The Day after Thanksgiving

Are we Evil.
What is the artist saying here?
Is he asking a question or making a statement?
Does it have any historical or social context?
Is it symbolic?

My First experience.



Sales, bargains, deals, discounts; these are the adjectives of what has been an American tradition celebrating the day after Thanksgiving properly call ‘Black Friday’. I decided to forgo the long lines at retail stores and outlets in search for the great bargains as millions of other Americans have done, and instead on this windy morning stuff from the delicious eatings of yesterday made my way to one of the most important architectural landmarks in the 20th century The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City.

From its site on Fifth Avenue a few blocks down from ‘The Met’, The Guggenheim rises as a warm spiral.

This was the vision of one of the greatest American architect of all time Frank Llyod Wright.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Lloyd_Wright

Famous for his innovations in residential architecture, Mr. Wright coaxed Americans out of their boxlike houses and into wide-open living spaces that suited the American lifestyle.
His style was often referred to as ’organic architecture’ which is a philosophy of architecture that promotes harmony between human habitation and the natural world through design approaches inspired by nature, which is sustainable, healthy, and diverse. Wright set out to design a building that will be unique where everything relates to one another, reflecting the symbiotic systems of nature.

After 15 years, and 700 sketches later, in 1959 that vision was achieved.
From an urbanistic point of view The Guggenheim appearance is in sharp contract to the more typically boxy buildings found in Manhattan.

Above the museum’s entrance, a gorgeous white-on-white movie marquee of neon and fluorescent lights hanging from white, lighted chains. It blinks wildly like it was opening night. I stood standing there waiting for a message to appear, but was left with my own interpretation of why this was here when no message had scrolled across.

It suggests to the vistor that you are about to enter a palace of art, life, and entertainment.

That is exactly what I experience.

As I entered the museum, I was speechless. The interior design was remarkable. The geometric shape is laid out in one continuous upward movement that leads to spiral galleries on six floors.

In the main lobby looking up towards the ceiling you can see what appears to be stars floating above given the appearance that there is a hole in the ceiling.

The concept was the vision of artist Angela Bulloch who came up with the idea of inserted a L.E.D. powered “night sky” into the museum's oculus in order to create a perception that day is night and that your actual outside rather than inside.

Title 'Firmamental Night Sky'

Angela Bulloch team up with nine other artist to literally use the museum as an entire exhibit title ’theanyspacewhatever’. The exhibit brings together these ten artist who have chosen to each produce an individual, site-specific work for the museum that interacts with the viewers.

‘The any space what ever’ is the notion of having free floating moments that often links one scene to another but isolated makes no since. This was apparent when I walk pass Walt Disney’s beloved Pinocchio floating face down in the Guggenheim elliptical pool.

This was latest piece by artist Maurizio Cattelan who is known for imbedding sarcasm into his works. Not sure what the kids think seeing one of their beloved childhood figures drowning face down. Was it murder or was it suicide?

The interior of the museum is painted all white given the feeling of purity with bright fluorescent lights

creating a background wall of lights that gives the appears that the paintings hover weightlessly in luminous space.

One such painting was commission in 1911 by Franz Marc who was one of the principal painters and printmakers of the German Expressionist movement. Expressionism is the tendency of an artist to distort reality for an emotional effect. Marc believed that animals possessed a certain godliness that men had long since lost. He developed a theory of color symbolism where different colors evoked gender stereotypes.

This painting title ‘Yellow Cow’, with its brilliant colors and geometric contour of the scenery was a wedding gift to his wife.

The interpretation of the colors within the painting suggest that the yellow represents a gentle, cheerful, and sensual principle that symbolizes femininity. On the other hand the blue represents the spiritual and intellectual symbolizing masculinity. The painting has been interpreted by historians as a symbol of Franz Marc and his wife. The yellow cow a depiction of Marc’s wife, and in the background the blue triangular mountains an abstract self-portrait of the artist himself.

In another gallery I found a work of art commission by Vincent van Gogh title ‘Mountains at Saint-Remy’. Painted in 1889, ‘Mountain at Saint-Remy’ represents the low range mountains that surrounding the hospital that Van Gogh was staying for mental distress. Van Gogh felt that painting the outdoors would help to restore his health.

With its shades of greens and blues and heavy paint, the mountains can also be viewed as waves in an ocean, where the road leading to the institution represents the beach.

Disclaimer: (The museum does not allow photos to be taken other than from the lobby area. The two photos above were not taken by my camera but found on the internet as part of my research. They are much beautiful in person.)

The Guggenheim Museum currently designs exhibits to be viewed by walking up the curved walkway rather than walking down from the top level.

Just about everything at the Guggenheim sneaks up on you in some way which expands the

pleasure and meaning of the piece of art.

One such exhibit is the maze erect by cardboard screens which transformed one of the museum’s ramps

into an interlocking system of patterned screens and dividers.Strange little shapes, some lighted, are attach to the displays that are actually the shape of a chicken.

A must see is Catherine Opie’s complex body of photographic works. Catherine an American artist is a social documentary photographer of international renown whose primary artistic concerns are community and identity--gender, sexual, or otherwise. She is known for shedding a formerly unseen light on her subjects; whether they be lesbian couples or the architecture of America’s greatest cities.

Using the world’s largest Polaroid camera, a series of large-scale pictures dedicated to the performance work of Ron Athey was taken as part of the Estate Project for Artists with AIDS.

The Estate Project for Artist with AIDS was establish to preserve the cultural legacy of the AIDS crisis so that future generations can enjoy, study and engage artworks as aesthetic achievements and historical documents. The project provides assistance to artists with HIV/AIDS working in all disciplines or art. http://www.artistswithaids.org/

The body of work taken by Catherine was a tribute to Ron Athey and his performance work.

Ron Athey is an LA-based performance artist who is renowned for his onstage rituals, including mummification, blood-letting, and piercing.
http://www.ronathey.com/

I can say I truly enjoyed my visit to The Guggenheim. Today the paintings were unimportant. The design, the beauty, and the warmth of the museum was the work of art of the day.

My first experience became my last as I exited the museum.

“Are We Evil.”

A moral opinion.

My Last Experience.

British Art

The Yale Center for British Art houses the most comprehensive collection of British Art outside the United Kingdom. The museum concentrates on works from the Elizabethan period (1558-1603) which is often considered the golden age in English history.

Natural light through valuted skylights and shaded windows illuminates the interiorBuilt of stainless and concrete, the interior is elegantly simple. The galleries are organized on four levels design in a cube like shape. The spiral staircases have a montone exterior built of steel and concrete. Two dimensional view of a large room gallery. "The Reception" an oil painting by John Frederick Lewis (1805-1876). This piece of work was influence by the lifestyles of the people of Cairo where Lewis lived for nearly a decade.

Augustus Leopold Egg's (1816-1863) The Life and Death of Buckingham shows the Duke surronded by nobles on the one hand and alone in a more humble dwelling on the other.

There are alot of symbolisms in both images. In the party scene, you have the interior glow of the room offered by the moonlight. In the death scene you have the light is provided by the sun .

The Frame that is showcasing the painting by Samuel Scott (1702-1772) is more remarketable than the actual painting itself. The painting illustrates the engagement between the British and French fleets that took place in 1747 during the "War of the Austrian Succession".John Martin (1789-1854) was an influential English Romantic painter who paintings were inspired by contemporary panoramas. The "Deluge" is a depiction of Noah's flood

James Ward(1769-1859), was known at the height of his career as the "Mammoth of animal

painters.Commission in 1803, this work is titled "Man Struggling with Boa Constrictor, A Study for 'Liboya Serpent Seizing its Prey'".

A visit home...

Yellow cabs. Skyscrapers. Street vendors. Hot dog stands. Traffic lights. Honking horns. Tourists.

These are the sights, the sounds, the smells of the Big Apple and today the Big Apple welcomes me home.

New York City is the birth place of musical movements such as hip hop, literature movement such as the Harlem Renaissance, and the home to one of the largest museums in the world, the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art measures almost a quarter mile long. Built during the 18th century, the Met as it is commonly known is a true metropolis. It is a melting pot for every category of art in every known medium from every part of the world. The museum’s collection contains works from every part of the world, spanning the Stone Age to the twentieth century. This was the vision of a group of prominent people who wanted to open a museum to bring art appreciation, and art education to the American people.

As I took the #4 subway from the Bronx to Museum mile, where nine museums occupy a section of Manhattan which contains one of the densest displays of culture in the world.

At first sight, The ‘Met’ looks like an emperor’s palace with its tall columns and windows, and immense stairways. The facade, was designed by architect Richard Morris Hunt, one of the most influential architects of his time. Also, he was the founder of the first architectural schools in America who combined classical Greek and Roman architecture with Renaissance.

Inside, the size and diversity of the artwork on display is impressive. One collection in particular are the European Sculptures. The presentation of the French and Italian sculptures are arranged in an area of the museum with high class ceilings that allows the light of the sun , the moon, or the stars to illuminate the open space providing an airy feeling and giving you a sense of the outdoors. The north wall of the courtyard made of granite and red brick incorporates the Museum's 1888 front entrance. As I begin making my way through the museum, I find myself staring at the anguish of a father. The sculpture ’Ugolino and his Sons’, tells a story of man who was betrayed by his native city of Pisa and its Archbishop and imprisoned along with his two sons and two grandsons.

Condemned to die of starvation, Ugolino yields to the temptation to devour his children and grandchildren, who were begging him to eat their bodies for his own salvation.

Modeled in the 18th century by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (1827–1875) who was a French sculptor and painter that studied the works of Michelangelo, Donatello.

Carpeaux was painstakingly concern with anatomical realism. This is evident as Carpeaux
resemblance of the human figure is astonishing in this piece of sculpture. The artist depicts the

mental pain of the father who appears to be fighting the decision to survive or die. This pain is evident in the idiosyncrasy of the father that is written on his face and gesture of the finger

biting.

In another scene, one son is embracing his father’s legs and looking at him showing love and reassurance that their decision was the right one and that the father should not fight it.

Capreaux illustrates the grandchildren’s innocents by portraying the kids as sleeping, unobservant of the agony their grandfather is facing.

Ironically, the characteristic of metal is a contrasting element in the artwork, but the artist painstakingly transformed its cold and hard nature of granite into a warm, and sensual image of human bodies. Rendered in geometric shapes and forms, the sculptor successfully created the conflict of man versus self and love for another.

In the bible, Matthew 2:16 describes a massacre of babies on the order of King Herod after

hearing of the birth of a new king, Jesus, in his realm. This incident was known as the ‘Massacre

(or slaughter) of the Innocents‘.

In Francois Joseph Navez depiction of these events explores the personal, and emotional dimensions of the tragedy which is at the forefront.

The caregiver attends to the dying child as the mother looks away emotionless, in shock, and distraught.

The other mother not wanting to experience the same fate is constraining her child from making
any noise as she looks in astonishment of the mayhem happening outside.

The melancholy shown in the faces of these women is illustrated by the vivid colors chosen by

the artist. In contrast, the actual murders taken place is portrayed as a faded image in the
background of the portrait.

The met encourages everyone to take in a variety of unexpected treasures often less well known but equally worthy of attention. Like these 40% gold masks created during the 9th century in what it now known as the city of Peru. Pieces like this were usually buried with the royal family of that time.

Raqib Shaw special exhibit is a must see. The painting are almost jewel-like with the use of Acrylic paint, glitter and semi-precious crystals captivating the eye with its rich colors and intricate detail. Shaw’s works presents an explosive collisions of fact and fiction, nature and culture. This piece is title ‘Absence of God'.