MassMoca and Why Art had a Point
And the college hits keep on coming. Last Friday, my Art History class had a field trip to Massachusetts to visit the famed MassMOCA, an art museum for the contemporary visual and performing arts. We left early in the morning and spent three or so hours chilling on a coach bus to get there. Me, I usually don't like museums. I'm in Syracuse University for the Visual Performing Arts program, but that doesn't mean I'm all gung ho for the big wide world of the arts. I like what I like and I don't think looking at the past should dictate my interests, not that I don't think its important. Whatever, I'm digressing. Either way, I very much enjoyed the trip and - Yay! - I gots pictures. And labels. Which is even more excellent because I have two visual analysis' to do based on what I saw there.
This is the exterior of the museum. It's kinda like a warehouse, but it's a very neat looking warehouse. The poles in the front with the pots up there are an exhibit too. Trees hanging upside down growing out, like how they do with tomatoes. See, check it out.
Neat, huh. Moving on.
So we go inside and more or less the first thing I see is a weirdo bicycle. I'm not positive who created it, mostly because I couldn't for the life of me find the little label card, but considering what was surounding it, I would have to assume that it was made by
It's interactive; you sit on the bike and when you peddle, the tv screen plays the film of how the bike was put together.
This piece is most definitely made by Ben-Ner. It's a patio set that wasn't put together the correct way, instead done creatively. There's a seat and an umbrella frame facing the opposite direction and a ladder that goes nowhere. And a bunch of other stuff that doesn't make sense but, dude, contemporary. When does that ever make sense.
Moving on. As I traveled along, I came to the
http://www.massmoca.org/event_details.php?id=456 exhibit, which brings together eight artists that emphasize an unease about themselves as artists and their work, which means that the pieces work to explore the self-esteem doubts that plague us. And I have discovered my most favorite contemporary artist ever: Sean Landers. He's fantastic. There were two of his pieces in the gallery and every classmate of mine who passed by stopped and stared.
Apathy. A white canvas covered with words of the pessimistic, self doubt that consumes, with one or two words of hope hidden in between. There are under layers with more words, painted over to create a fuller work. 'It is a ghostly litany of words spreading down the center of the canvas. CRASH, DESOLATE, DOUBT, MELANCHOLY, DOOMED, WRETCHED, PHOBIC, and the titular APATHY stand out from the faintly outlined and densely layered list, setting the tone for a discouraging painting. The words GLAD and APPEASED are legible at the top and bottom of the canvas, but their subtle presence does not mask the defeatist tone of the canvas.' To quote the pamphlete. I felt... well I don't know what I felt, which is probably not a good thing for a budding artist, but it was inspiring. Think that was sick? Check this
:
Le' go My Ego, also by Sean. It's more or less a visible transcript for the mess that is out heads and thought processes. We have stream-of-consciousness thoughts all day. One idea leads to a dozen others, and while maybe one or two make it to the forefront, all the others are still sifting in the back. Total love, right? When we walked by, everyone froze dead and stared. I know I and my friends did. Just, freeze frame, and stood there for twenty minutes.
To continue. After we tore ourselves from the delights of literary canvases, we travelled to the far end of the exhibit and I found this.
Broken Hand by Whitney Bedford. I have no words other then this and for other smaller canvases consisting of similar mauled and casted hands where his offering.
January 3, 2003 by Shana Lutker. Seems to be a series of diary entries that are embelished in the style of Landers. All the little lines trailing off with notes go into more detail about the particular part it is pointing to. It's rather sweet, actually. Scratch that, they are dreams. 'Lutker's Dream Books from 2003 and 2004, collected transcripts, in the style of the New York Times articles, of every dream she had during each year diagrams Lutker's personal interpretations of such dreams. Lutker's self-examination demonstrates the blurred boundaries between conscious and unconscious, real and imagined, public and private,' quoth the panphlete, nevermore.
Faith/Failure by Karl Haendel. Not quite sure what he was intending for this, but it's interesting to look at, don't you think?
Moving on! And we go upstairs to visit the "These Days: Elegies for Modern Times" exhibit. I more or less hated the whole thing (there was a sped up video of a dead rabbit and a peach decaying and being eaten by maggots. Amazingly, the peach remained while while the bunny bit it) except for Robert Taplin's Dante's Inferno series. i have no words for how epic these sculptures were. Here are my favorites.
'Robert Taplin's Everything Real Is Imagined (After Dark) consists of nine sculptures, each referencing scenes from Dante's Inferno as modern allegories of political strife. These sculptures tell a timeless story of the quest to understand life and death, heaven and hell, and human culpability. Taplin's story begins as Dante's does with the uncertain sense of reality, and becomes more complex, as the third canto brings Dante and Virgil to the River Archeron to cross into the First Circle of Hell. The text accompanying Across The Dark Waters (The River Archeron) reads, "And so they go forth over the dark waters before they arrive over there a new crowd gathers over here." (Canto 3, v. 118-120). Taplin takes this scene and turns its into a metaphor for the current refugee crisis, representing people trying to cross the waters into another terrain, unknowing, like Dante, of what awaits them.
This takes him through Limbo into the next Circles of Hell, including the riots in One Nation Rules (Fortune), again made contemporary to recall recent media imagery. The final sculpture depicts Dante mourning the fall of civilization in We Went In Without a Fight (Though The Gates of Dis), accompanied by the text, "We went in without a fight and I, who was eager to see what was within such a stronghold, as soon as we were inside, cast my eyed about and at every hand I saw a great plain full of torment and pain" (Canto 9 v. 106-111). Here Taplin's Dante stands as witness to a city destroyed, morning both life on earth and what may wait below.'
To go on, there was the fairly amusing Escape Artist (Primary Colours), 2008, by Sam Taylor-Wood. Personally, I just wanna float like that, 'cause that's just nifty.
This is the exterior of the museum. It's kinda like a warehouse, but it's a very neat looking warehouse. The poles in the front with the pots up there are an exhibit too. Trees hanging upside down growing out, like how they do with tomatoes. See, check it out.
Neat, huh. Moving on.
So we go inside and more or less the first thing I see is a weirdo bicycle. I'm not positive who created it, mostly because I couldn't for the life of me find the little label card, but considering what was surounding it, I would have to assume that it was made by
It's interactive; you sit on the bike and when you peddle, the tv screen plays the film of how the bike was put together.
This piece is most definitely made by Ben-Ner. It's a patio set that wasn't put together the correct way, instead done creatively. There's a seat and an umbrella frame facing the opposite direction and a ladder that goes nowhere. And a bunch of other stuff that doesn't make sense but, dude, contemporary. When does that ever make sense.
Moving on. As I traveled along, I came to the
http://www.massmoca.org/event_details.php?id=456 exhibit, which brings together eight artists that emphasize an unease about themselves as artists and their work, which means that the pieces work to explore the self-esteem doubts that plague us. And I have discovered my most favorite contemporary artist ever: Sean Landers. He's fantastic. There were two of his pieces in the gallery and every classmate of mine who passed by stopped and stared.
Apathy. A white canvas covered with words of the pessimistic, self doubt that consumes, with one or two words of hope hidden in between. There are under layers with more words, painted over to create a fuller work. 'It is a ghostly litany of words spreading down the center of the canvas. CRASH, DESOLATE, DOUBT, MELANCHOLY, DOOMED, WRETCHED, PHOBIC, and the titular APATHY stand out from the faintly outlined and densely layered list, setting the tone for a discouraging painting. The words GLAD and APPEASED are legible at the top and bottom of the canvas, but their subtle presence does not mask the defeatist tone of the canvas.' To quote the pamphlete. I felt... well I don't know what I felt, which is probably not a good thing for a budding artist, but it was inspiring. Think that was sick? Check this
:
Le' go My Ego, also by Sean. It's more or less a visible transcript for the mess that is out heads and thought processes. We have stream-of-consciousness thoughts all day. One idea leads to a dozen others, and while maybe one or two make it to the forefront, all the others are still sifting in the back. Total love, right? When we walked by, everyone froze dead and stared. I know I and my friends did. Just, freeze frame, and stood there for twenty minutes.
To continue. After we tore ourselves from the delights of literary canvases, we travelled to the far end of the exhibit and I found this.
Broken Hand by Whitney Bedford. I have no words other then this and for other smaller canvases consisting of similar mauled and casted hands where his offering.
January 3, 2003 by Shana Lutker. Seems to be a series of diary entries that are embelished in the style of Landers. All the little lines trailing off with notes go into more detail about the particular part it is pointing to. It's rather sweet, actually. Scratch that, they are dreams. 'Lutker's Dream Books from 2003 and 2004, collected transcripts, in the style of the New York Times articles, of every dream she had during each year diagrams Lutker's personal interpretations of such dreams. Lutker's self-examination demonstrates the blurred boundaries between conscious and unconscious, real and imagined, public and private,' quoth the panphlete, nevermore.
Faith/Failure by Karl Haendel. Not quite sure what he was intending for this, but it's interesting to look at, don't you think?
Moving on! And we go upstairs to visit the "These Days: Elegies for Modern Times" exhibit. I more or less hated the whole thing (there was a sped up video of a dead rabbit and a peach decaying and being eaten by maggots. Amazingly, the peach remained while while the bunny bit it) except for Robert Taplin's Dante's Inferno series. i have no words for how epic these sculptures were. Here are my favorites.
'Robert Taplin's Everything Real Is Imagined (After Dark) consists of nine sculptures, each referencing scenes from Dante's Inferno as modern allegories of political strife. These sculptures tell a timeless story of the quest to understand life and death, heaven and hell, and human culpability. Taplin's story begins as Dante's does with the uncertain sense of reality, and becomes more complex, as the third canto brings Dante and Virgil to the River Archeron to cross into the First Circle of Hell. The text accompanying Across The Dark Waters (The River Archeron) reads, "And so they go forth over the dark waters before they arrive over there a new crowd gathers over here." (Canto 3, v. 118-120). Taplin takes this scene and turns its into a metaphor for the current refugee crisis, representing people trying to cross the waters into another terrain, unknowing, like Dante, of what awaits them.
This takes him through Limbo into the next Circles of Hell, including the riots in One Nation Rules (Fortune), again made contemporary to recall recent media imagery. The final sculpture depicts Dante mourning the fall of civilization in We Went In Without a Fight (Though The Gates of Dis), accompanied by the text, "We went in without a fight and I, who was eager to see what was within such a stronghold, as soon as we were inside, cast my eyed about and at every hand I saw a great plain full of torment and pain" (Canto 9 v. 106-111). Here Taplin's Dante stands as witness to a city destroyed, morning both life on earth and what may wait below.'
To go on, there was the fairly amusing Escape Artist (Primary Colours), 2008, by Sam Taylor-Wood. Personally, I just wanna float like that, 'cause that's just nifty.