Cabinets of Curiosity

Back in the sixteenth century it was common for the elite (mostly in Western Europe) to collect oddities - little pieces from nature, art objects, just curious items and keep these cabinets of curiosities for their own amusement and to show off to friends.

Some people, like the English architect John Soane, turned his whole house into a kind of cabinet of curiosities, or more literally a museum. (If you are ever in London - do make a point of going to the John Soane House - it's a fabulous little museum, with some quirky things that make it really fun.)

So, that is my preface to a report on the art I saw in New York last week. It got me to thinking about the role of museums and how they can sometimes turn into, not cabinets or places of curiosities (though there are many curious things in museums these days), but can be places of curiosity - places to increase one's scope of the world and increase the level of curiosity in just the thinking and creative process altogether.

I always seem to come away from these short bursts of art packed into a day or two with new ideas and new worlds to explore. And, while all of the art is not good, there are enough ideas there to generate new avenues of ideas for myself, that the whole experience is very worthwhile.

Martin Ramirez - American Folk Art Museum

Well, this was the surprise and the highlight of my two days in New York (after 3 days of working earlier in the week).

The story behind the artist is fascinating enough. A Mexican migrant who left Mexico at age 30, came to the US to try and find work, ended up on the streets, homeless and penniless, was put into mental institutions, where he spent the rest of his life. He began drawing while institutionalized, was discovered by an art professor doing a sociology project on art of the mentally ill, and was then intrdouced to the public.

He's still not well known, and indeed if Karen had not told me about him I would not have gone to see this exhibition. Thank goodness she did.

The art is mesmerizing, fascinating. While Ramirez used limited media and limited themes in his work (mostly due to not having access to materials and with a limited life experience), he manages to convey many universal truths and experiences just drawing on pieced paper with mostly pencils and crayons.

The work is bold and inspiring, while at the same time, you wish this man had more at his disposal so that you could get even more insight from the work. Drawing from his experiences and remembrances of life in Mexico and then from what he could see just from his hospital window, Ramirez imagines and creates whole worlds of intrigue and social commentary, while at the same time being incredibly personal.

He uses line in bold and precise ways to reinforce his themes - creating stage like vignettes that showcase the particular idea of that drawing.

If you are not familiar with Ramirez's work - look him up and check out his art. You'll be fascinated.

Spanish Painting from El Greco to Picasso - "Time, Truth and History" - Guggenheim Musuem

This interesting exhibition explored the juxtaposition of Spanish painters of different periods centered on a variety of themes rather than in linear fashion, which made the exhibit that much more interesting.

It also raised the compelling question (for me anyway), of just how we perceive history - is it even a linear progression, or are events so intertwined that we take some steps forward, some backward throughout our histories and do we draw references from different periods to comment on our current one.

This exhibit, as stated above, was focused on a number of themes inherent in Spanish tradition and culture from the 16th to the 20th century. I don't remember all of the themes, but they were things like bodegones (this was essentially still life painting, but bodegas or pantries where food was stored was more the focus); crucifixion, nudes, royalty, knights and ghosts, etc.

Is history then just a series of themes to be explored, and how do they juxtapose from age to age? It's an interesting question to consider in these times.

As for the art, well, you can't go too wrong with painters like El Greco, Velasquez, Murillo, Goya, Zurbaran, Gris, Miro, Dali and Picasso all in the same show - and there were a number of pieces I had not seen before, so to see them grouped in these interesting ways and make the connections made this a very successful show.

Terence Koh/Kiki Smith - Whitney Museum of American Art

Probably the least interesting of the art I saw on this trip, but as I said, even in less interesting shows there are ideas worth considering and things that open up new avenues of thought and interest.

The Terence Koh exhibit was essentially a one piece installation that was "brilliant" in the literal sense as it consisted of one room, painted all white with one extremely blinding light placed at the back of that room so that it was very difficult to look into the room, but when you turned your back on it, the light projected through the lobby of the museum onto the opposing wall, creating silhouettes of everyone that walked through. It made for a somewhat seductive, but inaccessible diorama of sorts that evoked the oppositions of light and dark; inside and outside; memory and loss; pain and hope. Interesting in some way, but the inaccessibility made it difficult to really draw me into the piece.

The Kiki Smith exhibit was work from 1980-2005. Smith is especially interested in and concerned with portraying the human form in various ways and with various types of media. When the piece works (and a number of them did for me), then it is engaging and you could spend a good deal of time with it. When it doesn't, well then I don't get it and don't see the point. In some ways (and this will likely sound sexist), some of the work might work best for women as it explores a certain kind of approach to the world that seems to me uniquely feminine in nature. I'm sure Smith would completely disagree with that sentiment, but that's what came up for me when viewing the work. I liked some of it, and disliked others - but again, it raised ideas and a different way of looking at things, so maybe it was worth seeing after all.

Douglas Aitken - "Sleepwalkers" - Museum of Modern Art (MOMA)

Projected onto the walls of MOMA nightly from 5 pm -10 pm, this series of five short films creates little worlds and stories that share imagery and are intertwined, yet each is unique and different.

Each film is a story of it's own and has one actor (the actors are Donald Sutherland, Tilda Swinton, Chan Marshall (Cat Power), Seu Jorge and Ryan Dowoher). You see each of them as they wake in what appears to be the very early hours of the morning, still dark out, go through the preparations for the day (of work) - showering, dressing, puttering around the house alone; then going out into the world and taking some form of transportation to a place of work. You then see some elements of their work come into play and the "stories" never really have a definitive ending, but transition into the next loop or replay of the story.

There is shared imagery in each film and you can have different experiences of watching the films - in linear fashion, one after the other on the wall above the main museum entrance; side by side, two stories at once on walls in the alley between the front and back of the museum; or all five stories at once on five different spaces viewed in the sculpture garden at the back of the museum. All are interesting ways to view the films, and all evoke different responses to what you are seeing.

Seeing it in the rain made it all that much more topical, feeling the loneliness of a sleepwalker about to enter into another realm.

So, all in all, a good two days of art. I've just given snippets here, but encourage those with curiosity (my theme for this posting) to explore further on the various museum websites and other resources.