Friday, October 14, 2011

DAY 13 - GUGGENHEIM: IT'S ART DARLING!

Yes indeed. What an incredible building this one is! A big slap on the back to Frank and the team for pulling this one together! It's enough to put the artwork within it's walls to shame and thats a big call... maybe too big.

Let's just say, whether you're looking at a Jackson Pollack that could wallpaper an entire 80s themed house or walking through Richard Serra's overwhelming metal sculptures (how did they get them in here? and I've never gone into a panic over steel before), you never forget where you are.

My eyes kept drifting off the artwork and up to the glass ceilings or along the curved walls and down to... woops! a big shoe print right at the base of that sculpture on the pristine white part!

I wandered around in there for most of the day, wondering, are architects mathematicians or artists? It's beyond me how anyone can create something so beautiful and complicated and at the same time be absolutely sure that it's not going to fall down on everyone.

Every place that you visit has an audio tour. No exception here.

I am standing in front of a sculpture that is a plain bronze ball on a marble stand, my headphones say to me

'This is a sculpture of startling simplicity'.

It didn't startle me but I did have a little giggle. Oh ohh... The seed of misbehaviour!

I am standing in front of a huge canvas. It is completely black. The headphones are talking about the complexity of 'the white line'. The white line... the white line... aha! I see it now! Right at the top of the canvas. It's very small.

The headphones tell me that all the canvases in this room have complex white lines and are all exploring the same theme. I turn around and see that there is one of these huge black square canvases on every wall. I also see that there has been a man standing next to me the whole time. He has been listening to the commentary about the line too. We both look at each other for a moment and then explode with laughter.

We walk away from the painting, laughing out loud. People are looking now. He's going off about something in Italian and I'm talking back in English and we keep saying 'comprende!' to each other and then have to leave the room because it's too funny to be in there anymore.

The headphones also made mention of an artist who went off and worked in a factory so he could get in touch with the common man. I wished the Italian guy was around for that one.

I've always said, there's a fine line between great street theatre and being a wanker.

I'm not shitting on the art. I loved it. All three hours of it. However, there's always potential for wobbly receptions when it comes to creative productions, because they're so subjective. Its like other people's dress sense, you can find what another person's wearing completely laughable while they proudly walk around confident in their own imagined style... and we all know this works the other way around.

How often have you heard about the artists who never got to experience their own popularity because, while they were alive, everyone thought their work was crap? Well a lot of them are hanging in this incredible building and I've been thinking about them all day.

A big slab of my admiration to the artists out there who believe so strongly in what they create, that they devote their entire lives to creating it, despite what people say. That sort of focus and passion can evolve into some incredibly beautiful pieces of art, even if it does take half a century before someone appreciates it.

I think it does the Guggenheim justice to have the work of such people hanging on it's walls.

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