College Night at LACMA

Complete with a mashed potato bar and everything, College Night at LACMA was an experience like no other! I had never seen so many students my age so excited about a trip to the museum. Our night revolved around the exhibit titled 'In Wonderland: The Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and the United States.' Not only did I get to see works by one of my favorite artists, Frida Kahlo, but I also found a new favorite. As I walked through the exhibit, there were some similarities in certain paintings and I found myself drawn to a certain style. When I took the time to read who the artists of my favorite pieces were, the name Rosa Rolanda came across many times. My most favorite painting of the night was Autorretrato (Self-portrait) by Rosa Rolanda. She painted it in 1952 and used oil paint on canvas. I was intrigued by the various examples of symbolism in the painting. Rolanda finds herself in turmoil, like in real life after the end of her marriage to the artist Miguel Covarrubias. In the background there are images of skeletons, dancers, and body parts spewing out of a volcano. Many images represent the Mexico City dance company that Covarrubias directed where he met his second wife. This piece is meant to portray a feeling of chaos but Rolanda also does a great job of showing her allegiance to Mexico through the use of vibrant reds and greens in the foreground. Overall, College Night was an eye-opening experience as I got to see less well-known women artists' work, which proved comparable to famous artists' work like Kahlo's.

Design Museum, London

I also had the great privilege of checking out the Design Museum during my stay in London. This was by far the best museum I got to visit because of its simplicity and effectiveness.

First was the Terence Conran exhibition.

Terence Conran was a designer, engineer, restauranteer, entrepreneur, you name it. He had works in a variety of industries. There were items of crafted handiwork, magazines, and furniture.

This quote is dedicated to the business majors out there:

Design and business are completely interlinked -- one cannot succeed without the other. I've always thought design was 98% common sense and 2% aesthetics.

Reading some of these quotes and articles by Conran was very inspirational and thoughtful. Here was a figure who wasn't purely an artist or designer, but also a businessman. He also had his own design consulting firm, which is a testament to his success and influence.

Below are pictures from the MUJI exhibition. MUJI is a Japanese company that is very intentional in its product design. It dedicated a whole exhibition on how MUJI is trying to be more resourceful in the world with its design. Influenced by the loss the resources after the Japan tsunami, MUJI definitely sends a message on how wasteful the world can be. 

This was a very obvious statement of being more resourceful. This is "Cotton bud fitness 80," and it basically says:

Cotton buds don't have to be that long. Think about when you use cotton buds, do they really need to be as long as they are? MUJI asks questions about even the most trivial matters.

 These questions were asked of other items like clothing, toilet paper, and even houses and buildings.

The "Designs of the Year" museum was the best, most inspirational exhibition I've ever visited. It basically gathered all the nominated designs from various categories (press, fashion, automobile, etc) before the official winners in each category and overall was decided on. The winner was announced in April and it turned out to be the London 2012 Olympic Torch from the "Product Design" category.  

You can see some pictures here: 

http://designmuseum.org/exhibitions/current-exhibitions

Some notes I took throughout my stay include the following:

• Start with black and white to fundamentally communicate form and function
• Europe seems to be constantly innovating and redesigning products that are used the most, not ones that just seem "cool" and "artsy" (ie. ambulance)

Tate Modern, London

I had the privilege of visiting the Tate Modern Museum in London during my Spring Break trip to London, England. It was a very fun museum with interesting exhibits. The four exhibitions that were open were: Photography: New documentary forms, Poetry and Dream, Energy and Process, and States of Flux.

On each level of the museum, and even along the walls, there was a timeline of historical artists, styles, and eras.

The art piece below embodies what the "States of Flux" exhibit looked like. It was very interesting how the exhibit was set up to show the varied ways different "energies" are shown through art.

This section was a historical piece on how females are not represented in art. Although it was a political and statement piece, it was also slightly humorous. 

It thought this display was really cool because what you saw in the needles changed based on your angled and visual position and perspective.

The piece below is a fabric interpretation of an already famous art piece.

Below is an installation for the "Energy and Process" exhibit. It uses the conflicting nature of gravity to create empty energy in the room.

The piece below by Robert Morris was really interesting. The description said the following:

Morris wanted to question the fixed geometric shapes of Minimalist sculpture and the way Minimalism imposed order on materials. As he wrote in his essay ‘Anti-Form’, the alternative was to let materials determine their own shape. This meant relinquishing control of the final appearance: each time this work is displayed, its precise arrangement will change.

This, along with the other pieces in the room, really made you think about how matter and physical options took up "space," and really made you question what "space" even means. 

The piece below strives to hit a kind of sexual innuendo by having the chairs stacked on top of each other and two black balls hanging down. I included the description below to add a little more context.

I love museum bookstores, and of course Tate Modern's bookstore would have reinterpreted covers for classic books.

College Night at LACMA

California Design, 1930-1965: "Living in a Modern Way"

It was really interesting to understand what inspired this onset of artistic design in the "Shaping California Modern" exhibit. A huge part of it comes from the population growth. Something that definitely shaped my perspective when touring the exhibit was the following description of the influences during the times: 

"The general qualities associated with the state (optimism and democracy, fearless experimentation, and a love of new technology) and those specific to design (an affinity for light and brilliant color, an openness to Asian and Latin influences, and an advocacy of fluid spaces and cross-disciplinary approaches) made California's best products distinctive."

My favorite kind of design is design for identity and branding, especially classic and historic identity design. That said, I was really excited to see the letterheads and posters for "The Man with the Golden Arm" by Saul Bass.

I didn't know pictures weren't allowed so I got a chance to grabbed a few pictures of the housing display. There were definite Asian and Latin influences. I really liked the all-wood wall and the material of a lot of furniture. It definitely had a classic California classy surfer sophisticated feel. The exhibit's diversity definitely made me expand the idea of design.

In Wonderland: The Surrealists Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and the United States

Just looking back on my photos, I can tell I had a visual preference in the kind of art I liked best. I thought it was interesting that a lot of the art was inspired by traveling with, visiting, or spending time with other men. For example, Jeanne Reynal is classically trained as a mosaicist but also created other kinds of art while traveling through Nevada with Andre Breton. 

Chris Burden: Metropolis II

I've been to this exhibit before so a lot of was a repeat. Some of the aspects I still found mesmerizing was the racetrack piece and the projected video of the hand motion with dialogue.

I thought maybe the significance of the mini racetrack exhibit could be that at the surface, things that seem busy and complicated when they are actually very simple and not that interesting when truly investigated. The racetrack is very visually appealing and alluring because of the business, the noise, and the vastness of the structure. However, when you look at the actual path and direction that each car takes, the appeal from the intricacy is lost. The actual path of each car is very short and simple - it is simply the combination of multiple cars, multiple tracks, and the resulting noise that makes the whole structure seem very busy, complicated, and intricate. 

Student Exhibit at the Fisher Museum

Yesterday, I was able to stop by the Fisher Museum and Gallery to check out their feature exhibit at the moment: The One and the Many, a showcase of student work. First off, let me say that many of my peers are insanely talented. The works were varied but each was powerful in its own way.

A few pieces stood out as particularly memorable.

Devin Law's series of photographs felt intimately real. They depicted people at occupational centers - people learning or teaching, but stopping for a moment to show their emotions for the camera. It's rather a stark series. There's nothing particularly glorious about the environment, but the success depicted is subtle. That's what makes photographs, I think, so powerful: they need not use dramatic colors or brush strokes to make their points heard.

Speaking of subdued and somewhat faded photographs, vintage-looking scenes with a touch of cross-processing predominated. They are pleasing and a bit nostalgic. I was really struck by the series with concrete and flowers (perhaps there was a deeper theme, but I was pleased with what was on show).

I was lucky to know at least one of the artists on show, Ken Lam. I've seen a bit of his work and it's particularly masterful because of the eccentric messages it offers. You could call it surreal but it's firmly rooted in reality. Just check out the piece he had on display.

It's an intriguing one, and I encourage you to check it out for yourself.

The last piece I will talk about abandoned the canvas altogether, and to great effect. The experimental video featured the cameraperson walking along the side of walls. The setting appeared to be a Middle Eastern country, but that was hardly point. The limited perspective caused me, as a viewer, to reevaluate how I traditionally see the world. There was a steady cadence to the footsteps that kept me engaged.

All in all, I walked away with a newfound appreciation for exactly what my peers bring to the table. I found their talent, in fact, quite unmistakeable.

-Casey Penk