|
|
|||
|
Hoo-boy. Let me start out by saying that I'm not a huge fan of contemporary art. It was Tuesday, which meant that the MCA and the Fine Arts museum were both free. Since it was free, we figured what the hey, let's just go. So Mom and I headed over there not exactly sure what to expect. We decided to go up to the fourth floor first, bypassing the two main galleries and video gallery. We walked out of the elevator and took the first left. In one corner of the dark room, a light pattern looking like it had passed through a diagonal vent cover was splashed against the wall. When we read the plate about it, it said that the various widths of the light represented the separation in classes of modern day society. This description would be the template of descriptions of most of the erm... "Art" in the museum. We walked into the near pitch-black room of the next piece. In a circular pattern, little circles with numbers in them looking for all the world like floor buttons on an elevator, went up at varying speeds. I watched one go from 87 to 99, where it reset. The plate describing this one said that it represented an equaltarian society. I thought it would represent the opposite, with the numbers being at various speeds and all. We went back to the elevator and took the other path. The first thing we ran into this time was a large circle that had a few neon words on it. "Life", "Death", "Pain", "Pleasure". The description was that the paring of opposite words showed that eventually everything will be equaled out, or something to that effect. The next piece we came upon was a scrolling marquee. You heard me, a scrolling Marquee. My screensaver is a scrolling Marquee and it isn't in a museum. It showed various words of a depressing poem flying by. Why not just read the poem on paper? The description here was the "artist's" use of green on red than red on green was an amazing show of the simple way to make something more sensual. Of course, who am I to judge, right? The next room we entered had far more pieces than the previous ones. Straight ahead of us as we entered the room was a stack of 5 green blocks stuck on the wall. Apparently, this represented the chaos of society. I took this description and decided it would be the perfect one to use in my jokes, so for the rest of the time there, everything represented the chaos of society. After that we came to a piece entitled "Mercenaries". I actually liked this one. Basically, it was a painting of three mercenaries, but the canvass was an old, ragged, tent. This was one of 3 actual paintings in the entire museum. The next piece was a picture of Lee Harvey Oswald with a bunch of holes cut out of the picture, and a flag stuck in his mouth. I don't really get that one, not that I got most of them. Next, there was a small cabinet cemented into a bigger cabinet. The description basically said that the creator did a series of pieces using household objects. I guess she was into construction work too. The next room featured a couple of little aliens made with African cloth, or so said the description. I'm not positive on this, but I'm pretty sure all the artists share a common enjoyment of smoking pot. The next two pieces are my favorites, not because of their artistic deepness, but rather their sheer ubsurdaty. The first is a cabinet with sandpapered edges. I'm betting someone just wanted some quick cash for an old cabinet that they didn't know what to do with it. (Drumroll) And the number 1 weirdest piece is!... A double sink. You heard me. A double sink that is missing it's spouts. The plate reads: "This symbolizes the function, with the dysfunction, or I might have drunken a little to much, and picked it up at the junk yard." I'm betting on the latter folks. Well, we were pretty much done with this floor, so we headed to floor number three for the video gallery. Of course, when they say gallery, they meant one. However, one video was plenty for me. It featured a guy swimming in a small pool while another guy watched him. The first guy than got out of the pool, mooned the camera, and turned around to face the camera. Need I say he was naked? No of course I don't, that would be gross. Well, it was disturbing, and weird. And he WAS naked. At that point I was done with the museum, but mom still wanted to see the two big galleries. The first gallery we went into featured a woman who took pictures of her cross-dressing lesbian friends. Didn't I see a talk show with that title? Well, most of it was weird, and some was just disgusting, like a drawing on ones back made of cuts, and another with a woman who had far too many piercings. Way way way way too many in fact. After a few more bland, pointless, lesbian couple pictures, that gallery was over and we were headed to the last one. The first paintings we game upon in this new gallery would sum up just about the rest of it. One was a yellow background with the word "Crash" painted in black. Also on display were a brown on black "Boss", a blue on black "Jet", and a red on yellow "Smash". If there had been a "Boff" somewhere we would have been in an old Batman series. There were also three paintings in this gallery of black silluettes on grey backgrounds. These were okay, but were drowned out by the pure pointlessness of their brethren. This was the last gallery, so we got back our coats and left the museum, I for one amazed at the sheer loonyness of some of the work. It turns out, the fine art museum, which we visited later, had a contemporary section also. It however had more actual art, like Pollack and the such, that although I'm not a big fan of, I actually can sort of get. There was one however, just a black canvas... But I'll get into that museum later. Copyright, 2000, All rights reserved
|