On art

This Saturday, the Duke, two friends and I spent the afternoon in the art gallery.

An exhibit, labelled From Monet to Dali, focusing on the great artists from 1864 to 1964, was being featured.

While I am hardly an art connoisseur, and I in fact resent those who try to analyze art in extreme detail (as with poetry, I believe your visceral first reaction is the most important), it was intriguing to see the works of such famed artists as Renoir, Picasso, Monet, Manet, Rodin, Van Gogh and Dali, and hear the stories behind their work.

For instance, Rodin's The Age of Bronze was so anatomically detailed that there was an uproar about the work, as people believed it was not a sculpture, but rather an actual molding of the model. The model had to volunteer to have an encasing done of him in bronze to show that it was indeed different from the actual work.

It was also intriguing hearing about how evidence of social change was displayed in art. The paintings of this era were not, as it the past, heavy on deities and the upper class. As well, a lot of impressionist and post-impressionist works were not heavy on symbolism (though this definitely was the case for surrealism). They instead were just paintings of real life, particularly that of the lower classes. It is strange to thing of how the subjects used to be more limited to the upper class, as if they were the only ones living lives worthy of art.

I bought a print of Rousseau's "Fight between a Tiger and Buffalo". Another random fact-- despite his focus on the tropical in many of his works, Rousseau never left France. Which may explain why the bananas are upside down in this painting.

Upstairs from this exhibit, and having a little more breathing room, was a retrospective on the art of Huang Yong Ping.

The contrast between these two exhibits was an eye opening experience about the diversity of art.

Ping thrives on controversy and the unusual. I was more compelled to take pictures of his work, because, while the photos in the first exhibit were beautiful and doubtlessly many were controversial in their time, they weren't the conversation pieces that Ping's were.

(excuse the quality, as they were taken on my cell phone)




For instance, this was some sort of a wolf/crocodile/mermaid cross dining on spiritual symbols being dangled by a fisherman.


I found this one charming, though I don't want to think what happened to the poor explorer to whom this hat belongs.


I challenge you not to giggle at this one!

There was also an enormous model of a crashed Chinese spy plane you could walk in, filled with bats, that apparently didn't please the Chinese government a great deal; two large cages, featuring only knawed bones and petrified feces; and wooden vertabrae of an enormous python dangling for something like 50 feet over the other displays.

However, the centerpiece of this retrospective was controversy and the dichotomously posed question of whether animal rights or artistic freedom is tantamount. Essentially, without going into too many details, his piece, entailed "Theatre of the World", had a variety of animals, specifically lizards, spiders, scorpions, snakes, and insects, all in a model of a panopticon prison. The SPCA claimed it was inhumane, the artist and the gallery claimed the work was making a strong point and the SPCA's requests were censorship. Ultimately, the animals were all removed, and now insults abound, calling both the SPCA and Ping extremists, etc, etc. I loathe to take sides on such a thing, as I think it is too complex of an issue to simply place one value over the other, and I just want to stay away from either side after seeing the dogma being spewed from both sides.

Yet, it is a little refreshing to see art creating controversy again, because at least it is drawing people back into the gallery for something besides readily recognized names.