Labor of miscellany
L is up in PDX for the weekend, leaving me to work on a presentation for later this week. I have always found holiday weekends are perfect for catching up on paperwork and filing. When doing the latter, I found a bunch of postcards from recent travels that were supposed to serve as reminders to write about more art.
This year's trips to Chicago wound up being pretty well described. One bit of art that got skipped is Zhang Dali's show at V Walsh. (Or is that Walsh V?) This Chinese artist has put together a show of what I can only call information art. He has tracked down the original negatives for photographs of Chairman Mao and other Cultural Revolution-era icons that were used in publications from the time. He has printed them and hung them side-by-side with the doctored versions that were circulated. Really compelling work--although it made my head hurt after a while. It was a huge show, and there was a lot of text.
Boston provided me with a great trip to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. I really missed out when I lived in Boston: although I knew the story behind the museum, I can't say that I had ever been there. This is perhaps the most eclectic place I have ever seen art (and for those of you who know me, I've been to some pretty freakin eclectic shows). I'm convinced that the reason she was so adverse to hanging wall cards is because she had all her own stories to tell about the art. You know the memory trick of taking a walk and memorizing your shopping list (or epic poetry for those of you classicists out there) by associating items with locations along your walk? I get the distinct impression that Isabella's life-story is caught up in her collection. Someone has to come up with a 3-d Isabella avatar that can lead tours, which I can vividly imagine her doing after luncheon parties.
Someone please remind me to tell you about the Harvard Map Collection and the Levanthal Map Collection at BPL. Right now I have to check the temperature on the grill. I'm attempting to slow cook with propane today.
This year's trips to Chicago wound up being pretty well described. One bit of art that got skipped is Zhang Dali's show at V Walsh. (Or is that Walsh V?) This Chinese artist has put together a show of what I can only call information art. He has tracked down the original negatives for photographs of Chairman Mao and other Cultural Revolution-era icons that were used in publications from the time. He has printed them and hung them side-by-side with the doctored versions that were circulated. Really compelling work--although it made my head hurt after a while. It was a huge show, and there was a lot of text.
Boston provided me with a great trip to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. I really missed out when I lived in Boston: although I knew the story behind the museum, I can't say that I had ever been there. This is perhaps the most eclectic place I have ever seen art (and for those of you who know me, I've been to some pretty freakin eclectic shows). I'm convinced that the reason she was so adverse to hanging wall cards is because she had all her own stories to tell about the art. You know the memory trick of taking a walk and memorizing your shopping list (or epic poetry for those of you classicists out there) by associating items with locations along your walk? I get the distinct impression that Isabella's life-story is caught up in her collection. Someone has to come up with a 3-d Isabella avatar that can lead tours, which I can vividly imagine her doing after luncheon parties.
Someone please remind me to tell you about the Harvard Map Collection and the Levanthal Map Collection at BPL. Right now I have to check the temperature on the grill. I'm attempting to slow cook with propane today.
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