Friday, December 14, 2012

The Short Museum Crawl

Dale Chihuly's
'Chandelier'
at V & A.

Museums are perennially cool to me. I can spend hours inside them. This trip is packed with such a tight schedule that I didn't know where to fit in museums after drawing up the Excel sheet. In fact, the museums didn't get priority. Humans got that. :)

Thought that I'd like to visit one or two, and left it to 'play by ear' when I got in. Wouldn't have much time in the city, and didn't want to arrange that many trips out as the crowds intensify when Advent began. It would have to be done right at the beginning of the trip, and after that, be left to as and when opportunities arose. Lovely that I got many chances to stroll into the key ones that are hosting exhibitions that sounded fun.

************

Victoria and Albert Museum (V & A)

I like the retail shop at V & A, so I'll faithfully hop in whenever there's time to spare, or if there're special exhibitions to be viewed. Even though I wasn't particularly interested in 'Hollywood Costumes' or 'Ballgowns- British glamour since 1950', I still walked through those galleries. While the former was mildly fun, the latter was quite a yawn.

The ballgowns bored me completely. Zero interest in poofy frocks and didn't care which celebrity or socialite of the times wore them. Neither was I into the designers, nor did I care about the fabrics, detailing or sewing or whatever. They were all frankly, horrifying. Am not usually interested in thinking about what to wear for events. If thinking about an event induces a headache and more than a 15-minutes mulling-over, I won't bother attending it. Easy. Well, okay, after zipping through the exhibition in 15minutes, one piece caught my eye- a surprisingly understated piece from the late Alexander McQueen's final 16-piece AW2010 'Angels and Demons' collection that harked back to hand-drawn fabrics. It was a floaty but wearable from runway-to-street version in silk of an angel print reminiscent of a relief sculpture. (Read reviews here, here and here.)

Presenting the familiar favorites worn by Hollywood actors over the decades, 'Hollywood Costumes' was quite mehhh. (See photos here, here and here.)  Yes, yes, the roles aren't complete with the costumes as they set the character's pace and tone for the actor. Whatever. The blurbs on the wall next to the costumes were impressive. They explained who the designers were, the rationale for the design, perhaps a quote or two from them, the actor or the producer. Fairly interesting on the trivia front. The curator kept to the costumes' true nature in placing three special ones up on the wall above our heads- Christian Bale's 2012 Batman (thank goodness it wasn't the one with nipples), Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman, and Spiderman. At least I walked out of the room knowing that they made 12 pairs of trousers for Harrison Ford in his role as Indiana Jones per movie.

Was more intrigued by the Museum's newest permanent gallery- of furniture.

Tate Britain

Dutifully went through Tate Britain's 'Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde'. It has taken the Museum five years to put this together. After this premiere, it goes off on tour next year starting with Washington DC, then Moscow, then Tokyo in 2014. (Read reviews here, here and here.)

Also known as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, this exhibition of 300 objects including 60 paintings, brings together the works of mainly a group of seven English painters. (Google for their names please) In short, sometime in 1848 London, this group rejected the brushstrokes of Raphael, Michelangelo and Mannerist artists, and wanted a return to details rich in colors and bold in complexity, similar to Quattrocentro styles. They also objected to Sir Joshua Reynolds' (the founder and first President of England's Royal Academy of Arts who held on to his position till his deathbed) influence and hold over the art world. So, as a non-art-history major, I'd summarize it by saying that they achieved a mention in art history because they were the first group formed to rebel against the current art form of the day. Not revolutionary by any means, but avant-garde.

The paintings were stunning. I wasn't really paying attention to all the hooha about the styles or whatnots, although the particular emphasis on perfection and details meant I could see the food placed on the dining table at any given scene of a feast, and count the number of petals on a flower in any garden setting. The point is, I was able to glean a feel of Victorian England in the brightness of the exhibition and the zeal of the entire movement that didn't really feel like it had been locked in time. Love it or hate it.

Tate Modern

I really should get out to Cornwall sometime late summer and check out Tate St Ives. Tate Modern fared better with the two pioneers of postwar photography in 'William Klein + Daido Moriyama' and artists meshing painting and performance to push the boundaries of interactive art and social statements in 'A Bigger Splash'. (Read reviews here and here.)

Both were...underwhelming. But I enjoyed the former more. Already familiar with both photographers after flipping through their coffeetable books at home growing up because the Dad's a keen photographer, it was nice to see the photos framed up properly in a joint presentation at the gallery. I preferred Moriyama's darker themes. Titled after David Hockney's painting of California and its swimming pools, in 'A Bigger Splash', yes, of course Yayoi Kusama had a dedicated space, and many paintings of Jackson Pollock were displayed. I lingered longest at Room 8, at an installation titled 'Juniper Tree' by Joan Jonas which involved using different modes of theatrical presentation to denote the different countries of origin. The artist incorporated fairytales into her work. She used a set of stories that were collected by the Brothers Grimm. (See a photo here.)

In the gallery of the works of Daido Moriyama at Tate Modern.

Royal Academy of Arts

So after visiting Tate Britain and all that thinking about the Pre-Raphaelite movement, I had no choice but to round over to Royal Academy of Arts to take a look at their current exhibitions. There were two- 'Constable, Gainsborough, Turner and the Making of Landscape', and 'Mariko Mori: Rebirth'. Predictably pretty, paintings and personal and work objects of eighteenth and nineteenth century landscape paintings by English painters John Constable, Thomas Gainsborough and JMW Turner were put on display. All three artists passed through the doors of the Academy. Romantics, watercolors, oils, nature, truth, portraits. All very in line with the acceptable art of society of that era. 

I was really visiting for Mariko Mori's 'Rebirth'. A Japanese artist based in New York focusing on video and photography, this was touted as her first major exhibition in London displaying her works over a period of 11 years. Found her works extremely absorbing. Enjoyed it immensely. Her sense of aesthetics seems to be deeply rooted in the rationale of the architecture of Zen gardens of Japan, and the intricacies of the tea ceremony, along with modern influences of Manga and digital media art. Light and lighting featured very strongly in her works. But traditions and ancient ways held sway in her beliefs in the cycle of death and re-birth. Her works were meant to stir visitors' own pre-conceived notions about humans and their connections to the world and immediate society. (Read reviews here, here and here.)

************

Out of breath to write about British Museum and Shakespeare, and Goya and utensils for alcohol and tea in Asia. :P Those were great.

3 comments:

D said...

LOVE the PRB - they were my obsession when I was a teen after I first saw them at the Tate :)

imp said...

D: Really? I still like Raphael sorts... but happy to view them all. And for some reason, I read PRB as PBJ- Peanut Butter Jelly. HAHAHAHAH.

D said...

I like Raphael too - but I love the PRB. Their very literary subject matter, their use of tempera - all stuff that would really turn the head of a teenager :)I still like that stuff.