Posts Tagged ‘art’
0I first learned of Krzysztof Wodiczko and his work when he came to speak at the MFA. A friend and I escaped the Museum School during our lunch break to hear him talk. At the time (I think it was the middle of junior year), I was having serious doubts (again) about art’s ability to make an impact on people at all and whether I would be able to do anything meaningful or relevant to society as an artist. Seeing Wodiczko’s work helped mitigate these doubts a great deal, if not put a decisive end to them.
Polish-born artist Krzysztof Wodiczko is best known for his large-scale video projections of everyday people onto monuments and other public edifices. These projections often portray these ordinary volunteers candidly telling stories of their lives and experiences, usually centered around painful ordeal or personal suffering. His work has been installed and shown in public spaces in over a dozen countries, ranging from the town squares of authoritarian governments to right here on our National Mall in D.C. Wodiczko also designs technological devices or machines worn on the body that help construct situations in which people can share their personal stories with others.
Nearly all of Wodiczko’s work follows a socio-political theme. For instance, in his monumental projections work, he chooses to film people whose lives have intersected with war, conflict, homelessness, social inequity, gang violence. In all these works, the melding of private and public spheres is immediately obvious.
Aurélia’s Oratorio re-opens July 22 at the A.R.T. Yang and I saw it last December with our families, but in the end-of-year hustle and bustle, I forgot to write about it. So now that it’s coming back, I’ll take this opportunity to make up for the blog post that never was.
First impressions: it was a strange, strange event, like none I’d ever seen before. (Unusual even for the daring A.R.T. =)) In this show that was a mashup of vaudeville, dance, comedic skits, stage illusionry, and a smidge of Cirque de Soleil-esque acrobatics, there was a lot of velvet, a lot of lace, a lot of antique toys and furniture. The feeling conveyed is decidedly a rich, sweet, nostalgic, lost-in-time kind of Romanticism.
(There is no Part 1, unfortunately. Part 1 would have been about the ART’s production of Mamet’s Romance, but I neither liked it nor had much of a reaction to it. I know, that’s like the worst thing you can say about any work of art, but it just… didn’t touch me in any way at all.)
Part 2, on the other hand, was fantabulous! Yang and I went last Sunday to see the opening night showing of The Duck Variations and Sexual Perversity in Chicago. They were performed at the Zero Arrow Theatre (where the ART’s more “experimental” stuff is shown), which on that night was transformed, a la Symphony Hall on Pops nights, into a classy cafe/lounge setting with chairs and diminuative tables and waiters serving drinks throughout the performances.
Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton
My review
rating: 3 of 5 stars
I was very eager to read this book, as it promised an insightful glimpse into the varied echelons of the art world that you don’t directly get to see as an art student (which I was for the past 4 years). However this book fell short of my expectations in a few ways.
Though it is a wittily-written, fluidly readable, and even entertaining book, I feel that it lacked discipline. As a result, it isn’t as informative and insightful as it could have been, for such an interesting topic. The book is largely composed of a series of interviews, descriptions, and observations of colorful/notable art world players, the people they know, and the things they do. This comprises what the author calls an “ethnographic study” of the art world. However, in lieu of actual rigorous analysis based on her “field work,” the author meanders from one half-drawn conclusion to another, offering few academic insights and preferring to leave the work of drawing conclusions to the reader. While this is generally seen as good in contemporary art, we are talking about a work of non-fiction literature here. Investigative journalist or not, I expected more wisdom, not just a litany of facts and names.
Another way that I think the book kind of failed (at least for me personally) was that it promised revelatory glimpses and I don’t think I got any. Again, I think this may just be me, because I have reached an appropriate level of art-school-jadedness after 4 years, but I was hardly surprised by how the book claims that the art-world stage plays itself out. Sensationalism, million-dollar deals, the superrich wielding superpowers, academicism fighting back to retain its dignity, success depending on who you know and how strong your handshake is. None of this came as a particular shock. I think this lack of surprise came at least in part from how she narrated the book — that, essentially, it *was* narration, and not some sort of deeper analysis. The book tells plenty of *what* and *how* something occurs. However, what would have been surprising and wonderful to know is they *why* of this thing called the “art world.”
(Also… I might be missing something but… What’s with the passages about her swimming up and down the pool in Venice?)
That said, you’d think I absolutely hated this book. I don’t.. just was disappointed. On the upside, it was, as I said, entertaining, and informative in a full-of-proper-nouns kind of way. Sarah Thornton has a playful and easy way with words that is very pleasing in a dorky journalistic way. So don’t take my word for it; there are plenty of people out there who aren’t cynics with B.F.A.’s and they would probably have an entirely difference reaction than mine. Just know that if you’re looking for wisdom and rigor, for a real and really insightful ethnographic study, this isn’t quite there yet.
Young Chinese Artists: The Next Generation by Christoph Noe
rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is a survey of several up and coming young artists working today in Mainland China (this book is NOT about artists who have matured and attained international fame like Xu Bing or Cai Guo Qiang).
Going into this, I was actually caught by surprise, as I didn’t really know much about the contemporary Chinese art scene. But this book fully demonstrates that the contemporary Chinese art world is very much alive and well, despite outward appearances, and it is churning out a lot of work that is provocative, critical, daring, and full of naked people. (All the criteria of Good Art, clearly.)
