02-08-2014

So today we viewed art through the 'inspirational' words of Alain De Botaine. To be honest, I didn't particularly connect with anything I read. A lot of the writing also seemed a little obvious and a bit too broad, but I suppose it has to be relevant to everyone in the NGV, which is a huge audience.  I think reading that sort of thing is only really helpful if you're in the right type of mood too, or if there's actually something wrong. Some of his writing just seemed a little bit bullshit though, for example, on Pierre Bonnard's 'Siesta', 1900, oil on canvas:

Sickness: work, work, work. It's summer; they had lunch in a shady spot in the garden; they had salad and ate some fruit. Afterwards they came indoors to lie down for a while and escape the heat. They had sex. She is completely relaxed. In a little while she'll have a shower and maybe get started on that report. She'll be in a good frame of mind to tackle it.

I had trouble understanding how that was a therapeutic statement that could help someone. Is it encouraging people to have sex to get in a good frame of mind? Or is it intended to remind people in relationships that maybe if they had more sex they wouldn't be so stressed all the time?  I don't even know. It just seemed so far fetched and not all that relevant to the artwork. That's not to say he isn't a good writer and art critic - clearly he is, you don't become a household name for nothing. I just didn't fully appreciate some of what he was saying.

To a more positive side of appreciation, every time I visit the NGV international I notice something different. This time it was Jesus Rafael Soto's 'London Scribblings'. It's quite a large and obnoxious artwork, but for some reason I'd never stopped to look at it. But it's so impressive. I loved it because it was something completely put of my realm - sculpture and an optical illusion. There was probably a lot of mathematics behind it too, which I'm hopeless at. Though it was fixed, it seemed to move every time you looked at it. I've seen optical illusions before, but this one was in a gallery, sticking out of a canvas! Here is a photograph of it:

The other great thing about it is that the photo doesn't do it justice at all. No photo will. A video might do it a little bit more justice, but it's still not quite the same. I guess you could say that about a lot of artworks. But with this you really had to be there. If I were De Botaine trying to link this to Philosophy and self-help, I'd use that concept of having to 'be there'. I could talk about technology and viewing images through reproductions on tiny screens, people texting instead of talking, I could write a really long inspirational piece but nobody wants to read that, so I'm going to stop writing now.

17-07-14

The rain and cold perhaps drained a little beauty out of Melbourne's architecture this time, especially since it was kinda difficult to get the whole picture through the fluff on my hoodie. That being said, it was nice to be told to lift my head off the ground. It definitely got me thinking about how I should be doing that more often. Going to the block arcade was good too. I walk through there all the time, it's so obviously decorative, I was surprised and a bit annoyed at myself for not having stopping to look properly. So after looking around a bit, once everyone sat and drew lights and doors and roofs, I took my camera around the corner to a little run-down section that lead to a dead end, passing a run down lady dragging a massive bag into a rubbish bin. It smelt like piss, cigarettes, and old coffee. Man, I hope that didn't rub off on me for the rest of the day. Oh well. Maybe it was worth it, because there was a beautiful small patch of sky poking out between the buildings. It would have been the perfect place for an alien to abduct me, but no. I'm still here.

Anyway, since I'm still alive and writing I should probably review the actual galleries we went to. 

To be honest, the Diane Singer gallery didn't do a lot for me. The lights put me off a bit. They were ridiculously fluorescent, which always gives me a headache. I wasn't absolutely amazed by the work, however I appreciated how bold she was for using such bright, child-like colours and simple shapes and objects in her art, in a world of adults trying to be serious and dark and moody. I suppose you could say a lot of artists focus on the child-like side of things, but it's good to see it done in a contemporary setting in somewhere so close by.

At Westspace I think I liked the black and white photographs by Ross Coulter the best, they were quite dreamy. That's not a very interesting thing to say about them, but to be honest I don't particularly remember a whole lot more about them. There was also a section about homelessness and if I remember correctly there was some statistics and writing on lamps and things. That was an idea I hadn't really considered, so it was good seeing things presented a little differently.
Oh and back to architecture, we went and looked at St.Paul's Cathedral, which like many churches was overwhelmingly beautiful. Churches always make me feel a bit odd, kind of out of place and I'm never quite sure if I want to be a part of it all or not. Everyone sat on the pews and drew, and do did I. It felt a bit disrespectful drawing in a church. I drew the people behind me very roughly. Bailey, Raff, Zach. Kirrah, Rachel and Jale were up the back, but you can hardly see them in the drawing. I drew a young girl who was praying too, but I didn't do her any justice at all. I rushed it and gave up. The whole drawing's really pretty crappy, but it doesn't matter.