shit in art galleries
- Thread starter shakahislop
- Start date
Murphy
cat malogen
tremendous shelves
"load bearing"
lazily posts this here
IdleRich
IdleRich
I'm surprised to hear that about sculptures, even a representative one is a painting but more (Moore) isn't it? I think in general they can just be very powerful and impressive by simply being there in three solid dimensions.
I think I said that a few weeks back we went to Tate Modern on a borrowed membership card. We looked round the Cezanne exhibition properly and afterwards we had a small amount of time before closing which we used to all but run through the other two non-permanent exhibitions available (there were others but you had to book or queue or something). One of them was a load of sculptures by an Eastern European - Czech I think - woman whose name I couldn't pronounce at the time, nevermind remember now.
Which is a pity cos they were really good. Strange, soft looking, organic seeming, sleek and twisted deformed blobs. They cried out to be touched, something which made a lot of sense when you learned that one sequence had been created especially for blind people to feel them - I'm not quite sure to what end, but I think there had been some kind of educational or developmental reason. The photographs showing them being handled by blind people - their purpose - were a little frustrating now that everything was out of reach behind glass, but regardless of the that the objects were alluring and intriguing, almost without exception.
I think I said that a few weeks back we went to Tate Modern on a borrowed membership card. We looked round the Cezanne exhibition properly and afterwards we had a small amount of time before closing which we used to all but run through the other two non-permanent exhibitions available (there were others but you had to book or queue or something). One of them was a load of sculptures by an Eastern European - Czech I think - woman whose name I couldn't pronounce at the time, nevermind remember now.
Which is a pity cos they were really good. Strange, soft looking, organic seeming, sleek and twisted deformed blobs. They cried out to be touched, something which made a lot of sense when you learned that one sequence had been created especially for blind people to feel them - I'm not quite sure to what end, but I think there had been some kind of educational or developmental reason. The photographs showing them being handled by blind people - their purpose - were a little frustrating now that everything was out of reach behind glass, but regardless of the that the objects were alluring and intriguing, almost without exception.
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Corpsey
bandz ahoy
Walked around the V&A statue/cast courts today, the most wonderful place on earth.
This was a new discovery, crackling with electricity of agony:
This I already knew about and is one of my favourite things – bubbling, bristling with life and invention and ideas, all aysmmetrical, awkward, north European:
Had never noticed this before – Donatello doing a painting in stone (plaster replica):
And this, this is being the magic of the sculpture that looks like it's ready to spring to life:
This was a new discovery, crackling with electricity of agony:
Lamentation over the dead Christ | Pierotti, Pietro (Signor) | Mantegazza, Antonio | V&A Explore The Collections
Plaster cast, 'Lamentation over the Dead Christ' after the marble original, with gilding by Antonio Mantegazza, Milan, last quarter of the 15th century, cast by Pietro Pierotti, ca. 1866
collections.vam.ac.uk
This I already knew about and is one of my favourite things – bubbling, bristling with life and invention and ideas, all aysmmetrical, awkward, north European:
The Schreyer-Landauer Monument | Kraft, Adam | Rotermundt, Jacob | V&A Explore The Collections
Plaster cast of The Schreyer-Landauer Monument by Jacob Rotermundt about 1872, depicting an elaborate funerary memorial containing scenes from the life of Christ, made by Adam Kraft in Nuremberg, Germany, 1490–92.
collections.vam.ac.uk
Had never noticed this before – Donatello doing a painting in stone (plaster replica):
Annunciation tabernacle | Lelli, Giuseppe | Donatello | V&A Explore The Collections
Plaster cast of the Annunciation tabernacle by Donatello in the Church of S. Croce, Florence, second quarter of the 15th century, cast by Giuseppe Lelli, ca. 1895
collections.vam.ac.uk
And this, this is being the magic of the sculpture that looks like it's ready to spring to life:
Portrait of a young woman | dell'Aquila, Andrea | V&A Explore The Collections
Plaster cast, of a portrait bust of a young woman, after the limestone original in the Bode-Museum (Berlin), by Andrea dell’Aquila, Italy, 1450-1500, cast Berlin (Germany), about 1889.
collections.vam.ac.uk
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
I don't know what happened today but I felt cleverer and more receptive than usual. I was enjoying it just as much as if I'd been stoned, which is rare. What alchemy was this? I read some of a philosophy for basic bitches/children book on the way there and it forced me to start scrutinising reality, perhaps that was it? I was intoxicated. I was producing words from my mind that I'd usually be fumbling around for, getting worried about senescence.
Feeling like you're switched on is great. Maybe sobriety is the new drug?
Feeling like you're switched on is great. Maybe sobriety is the new drug?
entertainment
Well-known member
They're great when they come to you these waves of defamiliarisation. The way concepts leap out at you. The concept of a train or a balcony.
It's like a new channel between the senses and the intellect. They integrate in a way that bypasses the layer of outside voices and conventional wisdom that deaden everything.
In my experience they come when you are confident and at ease, you need to be confident in your ability to understand things on your own, independent of others or received wisdom.
shakahislop
Well-known member
went to ICP, sculpture center and PS1 today. there was a tirzah installation in some dimly lit underground bunker which probably could have been good but wasn't. i liked walking around the bunker though that was cool, it's good that there are these random free things to go and see on a monday afternoon.
saw one thing which was killer, it was a big name, james turrell, it was just a tiny tiny courtyard half the size of the smallest studio you've ever seen, with wooden benches, and they'd cut a hole out of the roof so that the roof was a square frame for the sky. and then coz the sky is framed like an art object and coz you know you're supposed to do it, it makes you look at the sky and the clouds as though they're in a gallery. that's a really beautiful installation.
saw one thing which was killer, it was a big name, james turrell, it was just a tiny tiny courtyard half the size of the smallest studio you've ever seen, with wooden benches, and they'd cut a hole out of the roof so that the roof was a square frame for the sky. and then coz the sky is framed like an art object and coz you know you're supposed to do it, it makes you look at the sky and the clouds as though they're in a gallery. that's a really beautiful installation.
Clinamenic
Binary & Tweed
Yeah great term there. Similarly I've framed such things as re-sensitization, as if you are becoming less callous to some stimuli and it is making an unusually lucid impression on you.
pattycakes_
Can turn naughty
So the best thing was something you get for free outside? Daaaammmnn. Savage burn bro 🔥🔥🔥 Take that, PS1!
shakahislop
Well-known member
it's free anyway for nyc residents, or for anyone who can pretend to be by memorising any nyc zip code. but yes you can also get the same effect by staring at the sky at any given time probably.
IdleRich
IdleRich
That rings a bell, hasn't someone framed nature before in some way to make you look at it?
When I lived in Hackney there used to be a shop which was affiliated with the art magazine Le Gun. It looked like the standard newsagent it used to be but it sold all these weird art objects - I remember this very peculiar rubber gun that was all floppy, almost like a Daliesque watch or something out of alien. I don't think they ever sold anything.
Anyhow, they had exhibitions there too from time to time and one that I really enjoyed has just come back to me; there was a cellar beneath the shop and someone had filled the space in with blocks (maybe cardboard boxes stuffed full to strengthen them), leaving some out to form a kind of tunnel that you climbed down into and then crawled through. At certain points there were windows in the sides through which you could see little vignettes or displays. I think the whole thing was called Wonderland or something, a small immersive world. I do have a soft spot for things like that and I think it was particularly impressive to create it on such a small budget in a tiny almost-gallery like that
shakahislop
Well-known member
went to dia:beacon yesterday, which is like a massive old warehouse hanger, i mean really massive, thing an hour or so drive north of new york. the best thing there was in this basement where they had a video of a woman dressed as some kind of wolf badly superimposed on close-ups of neon lights and flashing bulbs. fuck knows why that was good but it was. the mixture of all that americana times square flashing lights and this woman moving menancingly captured something innate about the former i think. the aggression of it. always a surprise to get something out of stuff like that. another one was a shaky bad quality handheld video of someone walking around a deserted construction site and again weirdly such a basic thing provoked various thoughts and feelings, despite seeming so pointless.
shakahislop
Well-known member
one thing i've noticed over the last year or whatever is how absent anti-capitalism and socialism etc etc is from the stuff that's in galleries now. i'd always seen those things as somehow allied to or at least present in this kind of art world. the politics does come through in particular in terms of black representation etc, which is absolutely everywhere, which was super engaging for me for a while, and the other identity-related stuff, which is slightly less prominent but which is pretty common.
the collection at dia had nothing political at all i think. very focused on form and aesthetics rather than meaning.
pretty good toilets, although suffering from that usual american thing of having massive gaps in the door and below the door which presumably are there because everyone wants to hear and occasionally make eye contact with everyone else shitting for some reason. in the stall next to me there was a guy having a long conversation about hotel reservations which was quite incomprehensible, why was he sat there doing that? he could have just done that in the gallery or outside. was he shitting at the same time? these are the things i pondered.
the collection at dia had nothing political at all i think. very focused on form and aesthetics rather than meaning.
pretty good toilets, although suffering from that usual american thing of having massive gaps in the door and below the door which presumably are there because everyone wants to hear and occasionally make eye contact with everyone else shitting for some reason. in the stall next to me there was a guy having a long conversation about hotel reservations which was quite incomprehensible, why was he sat there doing that? he could have just done that in the gallery or outside. was he shitting at the same time? these are the things i pondered.
shakahislop
Well-known member
i had no idea that's what PS1 used to be although its obvious now that you mention it. i thought it was a factory or some industrial thing. who the hell was living in long island city, enough people to need a school? there's hardly any old houses there, i thought it was all warehouses that were knocked down to make room for the big towers. electro-harmonix are still based there which is a legacy from that time i think. no idea on the boiler room. nothing that looked like that there anyway, that i saw.