Yesterday I spent the day in NYC visiting two renowned art
shows with a stop at the historic Chelsea Market. With a multitude of stimuli throughout the day, I marveled at the creativity of the artists but also questioned whether freedom of art gives you permission to be
politically incorrect.
This wonderful day trip was sponsored by The Aldrich
Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield and was attended by RMAC students as well
as students from Ridgefield and Danbury High Schools. The trip was offered for free thanks to a grant from The
Aldrich.
We started the morning at The Armory Show, which is a leading
international contemporary and modern art fair. Celebrating its 100th anniversary, the show takes
place in three locations:
Manhattan, Chicago, and Boston. The Armory Show can be credited for the
introduction of Van Gough, Gaugin, Cezanne, Picasso, Matisse, and Duchamp to
the USA.
In New York, the
exhibition is located on Piers 92 and 94 on the West Side. Many of the world's leading galleries are there to present their artists.
Student docents who accompanied us facilitated deeper
discussions of select pieces as we ambled through the aisles trying to see as
much as we could. We came across a
plethora of cardboard Brillo boxes, Andy Warhol style. The plaque invited us to
take a box for free. People
started taking them from the stack, only to find their awkwardness walking
around a gallery of art to be a conundrum. Before long, one by one, keys and pens were taken out as
people started flattening the boxes in order to carry them under their
arms.
An interesting thought. I did not favor the idea of bothering
with it throughout my day so I did not take one. I also had no idea what I would do with it at home and my
husband might likely mistake it as recyclable cardboard and put it at the curb
the following Thursday anyway. So
on we went.
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| Andy Warhol original |
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| Original Picasso drawing |
Another interesting piece was a sculpture on a wall, in and
of itself was nothing exceptional.
It was when you realized that the shadow created from this sculpture
reflected that of a person that you really appreciated the complexity of the
piece. I have no idea how one
would figure that out. Trial and
error? Math?
After a few hours on the two piers, the bus brought us down
to Chelsea Market for lunch. What I loved most about this old factory was the
atmosphere. The National Biscuit
Company originally purchased it in the 1890s. They baked many items, including Saltines and Oreos.
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| A National Biscuit Company painting is still on the brick wall, along with an Oreo one (below). |
Today the site is a plethora of newer
ovens offering many items for visitors. In all, there are about three dozen
eateries and specialty shops. As
you wind your way down the central hall, you pass old elevators, original signage
on brick walls, and a jumble of nooks and crannies.
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| One of many specialty eateries included this bakery. |
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| Although mostly eateries, there were a few places to do some funky shopping. |
Our last stop was the Volta Fair in SoHo, which is another
platform for emerging, mid-career, and established contemporary artists. Much smaller than the Armory Show, an
hour was enough time to see most of this exhibit. One of the sculptures that impressed me most was a
bust. I carefully examined it to
try to determine if the artist used marble. After walking around the back of it, I was shocked to see a
row of magazines. Pressed together
and carefully carved magazines resulted in a fabulous bust. That was impressive.
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| The back shows the rows of magazines pressed together, the material for the sculpture. |
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| Pipes on a floor.... |
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| ...so why not colorful hoses on a wall? |
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| I don't know what this piece was titled, but I call it Donut Head. |
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| We were careful not to step on the cat, playing on the floor. |
One artist there made me question freedom in art. He had many pieces in the show all with
the same theme. Two examples were ‘207 niggas on linen’ and ‘A bunch
of niggas in the dark', which you can see below. Is it okay to use the ‘n’ word if you call it art?
Then there were pieces that made you think about environmental awareness, like this map of the USA with all our trash, aptly titled Beautiful Disaster.
We thought this was an interactive piece, until we realized the girl was a sculpture. It was a little creepy, as was the caveman with his arms sawed on the floor.
I think the good tired feeling I had at the end of the day
was a combination of hours of walking and also the on-going stimulus on my eyes
and brain. Art is supposed to get
you thinking and it certainly did for me.
It always wakes up my artistic juices and makes me pledge to myself to
set aside more time to do the creative things I enjoy doing. The thought and question I will leave
you with is this. Should artists be politically incorrect under the guise of freedom of art? If yes, does it benefit anyone other than themselves?
Good question. I also had a bad reaction to that piece. I think though, to produce anything of value in terms of an honest representation of the artist's emotional and intellectual self, he/she must totally ignore whatever the current cultural climate is. Political correctness is a useful filter in our day to day interactions with each other but has no place in art. I think it's up to the viewing public to decide if a piece moves them or not. Of course the gallery has a say in the process based on what they think has merit whether controversial or not. I don't think the piece you pictured in the blog has much of a future and will fizzle out on it's own.
ReplyDeleteCall me old fashioned, but I prefer our ancestors' view - that art is supposed to look good.
ReplyDeleteI think some bad artist morphed the definition of art for his own egotistical purposes. He couldn't make good looking art, he didn't have the skills. So he came up with a new marketing idea to get himself invited to all the parties. He said his art had "meaning". And meaning trumps beauty. Look beyond the unskilled ugliness of his paintings and see the inner fabulousness of the meaning. Thus bad art was born.
And to put icing on that fake cake, this new art didn't actually have meaning either. (Shh, that's a secret.) Modern "artists" quickly learned to say something rude or vague or just complete gibberish, and then they hid behind the smoke screen as if it had the depth of great poetry. Bah! All silly.
I think future history will deal with these artists appropriately.
PS - I think the same is true with music. Mozart survives because it sounds good. I think Count Basie will survive. As will the Beatles. There is talent behind the notes. But rap music? Heavy metal? Do we really think 200 hundred year from now people will be going to Carnegie Hall to listen to the Mostly Metallica festival?
On second thought....
ReplyDeleteGuilty. I was was trying to be inflammatory so as to spark a debate amongst Ridgefield students and alike. I want to hear their thoughts on why art in its many forms is valuable. I wanted them to think it through and tell me why a road kill cat, when placed in a gallery, rises to the level of DEFCON 1 art.
But admittedly, I am trying to bully a response out of people - in much the same way that perhaps modern artists are trying to bully a response out of the public - by provocation.
At the end of the day, I don't mean to bash modern art. I think it is of interest, maybe not in the same way as more traditional art, but interesting none-the-less. All this is a way of saying to the blogger that I wouldn't mind if you deleted my posts if you find them to be too much, or even down-right wrong.