Category — Visual Art

Although the Brooklyn Museum is considered close compared to the other museums in the city, it’s also one of the few that I’ve never actually visited before. As someone who really loves exploring museums, I walked into the museum excited to see the different displays they had.

The Dinner Party was one of the first exhibits I saw and I must say I was disappointed. Since it was supposed to be feminist art, I thought that it would honor or show the beauty of feminism, instead I felt like it did the opposite.  I didn’t really appreciate the fact that the names were on the cloth on the bottom since it made it hard to read who the plate represented. I feel like the rigid form of the Dinner Party doesn’t really tell us what feminism is. The exhibit was way too structured and made me feel like woman were being controlled rather then increasing in power. Another thing that bothered me was how as the years passed the plates got increasingly bigger and the design would become 3 dimensional. I don’t really understand why a woman more towards the present would have a plate that pops up compared to a woman int he past. As feminist art I feel like every woman should have been given the same level of treatment because each and everyone of them made a significant impact in their own way. I was also a little bit disturbed by the art on the plates since it seemed to exploit the woman human body.

An exhibit that greatly disturbed me was Matthew Buckingham: “The Spirit and the Letter”. It was fascinating yet eerie at the same time. When I first walked in, all I saw was what seemed like a  beautiful chandelier in an upright position. Soon enough I heard a voice coming from the room and to my surprise I saw a woman on a projection. This woman however was walking on the screen upside down and would disappear and reappear on the screen at times. I really like this exhibit because it distorted everything in the room. The fact that the woman was upside down, and the chandelier was hanging compared to the chandelier next to me that was upright, made me question what was actually correct. This exhibit plays with your senses. When my friends walked in soon afterward they woman had already disappeared and they didn’t believe me when I told them a woman was there and thought I was hallucinating. Even I questioned myself for a moment as to where the woman went.

One of my favorite exhibits was Sanford Biggers: Sweet Funk – An Introspective. As someone who has played the piano for a number of years I was quite intrigued to see a tree intertwined into the piano. It was even more intriguing to see the keys play by itself. If I could I would have sat in that room and listened to the piano all day. The very image of the tree and piano left me at peace even though the exhibit itself was really strange and somewhat grotesque . It was beautiful to see nature and an instrument come together to form art. Something that disturbed me was the huge red lips you would see beyond the tree. It was as if someone was watching you from  a far and laughing at you while you were amused by the tree.

Another exhibit I thoroughly enjoyed were the period rooms. I really love being able to be a part of the art rather then to just simply look at it. I had fun walking around and looking into each different room. We could even enter some rooms to an extent. I feel like the museum really brought out the feel of the rooms. I was so tempted to just step into a room and sit on someone but thankfully there was glass preventing me from doing so. I like how the glass they used was barely visible and I wouldn’t know that I was looking through glass until I actually hit it. This exhibit showed how different things were back then. I mean my house looks nothing like Rockefeller’s house.

I really enjoyed looking at the art in the Brooklyn Museum. There are very little barriers in this museum and it allows the audience to interact and connect more with the art. A lot of the exhibits were in the open and it allowed me to see things more closely without damaging the art. I was especially surprised to see all those skateboards out in the open just laying there on the floor.

I had visited the Brooklyn Museum a few weeks prior to our trip on Thursday. While I had already seen most of the works already, I got a full understanding and appreciation of the pieces when I got a look at them a second time. I also realized that there were so many wonderful pieces that I had missed before.

I was amazed when I first saw the overall architecture of the museum. The small shallow puddle of water at the sides of the museum reminded me of the white house from afar.

Now onto the exhibitions! I really enjoyed the Great Hall on the first floor. They looked like geometric clouds all lined up against each other. The vast amount of space corresponding to the structures was a perfect fit. The artist seemed to take both a classical and modern approach to this piece. The bottom part of the structure seems to resemble the ancient Greek columns and the top part looks like a closed up circus tent.

The next exhibit that we visited, Sanford Biggers: Sweet Funk-An Introspective, was kind disturbing but nonetheless, I enjoyed trying to interpret and understand it. The piece that I thought was the most interesting was “Blossom.” It was a tree wrapped around a piano that was playing by itself. The music was very dramatic and it fit perfectly with this somewhat ominous setting. There was also a giant fluorescent smile on top of this tree. At first, we did not understand the smile but then when we went into the dark room next to it, we realized it was in the video of a man who kept putting white powder on his face. The video showcased an African American man putting white powder on his face and I was taken back by it at first. However, we soon realized that it attempted to address race. The man was trying to mask his face with white powder because he wanted to be white. I found this take on race interesting and it reminds society of the racial pressures that not one, but many groups may have.  There was also a statue that was projected against a wall. The shadow on the wall looked like President Obama but the statue looked like Martin Luther King. It showed the progression of powerful black leaders in American, both old and new. I also thought the play on lighting was genius.

Finally, we came across “The Dinner Table.” I actually wanted to see this piece for a long time and I am glad to say that it did not disappoint.  The whole setting was very grand and I could actually feel the presence of all these important female figures throughout the history of the world. My AP Art History told our class that the plates had sexual connotations. When I saw it for myself, I did not see it right away but as I kept looking at the plates, the sexual reference became pretty obvious.  As women, became more powerful, the plates more 3-D, more real…  I appreciated this because it showed the rise and increase in strength of women over the years. I could just imagine all these women sitting right before my eyes.

At the entrance to the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, a sign explains that “The Feminist Art Base may present images directed to adult audiences, and deals with challenging subject matter that may include sexual content or violence.” The art museum employs this sign as a means of allowing it to display obscene or objectionable content without the fear or guilt of exposing children to it. However, never, it seems, did the museum–or the artists, for that matter–contemplate the notion that the content might simply be inappropriate, and that something inappropriate is just that–inappropriate for adults just as well as children. “The Dinner Party” is a truly despicable example, not of art, but of pornography. In fact, the dictionary definition of the word ‘pornography’ could not give a better description of “The Dinner Party”: “obscene writings, drawings, photographs, or the like, especially those having little or no artistic merit.”

Not only is the “artistic” representation an insult to the values of our society, but to many it is a blatant disrespect to feminism, and perhaps more so, the notable women it depicts themselves. It is a mockery and perversion of religious symbols sacred to many religious traditions.

Ms. Judy Chicago’s “The Dinner Party” is simply disgusting. The purpose of art is to evoke meaning but “The Dinner Party” has no purpose other than to provoke. To call it art is to give undue commendation to a wicked endeavor to pervert and poison in the worst way, and an egregious disrespect to all of those who understand and embrace art as a form of meaningful expression. Shame on its fabricator and on the museum for such putrescence.

Three specific artworks captured my attention.

One: Sanford Biggers’s Blossom. On the 5th floor, in the center of the Cantor Gallery, stood a huge tree with a piano protruding from the trunk and a fallen bench placed in front of the piano. It was captivating. Upon closer inspection, I noticed that the keys on the piano were moving by themselves, playing an entrancing music that filled the massive room. This piece grabbed and held onto my attention. This multimedia piece alludes the ideological landscapes of Alfred Bierstadt and Frederic Church. Meanwhile, surrounding pieces refer to a range of things from Lotus representing slavery and Buddhism to Chershire referring to stereotypes of the appearance and behaviors of African-Americans. The arrangement of the works was interesting and eerie at the same time. The way the close-up photo of the clown watched from behind me, the way Chershire smile tauntingly hung above the tree, and the way the sounds from various videos and audio clips clashed with one another, all so haunting! But I enjoyed it. I love the feeling of eeriness.

Two: Thirty Pieces of Silver by Cornelia Parker. This artwork was hidden in one of the corners of the 4th floor Contemporary Gallery. Thirty pieces of flattened silverware attached to metal wire hanging from the ceiling. It was mesmerizing. Part of it had to do with the location of the artwork. This piece was inside a display box of three walls furnished in wood, giving off the vibe of an old, secluded kitchen. The floor was checkered black and white. And in the center was a flat circle of objects that seemed to mysteriously float. The vibe it gave off was serene. Breathtaking. This piece symbolizes betrayal because Parker crushed the objects of their former significance. It also makes an allusion to the biblical tale of Judas betraying Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. I really liked this piece.

Three: Matthew Buckingham’s The Spirit and the Letter. This was also a multimedia artwork, combining sculpture and video. Off to the side from the Dinner Party, in a secluded, dimly lit corner, a video projection of a room with a chandelier hanging played. A woman walked on the ceiling and excerpts from Mary Wollstonecraft’s writing were recited. And in the room, on the floor, was the chandelier in sculpture form, except it wasn’t hanging. It was standing from the ground, backwards from the way presented in the video. And on the opposite wall was a mirror. This piece was eerie and stunning. It questions the role of historical representation in contemporary day of, I am assuming, the fight for women’s rights.

Aside from these intriguing pieces, I also enjoyed the Youth & Beauty exhibition as well as the 19th century modern decorative arts installation.

One of the most fascinating things for me at my visit to the International Center for Photography were the striking similarities between Peter Sekaer’s photographs of Depression-era America and Eugene Richards’ photographs in the 9/11 exhibit. All of Peter Sekaer’s photographs were black-and-white, which would have been the only option for him in the 1930s. Captions on some of his pictures mention the “liveliness” of a picture; to us, black-and-white offer a certain drabness or old-fashioned feel to the picture and it takes effort to appreciate the “liveliness” of some of the pictures. Eugene Richards, on the other hand, uses black-and-white to communicate the solemnity and raw emotion of the subjects of his photographs. A recurring subject of Peter Sekaer’s work is a group of laborers or migrants sitting, wearing a worn, downtrodden expression that captures the difficulty of the Great Depression. A common subject of Eugene Richards’ and other 9/11-aftermath photographers is a couple of responders and emergency workers, absolutely exhausted and truly weighed down by the horror they find themselves in the midst of.

The most powerful photograph that I saw was part of the here is new york collection. It showed the face of a first responder, face completely covered in dust except for a tear running down his face.

Waking up the Sunday morning that we went to Beacon was the earliest I had woken up on a Sunday in months. But after the sleepiness wore off some excitement started to arise as we gathered by the clock in Grand Central Station.

After the 90 minute train ride we had finally arrived. Then we started to look at some of the exhibits once we entered the gallery. The first one that we saw was the dots/squares on the floor in the middle of the room. It kinda set the tone for many of the other pieces. It seemed like many of the pieces shared a common theme of math. Something they also shared was their openness. Almost all the art was not blocked off or guarded. They were able to be touched and ruined (or enhanced?) by anyone with a marker or pen. The only security was the occasional gallery security guard who would say not to touch the art. I thought the ropes/string that looked like a piece of glass was very cool because its an illusion and I enjoy that type of stuff, David Blaine being a good example of someone who always uses illusions.

After the gallery, we went to the basement for an interpretive dance. Unfortunately I didn’t enjoy it too much. Aside from the performance which I didn’t love, the chairs were extremely uncomfortable and for me, its kind of a make or break type thing. I would have been more comfortable standing the entire time. I think comfort is a big part of entertainment (unless the point is to be uncomfortable). Even when I was watching a really cool stunt show at MGM studios in Disney, I couldn’t fully enjoy it because the bleachers were similar to the one at Beacon and if I’m constantly thinking about my back it takes away from the performance. So even though it might sound like I’m complaining a little too much, if the chairs were better I think, for me, the performance would have been better.

To address the actual dance, I didn’t really get it. I couldn’t connect at all with the performance and I had no emotion towards it aside from a slight annoyance at the repetition. After reading the NO manifesto, I might have been doing the right thing by  not feeling anything.

Overall I did not really connect with the whole day. But I’m not going to say that what we saw wasn’t art. I agree that it was art but not everyone likes all art. I, in particular, did not enjoy that style of art. But I will defend its right to be art. Its kind of like that quote from Voltaire, “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

While walking into the art exhibit, I felt no real connection to the art there.
I’ve seen art before, and it never really speaks to me.
Then I saw the Sol LeWitt series.
It was so interesting. I saw math and sequences being used in ways I never expected, and it appealed to me greatly.
I then moved on to the holes, and felt such a weird effect of negativity and darkness. It was scary and sad at the same time. But the shapes appealed to me. I don’t know why, but the shapes were familiar and inviting. They seemed so elementary that I felt that nothing could be wrong with them. But something was off with them, which caused the darkness and negativity.
As I moved on, I wandered into the strings exhibit, which was interesting. I particularly enjoyed that the art was transparent, that it had similar views at similar angles, and yet, at other angles it was entirely different. Seeing it from the side made me see one string which really demonstrated to me the idea of dimensions. You have one string, or the first dimension. Then you see it from the front and you see four strings, or the second dimension. But if you looked at the ones on the walls, you would notice yet another dimension. The third dimension was the one giving it volume.
And then, I saw the Robert Smithsons. I was troubled by the fact that the same person who made that beautiful spiral jetty could make such unsettling sculptures which involved such dangerous and hazardous materials, not to mention the fact that these objects give off such disturbing vibes of violence. I didn’t see how they could possibly compare. I could not connect creator to destroyer, but maybe that is just me.
I then moved on to the large Richard Serras, of which I loved, as everybody very well knows. I don’t know how to put it in words, but I just felt like it was home to me.
Finally, it was time to check out downstairs. I don’t know if I regret going downstairs, or just was disgusted from the exhibits down there.
It was really creepy down there and just really unpleasant. There were freaky images, strange videos, and distorted structures. I didn’t like it at all down there. It gave me such a strange and unpleasant vibe of freakiness. Also, the basement added some tension and some creepiness to the whole environment, which added to those feelings of disgust, etc.
The last exhibit that I wanted to comment about was the do-it-yourself art, which, thanks to Maryam, Anika, Sari, and Emily, I enjoyed greatly. Being a piece of art feels so much better than appreciating it. It reminded me a little bit of what it means to be a singer (again, only extremely loosely used). It reminded me of having fun with it, of improvising, making mistakes, and truly enjoying what I am doing (with our cantors, we can definitely improvise and sometimes will need to to achieve the right atmosphere).That definitely was one of the highlights of the trip.
Lastly, I wished to speak about the ballet.
Unfortunately, I could not possibly fathom this as art. I found it more humorous than beautiful, but maybe that was the goal. Maybe the art was in the embarrassing of the artist. I could not relate to anything that happened in that performance.
Maybe I’m still too shallow.
I could not see that as art.

But, as you can glean from my comments, overall, I enjoyed the trip.

Joey Kabariti

This is a picture of a painting on West 8th street near St. Marks. I was really taken a back when I first saw the painting on the corner of the street across from where I was. In this picture you can only see one side of the eye but on the block there’s a painting of another eye on the opposite side of the corner. In real life it seems as if it’s watching your every movement. In a way it’s kind of eerie that two sides of a wall on the corner of a block is just looking back at you with huge eyes. I find the drawing of the eye itself interesting because a lot of thought must have been put into it before they chose what to draw. There must have been some meaning in the eye and it’s as if the artist himself is announcing that someone is watching the city’s movement. I think the drawing itself it amazing and unique but I wouldn’t really want it to be on a corner of my neighborhood. I wonder how people feel when they walk by it or see it from afar in the middle of the night. When you’re walking up close by the drawing, you can’t really see the significance of it. From afar though you can really feel the intensity of the eye and how it stares straight at you.

Dia: Beacon, I must say, was extraordinary.

The journey up there, to me, felt magical. From the metropolis of the city, we journeyed to the picturesque hillside of New York. The change in scenery made the Metro-North become the Hogwarts Express for me. I felt as if I was about to enter a surreal world and feel, well, enchanted. I was not at all disappointed.

Dia: Beacon was larger than I expected. It was like a maze with each corner and turn presenting a new surprise. I must admit some of the exhibits were a bit strange. The halls with just the pure solid colors in the form of different geometric shapes and the random dates plastered on black canvases confused me. But, some of the exhibits were just simply brilliant.

Franz Erhard Walther’s Work as Action exhibit was extremely exciting. Sari, Aniqa and I were in the “white room” exhibit, as Connie so aptly named it, when I discovered that this exhibit was interactive. When the three of us first entered it, we thought it was just a display of mismatched items that were folded together. But, upon reading the pamphlet, we realized that the items in orange were actually usable, and, I must admit, I yelped a bit out of excitement. When we re-entered the exhibit, we did a number of activities from bumping our heads onto a headrest planted to the wall to putting a rather “fashionable” vest on to creating a box with five people. It was so creative, and the artist made us part of the art which was so different and unique from anything I have ever experienced.

Another exhibit that I thought was brilliant was the holes in the ground in the form of a cylinder, a triangular pyramid and a square box. It proves that art not only has to be standing up, as Sari so eloquently pointed out. Oh! The strings were amazing. At first, it looked like a mirror was somewhat placed in the middle of the hallways, but then you realize that it was an illusion. The question that was posed in everyone’s mind was what was the artwork? Was it the geometric alignment of the strings or the imagination of the viewer? Quite interesting to say the least.

The Richard Serra iron sculptures were amazing. I could not stop being in awe of them. I felt like I was in a Tim Burton movie moving in a constant spiral. It was brilliant, nothing less than brilliant. And, if you walked out the door in the back, you would have seen another brilliant part of the museum: the garden. It honestly felt like being in Alice in Wonderland with the trees being symmetrical to one another and the staircase slowly narrowing.

Lastly, Sol Lewitt’s exhibits simply dazzled me. His Drawing Series made me want to jump up and down out of excitement. The reason why? It was an EQUATION. Everything was an equation! It was paradise for me. I am a mathematics lover, and I was blown away. He drew his lines on the walls. DREW THEM. How much more meticulous can a man get? And everything was so precise. How is that even remotely possible? I have no idea. That exhibit was amazing. I would go back to Beacon and spend hours in those rooms studying those lines and graphs. Also, his directions were pretty ingenious, I must say.

I know that we went to Beacon mostly for the dance, but I hated it. I was so disturbed. It disturbed me to my core. The first lady frightened me to no end that I was becoming squeamish.

But all in all, Beacon was phenomenal. I would not mind going back up there again. I was so enthralled by it. It was just brilliant.

At IPC, my favourite photo was the real old school one of the house in black and white. Something about the wooden panels, use of shade and contrast along with the general humbleness of the abode gave it not only a an eerie ambience, but also a sense of history. For that I decided to write a little something.

“That creaking door, it leads to the bastard’s basement. That’s where they keep the children I hear.” Seán claimed, but I whispered back, “Ludcrisity!” He responded, “No, little injun Conall, he said so.”

We laughed, uncontrollable. Kept walking down the city land. The old youngster Paddy sat on the corner of the chemist’s house, panting, unrestrained.

“Don’t run in the mornin’ mate, it’ll kill ya.”

I knew it would but that didn’t stop me, or Paddy.  I told him, “Good on you, have a fair journey.” He said fine but still followed.

“I oughta have one.”

He did. We passed through the lane, swiftly dodging the drunken fathers on Amsterdam Avenue. Their children left in the bars as collateral for unpaid tabs. It was a sad affair surely. Seán came along too, step-by-step, right behind us, beyond us as well but only he knew that.

He whispered to ‘imself, thinking no one could hear him but hoping someone did, “Oi avent tha sloightest idea wher’ hes goin’. I ‘ont know.”

Paddy headed to a house in the middle of the lane, no different than the one to its right, no different than the one to its left, undistinguished among the rusted ruins of skyscrapers reminiscent of the overthrown empire. It was just dark, but he was cowardly; he was worried, frightened. Paddy was an ol’ pal. He had tripped up with us a fair lot. We almost got the dreaded sores together, yet another odd experience.

“Goodday o’ sunshine, dark-

day reins over night, sometimes.” I sing, a popular song of the city, sombre thing it is.

Paddy, the pal, and he was here, insufferable as he be, was. A nice, tall, square man, he was before door. An annoying fool. Dead to me, dead to all he was then. That house there had a nice old man with a 12 gauge shot gun and a jumpy finger.

It was to be expected though; that genius Paddy, it wouldn’t av happened any other way and I know how god abhors the immortal. Somewhat a hypocrite, that god fellow eh? Yarbles. Paddy would say if you asked him. He was one of them religious types, sorta. Thou shant have other gods, other than meself, god would go round sayin’. What a scribbish god. Paddy that fool.

The house was mighty cold, hellishly so, Satan ‘imself probably batin’ his wings in the basement, that masochistic fool. An irrevocable fetter ice is to one’s heart, but more importantly, one’s feet. It was a self-imprisoning classism, impossible to exit but all too easy to get caught in, poor Paddy.

It was a beautifully cold house though. Sparkling too, definitely a feast for those that such is of interest no doubt, but warily one must chew as it is one you are bound to choke on. It had these golden streamers on the walls, all mixed up with each other. There was a stairway to the left that led to an open door, this stair’s streamers were black, didn’t match the walls, hurt my eyes. We went up ‘em, crouched a bit, silent as could be. Paddy ain’t the fastest, that nervous prick, but once in he off’d the top lights, maybe he warn’t as scared, we needn’t be blinded but so we were, We went the first left and were left in the right, though left to stare at the blackening white wall, decaying from the inside out with a sort of vomit orange foam that poked out of a few holes. There green couch with the white man in it, black wears, black gun, silver bullets, red blood, pink n’ purple wall, yellow faces, back door.

We ran.

We ran.

We Ran.

Bright light, dark eyes, even darker, tainted souls; we were corrupted if we were innocent.

Poor Paddy, paddled in his own blue blood, benevolent.