Wednesday, May 07, 2008

When Art Gets You By Surprise!

The art exhibitions I visit weekly in New York, are not always planned; although often I go to New York knowing which art exhibitions to go to, how much time to spend there and what to do next, many times I get to see exhibitions just by chance and purely unintentional.

Couple of weeks ago I experienced another coincidental art visit, thanks to Pope Benedict XVI. Because of the papal visit, some streets were either closed or overwhelmingly crowded. That led us to the 63rd Street, where we came upon Illustrators 50 Annual Exhibition in The Society of Illustrators. It was an interesting visit, I don’t know if that show is still on but I know the Society of Illustrators has a permanent collection and interesting exhibitions from time to time. I really liked the works by Sterling Hundley and Chris Buzelli; Hundley won the Gold award in the Advertising category and Buzelli won the Gold award in the Institutional category.

What is Illustration and what is the difference between an illustration and say a painting; I can say that an illustration usually accompanies a written text to both decorate the text and make the understanding of the text easier. An illustration is usually a figurative drawing or painting, in which the subject matter is usually more important than the form. You can read more about the origins of Illustration in America here.


More Surprising:

Ever heard of a leather coat that lived through an art exhibition and then died: Victimless Leather, one of the pieces in the “Design and the Elastic Mind” * exhibition at the MOMA was a tiny coat made up of embryonic stem cells taken from mice. The coat grew so big that it died 5 weeks into the exhibition. The Victimless Leather is part of a project called Tissue Culture and Art founded and developed by artists Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr. This piece was not as victimless as its title suggests; there was a dead coat at the end. Read more in The Art Newspaper! The Design and Elastic Mind exhibition will be up at MOMA until May 12. Although there will be no coat, there are other fun pieces to inhale.


Genetic Adjustment, By Chris Buzelli
Gene therapy offers hope to kids with Muscular Dystrophy


Mother of Pearl, by Sterling Hundley


* PS. Charlie Rose & Design and the Elastic Mind, is an interview with Paola Antonelli, the senior curator at the Department of Architecture and Design at MOMA . This is a great interview, not only because it is one of Charlie Rose's interviews but also because it will give you the heads up in understanding the main idea behind technological based art exhibitions such as Design and the Elastic Mind. I just watched this today (May 8th 2008) on channel Thirteen.

2 comments:

Mersedeh said...

OK, since no one else is saying it, I will be the brave one and say it....I think the living leather jacket is scary!...furthermore...I am happy it died! I realize it is a loss to the Art world and I am probably considered a retard in the "scientist" world as well, but something inside me just gets freaked out by a living/growing leather jacket!...it's too futuristic....

But is that the point? Is this the trend? Is Art heading in the same direction as Science? Will Test-Tubes and Experiments and issues of Ethics now be a growing part of the artistic debate as well as the scientific/political debate? and if so, why?....hmmm...!! Maybe, I should go read the rest of those links you included!

Thanks for all the cool topics girly!

Tameshk said...

Mersedeh Joonam

Those are great questions? I happy that you brought them up. Actually in my links there is no direct answer to these questions!

I think the whole idea is to bring the two often-thought-apart worlds (science and Art) closer together in order to create a collaborative relationship between the world of science and that of art. Design is a very tricky word, both have its definitions if arts and sciences; t

And how can that collaboration be useful here: Stem Cell researchers (embryonic) are able to give any shapes to these cells (as you see here it looks like a Coat) but it is hard for them yet, to design the cells to become exactly like Body Organs. And here the idea of an artist-scientist comes in handy.

I personally am sorry that the coat died, although think compare to the many works of art that were destroyed during the two World Wars and because of other disasters, this lost was not irreplaceable one for the art world.