Day Five
The MOMA and the Whitney
Well. I was correct in my assumption that I would forget a lot of things if I didn't write this blog right away. I was so exhausted when I got back that I slept for two days and then started class. Oh well. Lets begin and maybe it will come back to me.
I thoroughly enjoyed the Jeff Wall exhibit. It seems strange yet familiar that at the end of my college career I seem to know more, or at least be aware of more artists than I thought. A year ago I couldn't have told you who Jeff Wall even was, and all of a sudden I show up in New York with a college degree in art and I'm like "oh right. Jeff Wall. I know about that guy." It's like all those art history classes actually did something for me! It really made me confident that, contrary to what my dad and step mom believe, I've actually gotten something out of the last 7 years. It made me proud of myself. Feeling knowlegdable about all sorts of artists, from 6th cent. b.c to the present, is wonderful. Awakened to the idea that I learned more than I thought. When it happens I feel like I did the right thing. Made the right choice. The path I'm walking down must be the right one.
The same thing happened when I saw the Pipilotti Rist video. I felt really good that I had already seen this video several times. Like I'm up to date on what's going on in the world of art. I often feel like I don't know anything. It's nice to be proven wrong sometimes :)
I saw a lot of art on this day. It was one of those overwhelming experiences. Of course it didn't help that Nathan and I sat in the cafe for over an hour, not realizing time was passing us by, and then had to practically run through 2 floors of the MoMa trying to see a bunch of stuff we'd missed. I went straight for Starry Night, had Nathan take a picture, and that was that. Off to the Whitney.
I had a similar experience, time-wise, in the Whitney. I was terribly exhausted so I decided that I wasn't going to waste anymore time looking at anything that I didn't feel was relevent or interesting to me. So I went straight to the video art and found a movie/video in progess and sat down to watch it. It was freaking amazing. To say the least. I hope I can make something that good one day. The video was called "Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y" and was made by a guy name Johan Grimonprez. It consisted of what appeared to be all found footage that he probably pulled straight off an internet archive. Maybe not. But it was 90 percent old footage, beginning in the 70's, that related to the onset of airplane terrorism and hijacking. The video intertwined footage of the newly commercial airline industry and the security measures that undoubtably followed as this new mode of transportation was now also a new mode of terrorism. There was also footage of interviews from hostages, plane crashes, presidents, and much more.
Now that I think about it, this piece makes me worry that my own work is far too trivial. I make personal pieces about myself and my family and they almost always tend to be melodramatic. They never encompass some bigger picture like war, or terrorism, or politics. It makes me feel a little shallow and selfish, I guess, that I can't seem to see outside my own little world. Or that I think my own life is so damn interesting that I need to document it for people to see.
I came into the video about a third of the way in and it was a 68 minute video. What I'm getting at is I spent my entire time at the Whitney watching this one video. But it was worth it.
