New Museum: NYC

The New Museum is located on Bowery in New York City and is the only museum in NYC that is exclusively devoted to contemporary art. It is a strikingly interesting looking building as it looks like big white boxes stacked on top of eachother (I took the picture to the left while standing across the street from the museum but I was unable to take photos inside because photography was not allowed). The rose that is situated on the exterior of the building is a peice of artwork by German artist Isa Genzken.
Inside the museum there are six floors of which the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th are actual galleries. The elevator has a soundtrack of a man repeating a speech and certain words which reminded me of some of the videos we had seen in class where repetition was a common theme, such as Clown Torture.
The exhibits change every couple of months and at the time that I went, the exhibit on the 2nd floor was titled "Free" and the thirs anf fourth floors were an exhibit called "The Last Newspaper". This was supposed to relate to the fact that the use of newspaper in fine art is no longer a novelty. All of the exhbits on these floors had to do with the nespaper and the press, incorporating it into the art by using it or re-imaging it in one's own drawings or sculptures.

Some of the exhibits that stuck out to me were the large round, blue carpet (because I everybody was walking around it and all I wanted to do was lay down in the middle of it), the mannequin women with dresses which portrayed pictures of topics commonly brought up in the news (because, as a Sociology major, I took a sociological perspective of how we relay news to people and how it effect a society's views to favor or go against a certain issue and because they only know what is revealed through the media when there are many other things that are kept covered up - one of the dresses portrayed images to represent this idea), the typewriter that typed by itself and produced a large scroll of paper which gathered all around it on the floor (It was crowded with people around it so I wasn't able to get close enough to know what it was typing), and the projector showing images of what would be a sunset and a person holding a picture of a sunset over the original image. This last exhbit was part of "Free" and was titled "The Sun Is Always Setting Somewhere Else". I particularly enjoyed that one because I am a collector of beach images. My bedroom is a beach theme and I have alot of photography and art of beaches, sunsets, and the ocean around my room.

"Courier" at Ualbany Museum

Courier is a group exhibition featuring 11 different contemporary artists who have created works that reference the typewriter as a touchstone to history and also explore the properties of the typewriter. I specifically found the Dark Woods, Light Woods embossed print by Leona Christie interesting. When I first looked at this piece of artwork all I saw was a bunch of random typed words and phrases; reminding me of Vija Celmin’s work of randomness and lack of point of reference. When I looked further into this piece of art, I learned that the artist’s autistic brother had typed these words out on a typewriter; merging memories with typing. I found it extremely interesting that her brother could recall every specific detail from every single Detroit railway. Having worked with autistic individuals in the past, it was intriguing to be able to see her brother’s near-photogenic memory and detailed lists come to life through art.

Dave Hickey: Custodians of Culture Speech

This speech by Dave Hickey was relative to what we had seen in The Mona Lisa Curse documentary, that art is no longer what it used to be and that the ability to put a price on it has changed the entire structure of the art world. Hickey explains that the problem is that more artists care about money than they do art, when a couple of decades back, no body went into art for money. He also makes a distinction between non-commercial art and art that doesn't sell. In his comical manner, he explains art that doesnt sell is just bad art. Non-commercial art still pays the artists enough so for them to be in the business class for the rest of their lives.

I think it's sad that the love of making art has seemed to disappear for some artists who are now focused moreso on the love of making money. I also think the idea of people spending millions of dollars on pieces of art is rediculous and unecessary, especially when they are only doing so to flaunt their wealth and get themselves noticed. Unfortunately, I think that seeing art as a commodity and that auctioning it for more than it is truly worth is inevitable in a capitalist society.