In the Met: Prompt #8

"Outburst" by Judit Reigl (1956), Gallery 921 if interested 

Every time I find myself in the modern galleries at the Met, it is a nice, secluded moment. The lively sculpture galleries and special exhibits have the undeniable external energy of the crowd, but the "surge" of the modern, in works like this one by Judit Reigl, radiate from within the work. Reigl experimented with automatic writing in Paris (though born in Hungary and studied in Italy) and began to produce works that were both additive and subtractive, scraping the industrial paint vigorously with different metal devices. The physicality of her labor radiates through, the result of her task being works that seem to at once absorb and reflect the light. I have read a description that likens these bursts to "forcefields," which wasn't my initial reaction, though I desperately wish it had been because it is so accurate. Each mark feels suspended, as though it exists in both this temporal realm and an unconceivable universe. The tension aroused by the combination of the static and kinetic is captivating, as though it exists somewhere between a frozen still and take-off (... into outer space, in my opinion). 

I'm drawn to these moments of in-between, when "reality" or some visual principle lacks clarity because there is no simple, "really. The "in-between" is like the uncanny, which finds a home in my framework of visual and thematic preferences. With visual engagement, I recently tend to like to feel like I don't know where I'm existing, or that I don't at all (...there's an optical, circular piece in a gallery near this one that I cannot remember name of that makes you lose your mind a bit in a good way when you move around it). 

Prompt #8: Met Marathon

Odysseus, Athena, Aphrodite, Hera, Zeus... 

Since I was in elementary school, I became fascinated with the Greek-Roman myth/ theology. 

The enchanting tales of the gods and goddesses, as well as humans were thrilling to me. As I was wondering around the Met, I came across a very familiar scene from the Greek-Roman myth stories I have read when I was young: Perseus with the Head of Medusa. Here, Perseus is holding the severed head of Medusa, one of the Gorgons in his triumphant pose, armed with winged cap, sword, and Mercury's sandal. The tale of Perseus was indeed one of my most favorite from the Greek-Roman mythology; although he was abandoned from the royal family and was raised in a poor setting, Perseus nevertheless became the nation's hero by killing the ferocious monster Medusa. The heroic, grandiose quality of this statue is further strengthened by Antonio Canova's use of marble; the stone yields brilliant effects, being both pristine and sensual at the same time. 

Met Piece

I love egyptian art. I was obsessed with Egypt as a small child. As every other child was probably watching saturday morning cartoons I was tuned into PBS's special with Dr. Zahi Hawass as he explored the artifacts in the Egyptian tombs. I loved the rituals as a child. This world of mythology with such clear picture...really the fact that there could be a language of pictures. The idea of hieroglyphs was incredible to me. 

Now I have come to appreciate the timelessness of the art. Egyptian art is sort of amazing in the fact that it is so incredibly static. For several thousands of years (minus the reign of Akhenaten) the style did not change. It remained in a way where time just never passed. Much like how the afterlife worked to create a timelessness for these people. 

Maybe its my own fear and obsession with time passing that drives me so much to stillness. To remain the same seems so appealing. Maybe its just nostalgia. 

Anywho, while there are a lot of great pieces to chose from I've always been drawn most to the funerary objects. I chose the Singer of Amun Nany's Funerary Papyrus in gallery 126 for my piece as it also shows not only the stillness of the images but the amazing preservation of the papyrus. Such a fragile document to survive so long, its just incredible. 

Alberto Giacometti: Deconstructing and Reinventing Traditional Figurative Sculpture (Prompt 8)

          In 1945, coinciding with the end of World War II, Swiss born painter and sculptor Alberto Giacometti returned to Paris from Geneva where he had spent the war years. Already having established himself as a well-respected surrealist artist in the early 1930’s, Giacometti returned to Paris with a different way of perceiving the world. Roman Jacobson points out in his book On Realism in Art, “that [just one year later] Giacometti suggested that the aesthetic framework within which he was experiencing the outside world had become transformed.”¹ In other words, this pivotal moment in history not only affected the way that Giacometti perceived the world, but also the way this was visually articulated through his work. Not surprisingly, the end of World War II became a reference point in history and art textbooks alike, sharply defining the pre- and postwar periods. To summarize the thoughts of many scholars, this date marks a defining moment in art. In his book, The Anxious Object: Art Today and Its Audience, art historian Harold Rosenberg reminds us that W. H. Auden once called the period after World War II "the age of anxiety," while art became "the anxious object."² Consistent with these observations were the sculptural works of Alberto Giacometti after his move to Paris. In his works, Giacometti reduced the use of materials and formal language providing his figures with the highest level of expression. He transformed the idealized human figure into a semi-abstract human form to commemorate lives lost to war and to serve as a symbol of recovery from the fear and anxiety felt by a post war society. 

                             Image: Three Men Walking, II 1949, Bronze

                                                  Bibliography

1. Alexander, Jeffrey C. “Iconic Experience in Art and Life, Surface/Depth Beginning with Giacometti    Standing Woman,” Theory, Culture and Society 25, no.5 (2008) pg. 2 http://tcs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/25/5/1

2. Auden,Wystan Hugh. The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue (United Kingdom, 1947), quoted in Harold Rosenberg, The Anxious Object: Art Today and Its Audience (New American Library, 1969)

Feeling Meh about the Met

Who goes to the Met and feels uninspired? Who goes to the Met on a class assignment to choose one piece to talk about, and comes out empty-handed? Who returns to the Met for a second look, for the same assignment, in a desperate attempt to find something, anything, to discuss in front of her class, and still feels the void?

The place only has some 14,000 objects spanning some 5,000 years. How is it possible for anybody but a lame-brain to fail to find one measly thing to muddle through?

During both visits, I couldn't stop thinking about Jerry Saltz's observation on the country's most comprehensive and highly respected museum, which I am going to paraphrase here: The Met gets 5,000 years of art right. It had better stop sucking at the last 70.

Isn't that the truth?

The special exhibitions are what typically draw me to the Met. Ken Price, Impressionism and Fashion, Matisse -- all examples of sublime, world-class excellence within the past year. Right now, though, the special exhibitions are blah blah blah. Balthus? A pedophile with totally uninteresting fantasies. The textile trade, medieval treasures, baseball cards -- these are not for me. Of course, William Kentridge is the bomb. But he is Emily's. Rightfully.

I'm not going to bore you with all the machinations to justify myriad artworks, from Philip Guston to Claude Monet to the Temple of Dendur (no joke I was desperate enough to contemplate a tongue-in-cheek speech on cultural piracy and the Jewish slaves who built ancient Egyptian monuments, which resulted in Passover, the worst holiday ever, and -- and, oh wait, I promised no taking-the-reader-through-my-process filler -- cut).

So who swooped in and saved me? Monsieur Cézanne, bien sûr. As everybody in this class knows, I cannot paint and who is a better painter than Cézanne? Nobody. Maybe I was too stuck seeking out a contemporary, or a mentor, for my own narrative-driven art-making. But maybe it's enough for us to look together at something that simply makes me swoon. Maybe it's enough that my favorite art-history class at Michigan culminated in a comprehensive study of Cézanne. Maybe it's enough that a small Cézanne exhibition at the Palais du Luxembourg inspired my return to school.

And now, here I am.

Merci à vous, M Cézanne.

Gallery 825.

Uppers and Downers

Could anything be nerdier than procrastinating (my Met entry) by posting about something that was never assigned? Or maybe it's just a case of inspiration (what I am about to post) versus flatlining (the Met). Whatever the case, I need to tell you guys about my totally awesome art encounter. And then a little bit of a letdown.

Good stuff first.

On Saturday, I got to join a small tour of the unfinished portion of the Highline, between 30th and 34th Streets, where Carol Bove has installed five or six surprisingly smallish sculptures (all are new except one, which appeared in Documenta). Madame Bo-vay was present, and she is so cool, so smart, so articulate -- she blew me away. Besides the fact of the sculptures, which work with the same vocabulary as the MoMA installation we saw together last class, I dig how she takes her work seriously but not so much herself. She can laugh at the randomness of decision-making in art-making ("We put this piece here because it was the only place we could crane it up hahaha") while employing, without pause or irony, serious art words ("I wanted to work in this particular syntax"). I have never heard "syntax" used in this context but I am going to take CB's word for it, despite the Merriam-Webster sitting next to me. (Nor have I ever heard "crane" used as a verb but again, I am feeling lots of love and trust for CB's brains at the moment.)

I was also surprised to learn that an artist of CB's stature doesn't necessarily always get what she wants in terms of her art. To back up, CB's sculptures will remain on the Highline for the next 12 months, and then they will be returned to her. She really wants to see them all installed afterward in a white cube, just to see. "But it's just not gonna happen. I wish but probably not."

Why?

Shoulder shrug. Smile.

Lacking the chutzpah to brownnose by telling her how much I loooooved her MoMA installation, I instead got in her face with a million pictures. Here are a few.

After all that awesomeness, I got ready for more. I rode my bike up the Hudson to Columbia for an event with Eleanor Antin, the artist I chose as my contemporary. While I don't regret aligning myself with her, I was bummed about the afternoon. I imagined a panel discussion but when I arrived, there was a screening of one of her long, live-action movies that don't speak to me. Reader, I dozed. Not surprisingly, I overheard the curator, Emily Liebert, admitting that she had never seen this particular film. No wonder. The good stuff is up at the Wallach.

When Antin got up to speak, I was saddened by her appearance. Ghoulish. The questions sucked, I wished EL had taken the lead. The PBS show on EA was so much better. Wah wah wah.

But hooray -- Carol Bove is sustaining me.

And I get to further delay my Met entry because it is time for French class woo woo woo.

There's nothing to see, so you look (out to sea)

"There's nothing to see, so you look"

There is nothing to see. Nothing to understand. So you look. 

The horizon is something that is almost impossible to wrap our minds around. The concept that we can see so far that the sky and the earth meet at one straight horizontal line is a humbling reminder of human scale.

The horizon is the visual equivalent of infinity. 

When we look out to the horizon, there is nothing to see. There is no action, no content, no narrative, just the sky and the sun and the sea. The natural elements. Life at its most elemental. 

Such seemingly basic foundations withholding such complex systems of life. 

Perhaps this is the key to the human fascination with the horizon. This attempt to comprehend the incomprehensible, this vast blue space. The reality of it. People pay incredible amounts of money for ocean views- for nothing? 

This infinite nothingness has a calming effect, and is recognized as a sign of bliss. At least is did and was for me, until I examined it in this post.

The classic looking, gazing, searching stare out to sea is not a passive recognition, but an active search for understanding, an acknowledgement of the void. Such infinite emptiness, yet filled with so many elements of life, reduced to hues of blue meeting in a horizontal line.  

Psychic Atlas

What is my work?


What is my work though?

A moment? A moment. Not a controversial statement. Not a demonstration. Not a criticism.


A moment. Captured before it wisps away. A moment of beauty. Youth. Sentiment. Would have inevitably faded as memories do.

A constant struggle. Time. Trying to claw back what was.
Mortality.


"That was then and this is now" How about that was then and this is then?
The Impossible Preservation.

Prompt #7: My Physics Atlas

I make work from my personal experiences. Experiences that have shaped me as who I am now. For one of my works, I worked from my recollection/ memory of fireworks I went to see in 2011 winter. The way the fireworks scattered away at the end of the splendid show strongly moved my heart; it was the moment when everything ended and disappeared like the wind.

In order to capture this moment as faithfully as possible, I put great deal of effort in painting the sky; the hue of the sky was deep and mysterious at the same time! I put various (I used all color in the palette) colors to make the sky profound. Then, I tried to remember the marvelous, fantastic way in which the firework particles scattered away, and put endless marks of these on canvas. The process is shown below.

The final product of the work: 

As I intended, I was able to vividly capture the sparkling, splendid particles of the fireworks all scattering away in the deep, fantastic blue sky. This was the one of the most significant moments in my life that moved my heart. *

Prompt 7

What do I want to make? Who am I? What am I interested in?

I have no idea.  I just want to make cool work.  Work that moves people.  Work that makes me happy. Work that I feel good about.  Work that's balanced, thoughtful, thoughtless.  I don't wish to reduce the network of thoughts, emotions, concerns, the network of my mind, the atlas of my psyche to a graph or a simple description.  I'd rather leave it a mystery to myself and others.  It's more fun that way.  I really just hope to explore my mind and let my "work" change and evolve as I do.  I think that whatever I make is a psychic atlas of sorts.  Expression, exploration, and impacting those who come into contact with my "work" are key motivators for me.


I suppose the sculpture above reveals a little bit about my thought process and my way of thinking symbolically.  Recently, with the past two assignments for my sculpture one class, I seem to have developed some sort of interest in the differences and similarities, the contrasts and relationships between childhood and childish things--puzzle pieces, building blocks, etc.-- and more adult and heavy subjects/themes such as death, memory, mystery, uncertainty, hardship, etc.  The above sculpture is an example.

For another sculpture one assignment we were required to use styrofoam packaging materials like the ones that might be used to package and hold in place a television or computer in its box. We had to use these stryofoam pieces as plaster molds, pouring plaster into them to create interesting shapes.  The assignment was to use these methods to create a purely formal sculpture without any intentional symbolic meaning or narrative.

This is what I made--Please disregard the debris in the background as it is not part of the sculpture.  The main two slabs are not necessarily intended to resemble lego bricks, however the resemblance to legos is clear.  This resemblance was not totally intentional on my part.  But I find it interesting that this pattern of interest in puzzle pieces, in the way things fit together, in child's play, in aging, in death, has emerged in my "work", that these conflicting and yet connected concerns have become obvious--I think-- in my "work." Sometimes I find myself humming or singing a song.  Once I catch myself singing that song I often realize that the lyrics and or melody represent exactly how I feel at that moment.  Somehow my feelings and thoughts break through and surface from my subconscious mind; I become aware of them.  I am starting to think that the same phenomenon applies to my work.



I really think that my first and second in-class presentations are the clearest psychic atlases I could make at this point in my life.  But the above sculptures demonstrate to some extent the way my subconscious preoccupations, my feelings, general interests, personality, etc., surface and manifest themselves in my "work."  If you take the time to read into these sculptures and the work below a bit, you might find that they probably reveal quite a lot about me.  So, in a way, these sculptures are mini psychic atlases. I think that the same motivations and concerns that are behind work above and below, or at the very least the same process of my own subconscious motivations and concerns emerging and becoming apparent to me through my work, will be a part of anything that I make in the future.  

I made the above painting in an oil painting class I took at SVA a while ago.  We were learning to mix colors.  I was having a hard time with that and got frustrated.  I wasn't too happy with how my painting was coming along, so I kind of just let loose and went nuts.  It is my favorite painting that I made in that class.

I made this a couple of years ago when I was super baked.  I took a loose piece of board from my bed at home and started drawing.  It's very improvised, so I think it's a good mini psychic atlas.

The One Minute Psychic Atlas

The One Minute Psychic Atlas (on November 5, 8:00 pm - 8:01 pm) 

disconnect, excess, moderation, seeking the reckless, tension, self-deprecation, lightness, drowsy, terrified, feeling and not feeling, overheated, scrunched, tight, overheated, dizzy, overdone, spent, lightness, stillness, overheated, unkept, undone, but there's the lightness 

Can You See the Freak on the Screen?

Every week when one of these prompts comes along, I freak.

“What am I going to do with this?”

Then I think of an idea. And then I freak about how to pull off my cockamamie idea. Usually I feel so pressed by the Tuesday, 6pm, deadline, that procrastination never feels like a viable option. Have I mentioned that I love deadlines?

This time, even though the format leapt to my mind tout-de-suite, I was invoking every avoidance technique in order to evade execution. Cleaning, health-insurance forms, shopbop, you name it.

What would I say that wouldn’t sound stupid? Trite, silly, boring, old, mid-life-crisisey?

Or, what if I have nothing to say at all? I just learned the French phrase for writer’s block, and it’s as terrifying a phrase as ours but, as one would expect from the French, with a perfectly conjured visual component:

“L’angoisse de la page blanche.”

The anxiety of the white page.

Equally applicable to computers and paper. This time, I was using paper. So refreshing.

When I read Kerstin Bratsch’s list of an artist’s statement, I knew that mine needed to follow the format of Mark Lombardi’s wonderfully subversive “Narrative Structures” pencil diagrams, mapping out the personal and business connections of individuals involved in highly public political and financial scandals like Iran-Contra.

Although I found Lombardi’s work as exciting as everybody else did when his career took off in the late ‘90s, in his late 40s, I don’t recall having seen his work anytime since. (Lombardi hanged himself soon after attaining prominence.) The one reason that comes to mind is that it is the rare example of word art that I connected to immediately and viscerally, and because of Bratsch’s list format and energy, this feels like a text-art assignment to me. Not surprisingly, Lombardi's work is heavy on narrative, my constant drumbeat.

My between-me-and-me visual differs in a million ways from Lombardi’s but there are two especially that stand out. First, his are meticulously plotted and laid out with perfect symmetry. They convey serious thought that results in stunning visual pleasure. Second, Lombardi tells true stories, ripped from the headlines. My between-me-and-me is neither of these things.

When I finally made myself go for it, it was Sunday, midnight, with a looming French exam pushing me to have it out. On my kitchen windowsill, I keep an Ikea roll of paper, about a foot-and-a-half wide and just right for this project. I am attracted to the Jack Kerouac-ness of the scroll and yet, I was relieved to find a page ripped off already for a different project, by another person, about Israel, the Jews and the bible. (Surely you have similar projects strewn about your home, no?)

Oh well, this sheet was perfect for me. The less deliberation, the better. I had no idea what was going to come out of me, out of the friendly friction of my yellow lead-pencil, my preferred writing implement.

Well, you can see where this is going. It flew out of me in minutes. One of those creation moments that I have read about that has never happened to me, at least not that I remember. I don’t struggle, typically, but nothing flies out and feels complete so quickly, so effortlessly. Then again, 22 hours later, I can’t look at it closely either. It feels too embarrassing, too revelatory. But that’s what we’re here for, right? Creating isn’t about others. It’s all me me me me me.

Admittedly, my between-me-and-me isn’t screen-worthy. I can’t bring myself to make it so, nor do I want to, likely because it isn’t meant to be. The screen is too perfect, too exacting, not just for this particular – work? that feels way too formal, too big a credit; so I am declaring it a – thought process; but also for me and the way I operate.

This past summer, I spent a couple weeks in Jerusalem on a fellowship. On the penultimate day of the program, we each wrote a letter to ourselves that would be mailed to our homes in three months time. Mine arrived a couple weeks ago, and I still haven’t the guts to open it. I remember making lots of promises to do lots of things, like ambulance work with the Magen David, the Jewish and Israeli (and uncorrupt) version of the Red Cross (Magen David means “Star of David”). When I got home, I discovered I am too old for the Magen David. Defeat.

What else was in there? One day I will find out.

Meanwhile, my between-me-and-me is about my life now. No grandiose promises but lots of hopes about what I want my work to be, which basically means what I want my life to be.

So here goes, a big-picture picture that is totally illegible, and a few choice close-ups.

Mary: I can show you the original in person.

Not pretty but lots of heart.

Here are more:

At the bottom, I quote Rav Yaacov Palanik: "Don't be so open-minded that your brains fall out." I exhort myself, "Open! More! More! Bigger! Bigger! More. I am shaking out my brains." This is about having an open mind about myself, my work.

At the center of my diagram is "Eye & Idea."See the heart? Beating at the center? Ha.

A little Hebrew, a little French, in the upper right. A shout-out to my classmate, Chad B, bottom center.

More ...

Nu ... ?

Why

Control/Lack of Control

I am obsessive, anxious, systematic, efficient, and logical. My work is the same. I make art so the ideas in my head, my obsessions, my neuroses, don't consume me. I like repetition, patterning, pointless tasks because they allow me not to think. I can become almost robotic, which for me is a form of meditation, an escape. I like subjects that worry me in someway. Language has been my most recent fascination. Dictionaries and thesauruses. They are simple and rigid in their construction but language itself has a fluidity a whimsy which I want to achieve. I want to be whimsy and funny. I think my work is funny. It really is meant to be but no one ever sees it that way. So I guess I'm not funny. (Womp)

I am too calculated probably to be funny. Too focused on putting things into grids, patterns, systems. Making the random not random. Even if it appears random my work is not random. Not at all. Everything has a numerical value. I like numbers. Algorithms are fascinating to me. Coding is such a weird concept to me. How numbers and random letters can become a way to create something completely different. I don't know but it makes sense and doesn't. I guess it's a language with a functional definition. Guess we're back at languages, see I am pretty damn predictable. Everything in a system even my thoughts loop back.
I hate writing. I really have no sense of how to pick words. The right words, despite my obsession with them. Maybe it's because I don't see them as words. Words are shapes with a pattern in their form. I don't sound them out, I just look and process. I read fast, too fast for my own good perhaps. Maybe that's why my mind can race I save so much time reading through images because to me that's what words are. That's why I like art with text so much because to me it makes so much sense. It is just another form. In that context I like using it as a form. Making people see words the way I do. Not as a sound but as an image. I don't like sounds. I'm tone deaf. I love jazz. Jazz is a pattern too. A whimsical rhythm with a structure that seems structureless. The balance between is what makes it so amazing to listen to. You get lost in it. Even if I can't really hear the difference between the notes I get the timing.
I'm just rambling now.
To sum this up. In short as stated at the beginning I make art to find a balance between control and a lack of control. It applies not just for my work but also in my life. I want to find a place where I can still have unpredictability but in a way that I can at least narrow the possibilities into a field I want. A controlled chance. That's what I am striving for. Who knows if I will achieve that. Seems mildly impossible. But hey it's something to search for and I have a whole life ahead of me to try to find it.
Remember that piece from a long time ago...head on head...now thats a whole book.