immersion trip photos

A poster in the little museum in the Performing Arts Library. This picture's a bit small to really see it, but it's absolutely beautiful and kind of goth looking.


Another theatre poster. It's so pretty... God, I love art nouveau.


Some random graffiti in Chelsea that I liked. It looks like the skeleton guy is trying to escape from the wall. Cute!


This is a painting by Cecily Kahn (from the day spent gallery hopping in Chelsea) that I really loved. I think the white splatter looks like a person falling head first. But the pastel colors in the background are serene, giving the sense that the "person" is floating, not falling. Yet the black splatter is violent and forceful. So I think the "person" is dead. The whole thing feels conflicted: is it peaceful or disturbing? I'm leaning toward both. Death is a sad thing to have to deal with and accept, but it's still a natural part of life.


This is the hallway leading to the bathrooms in the Studio Museum in Harlem. How unusual. I've always loved bright red walls for some reason.


A car in desperate need of a good washing in a parking garage in Harlem. I adjusted it for the new year.


And last, but most certainly not least, me at The Daily Show!

JOY!

I got an apartment in Brooklyn! And it's beautiful! I move in Wednesday night! I still have class in Syracuse on Wednesdays, so I'll be commuting back and forth, but it's totally worth it.

I love New York City so much! I can't believe I'm finally going to be living there!

Pictures will come once I'm settled and it's decorated, etc.

still NY

I actually returned from NYC a few days ago, but here is the wrap-up anyways:

Tuesday we spent the morning workshopping, and had lunch at the Algonquin again. We didn't have anything in the afternoon, so Erica and I did some window shopping on the upper west side. I found a pair of pointy-toed flats in bright yellow for only $20, but they only came in size seven. Sad.

In the evening we went to "The Daily Show"! Jon Stewart is a tiny, tiny man. But still awsome. I was surprised that every segment was done in only one take. I figured they would stop and do stuff over if someone stumbled over their words or anything. Also, they read from a teleprompter, which I was also surprised by, since Jon Stewart seems so natural when you watch it on TV, like he's just talking straight from his head. After the show, us SU'ers were herded into a separate room to wait for Steve Bodow, the head writer we were to have dinner with. And when Steve came down to meet us, he brought Jon Stewart with him! So we got to meet him en masse. We couldn't take any pictures or get autographs or anything, which was really disappointing, but I still got be in the same room as him, so hooray! nonetheless.

Wednesday was our last day. I walked to The Strand, where I picked up a copy of the complete "Little Nemo" comics. I also stumbled upon an organic farmer's market in Union Square, and got some hot garlic jelly and jalapeno sauerkraut for my father. I also went back to the Studio Museum in Harlem to get a copy of the Africa Comics catalogue.

We returned to Syracuse around 10 p.m., to find a few inches of snow on the ground! Finally! I was so happy to finally see snow. Unfortunately it rained today and washed away any remnants of winter prettiness.

In other news, zingmagazine finally called and now I have an internship! Next weekend I'm going back to NY to check out some apartments that I found on good ole' Craig's List, then the fillowing week I'm moving there! I'll still be returning to Syracuse Mondays through Wednesdays for my two classes a week, but I'll be living in NY four days a week. Hooray hooray horray hooray!!!

I'm so happy I'm finally moving to NY.

Last review of the trip

Here is the official review I wrote about the Museum of Sex's exhibit on Japanese comics:

Working Title:
When Worlds Collide: Porn in the museum

A dark room with black walls, small windows cut into each at varying heights so that one must stand on toe or crouch down, face pressed to the hole, to see inside. A peep show? Not quite, though a look within does reveal nudity, prostitution, and all manner of graphic sexual behavior. Set a few inches into the windows of the walls are Japanese prints and drawings detailing sexual escapades dating from the Edo Period (1603-1867) all the way up to modern day’s pornographic manga (comics).

On display through March 6 at New York’s Museum of Sex, Peeping, Probing & Porn: Four Centuries of Graphic Sex in Japan provides an intimate glimpse into the evolution of sex trade and gender roles in Japan, and chronicles the country’s relationship with the western world and its own rapid modernization.

The Edo-era woodblock prints that begin the exhibit feature prostitutes in action within the brothel district. Most include startlingly detailed depictions of colorful engorged genitalia, the artists not shying away from bodily fluids and closeups of penetration. By the time Commodore Perry arrived to force the opening of Japan’s ports in 1854, scenes of rape and sex with demons and animals appeared, a reflection of the West’s invasion. Then western-style clothing shows up and women’s roles appear less victimized, the notes accompanying the pictures pointing out joyful facial expressions and consensual relationships.

Manga exploded after a WWII ban was lifted. Hentai (pornographic manga) now depicts every type of sexual activity and relationship imaginable, signaling a less repressive society in which women are no longer submissive slaves. Wide age gaps, bestiality, and gay relationships are common themes.

The exhibit’s dark walls and bright red floor, small viewing windows, and fabric screens hanging from the ceiling to divide the room into chronological sections all add up to a sense that visitors are participants in a peep show. The copious number of written explanations, however, also provide ample historical context. This mix of sexuality and intellectualism almost desexualizes the pornography, yet the graphic nature of the images keeps it firmly entrenched in masturbatory fodder, making for a uniquely paradoxical museum show.

The end is near...

Only one and a half days left of the NY trip! So sad...
Here is today's recap:

We started out workshopping our reviews. I was with Michael Kimmelman, the chief art critic for the NY Times. Crazy, right? He was fantastic. He pointed out all this stuff that needed to be tweaked in our reviews, while still somehow making me feel like I'm a halfway decent writer. And I agreed with everything he suggested. I suppose that's what happens when you spend a couple decades honing your craft: you end up knowing your shit. Hopefully I will find time to fiddle with the Kimsooja review and post it here again.

We had lunch with the critics (the other two were Alex Ross, chief music critic for The New Yorker, and Megan O'Rourke, culture editor for Slate.com). Lunch was also great, as conversation with Kimmelman came easily and we all found plenty to say. It's really inspiring to meet all these prolific people in my own field. It really gives me hope that I will one day end up with a career that I adore, though I do recognize that getting to that place will take a lot of time and hard work and putting myself out there.

After lunch we had almost an hour and a half to kill, so I got to take a much-needed nap. Then we went to the Studio Museum in Harlem, which was having an exhibit on African comics. I was actually going to check out the exhibit last time I was in the city (about four weeks ago), but didn't have time. I also read an article about African comics in the most recent issue of Zink Magazine, which made me want to see it even more. The museum is actually closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, but they opened up just for our class for two hours today, and gave us a discussion with the director, Thelma Golden, who was wonderfully articulate and had so much to say. I only wish we'd had more time, because I wanted to read all the comics and there were a ton. Also, most of them are in French, which I can read, but it takes about three times longer than reading the same thing in English. I may actually go back Wednesday just to buy the catalogue of the comics, even though the book is ridiculously expensive. I love comics so much, and these African ones are something totally new and unique for me, so I have to have them. It's a compulsion.

We had dinner at "Sylvia's Restaurant," which is apparently a famous institution. It was certainly the best soul food I've ever had. And there was so much! It was unlimited cornbread, fried chicken, fried fish, barbeque ribs, collard greens, spicy rice, potato salad, and then banana pudding with crumbly stuff for dessert. It was SO GOOD. I definitely gorged myself silly on cornbread.

Tomorrow is our last workshop and then in the evening, WE GET TO ATTEND A TAPING OF THE DAILY SHOW!!! I am beyond excited. I adore Jon Stewart and want to marry him. Also, we get to have dinner with one of the writers. SQUEEEEEEEEE!!! So exciting!

I am going to have to be dragged kicking and screaming back to Syracuse. Yes, I love my home; yes, I love my parents; yes, I love school. But being in NY just makes everything so much easier. There is a larger variety of more art here, and being so immersed in culture makes writing about the arts come so naturally. It just flows out of me with nowhere near the amount of struggling I experience in Syracuse. I wish zing and ArtNews would hurry up and get back to me so that I'd know whether I'll be spending next semester here...

Working title: Life in Progress: Kimsooja’s fleeting photos.

Becoming a star of the art world is no easy task. One must have the right style at the right moment, and even then, fame is most often a fleeting fad. How appropriate, then, that Korean artist Kimsooja’s current photography exhibition, at the Peter Blum Gallery in Chelsea, discusses the passage of time.

A Wind Woman, on display through Jan. 13, consists of a group of large-scale color photographs (roughly three feet wide by two feet high) that are stills from her 2003 video of the same name. Kimsooja shot the video while driving in Hawaii, with the camera shutter open at length so as to capture the movement of the landscape as she passed by.

Most of the photographs have placid clouds in the background, while glimpses of what are presumably foliage and contours of the land blur horizontally in the foreground. Dark lines trespass across each photo, exposing the photographer’s movement.

While standing in front of the photos, there is a distinctive sense that the scene is passing you by, not that you’re moving past it. The pictures urge the viewer to hurry, as though time is running by. Since the movement is already captured on film, however, forever sealing it in constant motion, attempts to catch up are a waste of time.

The very first photo in the array is nearly all white, with only very pale grey blobs. The last one is all black. The white evokes birth, with the following photographs life, and the stark black presumably death. It’s a seemingly heartless way of looking at the world. You’re born, life passes you by in an instant, and then it’s over. But within each fast-paced photo, the clouds in the background remain still. The static clouds are the moments that matter enough to stick with you.

Human existence is comparative to a drop in the ocean of time. Kimsooja’s photographs resonate with this short history, and the even shorter life span of each individual. Yet they’re also optimistic, reminding us that to cherish and remember something is to keep it still despite time’s attempts to steal it away.

more NY

Time for another NYC update:

Friday we started out with a tour of the Lincoln Center Performing Arts Library. Since my focus is visual arts, this resource may come in less handy for me than for some of my compatriots. It was, however, still amazing. They have archives of everything. They have newspaper clippings from what appeared to be every play that's ever been performed in the U.S. There were filmed stage shows that you could watch, all kinds of photographs and documents, costume and set notes (including fabric swatches! Be still my fabric-loving heart...). It was incredible. Unfortunately, you're only allowed to use their resources if you're doing legitimate research. So I couldn't go there just to look at costume sketches all day or watch different adaptations of Shakespeare just for fun. Sad...

We had lunch with John Rockwell, who has been a music critic, dance critic, NY Times editor, among other things in a number of fields. He was very nice, and what I could manage to overhear was interesting, but for the most part, I couldn't hear anything he was saying because the seating was all spread out. Also, the waiter was hilarious. He kept interrupting us mid-sentence when he brought out food. And when dessert came, he walked over and positively yelled "Key lime tart!" out of nowhere, with no warning. Kathleen and I cracked up.

Next we attended the ballet rehearsal (which turned out to be of "Sleeping Beauty," not "Swan Lake"). It was so neat. We got to see the director actually stop the dancers and make comments and changes. We got to see mistakes, which you never see when you attend a performance (how do they do that?). I wish we could have seen the actual performance too, though, as a comparison would have been appreciated. (Plus I love ballet.)

At night we saw part one of "The Coast of Utopia" (there are three parts). It was so good. It starred Ethan Hawke (lovely) as a pretentious philosophy (aka bullshit)-spouting Russian. I'm a bit hazy on the details, as it jumped around in time and there were a ton of characters, but I think the general gist of the plot is Ethan Hawke's character (Michael) sympathizes with the Decembrists (or maybe he is one, I'm not entirely sure...), and he wants Russia to modernize after the western world's example. At the end of the first part, he gets banished to Siberia for his "anti-government" activity. The costumes, the acting, the lighting, the set and scene changes... they were all superb. Seriously. Go see this play. All three parts if you can.

Yesterday we explored galleries in Chelsea, which made me oh so very happy. We started with Kimsooja's photographs, which I reviewed. (See above to read it, it should be the next blog post after this one.) We also saw Cecily Kahn's super bright abstract paintings, which I fell in love with, and Edgar Martins' absolutely beautiful, haunting photographs of a Portuguese beach at night. Lastly, we saw Janis Kounellis' sculptures, which I wasn't really that into. I don't know what the artist's intention was, but they all reminded me of torture chambers. There were these wire beds wrapped in strips of fabric, with the surface painted a rust color... they looked bloody to me, like someone had chopped people up on top of them. Scary.

(I'll post photos of this stuff and further comments when I get back to Syracuse. I don't have the right cord with me, so I can't transfer my pics to the computer while I'm here.)

We also had a studio visit with painter Pat Lipsky, but I wasn't that into the paintings she showed us either. I did get a look at a book of some more of her work, though, and I liked some of the stuff in the book a lot. Pat herself, however, was fantastic. I wish I could do studio visits all the time. It's fascinating to listen to artists talk about the mental and physical processes that go into creating a piece of work. I'm also a firm believer that knowing what goes into a piece of art informs your criticism by leagues. I guess as a bit of an artist myself, I just don't see how you can grasp an art form without experiencing its creation to a certain extent yourself. I don't believe that people with no artistic experience can't be critics, I just think that making art helps you appreciate it in a way that non-artists can't quite understand.

At night we attended the NY Philharmonic, which was thankfully a short performance, because I was very tired by this point. They played Beethoven's violin concerto first, with soloist Pinchas Zukerman. He was incredible. Who knew the violin could make such crazy, high pitched (yet somehow pleasing) squeals. The second piece was Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, which was absolutely phenomenal. This is the piece of music that accompanies the dinosaurs in "Fantasia." It is so chaotic, and loud, and brash, and awsome. It was just the thing to wake me up enough to go out for some chow with classmates. We ended up at a Mexaican place called Cosmic Cantina, which had yummy, but unfortunately very small, quesadillas. And then bed at about 2 a.m.

Today was our one and only free day, so I slept super late and it was glorious. I didn't do much, started out wandering around Chinatown for a bit in search of this underground mall that I went to with other people once years ago, but I couldn't find it. Lappy told me what street it was on (even which block), but after walking back and forth down the one little block, I still couldn't figure out where the hell its entrance was. It's either totally inconspicuous, or I'm just blind (or both!).

I met up with Andre and we got lunch and wandered around for a while. We eventually split, and I went to the Museum of Sex. Their exhibit on Japanese comics was really good. There was lots to read and they had a vast, vast array of pornographic Ukiyo-e (woodblock) prints and some manga. The ukiyo-e prints were really creepy. Japanese artists used to depict genitalia (especially penises) as really scary-looking. I noticed that the comics really outlined Japanese history, though, with the earliest prints picturing brothels and the sex trade, then a lot of sex with animals and demons and rape when the western world exerted its influence just before and then after Commodore Perry's arrival. Then all the characters started wearing western clothes and women's roles became less submissive and victimized

Manga was banned in WWII, so you next saw crude homemade drawings, and then post WWII saw the development of manga as we now know it. And by now manga tackles every aspect of "liberated," "deviant," or "perverse" sexuality that you can imagine. Bestiality, boys' love (yaoi), underage activity... Japanese comics have it all. I see it as a result of a much less repressive society, though the lack of repression is still debatable compared to the west, I think. But regardless, it's obviously far less repressive than the Edo Period. Manga also depicts women and men in all different societal relationships now (dominant vs. submissive, old age with a young'un etc.), which is pretty revolutionary compared to the always dominant (and often domineering) role of the man in both art and society in the past.

Okay, it is definitely time for sleep. Workshop tomorrow.

in NY once again

I've been back in NYC since last Saturday. Saturday through Tuesday morning I was just here for fun and to celebrate New Years (which was fantastic, by the way). I have been far too occupied with school stuff since meeting up with my arts journalism classmates Tuesday, so this is going to be a long entry recapping what I've done thus far. Enjoy.

Saturday I met Lappy in the city and we got dinner at a small, cute place that I can't remember the name of. The tables were chalkboards, though, so we could draw while we waited for our food. Perfect for us art kids. I hadn't seen her since I graduated, so it was wonderful to see a familiar face and catch up on our lives, etc. We walked around the city for a couple hours after that, ate some Cold Stone, then spent the night at her place in Westchester.

Sunday we slept ridiculously late and went to the city again, but split up to go to different parties. I met up with Jon and that whole crew from undergrad, and we went to a party at their friend Ann's beautiful apartment in Brooklyn. I miss those guys something awful and it was spectacular to hang out with all the people I used to see every day. I also chatted it up with some new kids, a couple of whom I exchanged e-mail addresses with. This was by far the best New Years I've ever had.

Monday evening Lappy and I returned to her house, where I read scanlations of Nana (it's a manga by Ai Yazawa) all night. The scanlations picked up about one chapter after the last chapter I'd read in Shojo Beat Magazine, so I missed a key part of the story, but everything that happened after that key point was the opposite of what I was hoping would happen. It was horribly depressing. Yazawa is a manga goddess. I find myself completely emotionally invested in her comics, even though when you get right down to it, they're basically just soap operas. Her talent for drawing expressive faces and for writing believable dialogue suck me right in.

Tuesday I went to the new MoMA (finally). I was kind of disappointed, actually. They have an incredible collection, and it's all organized on the walls really well, and I like the high ceilings. But I didn't like the floor layout at all. Instead of each floor being one meandering loop so that you can walk straight from one end to the other without missing anything, it had offshoots of rooms all over the place so that you had to retrace your steps much of the time to see everything.

In the evening, I met up with the rest of my arts journalism program and we saw the Broadway musical, "The Drowsy Chaperone." It's a play within a play. A guy talks to the audience about how much he loves this musical ("The Drowsy Chaperone") from the 30s, and when he puts the soundtrack on, the musical comes to life in his living room for the audience to see. The mini-musical was really doofy, though. It was about a famous Broadway star questioning whether she really wanted to get married (leaving her fame behind in the process) on the eve of her wedding. The "chaperone" was her consistently drunk maid of honor. Other cheesy characters are involved in the preparations, and "hilarity" ensues. The costumes and the set were gorgeous, and the "man in chair" character was amusing, but overall the whole thing was just too silly for my taste.

Yesterday we toured the New York Times offices, which was really cool. It makes me wonder if I'll ever see the inside again (from a desk, perhaps??). Lunch was spent with Jared Hohlt, culture editor at New York Magazine. He was very nice, though I must add that NY Mag never responded when I applied for an internship. Not even a polite rejection. Boo. (Not that it has anything to do with Hohlt, he was great.)

We next went to the Morgan Library & Museum, where I saw "Bob Dylan's American Journey," Saul Steinberg illustrations, and drawings by Fragonard and his contemporaries. The Dylan exhibit was so-so. It was a ton of stuff in a small, cramped area. It was interactive, in that you could listen to all his records from 1956-66 in their entirety, so that was a plus. And there were a lot of handwritten documents, including song lyrics, which was pretty amazing to see. The Steinberg stuff was pretty good, but not fantastic. The explanation printed on the wall claimed that he did set design, but there weren't any sketches or props from his designs on display. I did enjoy the drawings that were there, though. There was the classic New Yorker cover of the view of the rest of the world from NYC's perspective, and some collages he made out of self-designed rubber stamps, which I liked a lot. The Fragonard drawings were absolutely beautiful. I reviewed them for Wednesday's assignment, and will post my review after some more editing.

Then at night we saw "A Chorus Line." Most of the other AJ kids didn't seem too crazy about it, but I enjoyed it. I hadn't known anything about it ahead of time, though, and had only heard one song beforehand ("One Singular Sensation," which I didn't even know was from this show), so I think it helped that I went in with so few expectations.

Wow. Long day. Today I was exhausted.

Today we workshopped our reviews. My group was with Robert Ivy, an editor from Architectural Record Magazine. He was really helpful and encouraging. Lunch was spent with him and Eric Grode, a theatre critic at the New York Sun, copy editor at the New York Times, and an SU alumni. (Talk about accomplished.)

In the evening we had a networking party, which didn't turn out to be too successful for me. I talked to a number of people, but no visual arts people showed up, not even the couple who'd RSVP'ed. I was really hoping to meet this one woman from Phaidon Press, which is probably my favorite publisher. They put out a lot of art books, especially some absolutely beautiful collections of photography. But she didn't come.

Lastly, we went to Jazz at Lincoln Center (which is actually located at Columbus Circle), and this was incredible. The venue was gorgeous. It was a smallish club full of small tables that each had these really cool lamps that were basically gigantic eggs made of fogged glass with a lightbulb inside. I really want one. I'll have to check ebay. The ceiling had a dropped lip where it met the wall, which snaked all around the room in a wiggling shape. Then one wall was just a giant window with the most spectacular view I've ever seen inside the city, especially at night. There weren't any buildings obstructing the immediate view, but there was a wide cluster of skyscrapers further in the distance that had plenty of lights on. And I hate to admit it, but the glow around the buildings (caused by light pollution) just added to the scene. It was classic NY. Oh yeah, and the jazz was pretty good too (a quintet called "Horizon") considering I'm not much of a jazz person, but I was definitely paying more attention to the view and people watching.

And once again I am going to bed far later than I would prefer after a ridiculously busy day. Tomorrow will be a tour of the Lincoln Center Performing Arts Library, a visit to "Swan Lake" rehearsal (which I am very excited about), and another play (Tom Stoppard's "The Coast of Utopia: The Voyage"), but that last event will be after getting FOUR WHOLE HOURS OF FREE TIME. Finally! I'm either going to go to the Museum of Sex, which is currently showing an exhibit on Japanese comics, will head down to St. Mark's to do some window shopping in the punk shops, or may seek out a decent tattoo shop, as I'd like to get one done while I'm here if I have time.