BATHING IN CULTURE

I mentioned before that I visited the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento this Christmas holiday. I was very intrigued by it: it was huge, and I only got to see the contemporary wing, but that's what I'm usually most interested in anyway. They also had a Native American section which I walked through, and there were some beautiful artworks there as well.

What I noticed with a lot of the art here-- I think most or maybe all of it was by American artists-- is that it was a little dystopian and almost negative about society, but it was all depicted in a creative and often strange way. I liked paintings like Eduardo Carrillo's Las Tropicanas, which looks like a spooky but good party; Julie Heffernan's Moving Out, showing people fleeing a place with the world's contents dragged along with them; and Irving Norman's My World and Yours which is very disturbing but captivating at the same time. For the rest there were a lot of surrealist pieces (I loved Dorr Bothwell's Mental Terrain, also because of the title) and some modern paintings that looked almost like photos (for instance, Jack Mendenhall's R/B Furniture). And there was some very fun art, like Maija Peeples-Bright's painting filled with walruses. 

The Crocker is a very large museum: I spent two hours there and only worked through half of the third floor. So if you want to go, you might like to open up a day for it! There's something for everyone there-- contemporary art, Asian and African art, European art and some temporary exhibitions. It's also one of only three big museums in Sacramento I believe, so if you're close, you have almost no excuse ;)

1. Julie Heffernan: Moving Out

2. Michael Stevens: Spike

3. Dorr Hodgson Bothwell: Mental Terrain

4. Maija Peeples-Bright: Walrus Willamette with Whale Walkers

5. David Klamen: Parenthesis #4

Huis Marseille is the epitome of Amsterdam: a high and narrow building on the Keizersgracht where you can see the typical facades on the other side of the canal through every window, and get lost along the many staircases. On the 4th of December I went to catch the last day of the exhibition Shores Like You by Dutch photographer Scarlett Hooft Graafland.

I don't like art to be too political, or at least I don't like to pay attention to it. Mostly, when I go to a museum, I stare at the works that fascinate me and walk past the ones that don't. The fascination is mostly based on colour and composition, or maybe a certain ambience the whole thing exudes, or maybe I have a very clear thought connected to it that comes up like sudden inspiration. I used to never read the explanations with the works, because I'd like to give it my own.

However, when the idea behind a photograph (or painting) is political and it results in something beautiful in colour or shape or all of it combined, I do get curious. Obviously, the work that adorned the posters for this exhibition (Dunes Like You) has some political meaning. And what I got from it was that the men were almost 'undone' of their manliness. Their heads were composed together to resemble the womanly, round dunes in the background-- everything in the picture is soft, feminine, without any sharp points or edges: nothing to get hurt with. It provided me a whole new angle of thought on all that is going on concerning the Middle East.

I loved Graafland's use of colour. Everything was so bright. I have had a thing for blue shades all my life-- my middle name is Indigo: that might have something to do with it-- so I was especially fascinated with works like Fish and Rock. However, I noticed that I was drawn to the pink colours as well. And then I thought that it might be because pink is very much in style at the moment. I'm wearing a peachy pink new sweater as I'm writing this. It's a weird thought: our opinion of something as aesthetic and possibly timeless as an artwork can also be influenced by fashion, and trends, and what we see around us. I think it's true. Though, of course, beauty in itself is something people will always be drawn to, and Graafland found it in unique places. If you have a chance to see her work somewhere, I recommend you take it!

Pictures by me, taken at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam.