London, Day #21

I cannot believe how long I have been here. I also cannot believe that it is almost all over!!! I have been having an amazing time while I've been here in London, and I really am thankful to everyone of my family and friends who have made it possible for me to be here (also to my two future roommates who are searching for an apartment or house for us for next year without me, to them I am so grateful and I don't know if they know how much I appreciate them and how many baked goods I plan to make for them the second we are all living together).

Onward Ho!

Today was the day of oral presentations (Graded assignment 1/3). I did my presentation with Susie (as she was the only other member of the group) and this was on the piece that I blogged about on Saturday/Sunday if you missed that. We both thought our presentation went well. We were clear with our ideas and we made our own mini-powerpoint (to showcase the many different views of the work), and we also worked together well, splitting up the speaking, etc. So yay for us! Also our professor seemed to enjoy our presentation and had positive feedback!

After the first set of presentations, of which there were five (including ours) we had two lectures on photography, with lunch in the middle. The first lecture was by a woman who gave us a few lectures before, but I really did not like her lecturing style (which I also mentioned on Day 5). For the start of her lecture she had meant to show us two videos, but had many technical difficulties, and she gave the most horrible lecture introduction to photography ever. It was sort of frustrating and infuriating at the same time. Then we watched the videos which were basically works by artists with the actual artists talking about the works (you don't see the artists you just hear them). The two artists were Sophie Calle and Nan Goldin. I do like some of both of their works, but not all of either. I'll post one photo from each and talk briefly about each.

One project that Sophie Calle did (she is totally insane by the way) is she followed a man to Venice Italy, just to follow him around there and photograph him (without his knowing). This is a photograph from that series. I think that some of the photographs in the series stand out individually.

Nan Goldin is well known for her style of photography, basically documenting every second she possibly can of her life. In her early years she would photograph the drag queen community in Boston, and then not too much later she became involved in heavy drug culture (I believe in New York) in the 1980s. She has often been persecuted for making "drug culture" sexy, but I think she's said how she thinks it is actually "evil." I actually prefer her later work. I think it is so peaceful and beautiful, and I'm sad that more people don't realize that she really changed what she was working on.

From there, the lecturer talked about many photographers, but her speaking style is so monotone that it was really hard to like anything she was saying about anything. The other problem with her is she gives us slide lists with artists names, but no titles of works, and she makes many typos in the spelling of names. If she does have anything resembling a title it is really just a descriptive word used for their work, e.g. "cinematic" or "installation". Maybe I will revisit some of these artists at another date.

Our second lecture was by a photographer who is also a professor, and she has been coming to gallery visits with us a lot, so we are all very used to her "lecture-style." Her lecture was extremely interesting, and covered the topic of contemporary photographers. She definitely gave us some titles of books and essays that I want to read SOON, which is rare in any art history lecture for me. Let me know if you want the list :).

After discussions on theories of art and theories of art originally applied to painting that are now being applied to photography (believe you me this was all extremely helpful for the formation of my thesis), we looked at the works of several artsits (some of which I know, and others which I do not know). One of the photographers who she mentioned (whose work I really liked) was John Hilliard. Hilliard plays a lot with cropping and focus to change the nature of an image in one space. Here are a couple of examples:

For the first one he has taken one image and cropped it in four different ways. Each way tells a different story. I believe the piece is entitled "Cause of Death" and the four captions are 'Crushed', 'Drowned', 'Burned', 'Fell'. So you see? Cropping can change a lot of what an image says.

For this second triptych entitled "She Observed herself in the Glass," he has taken the same photograph three times with different focal points. Look carefully at all three pieces (I apologize for the poor image quality).

We talked briefly about artists who simply take photographs on the street, or even re-create things they saw on the street. One of these artists I enjoyed was Tom Wood. His series "All Zones Off Peak" was really interesting. What he did was he would take photographs from the bus every morning when he went to work. Unfortunately because of security people are no longer allowed to take photographs from public transit sources. There is a book of this series and if you like the work I suggest you buy it (it may or may not be on that list I mentioned earlier).

Of course we also talked about John Baldessari, and I wanted to share just one work by him from his Goya Series.

All in all, a great second lecture. After that there were more presentations, but instead of staying for those I went and did some research on the artist Lee Bontecou, who I am writing my final paper for the class on. I didn't necessarily want to write about an american artist, but I have always been fascinated by Bontecou, and I don't know if I will have a chance to write about her again (in my school years at least). On Saturday, if the weather is nice, I may go to Regent's Park and read some very long articles and essays on her that I have.

Then, Susie (from earlier in this post) and I went to Tea at the Sanderson Hotel. We had an amazing meal, and it was a lot of fun. There is an album on my facebook just for the afternoon tea portion (it's entitled Afternoon Tease, I was just going to do Afternoon Teas as I am going to tea next week at Claridge's Hotel, but I decided to be cheeky). The photos are here. The tea was sort of "Alice in Wonderland" themed, the captions have explanations of all of the foods (the only normal thing were the scones, basically).

And that was Thursday!

London, Day #20

Folkestone Triennial!

Today we went to Folkestone and had a private tour around most of their second Triennial (the first being three years ago). The whole day was such an interesting experience, and I really had an amazing time.

I guess I'll set you all up by telling you this: Folkestone has no real museum or large gallery/exhibition space, and so there is no way that the works featured in the Triennial can all be in one place. The town is a relatively small seaside town (where on a clear day you can see France across the Channel). Three years ago there were many works from artists all around the world, and nine of these works have been left behind as permanent artistic additions to the town.

The works from the previous triennial we actually took the time to look at were the following:

Mark Wallinger (UK) "Folk Stones" -- A piece comprised of 19,240 individually numbered stones to represent the exact number of British soldiers killed on July 1st, 1916, the first day of The Battle of the Somme.

Tracey Emin (UK) "Baby Things" -- A piece comprised of several small bronze sculptures of baby clothes and toys spread around the town. I saw the teddy bear, a hat, and a little shoe. The work is supposed to be a commentary on the high rate of teenage pregnancy in Folkestone. I will also mention that Emin does a lot of work about sex and her own personal life in bed.

Richard Wentworth (Samoa) "Racinated" -- The piece is a 10-part sign piece spread across the town. The text is a "fusion of poetry and botany" highlighting the non-native trees in this area. According to the pamphlet, it can also be read as a metaphor for the many migrants who have made Folkestone their new home.

This year's triennial is entitled "A Million Miles From Home." It ends on 25 September, so if you're planning on being in England before then, try and make a day trip out to Folkestone to see the works. The map is very well organized and has great explanations of the pieces. You are supposed to view the experience like a treasure hunt, but instead of treasure you get art.

I saw many works from this new triennial, but I cannot write about all of them here. I have posted pictures of almost all of the works I saw on my facebook, which you can look at here. I have made an effort there to explain most of the pieces in a bit of depth and description so you are not just aimlessly looking at contemporary art (YES ALL OF THE PIECES ARE CONTEMPORARY).

The works I want to write about here are:

Hew Locke (UK) "For Those in Peril On The Sea"

The Ship piece was really moving to me. I am not often moved in places of worship, as I do not worship, but there have been a few artworks or stained glass windows in churches that I have found very beautiful and moving. This church, however, is not just any church. This church is the oldest building in Folkestone, and it is quite interesting. You enter the church after walking through a very overgrown graveyard (where the tombstones have barely legible carvings), and there you see 100 model ships sailing above you. The idea and the execution are absolutely fantastically beautiful. Some of the ships were collected from places around the world, others were made by the artist and heavily decorated, but they were all sailing above, and it was just so beautiful. Did I mention it was beautiful?

And

Paloma Varga Weisz (Germany) "Rug People"

I have a very large place in my heart for abandoned railroad tracks. My whole life I've lived next to a set of abandoned railroad tracks, and I've spent good times and bad times there. There is something so beautiful about leaving something manmade to be taken over by nature, and then to put this incredible installation in the space is just exquisite. The sculpture consists of the heads of five figures who are all wrapped (individually in what look like blankets). The sculpture is sitting on a persian-style carpet which lays over both tracks. Even though the piece is made out of bronze (not the carpet), the figures look like they were carved into clay.

And

Cristina Iglesias (Spain) "Towards the Sound of Wilderness"

There are no words, this piece was absolutely beautiful and magnificent.

All in all, a fabulous day. I had my first and only fish and chips meal for lunch, it was very good but extremely filling, so I was only able to eat half of the meal. The journey home was long, but simple, so that wasn't too bad.

Tomorrow we are doing oral presentations (I am working with my new friend Susie) and then the two of us are going to High Tea!

xoxoxo

Be sure to check out those facebook photos!

PS. I discovered some new delicious and amazing cookies!

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.