A friend of mine has some clear plastic chairs, which she loves. They are Phillipe Starck Louis Ghost Chairs, and I had never seen them before until I visited this friend's new unit. Then I read an article about them in my weekend paper. And now I have seen them on display in an art museum.
Even though I find modern art very challenging, and I often don't like it, I keep taking myself to modern art galleries. While in London, Lisa and I visited Tate Modern, and today I checked out the Pompidou Centre in Paris. While I connected with fewer artworks at Pompidou, I think the selection of works was better. It featured a variety of media, ranging from sculpture, to video, to homeware design (hence the Phillipe Starck stuff).
I find that I am less forgiving with modern art. It evokes very strong reactions in me, I either love something, hate it or am completely uninterested. More classical art tends to promote a more reflective viewing style for me, so I am more inclined to develop a considered opinion of the piece. But at the modern galleries I have visited I have liked:
- some Cy Twombly work, particularly the Seasons, on display at Tate
- the New York photography on display at Pompidou. I have forgotten the artists
- Mattisse
- Pollock. Not very original choice, I know!
- Paul Nash
- Kandinsky (part of the Bauhaus movement)
- Dali. Again, not very original choice. Meh.
- Phillipe Starck. His designs are SO artistic, sometimes to the point that they are completely impractical. It's cool, haute merchandise domestique!
Weirdest thing I've seen in these moder galleries: a room entirely devoted to inflatable things. Some of this was inflatable art, but some was actually just inflatable furniture, a la 1960s, or plans for it, or photos of it. C'est bizarre.
I also chose to visit a site from another historical extreme today- Notre Dame. Lisa just smiles and nods when I get excited about churches... I am a little obsessive. I seem to remember similar reactions from Jackie by the end of our New Zealand trip... and the churches in Europe are of course far more numerous and spectacular! So church visits are something for me to indulge in when Lisa and I are solo exploring. I am not at all religious, but am fascinated by expression of faith, a subject I think was awakened when I wrote my thesis. So I just love exploring churches, religious artwork and literature, etc.
Anyway, Notre Dame is gorgeous, and particularly intriguing for its literary connections, as well as the general religious beauty. In fact, it is the literature (The Hunchback of Notre Dame, by Victor Hugo) which is responsible for the restoration of the Cathedral; prior to the success of Hugo's novel, the site had fallen into disrepair. In fact, the cathedral was ransacked the very day Hunchback was released.
I decided to commit to the wait and the fee involved with visiting the towers, and was glad I did. The steps are a challenge (472, I think), but the view was fantastic; both of Paris, and of the gargoyles and other monsters, each individualised, and the flying buttresses (it's a churchy thing, common on Gothic style churches).
Apart from that, Paris has seen me attempting French, people watching and just wandering alleys. Oh, and eating as much stereotypical food as possible. Lisa brought me croissant and pan au chocolat for breakfast (I can not BELIEVE how good French croissants really are! Wow!); we had wine with dinner (Sancerre, I think. It's a white wine, hints of apple, very crisp and refreshing); crepe fromage for lunch; and tomorrow we will picnic for lunch, with plans of baguette, cheese and saucisson. Mmmmm..... :)
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Yay! Someone else who likes Phillipe Stark!
ReplyDeleteI really like the humourous nature of his designs.
Woo. Notre Dame was one of my favourites... I went up the top too, I've got the coolest photos of PAris with gargolyes looking down.
ReplyDeleteOh yeah, and I went to the Pompidou Centre, although didn't go inside, I'm pretty sure it was a crazy looking building place, and we went up in the lifts to the roof, that was all... sounds interesting, but I agree, some modern stuff you just can't take or your brain will explode.
Love you, keep enjoying that food, it's never as good at home no matter how much you try...
xo
Didn't make it up the towers at Notre Dame but did catch the better part of a service there. It's amazing how even if you don't understand the language the service is the same so you kind of do...
ReplyDeleteLove Matisse!
The thing is, I think we are more forgiving of old art just because it's old. A really pedestrian depiction of medieval life is interesting, simply because it depicts another time and way of life, even if at the time it might have been seen as naff. (Or the medieval equivalent of naff anyway. Naffe, perhaps?)
ReplyDeleteThere is one piece in the NGV that always rubs home the point to me. It's a Renaissance piece called the garden of love or similar and it is shocking, the guy can not (well could not) paint, but people love it and it hangs in this gallery because it is renaissance.
The odd thing about it is all the faces look the same - all the men, all the women, even the statue in the fountain, have the same face, which looks like it was modelled on a ruddy middle-aged man with a receding hair line. The question is was this because the guy really couldn't paint people and just used one model (perhaps himself) for everything, or is it supposed to be a psychological piece about narcisssism? Hmmm. It always amazes me how people gush over it without even noticing.
The problem with modern art collections is not that there is anything wrong modern art per se, it is that the people arranging the collections have the reverse problem and just love anything that looks "modern."
I agree that we are a lot more forgiving of old art.
ReplyDeleteI think this could be because it's easy to judge it on the artist's technical proficency alone and ignore the statement(s) the artist is trying to make.
How many times have you heard someone say that they could have made copies of a Campbells soup tin themselves? But would they have thought of doing it in the 1960's? Would they have intended it as a comment on mass production and the emerging consumerist society of the time? Would they have intended it as a comment on the role of the artist in the production of art?