’t even qualify as art in my mind. Why would a man spend days, or weeks, even years painting things that as I see it, were either ordinary moments in time that needed no explanation or on the opposite end of the scale, illustrations so abstract and unrealistic that they didn’t even make sense? I looked at paintings and other mediums in regards to the beauty it possessed and had a very shallow perspective on what really made the difference between a piece that was bad, average or excellent.

Reflecting on the required reading has not only left me questioning whether or not any piece of art can be judged as good or bad, but it has also given me a greater understanding on how to extract different meanings from something that can densely appear to mean nothing. Being aware that different works were meant to be seen in different settings, that they have different contexts and backgrounds and that they are not just things full of mystery, leaves me more inclined to desire a trip to the museum and everything that it has to offer.

The reading has also given me more insight on the reason why many people, as I previously did, don’t find an interest or even relevance in the works of museums. It’s effortless to forget the importance of an original piece that can only be seen in particular settings. While on the surface it seems that one can perceive the same value and meaning from a photograph or reproduction, the readings have helped me to appreciate my future experience at MOMA because I know now that even if I have seen a piece before, given the new context, the information about it presented to me and the new quality, which would be impossible for any reproduction to have, my impression of the painting or sculpture will undoubtedly change.

Art gives you power and is not just for the “cultural hierarchy of relic specialists but for all of the people in a society”. Through attempting to find meaning in it we can begin “the experience of seeking to give meaning to our lives, of trying to understand the history of which we can become the active agents”. Maybe the point of art is not beauty but to help the people of a civilization understand the different perspectives of the past in a way that reading from a textbook cannot. Thinking and reflecting upon these concepts, make going to MOMA more of an exploration than a homework assignment and will make my time there more interesting and ultimately more productive.