The first museum we visited was the Whitney Museum of American Art. There we went to one of their new exhibitions of the artist Wade Guyton. Personally, I really wasn't a fan of this show. After our small class discussion after seeing it, I could totally understand why other classmates enjoyed it. But it didn't do anything for me. While walking through the exhibition, I was really trying to like Guyton's work, but found myself saying "oh, here's some more stripes on a huge canvas... oh and some more circles... ok." Although I didn't enjoy the work there, I did appreciate the thought and process behind it. The only thing that actually sparked my interest was how he managed to put this huge piece of plywood into an inkjet printer to print on it.
I thought the exhibition was laid out well. As my professor had mentioned, you look through it the same way a printer head moves. I thought that was pretty clever. Yet, there was a few things in the exhibition that caused me to as "what? why??" There was a huge pile of found wood just propped against a wall in the first room. Apparently Guyton just flipped the pile... There was another moment that really didn't fit. There was a wall with just two digital photographs of the inside of a cave. There was no description of them or really any reason for them to be there at all.
I managed to get these two pictures before getting yelled at.
The second museum we visited was my personal favorite, the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We saw a great exhibition called: Regarding Warhol: Sixty Artists, Fifty Years. I'm not a huge fan of Warhol. But this exhibition allowed me to see prints that I've never seen before. The show also consisted of contemporaries to Warhol and other artists that he influenced. There was work by Jeff Koons, Kelley Walker, Cindy Sherman, and Chuck Close to name a few. I was extremely happy to see the Chuck Close painting, "Phil" in person, I think I stood infront of it for like ten minutes, just staring at it. It was a huge, slightly over whelming show, yet it was very well put together. But I expect nothing but the best from the Met!
The exhibition was really fun to go to. There was a pile of candy for the audience to eat (there was actually a darker undertone to it - every piece of candy that was taken was representing the closer to death a person was getting), there was a room of tv screens showing clouds from Super Mario, and a room playing the velvet underground full of balloons we got to hit. The guard looked like he really enjoyed himself in the balloon room. But aside from how fun it was, it was really amazing to see how many people Warhol influenced, during his lifetime, while still making art, and after his death.
After seeing the Warhol show, I went to the European painting wing of the museum. The contrast between the work was amazing. I'm still more envious of the 16th century European painters than I am of anyone in the Warhol show.
Since I wasn't allowed any picture in the Warhol exhibition, have some 16th century European paintings.
The first part of your review brings up a point that I mentioned briefly in our class, namely, that even if you don't like an artist's work or an exhibition it's really valuable to spend a little time thinking about why you don't like it. (And like I said, you should never take any of our field trips as an endorsement.) This can help you form your own ideas about art more fully and even define the way you see yourself as an artist. I do agree with you, I didn't really need to see the cave photos or the wood pile (or the U sculptures, for that matter).
ReplyDeleteAs for the Met, it certainly was overwhelming, but maybe that kind of brought out the fact that it's really hard to overstate Warhol's influence, whatever you think of the work he himself made.
p.s. That candy piece was done by an artist named Felix Gonzalez Torres, one of my favorite artists of all time and someone who used prints in really innovative ways. I always recommend him to people; maybe it's worth a look if you're curious.