On Taking Art Slowly, Michael Kimmelman (link)
Photo by Valerio Mezzanotti
The young women were unusual for stopping. Most of the museum’s visitors passed through the gallery oblivious.
A few game tourists glanced vainly in guidebooks or hopefully at wall labels, as if learning that one or another of these sculptures came from Papua New Guinea or Hawaii or the Archipelago of Santa Cruz, or that a work was three centuries old or maybe four might help them see what was, plain as day, just before them.
Almost nobody, over the course of that hour or two, paused before any object for as long as a full minute. Only a 17th-century wood sculpture of a copulating couple, from San Cristobal in the Solomon Islands, placed near an exit, caused several tourists to point, smile and snap a photo, but without really breaking stride.
A very interesting article by Kimmelman. But you can’t be too harsh on these museum goers, it’s not their fault that the world is now the way it is, and demands a dumb quickness.
The article did make me think of my upcoming trip to Europe. An anachronistic wander through the ancient cultural heart (is NY then the artificial replacement?) of the world. What do I hope to get from it?
I want to see the important works that have come before and I want to see them in their original; with techniques laid bare. In their own aura of authenticity. Things you can’t get from reproductions. I want to steal. I want to see what can be reused in what I’m doing. I want to find the ones that move me, and really think hard about why they do. I don’t care if I don’t end up liking most of them. I’m not there to be judged. I’m there to do the judging.
I miss my books. I miss being able to go through something thoroughly and figure out what other smart people thought about it, what they got from it, and the context they put the piece into. I also want to read up on the lives of the people whose stuff I’m looking at. It’s one of my guilty pleasures.
I also want to meet people and show them what I have been doing. See what they think of my work.
I also want to work. I want to find out what this Europe is all about. What the people are like. I hope my fears aren’t confirmed, that it is all just middle class aspirationalism. I hope it isn’t just a display of the sameness that wealth encourages.
But for that I think I have to look hard and look long.
Click on the link in the title.
PS Also, I’d like to get laid.
Posted 2 years ago
