LIZSAYS:
Today, I saw a show by artist Yayoi Kusama at the Pompidou Center. An
early ‘hallucination’ seems to have set the course for her life,
fabricating a reality out of mere existence and embracing obliteration.
Yesterday,
I saw a show at the Cartier Foundation, working towards integrating art
and science. Participants included David Lynch, with little Lynchian
learning robots and Patti Smith singing an oddly melancholy drone,
sounding a bit like something from an original Star Trek siren, her
image eerily projected on the ceiling of a dome.
References to men grandly exploring the
tiniest of thoughts and particles building what we assume is real and
solid. But, what the hell do we know? It is all constantly changing.
Now, I am wondering about and wandering through the boundaries between
self and other, again. Yeah, I was a philosophy major back in university
and I was more interested in metaphysics than anything. But, hey, its
not like that got you a job in the 1970’s. So, it comes up again and
again but it is not something that is constantly on my mind. And yes,
I’m that friggin’ old. The longer we live, the longer we have to think.
Deal with it, it's a good thing, if you let it be.
Back to the meanwhile, I assume that everyone wonders, every now and then, about how real anything is, including themselves, and that may be assuming a lot, but I assume hard and strong.
Then there is the way Yayoi Kusama deals with it. She was born into the time when the nuclear end to the war left a huge psychic scar. She was Japanese and female.
Back to the meanwhile, I assume that everyone wonders, every now and then, about how real anything is, including themselves, and that may be assuming a lot, but I assume hard and strong.
Then there is the way Yayoi Kusama deals with it. She was born into the time when the nuclear end to the war left a huge psychic scar. She was Japanese and female.
I certainly identify with the feeling that one could just disappear into
the woodwork. Or in her case, into a dotted or netted background to the comfort
of other or nothingness, not thinking about or worrying that no one
would ever notice her or see her art seriously. Then again, maybe being
part of the background was the only way to be seen.
Of
course, she is much braver than I. She blasted off into the 60’s,
exploring her own mental state and physical existence in a way that I am
way too chicken to do. Appearing nude on film seems to me in 2011,
impossibly scary, but there she was, painted and touched and wading
between here and wherever she thought ‘other’ was. I immediately felt
connected and disconnected from her conflict. After all, I do not have
the reoccurring images, but I do have a feeling that I must ‘be’ on a
level that seems to others to be ‘Say wha?’
Speaking of that tangent, there was that sign again, saying that ‘something exhibited here may hurt children’s feelings.’ All I could see was adult nudity. Why that would hurt children’s feelings, I do not know?
I’m no stranger to child abuse, but natural nudity seems to be, oh, I don’t know, normal. After all, when we take off our clothes, we are all naked, nude, unclothed, but are we hurt? Just how sick is our world? I feel the patterns, nets and dots of her psyche approaching much more clearly. Just at that moment.
Then there was the Cartier Foundation’s show, a combo of science speak and art think, ‘Mathematics--A Beautiful Elsewhere,’ once again reducing reality to something tiny and intrusive. It was inescapably dense on the scientific front but also a lotus/onion of ideology for the art in each person who could notice.
I remember being in a class, “the Science of Philosophy” with a bunch of future doctors. The class was a requirement for them. They could not fathom a universe without absolutes; the philosophy majors could not understand a universe of absolutes. It taught me all I needed to know about any doctor I would ever have. They believed in correct and not correct and anything else was a playground of nonsense, a cute wonderland for the fluffy. Being a bit fluffy, I always assume that Western medicine is not the be all and end all, but I digress. Where the hell was I?
It was a great show because no one could be absolutely right. Artists had to understand the hard base of science, and the scientists had to see that their hard core reality was just assumption after assumption.
Ah, the beauty is in the details.
Speaking of that tangent, there was that sign again, saying that ‘something exhibited here may hurt children’s feelings.’ All I could see was adult nudity. Why that would hurt children’s feelings, I do not know?
I’m no stranger to child abuse, but natural nudity seems to be, oh, I don’t know, normal. After all, when we take off our clothes, we are all naked, nude, unclothed, but are we hurt? Just how sick is our world? I feel the patterns, nets and dots of her psyche approaching much more clearly. Just at that moment.
Then there was the Cartier Foundation’s show, a combo of science speak and art think, ‘Mathematics--A Beautiful Elsewhere,’ once again reducing reality to something tiny and intrusive. It was inescapably dense on the scientific front but also a lotus/onion of ideology for the art in each person who could notice.
I remember being in a class, “the Science of Philosophy” with a bunch of future doctors. The class was a requirement for them. They could not fathom a universe without absolutes; the philosophy majors could not understand a universe of absolutes. It taught me all I needed to know about any doctor I would ever have. They believed in correct and not correct and anything else was a playground of nonsense, a cute wonderland for the fluffy. Being a bit fluffy, I always assume that Western medicine is not the be all and end all, but I digress. Where the hell was I?
It was a great show because no one could be absolutely right. Artists had to understand the hard base of science, and the scientists had to see that their hard core reality was just assumption after assumption.
Ah, the beauty is in the details.
*all the photos are of the outside of the Cartier Foundation and its posters for the show. Photos of both shows were forbidden.
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