“i left the east coast and everything it stands for. i’m living in a place where no one ever asks what college i went to, never mind my SAT scores. i didn’t consciously want to reinvent myself, but i liked the opportunity to start over, sans the burden of the preconceptions of those i went to school with. i haven’t struck it rich and famous. and now i’m wavering, the economic chaos impacting my ability to have hope. but when i’m driving in my car and the right record comes pouring out of the speakers, i feel confident, i believe i can make it.”
— bob lefsetz (via lefsetz.com/wordpress)
we talked about this issue of what i called “east coast snobbery” about colleges at my book club last night, much to the chagrin of the girls in my book club who went to a snobby east coast college. (they’re not snobs, but their school could reasonably be called that.) i do think it’s a uniquely east coast question; when we first moved to oregon, my mother remarked that unlike back east, no one ever asked what school she had gone to when they first met her. (i myself went to a state school, and i thought it was great. i learned more than i thought i needed to know and i made some lifetime friends. that’s really all that should make it a “good” school.)
i moved to the east coast to consciously reinvent myself; i grew up in a sleepy college town that no one ever left, and i didn’t want that. i came to new york, or at least to my idea of what new york is, wanting to make a new me, a stronger, smarter, more fulfilled me. and i’ll agree with lefsetz, the economic situation (especially in new york) has me wavering between hopeful and hopeless sometimes. winter in new york is all about survival, and this winter has been particularly tough. but spring is right around the corner, and there is no better time to be in new york, when the city airs itself out and gets back to the business of being fully alive. i can’t wait to throw open the windows again.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Saturday, February 7, 2009
rebus
s gave me an excellent present for christmas: membership to moma for the year. this past weekend we decided to take advantage of this and headed over to the museum for the afternoon.
their big show right now is "marlene dumas: measuring your own grave" (through february 16--a valentines date perhaps?) our review was mixed. her brushy, ethereal technique works well in paintings of the deceased--i pictured their souls hanging around, waiting to see what happens next. but massive canvases of little girls hanging from nooses are not really my thing; i had not seen a large-scale presentation of her work, and what can be powerful in small doses is somewhat overwhelming in total. the most interesting thing is a room of quick sketches called "models" (i believe they are studies of all of the people who stopped by the model for her over a period of a few years.) they are revealing in their simplicity, the faces distilled to piercing eyes or strong noses, everything else rendered unimportant. in an interesting twist, amongst the pictures of women of all shapes, sizes and ethnicities, there is a portrait of a snake. i think that all of her work has a sense of the dark, almost brutal, parts of life, and this room is a distillation of that philosophy.
pipilotti rist has transformed the atrium into "pour your body out" (this just closed), a large-scale multimedia installation that encouraged visitors to take their shoes off and dive into her world of sounds and sights. while the explanation invited adults to make new friends, no one around me wanted to talk about rist's swim through a menstrual ocean (why not, new friends?!), and s was too shy to sit on the iris couch with me. he was concerned about the sound in the space--it was too open, too noisy to achieve the cocoon effect rist seemed to be going for, and perhaps the experience would've meant more in a more intimate space. but i love taking my shoes off in museums, so i considered it a minor success.
our favorite show, however, was "artist's choice: vik muniz, rebus" (through february 23.) to steal from the description, a rebus is a combination of unrelated visual and linguistic elements which create a larger deductive meaning, and muniz has raided the museum's collection to put together a startlingly engaging little exhibition. each piece is taken out of context (no title, no artist), so that the focus is solely on the piece and its relation to those that precede and follow it. i enjoyed the pieces in a way that i usually do not--instead of connecting to an overarching theme, each piece is examined for its own meaning and merit, and is connected to the other pieces in new ways. "do these relate because of imagery, or material, or meaning, or is simply enough that you are here to look at this piece?" the exhibition asks. we found ourselves making new connections between pieces, enjoying them on a purely experiential level. (my only complaint: the exhibit is too short. i wanted everything we saw to be this engaging.) i think it's worth it to go to see this exhibition alone.
their big show right now is "marlene dumas: measuring your own grave" (through february 16--a valentines date perhaps?) our review was mixed. her brushy, ethereal technique works well in paintings of the deceased--i pictured their souls hanging around, waiting to see what happens next. but massive canvases of little girls hanging from nooses are not really my thing; i had not seen a large-scale presentation of her work, and what can be powerful in small doses is somewhat overwhelming in total. the most interesting thing is a room of quick sketches called "models" (i believe they are studies of all of the people who stopped by the model for her over a period of a few years.) they are revealing in their simplicity, the faces distilled to piercing eyes or strong noses, everything else rendered unimportant. in an interesting twist, amongst the pictures of women of all shapes, sizes and ethnicities, there is a portrait of a snake. i think that all of her work has a sense of the dark, almost brutal, parts of life, and this room is a distillation of that philosophy.
pipilotti rist has transformed the atrium into "pour your body out" (this just closed), a large-scale multimedia installation that encouraged visitors to take their shoes off and dive into her world of sounds and sights. while the explanation invited adults to make new friends, no one around me wanted to talk about rist's swim through a menstrual ocean (why not, new friends?!), and s was too shy to sit on the iris couch with me. he was concerned about the sound in the space--it was too open, too noisy to achieve the cocoon effect rist seemed to be going for, and perhaps the experience would've meant more in a more intimate space. but i love taking my shoes off in museums, so i considered it a minor success.
our favorite show, however, was "artist's choice: vik muniz, rebus" (through february 23.) to steal from the description, a rebus is a combination of unrelated visual and linguistic elements which create a larger deductive meaning, and muniz has raided the museum's collection to put together a startlingly engaging little exhibition. each piece is taken out of context (no title, no artist), so that the focus is solely on the piece and its relation to those that precede and follow it. i enjoyed the pieces in a way that i usually do not--instead of connecting to an overarching theme, each piece is examined for its own meaning and merit, and is connected to the other pieces in new ways. "do these relate because of imagery, or material, or meaning, or is simply enough that you are here to look at this piece?" the exhibition asks. we found ourselves making new connections between pieces, enjoying them on a purely experiential level. (my only complaint: the exhibit is too short. i wanted everything we saw to be this engaging.) i think it's worth it to go to see this exhibition alone.
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