lacma field trip post 2

The LACMA education person replied with the wrong painting. I guess I’ll talk about the trip in general and some other stuff. I spent most of my time at In Wonderland. One thing that I think is interesting as I look back now is how pervasive the aura of feminism and sort of activism was since I entered the space. The way the show was curated to me seemed like such a big job – getting together so many pieces together, and the way everything was arranged was quite awesome too. And apart from the installations LACMA also held separate events, which I think are still going on.

I did like Dorothea Tanning’s stuff though. It felt like there was a lot of diversity within her body of work, even though I found it funny how although each piece in the exhibit was unique in its own way, surrealism felt sort of homogenous, that there was not much going on. But I did love the combination of Latin culture and feminism and surrealism. (but I still don’t like feminism)

Hmm but it seems like surrealism is the perfect way to convey messages that the artist is himself unsure of. Maybe. Or does not express. Like the painting that I saw that I liked the most, there was lots of surrealism in it, and it was not necessary that the artist herself knew what it was about, or that she gave them much conscious thought, but even without decoding the feelings into a decodable format, the message was still conveyed. Like a computer relaying messages without converting them into 0s and 1s. I could feel what the artist was feeling, even though hard information was not as easily comprehensible. Or maybe it was just me.

Another thing in particular I liked a lot was the abstract photography, like in Francesca Woodman’s Untitled, Rome, Italy photograph and Lola Alvarez Bravo’s Some Rise and Others Fall from the 1940s. These were relatively more concrete, but it was cool how the placement of elements and the use of tone and colour brought out different emotions. It showed how composition is not only to get a nice work of art but also to communicate things and properly or improperly. 

I also understood how experiential intelligence plays a role in viewing art. I think that it’s especially important in surrealism. The artist is not conveying ONE message, but simply covering up all the other ones. I mean, appealing only to those parts of the viewer’ brain that have something in common with the artist. Or maybe that works for all things.. yeah I guess it’s the same thing but im just thinking of it differently.


UPDATE: i just saw that another photograph i liked was by Woodman too. this one:

AND another one! :

 this one i liked generally.

in watching the clock, its easy to understand how a shift in an artists life would impact her art, especially if she likes surrealism a lot. here, in the art itself, you can see the vast change that has occured in the artist. the work she normally does which is i think about buildings, is now replaced with work that is confined within a box, not unlike our first assignement in class, which deliberately did not intend for us to get carried away. however, here the frames of the canvases go further to comment on her situation. the piece would have been complete without the bullet holes i guess too. or would it? hmm. but she did commit suicide later.