London, Day #19

Tuesday

I cannot believe I am over halfway done with the course! Of course my body is completely exhausted... so much so that I couldn't even sit through lectures today. I'm not regretting it too much, because the information is still out there, but resting was really the best thing for me to do today.

Cy Twombly died today, he was a really influential and incredible artist in his time. Here is one of my favorite works by him, and one you may recognize as his "style" although he did work in other styles.

Tomorrow we are going to the Folkestone Triennial! I am very excited to see how the works are laid out, and to see a new part of Britain. I also intend to have Fish and Chips for the first time since I've been here (as Folkestone is very close to the sea so I think the fish will be fresher).

To sleep I go in preparation for tomorrow!

xoxo

London, Day #18

Monday

Today is the first Fourth of July that I've had to write the date on a piece of paper. An odd feeling, but one that I could potentially get used to. The fourth has never been my favorite holiday, the only thing that wore me out was not being able to have the day off like everyone else I know!

In class we had two lectures, the first by our professor, Pierre (who is wonderful), on Scandal and Censorship in the art world. We started with the Fountain, of course, and then moved into the idea of one work of art in a themed exhibition causing some trouble.

After the lecture by Pierre, we had a lecture by a guest artist/lecturer. The information he was to lecture on was really interesting (Abstract art), but he basically just verbatim read his lecture (which was like a written essay). There is a huge difference between reading an essay and speaking about a topic that you have a lot of information on. It was really hard to pay attention to a lecture that was basically someone reading an extremely academic analysis of abstract art. Too much.

Then we went back to the Tate Modern to look at their photography exhibits. In their "permanent collection" section, they have works by six different artists that are called "New Documentary Forms." We discussed the idea of new documentary forms, but I was really unimpressed with the idea as something that should be shown in this kind of art space. I did, however, like one of the artists, from Ukraine, Boris Mikhailov.

This photo is from his series "Dusk" which are gelatin silver prints that have been dyed (they are not cyanotypes).

After spending what I thought was too much time in this part of the museum, we went to see the Taryn Simon exhibition called "A Living Man Declared Dead." The works were extremely powerful and very difficult to take in (especially after an already long day), and I wish we had started with this incredible project as opposed to the "documentary" bullshit from the 5th floor.

London, Days #16 & 17

Saturday + Sunday

Because of my slowly healing throat I spent most of Saturday and Sunday indoors, relaxing, resting, showering and what have you.

I will update you all on a project I am working on right now for my class.

We have to do a group oral presentation on one piece of contemporary art. Lucky for me, my group only consists of one other person, and we seem to be working well together, so yay!

The piece we are doing a presentation on is called "Film Star" by John Latham.

Latham worked a lot with books and the destruction of books, which I find truly fascinating since my minor concentrates on the preservation of books and the conservation of the form of bookbinding. Although I don't appreciate (in entirety) his destruction of the book form, I understand his motives, and appreciate his message.

The piece was originally used for a film, it's sort of like a stop-motion style film where the different colors of the pages are turned and then a shot is taken, so it looks as if the pages are automatically changing. I really wish that I could share the film with you, but it is a heavily guarded work of art (you can rent it to show in your gallery for £50 or something like that). Thankfully there is a lot written about the piece and the artist, so we aren't having too difficult of a time putting together our presentation.