Wednesday, December 27, 2006

in which we leave the warm, heated home in search of some art and culture

today, four of us bravely crept out of the warm, heated home and went to the walker art center, the recently reopened contemporary art museum in minneapolis. the building itself, unfortunately, was quite underwhelming - too much aluminum! not enough windows! but fortunately the art and work within was quite the opposite.

there was:
  • a beautiful piece by yoko ono called a painting to hammer a nail in. the hammer was made of glass and the painting was made of a mirror, thereby making the viewer - you - part of the work. yoko ono rules, and i'll be sure to see her retrospective, grapefruit, at the berkeley art museum.
  • an inspired collection of postwar abstraction, called the shape of time. the work ranged from robert rauschenberg and jasper johns (including two works by johns from the collection of my brother-in-law, jean castelli) to pop artists like roy lichtenstein and andy warhol.
  • a massive walk-through installation by thomas hirschhorn called cavemanman. made primarily of cardboard and tape, with posters of pop and porn stars, cans of soda pop, and a library of left-leaning books on philosophy, oppression, and revolution, the piece is a series of caves, a labyrinth of tunnels, serving as a metaphor, hirschhorn tells us, for our minds - littered, distracted, and filled with garbage. curious? the village voice has more.
unfortunately, "my complement, my enemy, my oppressor, my love," the first full-scale american retrospective of the work of kara walker, wasn't yet opened and won't be until february 17. also filed under unfortunate: walker's screening of zidane: a 21st century portrait ("using 17 synchronized cameras, the film tracks the world-class athlete from the first kick until he leaves the field") takes place well after we leave minneapolis, between february 9-11.

4 comments:

kq said...

right on googs. hope you and swash are having fun. please promise me that you will power walk around the lakes and toss your chapeau into the air blithely just like mary tyler moore. i so loved her when i was a child. it's funny for all that love, i have never been to the minneapple to reenact the opening sequences myself. at any rate, big love to you both.

Anonymous said...

I grew up with the Walker and foolishly thought there was one art museum like that in every town. Haven't been around recently to see the new outdoor structure, but I'm glad they are still doing good curation. And believe me, it's not *that* cold yet.

Anonymous said...

q: normally i'd make you that promise but ... i forgot to bring my chapeau! i'll see what we can do.

j: i always forget you're from around here. regarding the weather, which the locals refer to as warm, it really is beautiful, just, um, a little brisk for my california tooshie.

....J.Michael Robertson said...

Looks like a dry run for something on the new Digital Journalism website at beautiful USF. I see Teresa Moore's Arts Reporting students taking part.