Can You Tell I Fucking Loved Museum Field Trips as a Kid?
I got over my desire to be a lazy pathetic shut in yesterday and a) explored my immediate neighborhood a bit on foot (verdict: most excellent 24-hour donut shop within a couple of minutes walk made it all worth it), and b) went to LACMA for a few hours. I felt a bit sad only spending a few hours there, but oh my god, my ankles were killing me and I don't even entirely know why. Maybe it was just the sneakers I was wearing? But seriously, I have previously only had this kind of ankle/foot pain as a result of walking miles all day, not walking two miles tops and standing around for a few hours. Is this what getting old feels like?
Anyway, it wasn't planned, but I saw Edward Kienholz's Five Car Stud installation art piece on its last day, during its first American public showing since it was finished in 1972. A very powerful piece, at least for me. The sheer experience of it has lingered with me more than anything else I saw yesterday. It was in a dark, large space, with the floor covered in dirt. You could walk around and in and through the tableau of racial violence: a black man being castrated by a group of white men in grotesque masks, for the crime of being in a relationship with a white woman. The scene is framed by the headlights of four cars and a pick up truck, the only sources of light, with cutouts of bare-branched trees looming in the dark. Tinny music plays from the radio of the couple's car, as the woman watches in horror.
All of it was life-sized, and being able to walk through it made it feel like it was a freeze-framed moment that could come to gruesome, violent life at any moment. The darkness pressed in, and the scene just seemed more disturbing when I stepped outside the circle of light cast by the headlights. I didn't take any pictures, because even if my iPhone camera could get a decent shot in such lighting, photos wouldn't quite capture the piece's unsettling power. The whole point is to immerse yourself in the scene, in the horror of it.
On a much lighter note, I also saw the recently opened Metropolis II by Chris Burden. It is basically what every ambitious child wishes they could build with their toy race tracks, legos, and various other building toys. It is, unsurprisingly given the title, a "kinetic sculpture" of a city: complete with highways, trains, and hundreds of little cars hurtling about on the little city's multi-level roads. The bustling noise of it and all the little details were really impressive. All the kids at the exhibit seemed very impressed (and were likely Getting Ideas about building their own little miniature metropolises [metropolii?]).
I am feeling way too lazy to fuss about with uploading the few photos I did take, so I will maybe do that later. Other stuff of interest at the museum: the interestingly designed exhibit for the ancient Central and Latin American art, which was entirely empty when I was going through it, and thus supremely creepy omg. I didn't linger just because I found it too creepy being alone in rooms full of leering tiled skulls and animal-headed ancient gods. LACMA also has a decent little collection of surrealist and Dadaist art, including the famous "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" painting by Magritte. I skipped past the older European stuff more or less, since it all blends together to me in a blur of saints, Jesus, and overwrought pietas anyway, and the colonial America stuff because blah blah portraits and landscapes.
I need to go back to see a few exhibits and installations before they leave: the Rodarte Fra Angelico Collection, the Contested Visions special exhibit examining the significance of indigenous peoples in the art of Colonial Latin America, a more proper look at the Glen Ligon exhibit I was too tired to properly take in...I should really just get a membership.
This entry was originally posted at http://yasaman.dreamwidth.org/395869.html, with
comments there.
Anyway, it wasn't planned, but I saw Edward Kienholz's Five Car Stud installation art piece on its last day, during its first American public showing since it was finished in 1972. A very powerful piece, at least for me. The sheer experience of it has lingered with me more than anything else I saw yesterday. It was in a dark, large space, with the floor covered in dirt. You could walk around and in and through the tableau of racial violence: a black man being castrated by a group of white men in grotesque masks, for the crime of being in a relationship with a white woman. The scene is framed by the headlights of four cars and a pick up truck, the only sources of light, with cutouts of bare-branched trees looming in the dark. Tinny music plays from the radio of the couple's car, as the woman watches in horror.
All of it was life-sized, and being able to walk through it made it feel like it was a freeze-framed moment that could come to gruesome, violent life at any moment. The darkness pressed in, and the scene just seemed more disturbing when I stepped outside the circle of light cast by the headlights. I didn't take any pictures, because even if my iPhone camera could get a decent shot in such lighting, photos wouldn't quite capture the piece's unsettling power. The whole point is to immerse yourself in the scene, in the horror of it.
On a much lighter note, I also saw the recently opened Metropolis II by Chris Burden. It is basically what every ambitious child wishes they could build with their toy race tracks, legos, and various other building toys. It is, unsurprisingly given the title, a "kinetic sculpture" of a city: complete with highways, trains, and hundreds of little cars hurtling about on the little city's multi-level roads. The bustling noise of it and all the little details were really impressive. All the kids at the exhibit seemed very impressed (and were likely Getting Ideas about building their own little miniature metropolises [metropolii?]).
I am feeling way too lazy to fuss about with uploading the few photos I did take, so I will maybe do that later. Other stuff of interest at the museum: the interestingly designed exhibit for the ancient Central and Latin American art, which was entirely empty when I was going through it, and thus supremely creepy omg. I didn't linger just because I found it too creepy being alone in rooms full of leering tiled skulls and animal-headed ancient gods. LACMA also has a decent little collection of surrealist and Dadaist art, including the famous "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" painting by Magritte. I skipped past the older European stuff more or less, since it all blends together to me in a blur of saints, Jesus, and overwrought pietas anyway, and the colonial America stuff because blah blah portraits and landscapes.
I need to go back to see a few exhibits and installations before they leave: the Rodarte Fra Angelico Collection, the Contested Visions special exhibit examining the significance of indigenous peoples in the art of Colonial Latin America, a more proper look at the Glen Ligon exhibit I was too tired to properly take in...I should really just get a membership.
This entry was originally posted at http://yasaman.dreamwidth.org/395869.html, with
comments there.