![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
millionreasonsSunday we went bowling but Saturday was art, plus arguing about TVs in John Lewis (makes a change from couples disagreeing in Ikea). We went to the Royal Academy for the Anselm Kiefer retrospective and then onto Hauser and Wirth. I saw an Kiefer exhibition at the South London Gallery some years ago; the paintings were called things like Dark Light That Falls from the Stars and I was very affected by the grey, intricate, pestilent pictures. This exhibition moved me less, perhaps because I was hungry, perhaps because to provide VFM, there were 12 rooms, perhaps because the South London gallery is more of an intimate setting. Anyway, I did like that Kiefer seems to be half painter half sculptor, there were paintings of trees, with twigs attached, another with triffid-like dead sunflowers hanging off of it (he is the anti-Van Gogh).
At H&W, I wanted to see Pierre Huyghe, but ended up in Paul McCarthy next door. Yes, we went to see porn by mistake, honest, officer. The thing about painting people shagging, with overlays from rude magazines, may have been shocking in the 70s, or to Mary Whitehouse in the '90s, god rest her unimaginative soul, but now, when you can see any kind of perversion with a few mouse clicks, it seems a little dull. The artist also had a bit of a coprophilia thing going (I do hope those poor girls were actually chewing chocolate), which reminded me of the film You, Me And Everyone We Know, in which a small boy writes scatological stuff about poo going back up your bum. But being obsessed with shit when you're in your 60s seems a little pathetic. I think if a little more humour had been interjected (i.e. one piece had a sock puppet in place of a penis), it might have been more fun, but as it was, I just said Hmmm, and Very challenging, and we escaped next door.
There were four pieces in the Huyghe exhibition: a beautiful close up film of insects trapped in amber. It made me think of the inside of a kaleidoscope.
The second objet was three aquariums (aquaria?) that stood in the middle of the room, housing isotopes transplanted from Monet’s ponds in Giverny, algae, fronds, and the odd fish and salamander. They were lit yellow, green and mud, and reminded me of Rothko, the seeping colour, the square blocks of hue. There was also a very disturbing film of a monkey dressed in a waitress uniform and wearing a (realistic) human mask. I think it was trying to say something about the nature of identity but it made me feel bad for the poor monkey, trapped inside an art project.
I walked straight past the first piece, a headless, reclining statue, but went back to have another look, and read in the blurb that the figure contains an internal heating device that encourages the growth of moss and mimics human circulation; the inanimate thing seemed closer to humanity than the unfortunate simian.
At H&W, I wanted to see Pierre Huyghe, but ended up in Paul McCarthy next door. Yes, we went to see porn by mistake, honest, officer. The thing about painting people shagging, with overlays from rude magazines, may have been shocking in the 70s, or to Mary Whitehouse in the '90s, god rest her unimaginative soul, but now, when you can see any kind of perversion with a few mouse clicks, it seems a little dull. The artist also had a bit of a coprophilia thing going (I do hope those poor girls were actually chewing chocolate), which reminded me of the film You, Me And Everyone We Know, in which a small boy writes scatological stuff about poo going back up your bum. But being obsessed with shit when you're in your 60s seems a little pathetic. I think if a little more humour had been interjected (i.e. one piece had a sock puppet in place of a penis), it might have been more fun, but as it was, I just said Hmmm, and Very challenging, and we escaped next door.
There were four pieces in the Huyghe exhibition: a beautiful close up film of insects trapped in amber. It made me think of the inside of a kaleidoscope.
The second objet was three aquariums (aquaria?) that stood in the middle of the room, housing isotopes transplanted from Monet’s ponds in Giverny, algae, fronds, and the odd fish and salamander. They were lit yellow, green and mud, and reminded me of Rothko, the seeping colour, the square blocks of hue. There was also a very disturbing film of a monkey dressed in a waitress uniform and wearing a (realistic) human mask. I think it was trying to say something about the nature of identity but it made me feel bad for the poor monkey, trapped inside an art project.
I walked straight past the first piece, a headless, reclining statue, but went back to have another look, and read in the blurb that the figure contains an internal heating device that encourages the growth of moss and mimics human circulation; the inanimate thing seemed closer to humanity than the unfortunate simian.
