Rothko was different than I thought it would be. Once we walked inside the gallery, the show was billed as "Rothko: The Late Years" which explained the lack of typical Rothkos in the show. Saera and I split an audio guide, as in we swapped out the cheap headset for a pair of iPod earbuds and each had one ear listening to the recording. We also carried around folding chairs, and just looked very studious in general. In general, I really enjoyed the show. It was well laid out and the audio guide gave helpful information. Apparently, Rothko was one of those painters who was very moved by music, so the audio guide had selections from certain music that you could listen to with different pieces. Lots of Mozart! Among the pieces in the exhibit, the ones that I found to be a new concept to me were a series he did of Black on Black that focused on very slight hue changes, ie. red-black vs. blue-black and also thinking about the quality of matte vs. glossy paint in terms of reflection and absorption of light. It was just something that you cannot grasp from a picture of one of the paintings from a book. It made me really happy that I was able to see them in person.
I really had no idea what to expect of Cildo Meireles. A few weeks ago, a one room gallery was built in the plaza at out school (due to it's proximity to another Tate building) with one of his "pieces", and I thought it was just confusing and didn't know what to make of it. Saera and I stopped for a coffee before going in and on the wall advertising the show, I saw a picture of this:
About 4 years ago, my Grandma was a docent for a show at LACMA called Beyond Geometry, which included this piece. With this slight bit of knowledge of the guy, we went into the show.
So Cildo Meireles is a Conceptual/ Installation Artist. Being a fairly traditional Museum patron, I was confused at first at the fact that people were touching, kicking, even breaking stuff and the guards were not the least bit concerned. But once I got over my initial reaction to not touch, it was amazing. One installation "Through" was a sort of maze, but all the walls were somewhat transparent, including several made of aquariums filled with translucent fish! The floor was several thicknesses of broken panes of glass. So just imagine walking through a maze while continually stepping in broken glass, even sometimes breaking the glass further. It sounds crazy, but it was really cool. There were 8 large installations along with a room of his earlier work. It was totally worth 3 pounds. When we were leaving, there was a que to get out the door, which was confusing until we were told there was a special last piece everyone was waiting for. The line halved in size as everyone was told the would have to take off their shoes and socks and dusk masks were handed out to those of us still remaining. Occasionally, we could see someone coming back out of the installation room and they were covered head to toe in dust. We considered not going because it seemed really messy, and no one would tell us what the dust was (the dust makes brought me back to the days of the dye lab) but then we figured it was a one in a lifetime experience, so we went for it. At this point, most other people had dropped out of the line. We headed into a holding cell, where we saw people leaving the installation brushing off excess dust. And then we went in. So imagine a room 30ft by 40ft filled to right below you knee with white powder. Once we fully stepped in, the door was shut behind us and the room nearly went pitch black except we could tell there was a light source off to one side, so we started walking towards it. Turning a corner, we realize it is a fake candle placed in the powder. The whole thing was so weird, and hard to fully describe the feeling, but it was so strange and wonderful. We later figured out he powder was talcum powder, which made my feet feel awesome for the rest of the day.
It was a really fun day, especially since we weren't expecting to have the time free. We later found out that the teacher had sent an e-mail out telling us all that our assignment for the week was to go out to a new show that challenges you to think about the modern approach to viewing art. Well, look at that, we did the homework before we even knew we HAD homework.
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