Allow me to begin by saying that I am not the biggest fan of modern art. I don't like having to stare at something for long minutes, wondering what it's supposed to be or what it's supposed to mean. I like to be able to look at something and grasp immediately at least what it's supposed to be.
That said, I did find the Museum of Modern Art interesting. Modern art, I have discovered, is much more fun when viewed with a friend. You can both stand there and stare at it, and share your theories on what it's supposed to mean. The more ridiculous, the better.
There were several things that I noticed on my trip to the museum. One of them was the number of works titled "Untitled." I'm not sure whether or not that is supposed to have some sort of deeper meaning, and really influence my understanding of the piece (or it would if I understood modern art at all), or if the artist was simply too lazy, too busy, or simply uninclined to give the piece a name. It strikes me as very odd, though. Why go to all the trouble to create something, and then not give it a name?
The only possible answer I can think of to my question is that the artist wanted to allow the painting to mean different things to different people, and didn't want a title influencing their perceptions. This would be great, if the paintings meant anything to me at all. Instead, those of us who don't understand modern art are left fumbling around in the dark, staring at what really looks like a bunch of squiggles on canvas and wondering, "What was going through the artist's head when he painted this?"
There were several paintings at the Modern that I really enjoyed, and understood pretty much as soon as I saw them. "Camouflaged Botticelli" was probably my favorite. I also really liked "The Ark." The only thing that these two paintings have in common, as far as I can tell, is that they're both fairly obvious. They may have a number of deeper, hidden meanings, but based on the title and the picture, you can easily grasp at least the basics of what was going on in the author's head when he painted them. I really appreciated that about both of them.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Friday, February 18, 2011
Conversation Two
Jay and I met again for the second time on Wednesday afternoon. We met in the BLUU, which was interesting. I don't think Jay had ever been to Market Square, because we had a little miscommunicatin about where exactly we were going to be meeting. Once we had everything sorted out, we talked for a while in there. He had just come from his IEP class, and he said that it was a little boring. They'd been doing writing that day, and writing is always harder when you don't speak the language. I can totally sympathize with that - I'm a really good writer in English, but whenever I would try to write papers for Spanish class, I always bump up against my lack of a large vocabulary in Spanish. I can communicate basic concepts, but not being able to be as eloquent as I'd like frustrates me.
We spent some time in Market Square, talking about how it works, and then we decided to go and sit outside. It was absolutely beautiful outside, perfect weather. Both of us commented on it, and we got to talking about the different weather patterns in Texas versus South Korea. Apparently they actually have all four seasons over there. I was a little jealous, since where I'm from (Houston) we only have two seasons - wet and dry. It never really gets cold enough to be truly classified as "winter," or so I'm told. I maintain that Fort Worth actually experiences four seasons - spring and fall are just compressed into the space of about two weeks, as opposed to three months or so.
This conversation was much less awkward than the last one - it felt much more natural, more like an actual conversation, and less contrived. It's always really interesting hearing about different cultures, and we spent a while comparing living conditions. I had to explain the concept of a suburb to Jay - I'm sure that they have something like them in South Korea, but he wasn't sure what they were when I used the word. The population where he's from is very dense, lots of people trying to live in not a lot of space. So they mostly live in apartments, where we mostly live in houses. They have houses in South Korea, of course, but they're insanely expensive - he said that a little 4 room house could cost up to about 3 million dollars. Needless to say, I was impressed. That's a lot of money for a little house.
Another cultural difference that we discussed was walking on the grass. As we were sitting outside on one of the benches in the Commons, we saw several groups of people sitting out on the grass with homework and books spread around them. He seemed very shocked by this - apparently sitting outside on the ground isn't done in Korea. I explained that he's very likely to see more of this, especially if the weather stays nice. After being cooped up inside for a week over the snow days, we like to go outside and sit in the sun. I also explained that if he came up on the weekends, he was likely to see large groups of girls just laying out in the sun, tanning. He seemed a little surprised by this, but ended up writing it off as just one of those weird things Americans do.
We spent some time in Market Square, talking about how it works, and then we decided to go and sit outside. It was absolutely beautiful outside, perfect weather. Both of us commented on it, and we got to talking about the different weather patterns in Texas versus South Korea. Apparently they actually have all four seasons over there. I was a little jealous, since where I'm from (Houston) we only have two seasons - wet and dry. It never really gets cold enough to be truly classified as "winter," or so I'm told. I maintain that Fort Worth actually experiences four seasons - spring and fall are just compressed into the space of about two weeks, as opposed to three months or so.
This conversation was much less awkward than the last one - it felt much more natural, more like an actual conversation, and less contrived. It's always really interesting hearing about different cultures, and we spent a while comparing living conditions. I had to explain the concept of a suburb to Jay - I'm sure that they have something like them in South Korea, but he wasn't sure what they were when I used the word. The population where he's from is very dense, lots of people trying to live in not a lot of space. So they mostly live in apartments, where we mostly live in houses. They have houses in South Korea, of course, but they're insanely expensive - he said that a little 4 room house could cost up to about 3 million dollars. Needless to say, I was impressed. That's a lot of money for a little house.
Another cultural difference that we discussed was walking on the grass. As we were sitting outside on one of the benches in the Commons, we saw several groups of people sitting out on the grass with homework and books spread around them. He seemed very shocked by this - apparently sitting outside on the ground isn't done in Korea. I explained that he's very likely to see more of this, especially if the weather stays nice. After being cooped up inside for a week over the snow days, we like to go outside and sit in the sun. I also explained that if he came up on the weekends, he was likely to see large groups of girls just laying out in the sun, tanning. He seemed a little surprised by this, but ended up writing it off as just one of those weird things Americans do.
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