Digital Revolution @ The Barbican Centre

I had absolutely no idea what to expect from the new exhibition at the Barbican Centre, that aims to explore the rise of digital creativity across the arts.  Up until this point (and apologies for not posting) I had been busy immersing myself in my dissertation and the impeding job hunt.  Finally both parts have now been taken care of, and I am back to doing what I love, exploring art exhibitions and writing about them.

It was a sunny Tuesday morning, and a friend and I arrived at the exhibition before it even opened- this is good advice- aim to get there around half ten to pre buy your tickets and avoid any queuing.  I’ll keep this post brief because I believe that one of the reasons I loved it the exhibition so much, was that I had no expectations, and no idea what it was going to entail.  When we get ourselves too hyped up about something, an exhibition, a particular artist, or an event in general, we do tend to attach with it too many expectations.

 

But it’s easy not to get disappointed with this exhibition when there is such a high level of interaction.  You can play with the 3D laser field light that fills an entire room, play a keyboard and listen to the sounds of the world and even revive your youth by playing games such as the Sims and other vintage video games.  You can also project yourself onto a large digital screen and dance with the new image, create a digital version of yourself, whisper to butterflies which in turn type out the message you speak, and finally, my favourite part, turn your own image into that of a great phoenix.

For me, the exhibition was all about interacting with a digital space and uniting digital’s past with its future.  This is exactly why the exhibition was, in my eyes, not only incredibly entertaining, but also eye-opening.  It offers insight into the importance of digital culture not only in art, but also in our lives, and by reconciling the past with the future, it offers a sort of shared phenomenon that the public can all relate to.  Artists, film-makers, designers, musicians and game developers, all pushing their fields using digital media, unite for the first time inDigital Revolution.  The exhibition runs until the 14th of September, and is a must see this Summer in London.

Marina Abramović: 512 Hours

I must admit I was rather sceptical about going to see Marina Abramović’s latest attempt at performance art.  I had lost a little bit of faith in her as an artist, when she appeared  to compromise her morals by appearing in Jay Z’s latest music video back in 2013. However her most recent performance at the Serpentine Gallery proved utterly groundbreaking.

After queuing in the 26 degree heat in Kensington Gardens for almost an hour, we were finally let in.  We were told to put our bags and watches in lockers and to be absolutely silent within the space.  At this point, I had absolutely no idea what to expect, and felt surprisingly nervous.  These feelings, coupled with a sense of anxiety were aggravated even further on initially arriving into the space.  On walking in, I immediately look for Marina.  I see her nowhere and wonder whether that’s the joke of the exhibition, that she doesn’t actually bother showing up.  Instead, I find a group of people with their backs against the wall looking into the centre of the room at another group of people who are stood on a stage with their eyes close.  Some are in an almost trance like status.  Finally, Marina appears, and shortly after a guy approaches me takes me away by the hand and leads me to a chair.  He puts headphones on my ears, blocking out any sound and tells me to close my eyes.  This only adds to my anxiety.

Not long after, we feel brave enough to check out the rest of the space and discover there are two more rooms.  In the first, people are walking across the room at the slowest speed known to man, holding hands, with there eyes closed.  It’s kind of like a pagan ritual gone wrong and feels slightly awkward, so we go off to explore the other room.  This one holds around 30 camp beds, great start.  On entering we are escorted to one of the beds by another performance artist.  We are given head phones and tucked up in a blanket. It feels surreal, but at the same time incredibly comforting.  We lie here for what seems like forever, in a perpetual state of bliss with no idea of time or what is going on around us.  At one point I feel the reflection of a figure in front of my bed.  I look up and the figure is Marina’s who smiles at me and tells me to close my eyes once again.  It’s a magical moment.

On waking, we walk back into the main room and find that we have have lost the fear that had plagued our experience initially.  We stand around with our backs against the wall, until Marina approaches my friend and I and leads us over to the central stage.  She asks us to close our eyes and to switch off, so that we can give all of ourselves to the experience.  We stay here for another undocumented time frame and then walk once more to the back of the room.  Marina comes over again, and asks us what we thought of the show.  She tells us about her aim for the project and what she hopes people will get out of it.  It’s another magical moment and I can’t believe this is happening, it feels so cool and exclusive, but at the same time so natural.

What is even cooler is just how delightful and sincere Marina actually was.  She had a very warming and charming persona and genuinely wanted us to experience the exhibition in the way she had initially intended.  We were incredibly lucky to have Marina herself as a sort of constant mentor for us throughout our time at the exhibition.  I think its because she could sense the fear in us initially and wanted us to give everything we had to experience the energies and the surrounding presence of the other bodies.  We certainly felt it.

On leaving the exhibition, I felt like I had just done a hardcore mediation session.  I felt calm and content and walked with a swing in my step.  I can’t quite explain it and the fact that I can’t, makes it so special.  It’s something you have to live through yourself.  Give it your all and you will get everything from it that you deserve. In implicating our bodies in our experience and connecting them to others, it allows for a great feeling of liberation and contentment.  We shook Marina’s hand and had a few parting words with the artist before finally leaving the exhibition.  What a perfect ending to an overwhelming and intense ‘exhibition’.  I dare you to go.

 

I Went to Art Basel And I Went Naked

If you’ve read any of my articles before, you’ll be aware that I am pretty tolerant when it comes to performance art.  Despite the increasing scepticism that surrounds it, I tend to see the beauty and passion in it as inherent qualities of art in practice.  I recently wrote an article about the young performance artist Milo Moiré, who hit the headlines last month when she stood naked in a square in Cologne, pushing ‘egg’s out of her vagina.  Naturally, she got ripped by the press and the art world, but I still found myself defending her. Why? She had made a somewhat convincing statement about art and its relation to life despite a pretty volatile appearance.  She focused on concept disguised behind controversial aesthetics, and I totally rate that.

Unfortunately I can’t say the same about Moiré’s most recent attempt at performance art. It was devoid of everything great performance art should have, concept, originality and shock factor. At the annual Art Basel in Switzerland, art enthusiasts found themselves among one particular art enthusiast, who stood out because she was not wearing any clothes. Instead, she replaced her clothes with words that represented the very clothes missing from her body. Instead of wearing a t shirt, she chose to write ‘t shirt’ on her stomach.  She surprisingly enough passed rather inconspicuously among the public and even managed to get away with the act until arriving at the entrance to Art Basel, where she was asked to put on clothes or leave.

It was the inconspicuous nature of it that warrants the act ineffective and frankly embarrassing. Performance art should of course be in a separate category of itself, away from the plastic arts, but that doesn’t mean it should be allowed to ride of some sort of non existent hall pass that allows it to discount both aesthetics and concept.  What exactly was the artist trying to convey? We didn’t even get to find out because the piece was so uninteresting and devoid of excitement and brashness.

Performance Art has a pretty bad rep these days.  I guess we can’t really be surprised, especially if we compare it to its beginnings in the seventies, where originality and creativity ran wild.  It was all about power, strong visuals and long term goals.  If we want Performance Art to make a bolder message and to actually mean something, it needs to have a clear concept and above all it needs to mirror society and culture.  What else is art if it is not a reflection of our time?

p.s  my best friend really hates performance art

 

 

Collecting Air Miles While You See Your Favourite Picasso

I’ll never forget the first time I realised I truly loved art, it was the time I decided to go to a particular country purely to see one particular piece of art work in one particular art gallery.  Yes, it was a year ago that I decided to go to Madrid to see Picasso’s Guernica.  The incident was incredibly eye opening and also culminated in the start of this blog- so lets just say it was more than pretty momental.  Travelling and art are two of my greatest passions, so it makes sense to combine the pair. Whilst I’m eternally content with the unique and vast art scene in London, I am always searching for my next European adventure. I’ve comprised a list below of my top five modern art works to visit in their counterpart European City.  Who needs an excuse to go on holiday, when you can go see art?

Rachel’s Top 5 European Modern Art Pilgrimages:

*Spain: Madrid

AKA Picasso, Paella & Parraletta

WHAT? Pablo Picasso: Guernica (1937)

WHERE? The Reina Sofia, Madrid (www.museoreinasofia.es/en)

AND? In 1937, Picasso, shaken and shocked by the terror of the bombings of the Spanish town in the Basque region created Guernica to be shown at the Spanish Pavilion at the International Exhibition in Paris. The painting, as a plea against the general horrors evoked by the Spanish Civil War, quickly came to stand as a general emblem for the Spanish cause. The black and white newspaper finish to the picture can be seen as a homage to Picasso’s first reading about the bombing through the French newspaper, L’Humanité. The allusion to this devastation is rendered powerful in the painting with the twisted broken bodies, the fallen soldiers, children and animals, the reference to ‘bombilla’, or bomb, and the daggers. All those atrocities are made more unimaginably poignant by its very size, 3.5 metres tall, by 7.8 metres wide. This piece is as powerful as it is emotive, be prepared to be shocked, and to spend a lot of time hanging around it.

ALSO ENJOY? When in Spain, hot weather, sangria, tapas and free entry to the other two major museums that complete the ‘golden triangle’ in Madrid, the Prado and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum

PRICE? A LOT cheaper than London (A weekend for two, around £300 for flights and accommodation)

 

**The Netherlands: Amsterdam

AKA Van Gogh, Vondel Park & Viagra

WHAT? Van Gogh: Self Portrait (1887)

WHERE? The Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en)

AND? Vincent Van Gogh was a post-Impressionist painter of Dutch origin whose works, notable for its rough beauty, emotional honesty and bold colour, had a far-reaching influence on 20th-century art.  Ever wondered why he did so many self-portraits? He couldn’t afford to pay a model! After being told by his brother, Theo, about the new revolutionary, colourful style of French painting, Impressionism, Van Gogh moved to Paris in 1886. A year later he was to complete this piece, using rhythmic brushstrokes in striking colours.   Here, he portrays himself as a well-styled Parisian, and thus his exposure to Impressionism becomes incredibly clear, highlighted further by his interest in colour and dramatic brushwork.

ALSO ENJOY? Cycles around the city, lounging in parks and plenty of smokes and pancakes. While in Amsterdam, also go to the Van Gogh and the Stedelijk Museum

PRICE? Cheaper than London (A weekend for two, with flights and accommodation, £350)

 

***France: Paris

AKA Delaunay, Disco’s & Disaproving Looks

WHAT? Robert Delaunay: L’Équipe de Cardiff (1912)

WHERE? The Museum of Modern Art- The City of Paris  (http://www.mam.paris.fr/en)

AND? In 1912 Delaunay began the first of several versions of The Cardiff Team. The motif derived from a newspaper photograph of a Cardiff-Paris rugby match, which showed players jumping for the ball. Delaunay added Paris’s famous Ferris wheel and an Astra billboard, which advertises an aircraft construction company. The letters on the hoarding to the right derive from the artist’s own name. The Eiffel Tower features in many of Delaunay’s paintings, as the artist regarded it as the archetypal symbol of modernity. It is here seen emerging above the fragment of his name.  The painting is bright and fun, it points to futurism via movement, modernity and dynamism.

ALSO ENJOY? Fine dining and even finer wine in the City of Love.  While you’re here, why not also check out the Pompidou, the Louvre at the Orsay?

PRICE? On a par with London (Weekend for two, with Eurostar and hotel, £450)

 

****Norway: Oslo

AKA Munch, moodiness & melodies

WHAT? Edvard Munch: The Scream (1893)

WHERE? The National Museum of Art, Architecture & Design, Oslo (www.nasjonalmuseet.no/en/)

AND? Scream was painted in 1893 during a transitional period in art history, following the end of the photographic and before the Expressionists and other artists of the early twentieth century made it a trend to put a focus on the expression of their inner feelings and emotions through their art.  What makes Munch one of the most interesting artists to come out of modern art, is that he shows us a glimpse of his inner troubles and feelings of anxiety through his painting. He therefore puts more importance on personal meaning than on technical skill or “beauty,” a traditional goal of art.  It was painted the same year his sister was diagnosed with insanity, and It was painted using oil and pastel on cardboard. It is incredibly frightening and powerful.

ALSO ENJOY? Relax around the lakes, enjoy the breath-taking Opera House, and be prepared to fork out for a pint of beer! In terms of art, The Office for Contemporary Art and the Munch Museum, an entire museum dedicated to the artist himself, are essentials.

PRICE? MORE expensive than London! (Weekend for two with flights and hotel accommodation, £500)

 

*****Austria: Vienna

AKA Klimt, Kisses & The Konzerthaus

WHAT? Gustav Klimt: The Kiss (1908)

WHERE? The Austrian Gallery Belvedere, Vienna (www.belvedere.at/en)

AND?The painting is easily Klimt’s most famous work, and holds particular strength in the History of Art.  Completed in Vienna, where it still resides today, the painting depicts a couple kissing in a style that is both geometric but at the same time realistic.  This particular kiss occupied Klimt throughout his career and became the subject of numerous works.  There have been numerous attempts to identify the woman portrayed in The Kiss. Those mentioned have included Klimt’s life-long partner Emilie Flöge, but also Adele Bloch-Bauer. The subject’s well-proportioned facial features reveal a similarity to many of the women that Klimt portrayed, but ultimately they cannot be unequivocally attributed to a particular person.  Finally, what makes the technique of the work so unique, is its incorporation of a gold leaf on canvas, rather than simply a classic oil on canvas.

ALSO ENJOY? A Viking tour, some apple strudel and a visit the State Opera for a show.  Why not also visit the Museum of Modern art and the Museum of Fine Arts!

PRICE? Cheaper than London! (Weekend for two with flights and hotel accommodation, £400)

 

Provocative Performance Artist Reenacts Gustave Courbets ‘The Origin of the World’ By Displaying Her Own Vagina

Just as I was beginning to despair with the recent ‘attention seeking’ acts of performance art, one young artist comes along and changes all that.  YES, Deborah de Robertis constitutes a piece of performance art work that directly plays with and challenges Gustave Courbet’s ‘The Origins of the World’.  Indeed if we are aware of the incredibly racy nature of Courbet’s 1866 painting we can only imagine the provocative nature of the act that this performance artist undergoes.  If you weren’t aware, and as the title makes clear the painting references to the beginning of human life, the place where it all starts.  It is a portrait of the female genitalia.  Whilst the painting was seen as a great scandal at the time, today we recognise it an artistic treasure uniting themes such as realism, romance, eroticism and voyerism.  It’s an incredibly powerful piece, it disturbs just as it incites.

Last week de Robertis, draped in a short gold sequin dress, entered ironically, rather inconspicuously into Room 20 of the Musée d’Orsay.  She placed herself boldly and un-ashamedly directly in front of the Courbet masterpiece, but at the same time, she gave nothing away.  A few seconds later she opens her legs revealing her womanhood.  It is as raw as it is intense, and at the same time rather too easy to watch given the brashness of her display.  But what is it about this piece of performance art that allows it to stand so far from other more recent contemporary pieces?

Before you go any further, check out the video of the performance here: *high sexual content ALERT* http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1yaxll_une-artiste-expose-son-sexe-sous-l-origine-du-monde_news

There was something incredibly raw and emotional about her performance, surpassing the so called ‘aesthetics of beauty’ that the History of Art proclaims to, pushing her performance one step ahead.  It is a declaration of a message about women by women to women, to men and to society.  Did you know that in the 1990’s, less than 5% of the artists in the Modern Art section of New York’s Metropolitan Museum were women, but 85% of the nudes were female?

As always the most frustrating and often most entertaining part of reading articles like these is the sprawl of comments made by the great public.  One ‘top commenter’ AKA a Carol Dixson naively says ‘I’m guessing about half the population in the world has one. Hers is special? This “artist” needs to get over herself.’  It is comments (attitudes) like this that seems to disregard  the powerful message behind the act of performance art.  If you don’t like it that is fine, but with conceptual art, with performance art, it’s more the message or concept behind it that becomes the most powerful.  I don’t think those gallery-goers or indeed the security staff at the Orsay will forget about this incident for a long time.  And why should they?

Who knew that a vagina that in art is so treasured, becomes so disturbing and hated in real life? Talk about hypocrisy!

Despite the much despised custom that the French adhere to move things at a very glacial pace, it still didn’t take long before De Robertis was removed by security staff.  She has been handed over to the police who have the power to charge her with sexual exhibitionism.

But De Robertis justifies her performance.  ‘If you ignore the context, you could construe this performance as an act of exhibitionism, but what I did was not an impulsive act,” she explained to Luxemburger Wort. “There is a gap in art history, the absent point of view of the object of the gaze. In his realist painting, the painter shows the open legs, but the vagina remains closed. He does not reveal the hole, that is to say, the eye. I am not showing my vagina, but I am revealing what we do not see in the painting, the eye of the vagina, the black hole, this concealed eye, this chasm, which, beyond the flesh, refers to infinity, to the origin of the origin.’

I couldn’t agree more with the brave young woman and neither it seems did the surprised gallery-goers who were quick to applaud her performance.  Why call her brave? She believed in promoting her own message so much that she sacrificed her own position and persona to do so.  Displays of sexual exhibitionism in such a public place like the Musée D’Orsay are going to get you arrested. Yes she broke the law, yes the performance was extremely sexually explicit and yes it came with absolutely NO warning, but this was the very beauty of it! And there is something incredibly powerful and beautiful about her performance. It’s funny how quickly the public go a-wall when a woman’s genitalia is involved.

Last time I checked almost 50% of the population have a vagina, and the other 50% are no stranger to them, so why the outcry? Does it take a nude performance artist disrupting a casual day of museum revelry to make the world notice? Apparently so…

Should Picasso’s Guernica be used as a tool to aid dance performance?

It is so great to have a best friend who not only shares your passion for art, but who also upholds your very specific out look on art.  Whilst we don’t always agree on everything (Banksy & nude photography for example), we seem to share a very old fashioned approach to art that looks to modern art as the centre for artistic belief.  This morning, I received a message from Alice about the recent act of performance art that uses Guernica to aid in the visualisation and comprehension of performance art. Whilst I believe performance art can be revolutionary and exciting, I, like Alice, see that the use of Guernica here is somewhat problematic.

Last Sunday, at the Reina Sofia (where Guernica has been on display for nearly 80 years), a young man, Josue Ullate, leaped around the piece in black tights, and with a bare chest.  This ‘dance’ lasted almost five minutes and was inspired by a piece by the flamenco singer, Enrique Morente.  As part of International Dance Day Celebrations, 80 people were to attend, who had won tickets by applying rather democratically, on the internet.

There is nothing else democratic about this dance act.  I recall back to seeing Guernica last summer in Madrid.  As impressive as Picasso’s anti-war message had come to stand for me, as it had done for the population at the time, I remember my experience being slightly plagued by the conditions in which we were to see the work.  Naturally the piece was surrounded by gallery attendants and security guards, and photos were not permitted, but there was something even more constrained and formal about the atmosphere.  One almost felt as if we weren’t quite worthy to view the painting.  Picasso would quake in his grave, if he understood these were the conditions to which we saw one of his most iconic pieces (or any of his pieces at all).

If we are to abide to these strict rules conditioning Guernica in its every day display, we should not allow them to slip for the sake of a performance.  Whist the performance came to stand for a memorial, it opened up to a strict state of contradictions, shedding light on the unbalance of the hierarchies existing in art.  Let us not forget the original message of Guernica.  It was created by Picasso in order to help the plight of the Spanish Civil War, and to help show the suffering of the Spanish cause.  Guernica is very close to my heart, and whilst I do not believe that performance like this reduces it statue, I do believe that its curation should be examined further.  Guernica comes to stand as poignantly today, as it ever did in Spain, and why celebrate this in performance, if we cannot everyday?

Performance Art: Powerful or Pompous?

I enjoy my morning ritual of browsing the Guardian and the Independent for their up-to-date art criticisms.  Whilst I more often than not disagree with the writings of these art journalists, I do admire their brutal honesty.  This morning, I came upon an article titled, ‘The artist who lays eggs with her vagina- or why performance art is so silly’ by Jonathan Jones of the Guardian. Jones examines a contemporary case of performance art by the German artist, Milo Moiré.  Moiré reveals her naked body in a public square in Cologne, and in doing so, provokes a spectacle by creating abstract pieces by pushing eggs filled with paint out of her vagina, onto the bare canvas below her.

As a girl who has a penchant for art history and in particular, modern art between 1920 and 1970, I should really condemn this sort of performance? Yes, I struggle to comprehend it and even explain it to others, but there is something quite compelling about this ‘performance’ that fits quite nicely into the way art should be embodied. Firstly, the piece makes a statement.  It crusades for feminism and equal rights for women, and so, in my eyes, it is brave and uncompromising.  Secondly, whilst the performance aspect of the work can stand alone as an art work, the artist herself creates a lasting piece of work in the form of the abstract paintings.  By creating a performance, she creates work and also leaves a powerful message.  Art should be non-exclusive, and devoid of pretence.  It should be an open concept that is not restrained by any definitions to which the art world or the public deem it to be.  If it affects you, surely we can surrender this concept as art?

‘Performance art is a joke. Taken terribly seriously by the art world, it is a litmus test of pretension and intellectual dishonesty. If you are wowed by it, you are either susceptible to pseudo-intellectual guff, or lying’ (Jonathan Jones, The Guardian)

I don’t agree with Jonathan Jones. I agree that there is still some sort of nostalgia for 70’s performance art, heralded by those such as Burden, Gilbert and George and Abramovic, but with our contemporary present, art should move forward and embody a direct representation of this time, rather than always looking back to the past.  Naturally, life in 2014 is completely different to life in the 70’s, we have new concerns and we should tackle these in different ways.  Can we still relate to 70’s performance art? I certainly can.  But can today’s generation, with a limited knowledge of art, really do so?

Whilst Moiré’s performance is shocking, vulgar and incredibly provocative, surely her aim has been achieved? We are all talking about her performance.  Whilst this may in the form of humour or irony, she has aligned herself as a performance artist by creating a public spectacle, that will not leave the minds of the public, nor the art world, for a long time.

Is today’s performance art a joke? What do you think?

Please read more here: http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2014/apr/22/artist-eggs-vagina-paintings-performance-art-milo-moire