Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry

Alison Klayman's Ai Weiwei Never Sorry is at the IFC until 8/2/12. Bart and I got a chance to see it today and it was just so eyeopening. It offers a glimpse into the artist's trajectory and the many appalling issues surrounding the Chinese political system that we don't typically take into consideration.

Other than Weiwei's Sunflower Seeds installation which was displayed at Tate not too long ago, I didn't know any of his other work. One particularly impressive piece discussed in the film is the one pictured below. Inspired by a statement from a mother of one one out of the thousands of children killed during the 2007 Sichuan earthquake, it says "She lived happily on this earth for 7 years". Just as powerful in content is its form, which pieces together thousands of backpacks.

Credit Uta Lenk

 Since the Chinese government provided very little information about the students who were killed during the earthquake, Weiwei and his assistants went from home to home, collecting the names of all the children who had gone missing, ultimately tallying nearly 5,000 casualties -- a count the Chinese government either didn't conduct or kept secret from its citizens. Weiwei argues that these deaths could have been easily prevented had the architectural foundation of the government-funded schools been built sturdier.

I typically avoid posting profanity on this blog, but this picture is the best because Weiwei's "fuck you" carries a lot of meaning.

REAL/SURREAL

Note: I began this post on 02/10/2012 as an attempt to share with Bart what had caught my eye at the Whitney's Real/Surreal Exhibit. It's unfinished, and I'm afraid I won't get around to finishing it. So rather than it just sitting around as a draft, I shall post what I have so far.

Whitney Museum: REAL/SURREAL Exhibit (Oct. 6, 2011–Feb. 12, 2012)

The pieces in this collection are drawn from the Whitney's permanent collection and deal with decades surrounding World War II. According to Freud, "the distinction between imagination and reality is effaced." For a portion of this visit, Aileen and I tagged along a tour group for this exhibit, which was led by an older man who seemed very passionate about the works he chose to highlight . Along the way, we gained a lot of fun facts about several of the work and its composers.

This isn't the particular piece I saw at the Real/Surreal exhibit, but it illustrates the same juxtaposition of machinery (a carburetor) next to an organic object (an onion), which my tour guide so eloquently called a partnership that spawns a "sense of melancholy" in this technologically driven day and age.

Walter Tandy Murch (1907-1967), Carburetor, 1957. Oil on canvas.

Again, this isn't the work I saw, but it gives you a good idea of Wilde's style. The work I saw at the exhibit was called Work Reconsidered #1, 1950, which immediately attracted my attention because of its similarity to Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting -- in the background, Wilde blends grays, blues and blacks to evoke a vast desert-like space, which sharply contrasts with the pallid female, who sits in three-quarters view and consumes the midground. She's bare from the waist up, but positioned with her right elbow, which leans on the table in the foreground in such a way that her areolas and nipples, but not the curvature of her breasts, are concealed. Exceptionally detailed insects rest on her exposed skin (Aileen was freaked out by cockroach [yes, it was that detailed!] in between the lower curve of her right breast and the border of her scapula). I could go on and on about the details of Wilde's Work Reconsidered #1, 1950, but within the context of this exhibit/post, what I found most compelling was the artist's ability to re-contextualize the Northern European Renaissance style into one that fit the Surrealist movement. 

John Wilde (1919-2006), In the Hand, 1957. Oil on tempered masonite.

I came across Yves Tanguy earlier this year as I walked around the Met, and I took pictures of his work because I couldn't understand it. The tour guide stated how Tanguy was heavily influenced by de Chirico and that during World War I, the artist was drafted to war but France never sent him to the battle grounds because the officials knew he was an artist (this is to the advantage of Tanguy, but that's corrupt behavior). Check out the biomorphic objects -- their color is so similar to that of bone.

Yves Tanguy (1900-1955), The Wish, 1949. Oil on canvas.
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York;

Federico Castellón (1914-1971), The Dark Figure, 1938. Oil on canvas.

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

The following Man Ray piece was actually recreated by Sherrie Levine. See here.

Man Ray (1890–1976), La Fortune, 1938. Oil on canvas.
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

The Hamptons, Elaine de Kooning and Montauk

Bart drove us out east towards the Hamptons yesterday and provided me with a little tour of some of its communities. I had no idea "The Hamptons" was an umbrella term that referred to a bunch of different towns, and my goodness -- the number of mansions out there! Talk about excess. Let me amuse you with a fun fact that Bart pointed out yesterday -- Sagaponack has a population of 582, spans an area of 8 miles (22.35% of which is water), and was once listed as the most expensive zip codes across the nation. According to Forbes, it's now third in the nation with a median home price of about $4 million. Dear Lord.

Our first stop was in Bridgehampton, where we came across the Mark Borghi Gallery, which happened to be selling several Elaine de Kooning paintings amongst other contemporary artists. I was vaguely familiar Willem de Kooning, but had never heard of Elaine. The girl at the front desk told us they were spouses that had a rocky relationship. At first, I was not impressed with de Kooning's abstract work because they seemed so quickly executed, but now I'm reconsidering this opinion because of two things: (1) what the front desk receptionist said and (2) the absence of the parergon -- none of her paintings had the small detail block including the work's title, year of production, medium.

• (1) - I'm sitting here and remembering entering the gallery and to my right, at the very entrance, there was this large canvas that occupied nearly 10 feet in height and perhaps 20 feet in width; it had extremely wide brushstrokes of a variety colors (mostly vibrant) layered on top of one another*. My immediate observation, was the brush stroke's style, which I initially conceived as requiring minimal effort and skill -- this turned me off (sigh, I know, I know -- I'm really trying to let go of this awfully close minded approach to art, but it takes time). Unfortunately, as a result, my examination of her painting ended there and I became indifferent to the rest of her work. I'm now realizing that I didn't consider what these brushstrokes might mean -- they had an intensity and aggression to them. Perhaps this style of painting served as therapy to Elaine when she was frustrated with Willem or some other external factor? Within this context, I'm now understanding her more abstract work much like I understand and appreciate Pollock's action paintings or Kusama's Infinity Nets series, where the form of the brushstroke (or paint splatter in Pollock's case) is the manifestation of a gesture and supplies the viewer with some insight about how the artist may have felt at the time of the work's conception. 
• * = Bart really enjoyed this layering because of the combinatorial effect when the brush strokes of different colors cross over. 
• (2) - The parergon is that which supplements a work (within a context of a painting, examples would include the artist's signature, the painting's frame, its title, etc) and is a term I've only recently become familiar with. The gallery didn't provide any of the painting's details next to de Kooning's work -- I was lucky enough to recognize it was her work because of a signature and date she placed at the bottom right hand of each piece. Instead the gallery provided a single sheet of paper at its front desk (I should have requested a copy, but it didn't occur to me then), indicating the artwork's name and price (as far as I could tell, there really was no way of discerning which title corresponded to painting on this long list with small text). I honestly think this borders disrespect to the work itself. Some might argue with me and say authorial intent might not be relevant, and if that's the case, well then, I'd appreciate at the very least a little note next to the piece indicating the work is untitled.

Edit: According to Elaine de Kooning's Wiki, she briefly studied in Hunter College (my alma mater) and passed away in Southampton. A befitting quote by her: "A painting to me is primarily a verb, not a noun, an event first and only secondarily an image."
---
After Bridge Hampton, we drove further east to some beach on East Hampton, where we ate a picnic he packed for us (he's adorable: peanut butter & strawberry jelly sandwiches, salt & vinger flavored almonds, and salt & pepper kettle cooked chips). I took some pictures of the horizon with the Yaschica 35mm I found at home (can't wait to develop them!). A month from now, we'll be crossing the Atlantic on our way to Europe!

After lunch, we got back on the road and headed towards Montauk, and arrived shortly after the gates to the lighthouse closed. This worked to our advantage since we were spared the $8 parking fee visitors must pay between 9a-4p. We still got a chance to walk around the area and appreciate the lighthouse from afar.

In case you're interested, I borrowed the following info from Montauk Point Lighthouse ...

Members of the U.S. Lighthouse Service and the U.S. Coast Guard have been the residing keepers, tending the light for those at sea. Whaling ships, steamers, submarines, fishing and sailing vessels of all kinds have passed this tower on Turtle Hill, guided and reassured by its presence. On land, generations of visitors have made the trek to Long Island's easternmost tip, marveling at this lighthouse, the work of the keeper, and the beauty of Montauk Point.

Automated by the Coast Guard in 1987, the Montauk Point Lighthouse no longer needs a lightkeeper; however, a keeper of its history is essential. Under a program to provide for the continued maintenance and preservation of this historic lighthouse, the Coast Guard has transferred ownership of the lighthouse to the Montauk Historical Society.

Prior to yesterday, lighthouses had never really piqued my interest, but now I'm really loving this idea of safety associated with them. 

In an attempt to get a good angle of the lighthouse,
we stood on top of the bench.

A beautiful boy with a curmudgeon's expression
juxtaposed alongside erosion. WWDD?

Looking for aerodynamic efficient rocks for rock skipping.

Nope, we can't take normal pictures together.

Ocean horizons are beautiful.

redefining art and diego rivera at the MoMA

free entry into the MoMA thanks to CUNY + SUNY!

just a few thoughts --

the other day, bart asked me who my favorite artists are. i really don't know anymore. and i really like the fact that i don't know anymore. i used to name a slew of masters from the renaissance, followed by a list of some of my favorite indian architecture, but as of late, perhaps since last summer, i've redefined my interpretation of what art is and means to me.

i really appreciate how subjective the definition of art is and how there's this constant definition and re-definition of it as a person gets older and experiences more of life.

when i was in high school and most of college, i judged an artist by his capacity to display archetypal adroitness on a canvas or sculpture. what i suffered from was an overly scientific approach to art -- an ignorance/detachment that prevented me from fully appreciating the work itself. what's terrible about all of this is that i detest the art-science schism, yet as a teenager and well into my early 20s, i was unknowingly polarizing the fields by means of understanding art in this very rigid way. back then, technique equaled quality to me, which is certainly acceptable within the context of renaissance art, but this sort of mentality isn't applicable to the more contemporary forms of art. i'd go as far to say that use of classical technique is anachronistic and therefore irrelevant in the discourse of modern art forms. as of late, i've really been digging the post modern (or "PoMo" as bart would call it) aesthetics because it engenders an entirely different level of engagement of the viewer (appreciator) with the work of art. most modern art forces me to stand in front of it and critically think. it's beautiful when you share these moments with your significant other (as i do with bart) and share what's internally going on. yesterday, bart and i spent probably close to an hour looking at a single diego rivera sketch entitled man at the crossroads (1932; pencil on paper). can't find the actual sketch on google image, and the actual mural itself (that which shows up on a google image search) isn't the same as the sketch. how unfortunate. i hate when this happens. considering the MoMA allows you to take pictures in the some of the other galleries, i'm pretty sure this doesn't have to do with ensuring preservation of the art (i.e. by avoiding those idiots who use flash photo). it's probably a measure taken to ensure people physically visit the gallery (aka bang out a $15 or whatever$ entrance fee). hmph. anyway -- i will definitely elaborate on man at the crossroads in a later post when i have more time to write.

here is another beautiful fresco we saw yesterday:

Diego Rivera, Frozen Assets, 1931; fresco within steel frame.

i love how the verticality of this freso functions twofold: technically speaking-it creates a linear movement that activates our spatial orientation and sense of perspective; figuratively-- this verticality (coupled with the use of color: dismal lighting at the base; artificial, but still more apparent, lighting in the middle portion; and natural light provided by nature at the top) could suggest a transcendence of sorts -- the way some religious art depicts hell at the bottom, earthliness/purgatory in the middle, and heaven at the top. can you see it? the few people at the very bottom (in the bank) look and feel so disconnected/depressing, whereas the homeless masses (middle frame) and slew of commuters (see detail located within the upper horizontal bar [depicting a train station]) in the middle of the fresco aren't illustrated with as much detail as the six "wealthy" individuals, but there's a shared sense of struggle (albeit, the homeless vs. commuters would obviously understand struggle differently). frozen assets reminded me of all the gentrification occurring in nyc, the displacement witnessed throughout history, some of which is ongoing. although painted about 80 years ago, this sort of industrialization/capitalist driven devastation still lingers and is ever so prominent in some parts of the world.

concluding remark: it's been difficult to let go of some of my predispositions when it comes to analyzing art, but needless to say, appreciating modern art has brought me to an entirely different stage of art appreciation.

here are a few silly pics post-MoMA:

happy bart and cindy sherman as a sad clown

OH, Ok!

mi tesoro.

bart tried taking a picture of me but instead took a picture of my cheek and himself,
as well as some cool african masks in the bottom third of the background.

some nice tourist asked us if we wanted a picture together, so we said yea, sure!

Miru Kim's Underground Art

"I feel an obligation to animate and humanize these spaces continually in order to preserve their memories in a creative way before they're lost forever."

OUR CITY DREAMS

Stumbled upon this documentary on my Netflix recommendations -- it captures the lives of five female artists (Swoon, Ghada Amer, Kiki Smith, Marina Abramovic, and Nancy Spero) who live and create art in NYC. So inspiring! The portion on Nancy Spero, rest in peace, was particularly beautiful and brought me to tears.

Swoon presenting her work at MoMA (Part 1 of 2)

(Part 2 of 2 here.)

 Ghada Amer, The Dance, 2004; 

acrylic, gel medium and embroidery on canvas.

Marina Abramovic, Rest Energy with Ulay, 1980;

Performance.

 

Kiki Smith, Sirens, 2007;

set of six cast bronze sculptures with black patina.

Nancy Spero, The Bomb, 1968;

gouache and ink on paper.

Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain.

I have never been a huge fan of contemporary art, but Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía completely changed this sentiment. This museum is also one of the main reasons I would like to eventually return to Madrid.


The experience began in their glass-walled and -floored elevators, whose intention, I am sure, is to give the rider vertigo.

With my nerves on edge, I made my way to the nearest exhibit, which led into a room embellished with typical Picasso paintings -- work akin to the those exposed at the Met and MoMA. I perused through this room rather quickly in anticipation to get to the Guernica (1937, oil on canvas). I suppose my mind has never been good at translating the dimensions of an artwork provided to me in the captions found in textbooks because I was floored by the enormity of this painting (11' x 25'6"), which, rightfully so, has its own room in Reina Sofia.

(image borrowed from go see run eat)

I stood in front of the painting for a good fifteen minutes. There were maybe twenty or so other people in the room with me -- but no one spoke, the room stood still the entire time while everyone just took the artwork in.


Other noteworthy works at Reina Sofia included:

Luis Quintanilla, Franco's Black Spain Series,1938-9, ink on paper.

more of his drawings (with explanations) from this series.

Francisco Goya, Disasters of War Etchings Series, 1810-20, ink on paper.

Francis Picabia, Woman in Red Headscarf, 1937, oil on canvas.

This isn't the greatest image of this artwork, but when seen in person, its colors are more vibrant, really drawing the viewer in. 
 

Francis Picabia, Brouette (Wheelbarrow), 1922, gouache. 

The Dada room mostly consisted of work by Picabia -- his watercolors, sketches, and music (mutable sounds).

Salvador Dali, The Great Masturbator, 1929, oil on canvas.

Information borrowed from the Dali Gallery: 

The Great Masturbator is a self-portrait painted in July 1929. Dalí's head has the shape of a rock formation near his home and is seen in this form in several paintings dating from 1929. The painting deals with Dalí's fear and loathing of sex. He blamed his negative feelings toward sex as partly a result of reading his father's, extremely graphic book on venereal diseases as a young boy. The head is painted "soft", as if malleable to the touch; it looks fatigued, sexually spent: the eyes are closed, the cheeks flushed. Under the nose a grasshopper clings, its abdomen covered with ants that crawl onto the face where a mouth should be. From early childhood, Dalí had a phobia of grasshoppers and the appearance of one here suggests his feelings of hysterical fear and a loss of voice or control. Emerging from the right of the head, a woman moves her mouth toward a man's crotch. The man's legs are cut and bleeding, implying a fear of castration. The woman's face is cracked, as though the image that Dalí's head produces will soon disintegrate. To reiterate the sexual theme, the stamen of a lily and tongue of a lion appear underneath the couple.  

Salvador Dali, Cenicitas (Little Ashes) formerly Sterile Efforts, 1927-8, oil on wood.

Information borrowed from the Dali Gallery:

Senicitas, (also known as Summer Forces or The Birth of Venus), was painted when Dalí was completing his military service. It is one of a series of paintings that mark the emergence of themes and symbols that were to dominate Dalí's work. Senicitas is Spanish for "little cinders", referring to the red marks that are attacking the limbless body. The body, though it is more male than female, has no genitals but to the right of it a hand forms the shape of male genitalia. There are also several headless female bodies; one covered in dark veins squeezes her lactating breast. Dalí uses various techniques of depiction here: some images are painted quite realistically, like the female body in the bottom middle of the painting, while others like the donkey above, appear as a scattered outline only. The decapitated head of Dalí's friend Lorca appears as if dead, lying on the ground underneath the body. One of their favorite games was for Lorca to pretend he was dead; he could do this quite convincingly for long periods of time.

Joan Miró, Man with Pipe, 1925, oil on canvas

This was located in a room called Palabras en libertad. Surrealismo  y campos magnéticos (Words in Freedom. Surrealism and Magnetic Fields), which I thought was a beautiful name.

Angeles Santos Torroella, Un Mundo (A World), 1929, oil on canvas.

This artist was only 17 years old when she produced this. I can't find the
dimensions of this work, but it's very large (~6'x4') and beautifully detailed.

 Robert Delaunay, Portrait of Tristan Tzara, 1923, oil on canvas.

Hermenegildo Anglada Camarasa, Retrato de Sonia Klamery, c. 1913, oil on canvas.

 

Yayoi Kusama Exhibit Entrance

This little girl ran towards the balloon as I snapped the picture. 
Her excitement and animation for Kusama's art made me smile.  

Yayoi Kusama, Gleaming Lights of the Souls, 2011, installation.

Literally one of the most amazing experiences of my life. You enter a small room

that is mirrored on all four sides, and hung from the ceiling are a constellation of LED 

lights that flicker from green to red to yellow, producing a series of reflections.

Yayoi Kusama, Infinity Nets Painting, 1959, oil on canvas.

From Reina Sofia pamphlet on Kusama:

In 1957, Kusama arrived in Seattle, where she exhibited her work at the Zoe Dusanne Gallery. Six months later she moved to New York, where she radically transformed her approach to painting. Possibly a response to Abstract Expressionism, the large scale canvases that became known as the Infinity Net Paintings are covered in seemingly endlessly repeated, scalloped brushstrokes of a single color on a contrasting background. The Infinity Nets openly display the process of their making. The nets are made of repeated versions of a single, simple gesture: a discrete movement of the artist's wrist, conveyed via her brush as an arc of paint. The incessant character of this gesture is both obsessive and meditative and could be said to anticipate the serial techniques employed by Minimal and Conceptual artists. The nets and 'dots' visible between the painted arcs were to become key motifs in Kusama's personal vocabulary of images to which she has returned through her subsequent career.

It's been nearly seven months since I posted on this.

Stanley Donwood

Excuse the Blogspot hiatus, I was posting on tumblr.

Yeondoo Jung: Dreams Come True

Transgressing the Border Between Reality and Fantasy

"Dreams Come True," a project that converts children's drawings into reality:

Yeondoo Jung transforms photography into a magical wand that, with the wave of his hand, casts a magic spell. His photos recreate the dreams of adolescents that he has met in cities around the world. His own world is made up of children's fantasies scribbled on drawing paper -- not a world of reality, but of faded dreams. His photosare careful, imaginative re-creations that bring to life the fragmented stories of people that come his way and tickle his ear and eye.

In a series of tightly composed photos that began in 2001, Jung does much more than record a visual image. He discourses with the subject. The multiple layers of experience and verbal exchange in the space shared by the photographer who peers through his lens and the subject that stares back at him create a unique photographic image. Jung painstakingly gives photographic form to disembodied dreams, inspiring our sense of wonder and respect for his representation of the terrible freedom of a child's unbridled ideas or the nascent power of an adolescent's dreams. The impenetrable borders and the fusion points between reality and fantasy converge smoothly in Jung's photos, inviting us into a new visual world of emotion and desire.

Cai Guo-Qiang.

Same Word, Same Seed, Same Root

Min Tai Yuan Museum, 

Quanzhou, Fujian, China 

2006 

The large-scale gunpowder drawing measures 18 meters in height and 9 meters in width. The drawing depicts a large banyan tree from its roots to leaves, symbolizing the same culture, same race, same roots, and same origin between Mainland China and Taiwan. The guest-welcoming banyan tree hangs at the lobby of Min Tai Yuan Museum, which is dedicated to exhibiting the fateful relationship between Fujian and Taiwan.

Sophie Blackall

via sophie blackall

Also check out her missed connections project.

Alex Grey's Kissing, 1983.

via alexgrey.com/

!!!!

Suren Manvelyan 

via Fresh Photons

Romance, Schiele vs. Munch.