Heroes and Project Runway

Having a nice quiet morning, going to do an art walk tour later in the day. Around 2.
Should also look at book edits, but was dead tired from work this week, so taking a breather.

On the Television Front:

I think Heroes may be dead in the water. It's starting to bore me at any rate. I find myself caring less and less about these characters and their arcs appear to be rather meaningless - constantly reset by the writers to suit whatever theme or idea they want to talk about. In some ways, Heroes reminds me of some of the X-men comics I used to read, with story and plotlines that often felt at the expense of the characters. The characters mere pawns or tools for whatever crazy or inspired idea the writer came up with - as opposed to the story coming from the character's actions, it at times felt at their expense. This is unfortunately one of the flaws of the on-going serial format - the tendency to decide to bring character's who have died back from the dead, or forget a character's background or history, merely to do a specific story. It happens a lot with soap operas and comic books - but in their defense, it usually happens after the show or comic book has been around for about ten-twenty years. Heroes has only been on for three years - this is the third. They don't have any excuses. ( spoilers )

Project Runway surprised me. ( spoilers )

Art-Walk

Well, that art walking tour I did in Chelsea - turned out much better than I expected. I met new people and, was told at the end of it, by at least four people, that my presence made the walk worthwhile for them and interesting. My comments added something to it.

We toured four-five galleries and instead of just looking at the art, we discussed the art in depth, and in one gallery with the artists themselves. Haven't done that since undergrad. I know quite a bit about art - due to the fact that my brother and sister in law are professional artists, sis-in-law's parents are professional artists, and one of my best buds worked in numerous art galleries and museums and got her degree in art. And...well, I've also studied art at different points in my life. So I was able to talk about it quite a bit, and with others who equally knew things about it.

The work that stayed with me or resonated was a photography exhibit in the Bruce Silverstein Gallery. The Silverstein exhibits photography picked by top museum curators from around the world, which has not been seen in New York. The artist that blew me away was Raphael Dallaporta. Whose exhibit is here:

http://silversteinphotography.com/galleries.php?gid=358&i=37&page=next


Guess what these are pictures of:

1.

2.


( answer )

Appearances can be deceiving was the motto of the day. Each peice of art work changed after we spoke about it. What at first glance appeared to be one thing, became something completely different later. Most of the artists we visited were playing with perception. The first gallery featured hyper-realism or photo-realism. The paintings looked like three dimensional photographs - it was not until we looked closer that we noticed they were in fact paintings. Another gallery took violent acts or sports and changed them, making us see something else - also playing with photo-realism, so that the paintings appeared upon first glance to be photographs. There was a particularly arresting picture of two boxers that looked like two lovers - or a sexual interaction, the artist had blurred the image in such a way to suggest a sexual connotation to the subject matter.

One gallery - displayed a picture of four teenage Africans, standing in front of what appeared to be a landfill, holding twenty dollar bills and grinning. I passed it by a couple of times barely glancing at it, but then stopped and looked at it more closely when I noticed four people staring at it and chatting about it. It was a photograph. Not a painting. The kids were in what appeared to be Western attire, even if the location did not appear to be Western. They were dirty. There was someone working in the background. And one of the bills had blood on it. We wondered if they found the money or had been given it. By their grins, it appeared they'd found it.

This same gallery had two sculptures - one that was a scale, with a bucket of lightbulbs dressed up as women's breasts, and on the other side a stack of books, the scale was heavily weighted towards the breasts. We determined that the message was Sex was more important or heavier than knowledge. OR, as I said, the male view of women - was to appreciate her sexually or how she appeared sexually, over her intellect. Another person said it was representative of the (heterosexual) male - that he focused more attention and importance on sex over knowledge. This was reinforced by a sculpture that was more stereotypically femine - it had a laundry wheel, brushes, combs, and other household utensiles with a grinder and weighted down by a log. Women chained by their housework and maintenance of themselves. Somewhat disturbing exhibit, which resonated but was not likable.

Cecily Brown (I thought it was Addams, could have sworn it was, but it is Brown) was the third artist that stood out - her paintings were abstract expressionism. Apparently she'd made her mark in pornographic art and somewhere along the line changed to abstract expressionism. One appeared to be a humorous take on the traditional still life, which incorporated a bit of critique of Francis Bacon - which none of us really saw. As one of the guys stated - Bacon is more violent and passionate, and the painting was rather cold and calm in comparison. I'm admittedly not a fan of abstract expressionism - find it rather frustrating and bit busy. It does make the viewer work - at first glance it looks like nothing, but a bunch of pant splattered against canvas. You look deeper, you see faces, deeper still you see a form of a woman lying in the forest with trees and leaves around her. One painting looked like an Angel with wings or so we thought, until the tour guide derailed us with her rather bland description of the woman just lying relaxed on the forest floor. Go here:

http://www.studio-international.co.uk/studio-images/cecily_brown/roody_hooster_b.asp

The tour guide goes by the theory of "Artistic Intent" - in which the artist does the work with the desire to communicate a specific point of view and if you do not see it, it is not successful. My view - which I got from my brother, a conceptual artist, was that the artist is interested in interaction and realizes that you may or may not see what he or she is communicating, that to a degree we all project what we want to see on the art. And it's success is not limited to our ability to only perceive what the artist intended. I've had similar arguements regarding authorial intent online. I think once the art is out there - you no longer have much control over how others perceive it and to a degree their perceptions can enrich your work or denigrate it beyond recognition depending on how clear your message is. So yes, to a degree, how well you've communicated your original intent as an artist - does show how sucessful and good the work is, but if someone cannot interact with it, cannot find something personal to themselves that resonates for them - is your work universal or merely self-indulgent? Does it expand past yourself?

Interesting afternoon, not at all what I expected.