Beautiful. What a profound visual metaphor. As for your experience overall, it reminds me of being at the Getty - the hump of humanity around Van Gogh's Irises made it impossible to see, while The Milliners by Degas hung quietly in the corner--to me, a far more brilliant and moving work. Of course, the Getty is not the Pompidou! Same type of crowds though, it seems.
Oh the Getty sounds like a real treat as well. I think it's all about finding those moments for oneself in these spaces, which really still are designed to be appreciated first and foremost with one's eyes and silence. There's magic in em yet! But alas, my brain can't help but look at the rusty side of the coin, too.
I’m sure it’s just an accident of history that this particular Degas doesn’t draw the crowds. Most people like what they’re told to like. But there’s a lot of artwork in that robber baron palace that is rightly ignored. Neither the absence or presence of a crowd can tell you very much about the work.
"Most people like what they're told to like" indeed. It's why the authoritarians are having a dance party these days across the world. Popularity is a fickle thing, indeed
Enjoyable content about enjoyable content. Engagement. Engagement. (but also more authentically, i enjoyed reading this and i really should've gone to the museum all the time when i was unemployed because it was free because france, but it is no longer free, and I am still not going to the museum so maybe we could go together if i can ever wake up in time)
I'm not sure I'd classify Magritte or Varo as content--it's art--but I do think engaging w/ museums helps us spot the difference. See what I did there? See ya in the lobby xoxoxoxo
To that I say: you've been blasted with too much content and not enough art. I just finished re-watching the Kurt Vonnegut documentary "Unstuck in Time." It can shine the shoes of even the most cynical of poets
I loved listening to this instead of reading it. The interlude description was so nice and vivid. I kept getting stuck on the phrase "Good and Evil don't exist." I don't know why. Maybe because they both exist, do they negate one another? I also liked the image at the end of the consumption of art by capturing it on your camera. That has always seemed funny to me as you can most likely look up any of these works online to see them. Maybe people want to remember that THEY saw it. I'm really glad you got to the museum on the last day. Seems you were able to capture it though. Much better than an iPhone photo. :)
I was being a bit cheeky by keeping the G and E capital. Lower case goods and evils abound. But the Big Ones, not so sure. I think, in fact, that belief in the Great Binary of Light over Darkness may in fact be one of the guarantees of lower-case evil. But that's probably a different essay.
I enjoyed the meta quality of this piece. The absurd images of the real (your consumers) contrasted with the surreal images on the walls. In this budding age of AI, we mere consumers are faced with the conundrum so many visual artists and philosophers have struggled with for centuries: What is real? If anything we can imagine can be made real, then what is beyond real? I wouldn't be surprised if many of the images in the exhibit seem quaint given what H. sapiens has shown itself capable of manifesting in the 100 years since these artists reimagined their subjective realities. And then there is the meta quality that is works meant to depict that which is beyond real becoming (intentionally if Breton is our guide) artifacts of a time and a movement; reduced, as it were, to being real.
Breton realizing Surrealism was the solution to turn the very real traumas of PTSD from real happenings into non realities for the brain to sublimate is perhaps the most ironic reality of all!
What is real in the era of the hyper real and the artificial real? Great question. I think there's something important about that which is meta insofar as it forces us to be in constant conversation with our supposedly suspended beliefs. Reminding the reader / viewer / listener that they are, in fact, listening to a song, or are witnessing a specific moment in time, is as real as it gets for me these days. Then again, that's why I'm a big fan of metamodernism, acknowledging the romantic at the same time as the realistic, the sublime as well as the grotesque, etc. Towards the great oscillation we swing!
Beautiful. What a profound visual metaphor. As for your experience overall, it reminds me of being at the Getty - the hump of humanity around Van Gogh's Irises made it impossible to see, while The Milliners by Degas hung quietly in the corner--to me, a far more brilliant and moving work. Of course, the Getty is not the Pompidou! Same type of crowds though, it seems.
Oh the Getty sounds like a real treat as well. I think it's all about finding those moments for oneself in these spaces, which really still are designed to be appreciated first and foremost with one's eyes and silence. There's magic in em yet! But alas, my brain can't help but look at the rusty side of the coin, too.
Ah yes! I always go to the painting no one is interested in. So much more relaxing.
I’m sure it’s just an accident of history that this particular Degas doesn’t draw the crowds. Most people like what they’re told to like. But there’s a lot of artwork in that robber baron palace that is rightly ignored. Neither the absence or presence of a crowd can tell you very much about the work.
😁 you’re making me chuckle.
"Most people like what they're told to like" indeed. It's why the authoritarians are having a dance party these days across the world. Popularity is a fickle thing, indeed
“Who are we to keep the moon locked in her cage, force-feeding her our hungry vision of the cosmos?”
Thank you for your thoughtful repose on the surrealness of these *pop* moments.
Thank you for reading. Here's to letting the moon shine bright!
A very fine take-away... I don't think I will look at my coffee grinder the same way again.
Love the moon locked in a cage phrase. Nor Hall's great book on the Feminine "The Moon and the Virgin" comes to mind! Merci!
That book title is lo and behold now on the back of "The Requisitions!" I used her blurb on the back cover ... synchronicity indeed
Enjoyable content about enjoyable content. Engagement. Engagement. (but also more authentically, i enjoyed reading this and i really should've gone to the museum all the time when i was unemployed because it was free because france, but it is no longer free, and I am still not going to the museum so maybe we could go together if i can ever wake up in time)
I'm not sure I'd classify Magritte or Varo as content--it's art--but I do think engaging w/ museums helps us spot the difference. See what I did there? See ya in the lobby xoxoxoxo
Often feels like the only difference between art and content is the packaging these days
To that I say: you've been blasted with too much content and not enough art. I just finished re-watching the Kurt Vonnegut documentary "Unstuck in Time." It can shine the shoes of even the most cynical of poets
I loved listening to this instead of reading it. The interlude description was so nice and vivid. I kept getting stuck on the phrase "Good and Evil don't exist." I don't know why. Maybe because they both exist, do they negate one another? I also liked the image at the end of the consumption of art by capturing it on your camera. That has always seemed funny to me as you can most likely look up any of these works online to see them. Maybe people want to remember that THEY saw it. I'm really glad you got to the museum on the last day. Seems you were able to capture it though. Much better than an iPhone photo. :)
I was being a bit cheeky by keeping the G and E capital. Lower case goods and evils abound. But the Big Ones, not so sure. I think, in fact, that belief in the Great Binary of Light over Darkness may in fact be one of the guarantees of lower-case evil. But that's probably a different essay.
I will have to try that! I did not realize there was an option to listen. Such a fascinating platform this is.
I enjoyed the meta quality of this piece. The absurd images of the real (your consumers) contrasted with the surreal images on the walls. In this budding age of AI, we mere consumers are faced with the conundrum so many visual artists and philosophers have struggled with for centuries: What is real? If anything we can imagine can be made real, then what is beyond real? I wouldn't be surprised if many of the images in the exhibit seem quaint given what H. sapiens has shown itself capable of manifesting in the 100 years since these artists reimagined their subjective realities. And then there is the meta quality that is works meant to depict that which is beyond real becoming (intentionally if Breton is our guide) artifacts of a time and a movement; reduced, as it were, to being real.
Breton realizing Surrealism was the solution to turn the very real traumas of PTSD from real happenings into non realities for the brain to sublimate is perhaps the most ironic reality of all!
What is real in the era of the hyper real and the artificial real? Great question. I think there's something important about that which is meta insofar as it forces us to be in constant conversation with our supposedly suspended beliefs. Reminding the reader / viewer / listener that they are, in fact, listening to a song, or are witnessing a specific moment in time, is as real as it gets for me these days. Then again, that's why I'm a big fan of metamodernism, acknowledging the romantic at the same time as the realistic, the sublime as well as the grotesque, etc. Towards the great oscillation we swing!
Terrific take!