Pictures From The Museum

Courier, University Art Museum, University at Albany, State University of New York

When joining this class I was very hesitant over how much I would enjoy the class and how well I would succeed in it. I have always appreciated art, but never knew much about it. When traveling through Europe one of my favorite things to do is to go to the museums. I loved going because I felt that the art in the places I was going showed great cultural value and would let me become more worldly and educated. The four places I most enjoyed going to museums was in Paris, Vienna, Greece and New York City. I was amazed and taken aback by the beautiful art.
As class began and I started learning more about contemporary art, and art movements that took art out of a pastoral and portrait phase, I started to see that my art education was very limited. At first I was angered that someone could take a urinal and put their name on it and call it art. I asked myself, 'what talent does this show?' My view on art and my view on culture started to change as I saw that there was more to art then pretty pictures and history. Learning about different kinds of art and artists made me aware that art represents more than a pretty picture hanging on a wall, it represents culture, history, emotions.  Artists today seem to be trying to grasp the viewers emotions and shaking them upside down.
My partner Matt and I went to the Courier University Art Museum at UAlbany about half way through the semester. Looking back now I feel that it was the perfect time because if I had gone in the beginning I would not have been as educated and prepared for a different type of museum I had never encountered. Walking into the museum we were complexed and confused, we searched to find the entrance and when we walked in there was no one inside the museum. There was a woman at what seemed to be the front desk and I asked her for a pamphlet on the museum and then asked if I could take pictures. I found it very odd that we did not have to pay to enter and that the woman at the front desk didn't know whether or not I was allowed to take pictures. She went away and asked someone else and informed me that I was indeed allowed to take pictures. Matt and I started to walk around and the first thing we came to was  a video done by the artist Ann Hamilton. We were both excited to see that someone we had discussed in class was in the museum we were visiting. I took a brief look around the rest of the room and the walls seemed very bare and there seemed to be no pictures. This museum was nothing like anything else I had ever been to. As a whole the show was contemporary artists who based their work around the idea of words and typewriters. As a whole many of the works were letters repeated and put in different ways, there were actual typewriters displayed throughout time, and video displays.
We walked around the gallery looking at all the works and without needing to research the museum we instantly knew the theme based around the gallery. I had never been to a gallery before that had a theme, most of the museums that I have attended was mostly monumental pieces of work such as The Mona Lisa. One particular piece that grabbed my attention was "Zeno Writing" done by William Kentridge. This piece was a twelve minute video, I had never been to a museum where they were viewing a video so this right away grasped my attention. The video was a progression of time and modernity and was a little hard to comprehend but still held my attention. I can see why this piece was in this gallery because it represented the ideas of a book 'Confessions of Zeno' and because it depicted the revolution of machinery, such as a typewriter.

On the wall near the entrance of the museum was an introduction what we would be seeing it read " First patented in 1868, and marketed and sold by Remington Arms Company in 1873, the typewriter reached peak production in the mid 1970's. Deman began to wane in the 1980s with the advent of the word processor, followed by the personal computer. In 1995 Smith Corona, once the typewriters market leader, declared bankruptcy...... The exhibition "Courier" presents eleven artists who created works that are rooted in the physical, communicative, or iconic properties of the typewriter." It was great to see history of the typewriter by contemporary artists such as Leona Christie/Gavin Christie, Daniela Comani, Lee Etheredge IV, Ann Hamilton, William Kentridge, Matt Liddle, Elena del Rivero, Allyson Sttrafella, Ignacio Uriarte, and XU Bing.

All in all I was glad I went to the museum, it was an experience that I had never had before and it definitely broadened my horizon of art education and art appreciation. If I were to chose however between going to another museum like that or going back to The Louvre, I would have to pick The Louvre. It was a great experience and I learned a lot and especially enjoyed that Ann Hamilton was shown there because it connected greatly with what we had been learning in class.

Research and Art

While learning about Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla in class I found that their collaborative art was most interesting due to the fact that they incorporated research into their art. They said that research is important to them because it lets them learn something about the world. They are interested in looking at different backgrounds of people and cultures in places around the world and how they work. I find this artistic process riveting because of the fact that they really learn about culture through the research that they do. Loving history and being a history major Allor and Calzadillas process of art lures me in because they are looking at some places culture learning about the history and the current events and then translating that into their work. To me it shows educational value and a form of art that will last throughout time because it represents an alternate way of looking at someone's culture that you may not know too much about.

Museum Visit

I recently had the unique opportunity to visit the University Art Museum located on the campus of the State University at Albany. Upon arriving to the museum I was anxious to experience what my visit had in store because in my life time this would be the second museum I ever went to. We entered the museum on the main floor and were immediately surrounded by works that varied from computer animations to works that contained letters in different kinds of patterns. At the time, the University Art Museum was featuring an exhibit, ‘Courier.’ ‘Courier’ consisted of a group of eleven artists who all brought different forms of art which were related to the process, sound, and printing mechanisms of the typewriter. The exhibit was slated to open October 5 and run all the way through until December 4, 2010. The artists featured included Leona Christie/Gavin Christie, Daniela Comani, Lee Etheredge IV, Ann Hamilton, William Kentridge, Matt Liddle, Elena del Rivero, Allyson Strafella, Ignacio Uriarte, and Xu Bing.
The Museum was interesting to visit because the works allowed me to think creatively how they were presented and what they were trying to explain to the viewer. As we walked in on the lower level the work we viewed first was “abc” by Ann Hamilton. I was surprised to see this piece in the University Art Museum and remembered discussing it in class. In class I felt that this piece was very interesting because normally we are used to seeing letters come out and not be erased one by one. Viewing this piece in real life was a much different experience. The video screen was very small and it was mounted inside of a much larger white wall. Looking at the piece from a distance made it seem even smaller as the white wall overpowered the small video screen. When looking up close you can make out the finger print smearing the ink and erasing away the letters right before your eyes. Ann Hamilton’s work is interesting for the creativity she used in her piece. Seeing it in real life gives the viewer a different feel of the art she produced.

A large majority of the works that were shown in the museum consisted of a lot of skillful typewriting patterns. One particular artist that I noticed was Lee Etheredge IV, who was a very skilled typewriter who created art by making patterns of certain letters. At first when looking at the work it seemed almost not impressive with the technology that is available today. Then I thought about creating this work with a typewriter and I gained a lot of respect thinking this way. His work consisted of multiple circles, some overlapping each other and some by themselves. Looking at this piece from a distance the work looked like regular old circles that are drawn on a paper. I then took a closer look I could see that all these big circles were made from individual letters grouped together to make up a larger shape. I found this interesting that the picture looked completely different when you viewed it from different distances. The intricate style of work Lee had to do to create this piece was also impressive and made me appreciate the art much more than I did when I first looked at.

As we went up stairs to the balcony portion of the museum we ran into two rooms that contained video works. As we entered into the room with the projector, a movie came on that was on a loop of a man, Michael Winslow. This piece contained Winslow making noises into a microphone that perfectly resembled the noises made while typing on a typewriter. As I watched the movie I tried closing my eyes to see if I could get a more realistic sense of the work. The sounds were spot on and it took until I opened my eyes again to realize that they were not the sounds coming from a true typewriter. This portion of the museum was one of my favorites because I’ve never sat in an exhibit and watched art being performed live on a screen. I feel the viewer gets a more behind the scenes look at the process of creating the work and this was interesting for me to experience.

Going to the University Art Museum was a very interesting experience. In class we viewed many artists and their different styles of work, but going and experiencing art for myself was a different experience. Leaving the museum I felt that the art I viewed impacted me and made me appreciate things I did not appreciate coming into the museum. These include things such as the amount of work and effort needed to be an artist who produced popular enough work to be in a museum. The overall quality of the museum impressed me and although it was not as large as other museums the works were very interesting. The work that was derived from the typewriters, the skills to make the exact sounds of the typewriter, and the creativity to experiment with what would happen if you erased the ink all impressed me. Attending the University Art Museum at the State University at Albany allowed me to appreciate and look at art differently than I did upon arriving on the campus.

The Collaboration of Artists

All of the previous artists that we have viewed in class worked on materials based of solely their ideas. Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla work as one artist in their studio to devise new works of art. When they join together to create new works they research much about their interests and often times the worlds reactions help them to form their response. Both argue with each other until they both agree on the outcome of their work serving as a way to correct their piece making it perfect in the end. I especially was drawn to one piece of work that we viewed in class. It showed a video of a man who attached a motor to an upside down that was in the water. He used this table as his boat and the authors related this table to politics and their ability to not see the other side of things. For me it was very interesting to take an object and create something completely new from it and relate it to a current issue which people can relate to. These two artist collaborate together to come up with very interesting works that move the viewer to look at objects in ways they never before imagined.

Globalization of Art

Due to the result of technology we are now working as a global community and art is a moving force of social and cultural means. There is a cross pollinations of thoughts and ideas and artists are out of the studio and making statements and commenting on culture and are relating to their world in an exterior sense. Although this may seem like a good thing, now many places are trying to reclaim what they feel is their cultural past. For example the Greeks are now feeling the absence of the Elgin Marbles. They were removed from the Acropolis at the beginning of the 19th century, and are a priceless example of ancient Greek religious art, but the British Museum doesn't want to give them back. According to Greece it has been 200 years since the 90 pieces were taken from the Acropolis in the center of Athens and in that time span the state of Greece wants their marble statues back and the British Museum doesn't want to return them. The Greeks are angry because they feel that the British have no right to keep their most important cultural symbols, and believe that antiquities must stay in their homes. The British Museum argues that they are in far better shape than what was left behind partly due to more favorable conditions in Britain and partly because they were in a museum were people took care of them and in Athens what was left behnd on the Acropolis where the pollution has ravaged them.