A Trip to the MoMA

When embarking on my trip to the Museum of Modern Art, I did not know what to expect.  My family and I took a trip up to the fourth floor where there was an abstract exhibition.  The first thing I saw when I walked in was two pieces by Andy Warhol.  I immediately smiled.  I recognized the pieces and the style of his work right away.  One piece was a large canvas with a small portrait of Marilyn Monroe.  The other piece was a compilation of Campbell’s soup pictures.  There were several people crowded around the pieces.  Some were even drawing pictures of the pieces on display.

There were so many fascinating pieces in the exhibit.  I saw pieces that we talked about by Jackson Pollack.  One of his pieces was huge!  It took up almost an entire wall in one of the rooms.  Other pictures I noticed were by Aaron Siskind.  I recognized his name from digital photography.  I studied him a bit for my photographer paper.  It was cool to see a bunch of his photographs close up.  I really liked his photo “Martha’s Vineyard.”  I also liked his peeled paint piece.  The texture was really interesting to see in person.  It really made his photograph come to life.

One artist that I found particularly intriguing was Ad Reinhardt.  His pieces were so simple, but something drew me to them.  Two of his pieces were just black paint and nothing else.  My family looked at me and thought I was crazy when I said I liked these pieces.  “There’s nothing to it!” said my dad.  But, I noticed after looking at them that it was about the variation of the shades of black that Reinhardt used in these pieces that made it so interesting.  Most people just glanced at these pieces and walked away assuming they were just black squares and rectangles.  However, it was really cool to see the deeper meaning in the pieces and actually understand what the artist was trying to get his viewers to see.

While at the museum, I also visited a contemporary art exhibition.  This one was really cool and had a lot of things we talked about in class as well.  A lot of the works were a lot larger and stood our more than the other pieces.  Some of the artwork took up an entire room!  There was one piece that was a glass circle where half of it was lit up in neon green.  It seemed so simple, but it was still so exciting to look at.  It’s just funny to see these things that make you wonder why they are such great pieces of art, yet you are still drawn to them and can’t look away.

One piece from this exhibit was two entire walls filled with the word AIDS in small square tiles.  This piece was colorful, and it made you a little bit dizzy if you stared at it for too long.  There were other pieces within the art and it was really something.  It sent such a strong message and you were forced to look at it.  Other pieces were simply words printed largely on the walls.  One piece read, “The show is over the audience get up to leave their seats time to collect their coats and go home they turn around no more coats and no more home.”  There is no punctuation, and the words are written spaced out and funky.  I’m not really sure why but I was especially drawn to this piece.  I thought the way it was presented was really different and it made you stop and think about it both while and after reading it.

I also saw an installation in this exhibit.  It had unfinished walls, garbage bags hanging on the walls, and random things all throughout the space.  It was really interesting how Paul Chan, put together this installation.  It was even cooler to actually know what the script was talking about when they mentioned that this piece was an installation. 

Paul Sharitis’ video was particularly striking.  I walked into a dark room simply to see a bunch of colors blinking on the screen.  First blue would come, then green, orange and so on.  My sister decided to make use out of the film and make shadow animals.  This film was forty-four minutes long and nothing happened except the different colors popping up on the screen.  Like many of the other pieces, it seemed so simple.  Anyone could have done it, right?

My trip to the Museum of Modern Art was a great experience.  I did not know what to expect before I went, but once I arrived it was really cool to see everything.  I liked a ton of the different pieces, and it was cool to actually recognize the artists and the types of art they were discussing in the descriptions.  My entire family was completely baffled and lost throughout the exhibit, but I understood a lot of what was going on and was able to explain things to them.  It was excellent to be able to do this and to actually know what some of the artists were trying to portray in their pieces.

-Kristen

SHHH! It's A Secret!

Many artists use observations to depict the world around them.  One artist in particular that does so is Jill Magid.  She used institutions and authority in order to make her art.  She worked wit the Dutch Secret Services in order to create conceptual artwork.  Magid has a particular interest in secrets; not the exposure of them but their existence.  Therefore, her project with the secret services was one that really fascinated her.  She enjoyed working with them and using them as a way to create her artwork.  She had the opportunity to work with members of the secret service and understand the organization from the inside. 

After creating her project, Magid got people to wonder who was the watcher and who was an observer.  Was everyone a spy?  The agents really appreciated her work and kept scheduling to meet with her despite the fact that the secret services did not like parts of her work.  They felt it revealed too much information about their organization and made her black out parts of her book.  The book could only be seen through glass as well.

Magid’s work depicts this idea of awareness of the population and what this means.  She utilizes what is out there and turns it around to benefit her and her work.  I thought her piece called “I Can Burn Your Face” was really intriguing.  I liked that she did it in neon so that it stands out and “burns” your eyes when looking at it.  It goes along with the title of the piece and the idea she is trying to portray through this piece of art. 

I also thought the idea of exposing these agents so much that they feel vulnerable but not enough to quite figure them out was really fascinating.  I would never have thought that this is what she would have done with the information she gathered through her meetings.  Not only was it something interesting to look at, the idea behind it is really cool and I liked that we got to walk through the process with her.  Seeing her thought process and her ideas through her own perspective really brings the artwork to life.


-Kristen

Public Art

This week’s discussion focused on the use of the public in art.  Some artists use the general public to finish or complete a work of art.  This moves the population, whether it is a large or small group, into an area of creating and finishing artwork.  In the video we viewed, art is described as the origin or experience of beauty.  The things we call beautiful are so different.  Art is meant to make different objects captivating and beautiful to look at.

Spencer Tunick used the public to create his artwork.  He is an American artist who creates installations of the body.  He does this by using people in the nude; it gives a different outlook on both art and the human body itself.  His works use the body in the multiple and he has these humans posing with complete strangers.  He reflects these bodies to landscapes or other spaces that he chooses.  It is almost like they are used as camouflage because so many bodies are put together in one shot.  Although the public is naked, it is not exposing because it is a community effort and so many people are posing together.

I think this is a really strange way of making art.  It is definitely unique and interesting to look at because you cannot even notice that the people in the photo are naked simply because there are so many of them.  However, when looking at his work it seems as if there is a deeper meaning to just the use of the public in art.  I saw it as an expression of being comfortable with the human body.  Not only are these people naked, but also they are posing with sometimes hundreds of complete strangers.  I know that I would never be able to do something like that!  I don’t even care if you couldn’t pick me out of the crowd; it is not something that I would be comfortable with.  I think it says a lot about the people in the artwork themselves.  This type of art also reminds me of street art in the fact that it is a community effort rather than just one person making the art themselves.

Another artist were focused on was Gillian Wearing, who looked at people under different psychological strains in society.  She composed a piece where she had people not moving for sixty minutes.  This piece focused on the idea of holding back and restraint.  It also gave this idea of being able to let go and scream out once the sixty minutes were finally over.

Vanessa Craft is an artist who uses women with a certain body type to create her staged photo performances.  She connects art to art while reformulating ideas that have been around for decades.  Women are her material and surrogates.  She uses a specific group of women and poses them in a certain way; she refers to them as her “army.”  I did not think her photographs were as interesting as Tunick’s or Wearing’s.  For some reason they just did not jump out at me as much as the others did.  I think I was not as interested because she only really worked with a very specific type and really staged her photographs.

This type of art is really interesting because it is not like anything we have looked at before, besides the art where artists used his or her own body as a form of expression.  In these pieces the people aren’t really doing anything, but they still serve as the medium or the central idea for the artists.  They do not have to be physically doing anything; their existence in these pieces of art are vital simply because they are completing the work.


-Kristen

Collection Craze

Have you ever collected anything?  Because it’s a common thing.  Art isn’t the only thing that can be collected; you can essentially collect anything.  These things become special possessions and treasures.  You may keep all of these things in a certain place, or display them in a certain way.  But more often than not, these things have a story behind them of how, why or when you got the pieces.  You cherish these things because it creates a memory of a specific moment in your life; you’re essentially capturing a moment in an object.  Unfortunately, the meanings of these pieces change, but the memories never die.  At the end of the day, these pieces might not matter all that much in the scheme of life, but sometimes they do.  These collections are often things we disregard in our everyday lives.  But they are all around us, and they propel us through our lives whether we are aware of it or not.  We are born from these objects that come from the world all around us. 

When talking about collections, a million things came to my mind.  I used to collect beanie babies and seashells as a kid.  Now, I collect photographs.  I am constantly printing out pictures from my own life, and collecting others and then making collages.  I love pictures.  I love taking them; I love being in them; I love everything about them.  Like the people in the video we viewed, they capture memories; and let’s be serious, I need something to remind me of all the fun times I’ve had.  I can’t possibly remember them all.  This was a really personal video regarding collection and it was really relatable because it wasn’t solely focused on art.  It reached out to those who are interested in things other than art and while I love art, it was still something unique to watch.  It definitely brought me back to my childhood years and it made me think about why I cherished a stuffed animal so much.  I mean, it’s not like it could talk to me or anything.  Who knows; I’m sure I had a good reason at the time.  But for now, all I can do is laugh about it (because I still have all of them).

Today we talked about a man who works with collections in museums by the name of Fred Wilson.  He places objects together to create this different meaning than what the objects really stand for.  He creates his own meaning within these objects.  He takes everything he wants to say and depicts it with the collections.  He says, “It is not art, but it is who I am.”  He notes that you do your best work when you are doing something that you believe in.  Wilson’s motivation behind his type of art is truly motivating and heart felt.  His childhood as a black boy exposed to several different races, and discriminated against for his own race caused this sadness inside of him that he expresses through his work as an adult.  He is very interested in the juxtaposition of objects; he works with this and explores the visual world around him that affects him so much.

Wilson’s work is truly admirable.  Although he does not create the pieces with his own hands, he creates his own meaning and there is so much motivation and emotion behind what he does.  He really went into depth to explain the meaning behind what he does.  His pieces were touching because of the things they represented.  He really embodies the idea that a picture, or in this case a collection of art, is worth a million words.  Wilson has become stronger as a result of his rough childhood, and he took something in his life that was so negative and reinforced it in a positive way.  There is definitely something to be said for that.

Another artists we discussed briefly is Mark Dion, who is considered a modern archaeologist.  He mastered the art of traditional ceramic making.  He made a ceramic teacup and then destroyed it and proceeded to display it as art.  Many were baffled by the idea and did not understand the purpose of his piece.  They considered it useless.  When I heard this, I actually thought it was really cool.  I think the whole idea of ceramics and the process is fascinating.  The glazed look of a finished product is really intriguing, and seeing something like that in pieces is unique.  Either way, it doesn’t matter because if he thinks it art than it shouldn’t matter what other think about it.  It brings us back to our original argument of “What is art?”

-Kristen