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Fluxus

On Friday September 16th I went to the Grey Art Gallery in Manhattan and saw the Fluxus exhibit. This exhibit was one of the oddest ones I’ve ever visited. Entering the building seemed normal enough, a security guard sitting in the front and a woman taking my bag for security purposes. This is where the normality ended. I felt like I was in a different world. The idea of Fluxus is to go against the normal notions of art and create something that makes the viewer think and hopefully upsets some established artists and art critics at the same time. The man who started the entire Fluxus movement, George Maciunas, basically wanted to start an artistic revolution to combat the growing “commercialization” of art. What he and a group of other artists ended up creating was an incredibly bizarre collection of pieces that focused around some of the many aspects of life that the pieces were associated with, like love and happiness. Some of the art pieces were very creative and interesting, like Yoko Ono’s Painting to Be Stepped On  and Robert Watts’ 10 Hour Clock. Ono’s painting was hilarious in my opinion; at first I actually walked around it to avoid stepping on it because I hadn’t read the title, and I thought Ono did a great job in doing exactly what the Fluxus project centered around, which was being different and the foil to mainstream art. The clock piece was clever and wasn’t quite as unique as Ono’s idea, but whenever I see a clock that doesn’t have 12 hours, I can’t help but find it hilarious. I thought the exhibit was fairly controversial, from suicide kits to film of a naked woman’s body being played on repeat, but if the point of the entire project was to completely differ from what everyone expects art to be, then I think Maciunas and all of the artists who contributed did just that.

I Don’t Believe in Outer..what?

On Wednesday October 6th I traveled down to the Brooklyn Academy of Music to see a play entitled “I Don’t Believe In Outer Space”. Before attending the production, I had managed to see a brief snippet of the production done previously. This snippet involved a man pretending to play table tennis with an invisible ball. He even managed to add in his own sound effects to truly create a strange display. So, in a sense, I was somewhat prepared for what I was about to witness. However, my preparation had not trained me well enough for this display of bizarre behavior.

The entire stage was covered with small balls of duct tape, and began with several groups of people randomly prancing throughout the stage. I couldn’t figure out who to fix my attention on, and this caused me to whip my head left and right, trying to understand what was going on before me. The dancing, if you could call it that, was a mix of a what a contortionist would do and the prancing of a traditional ballet. Sprinkled over the play were occasional monologues, most notable one by a woman who may have been possessed by Satan himself. It was almost as if I was in a really bad nightmare, because nothing was making sense and everything was horrifying me. But alas, I knew I wasn’t in a nightmare, because even in my worst dreams, I could at least see what was going on without twisting my body in a yoga-esque pose. Yes, the seats were that horrendous. Adding to my dismay were 2 human giraffes sitting in the two seats ahead of me. It seemed as if the BAM had taken surveillance on me, figured out what would baffle me the most, and put in on stage. However, one element of this….thing was able to salvage my sanity, and that was Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive”. This song, like every other element in the play, had no real reason to be there, but it was almost like this song was the blanket that protected me from the fierce, horrific tundra of “I Don’t Believe in Outer Space”.

Overall, the  play wasn’t to my liking. However, I had learned some valuable life lessons and skills after attending the performance. The most important skill I gained was being able to find my happy place. I was scared, and I was petrified. However, I went deep into my brain and entered my new-found happy place, and now when something traumatic is occurring, I can return to my happy place for safety and refuge. I will survive. I won’t lay down and die, but with that being said, if bizarre and random displays of expression for 75 minutes aren’t your idea of a good time, you might as well do so. I salute William Forscythe and all of the performers for their effort, and if it’s any consolation, this isn’t the most disturbing thing I have ever seen (I think it ranks close to 11 on the top 20).

Did Diego Rivera deserve to have his design destroyed?

In 1932, Norman Rockwell, as well as the other member’s of the prestigious Rockefeller family, petitioned Diego Rivera in the hopes that he would create a mural for their building. Normal Rockwell initially decided that an artistic mural would create an atmosphere of culture that would legitimize the otherwise banal business tower. Initially, the project looked like it would be a success. However, when Rockefeller and the press found out that Diego Rivera had created a portrait of communist leader Vladimir Lenin in the mural, they were infuriated. America was strongly capitalist at the time, only a few years past the great depression that struck in 1932. Clearly, a picture of a communist leader on a building that symbolized great commerce and personal wealth would be contradictory and embarrassing. Faced with pressure from the elites in Manhattan, Norman Rockefeller eventually decided to hand Rivera the lump sum of his artistic dues, send him on his way, and destroy any evidence of his mural in Rockefeller Center.

I think the question of whether the removal of the mural was the right result or the wrong result is hard to answer. While we live in a society that values every person’s right to think and voice his or her opinions, it seems unfair to say that removing the mural was the wrong thing. If this mural were painted today, many of us in support of freedom of expression would still find the communist imagery unappealing. Communism is a system that most Americans identify as restrictive and oppressive. American’s experience with Soviet communism during the Cold War tends to make them less receptive to images of Lenin being plastered in public. However, it doesn’t take away from the fact that Diego Rivera simply presented his personal view and was within his right in doing so. Essentially, the question of the removal’s fairness cannot be answered like a math equation; there is a lot of gray area.

Although there may not be a clear verdict on the removal’s case, it is clear that the Rockefeller’s are at fault. They knew well before enlisting the help of Rivera that he was a staunch supporter of communism and displayed communist imagery in his work. With that knowledge, they still gave him the task of beautifying their building, and placed no restrictions on what he could make. Rivera, although controversial, clearly was within his rights in making the images of Lenin and John D. Rockefeller boozing in a nightclub. Were his images provocative? Of course they were. However, he was an artist and an activist and was merely using this canvass to convey an idea. If Rockefeller didn’t anticipate Rivera’s antics, he was either misinformed or naïve. In the end, he destroyed what would have been a stunning piece of art because it made his company look bad. Rivera, although daring, did not deserve to have his work removed.

Meet the Artists

On Thursday September 1st, the Macaulay freshman class and I visited the Macaulay Center in Manhattan to go meet some documentary film makers and learn about the art of making a documentary film. I, probably like most of my classmates, was really annoyed to have to travel right after school straight to Manhattan when the weekend was right around the corner and freedom was so close, but we went anyway because it was a Macaulay requirement and we had no choice. I initially thought it would be boring, but even though the dark room and comfy auditorium chairs almost made me fall asleep, I managed to stay awake for the entire first film, which was fairly interesting. It was about former Von Dutch partner Bobby Vaughn, and the struggles he faced trying to relocate to Queens and start a clothing company after a murder allegation against him in Los Angeles. The documenters were a former graduate of the Macaulay Honors program and a professor currently teaching in the city. They both chose to make a documentary on this man because he was an interesting character in the community and he was reaching out to help the neighborhood he lived in, so the documenters also wanted to be in support of that. I found the movie, especially his account of fighting off an attack by his best friend only to then take his life, very interesting.

The documenters also talked about the process of making a film. Besides choosing a topic that would be exciting enough to make a movie on, they also had to get the funding, the supplies, and the manpower to make a film. The student who graduated from Macaulay, whose name I’ve forgotten, talked about the relative ease of getting technology good enough to make a feature film. He said that this was the easiest time for an amateur to make a film, because now it only cost a few thousand dollars to buy a good camera and rolling tape. They also mentioned that while shooting the film took only a month or so, editing the entire film took a year, which was pretty shocking to hear. I have more respect for filmmakers now, even though I didn’t think their job was easy before this event either. But it was pretty interesting to see someone be able to make a film and to learn some of the techniques on getting the entire piece put together.