Art Event: The Mandrake, 4/7/07

On Friday, April 7th, I attended a showing of The Mandrake. At it was written by Nicolo Machiavelli, political theorist who also wrote The Prince, one could take its message to be a political one. (It probably is.)

It was an enjoyable production, with lots of humor. Very funny. I really liked it. I liked how the introduction was set up as a band of travelling players unpacking and parading, especially the trapdoor gag where cast members take out their costumes, and then a signpost, and then the musicians.

Art event: Visit to the Walters Art Museum

Over spring break, I visited the Walters Art Museum in order to see Untamed: The Art of Antoine-Louis Barye.

Barye lived between 1796 and 1875, and is most well known for his bronze sculptures of animals. Most of the animals in his sculptures are in action in some way-- most often hunting or being hunted. There were tiger hunts, there were lion hunts, there were stag hunts, there were bear hunts. There were bears attacking stags, dogs attacking bears, tigers attacking crocodiles, and snakes attacking tigers.

They were all variations on a theme, to say the least.

He was very good at what he did: in the hunting scenes, riders often look like they're about to fall off their horses. He was excellent at capturing motion and action.

What was very interesting to me was that they also displayed a variety of his paintings, in oil and watercolors, which were, to me at least, sweeter. It was a very nice break from all the man vs. nature captured in bronze. The paintings still always involved animals, but it was more likely that it was a lion trotting along a path, or a tiger rolling around on its back. However, Barye never really left France, never really got to see these exotic animals in their natural habitats. He studied and sketched them at the Jardin des Plantes, and so often wound up painting a lion trotting along a path... in the French countryside.

In fact, I attended this exhibit with my mother, and when we saw the lion tortting along the path in the French countryside painting, she exclaimed, "Someone better call the zoo, quick! That lion's escaped!" She didn't even need to read the wall text to see that the lion was out of place.

Art Event: Colby Caldwell's "Last Lecture"

The Last Lecture Series is described as follows:

"The Last Lecture Series brings your favorite professors into the
limelight and asks them what they would want to share if they knew
that this was indeed their 'last lecture' (death, retirement..
whatever.. the last)."

Colby Caldwell's Last Lecture was entitled "From Molly Hatchet to Aphex Twin in Four haircuts (kinda)" (he'd changed a lot at the last minute, apparently.)

It was, more or less, about how the veneration of the DJ-- a person choosing already existing music and creating things with it, as opposed to a working musical artist-- and the rise of rave culture changed his views about art. He also discussed recorded sound versus live performance (in the context of music), and how he went from listening to Molly Hatchet, then Pink Floyd, then Joy Division, then The Cure, and then Aphex Twin. It somehow all fit together, I swear; the lecture was incredibly engaging (especially for me, as I relate to music in many of the same ways).

Art Event: S-E-X-Oh!, 2/17/07

I, personally, really enjoyed the show. I felt that they were funny in the right places, serious in the right places, and altogether treated their various subject matters with the attitude appropriate to it. I also feel like that they did not switch tones too suddenly, which can be a problem in shows that are not unified by a single plot. They paced it well, giving the audience time to digest some of the heavier stuff, but returning with lighter fare to conclude the show on a happier note. I left feeling good about my experiences, as if, I don’t know, as if they had been my friends and we had spent the last hour and a half commiserating instead of me watching their play. I liked all of their performances, and I could tell that real emotion was behind the performances of these experiences, which, I think, helped me get into the play more. I also liked their backdrops and machine-like profiles/introductions dispersed throughout the play; again, I thought that that they made the performances more “real” and relatable.

However, I think that there were one or two points of the play that could be improved, that I felt threw me out of the flow of watching the performances a little bit. The first one was the Spanish. I knew that all of the performers would be Latina so I figured that there would be Spanish in the play, I definitely agree with that. However, usually when there is another language in a predominantly English-language performance, there tends to be enough context surrounding the use of the second language for non-speakers of that language to understand the usage and follow along. That was mostly true in S-E-X-Oh!, but there were some times that it wasn’t and I felt left out. (There were other people in the audience laughing along, but they obviously had a better grasp of Spanish than I.)

So, in conclusion, I felt that the performers presented their material well and engagingly, resulting in an enjoyable performance.

Lecture: John Baldessari, 2/7/07

I really enjoyed the lecture on John Baldessari. I had heard the name before, and had been shown examples of his work (some of the Blasted Allegory) in another art class, as examples of forcing narrative by sequencing images and words, based on the preconstructed way that we read and how we assume that images placed next to each other are related.

I thought it was very interesting how he played with preexisting thought patterns (like the creation of narrative), and constructions like linguistics and the connecting of words with images. I also found it interesting how he played with art's "basic conditions"-- wondering if art required a viewer, like with "This image is not to be looked at"; if art needs to work on more than one level, as in "A work with only one property"; and the presence or lack thereof in the work of art versus the viewer/reader as producer of content. I also liked his concept of "right" versus "wrong" art, as displayed in some of his photographs, that the art requires the belief of the viewer that the work is art to become art.

What I liked best about his art was the irony and humor involved within it. Often art can be either Serious Business™ and therefore accepted by the art world, or it can be humorous and therefore not taken as seriously as Serious Business™ art because the humorous art is seen only as light amusement. Baldessari's art was humor and Serious Business™ at once because it was questioning the art world's conventions using humor and irony.

I'm glad that I attended this lecture, so now I can attach ideas and pictures to a name, rather than that name just ringing a vague bell.