On the Wednesday after the iPs and Beck had left, my parents and I headed down to the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art. I, of course, stupidly did not bring my camera. But I can link to it like no one's business. I had at least one thought each about the following exhibits (note: some of these have little flash animations that you can check out, but I lasted about four seconds before getting annoyed at them. So proceed at your peril), so I'll share them here.
The first exhibit we checked out was Car Culture. I really appreciated the first room, which had two videos playing: one, a pair of fairly gangster looking guys sitting in the front seat of a car while staring out the window. Fairly typical 70s gangster-film kinda piece, instantly invoking The French Connection or Godfather whackings. It's audibly raining int he first movie, and nothing particularly happens, just these two unsavory characters seemingly biding their time. In the adjacent room, there a shot of a car sitting on an old dirt road next to a field. It's raining, and it's difficult to tell, but there are probably two men sitting in the car. Again, the obvious assumption is that these two films are the same film shot from different angles, but that's definitely a connection the viewer imposes on them. A classic little piece of cinema which accentuates its own artifice and structure, plus you have the embedded context of gangsterism and drive-bys and all the other ominous notions that culturally accompany a motor vehicle sitting in a dreary, isolated field. Very cool.
The next exhibit I took on was Melinda Bergman's Every Way in is a Way Out. I actually do have the brochure for this, so i'll post the pics here:
So it's a series of surrealist sculptures, paintings, statues, and altogether it's intended to comprise a sort of strange landscape. Two things ran though my mind on this: one, the placard commentary on this exhibit was straight-up ridiculous, informing me how "The serenity of a San Diego blue sky is tinged with the transparent blue light of Sweden," and that "Bruno Bettelheim's analysis of social control embedded in fairy tales comes to mind, as does French existentialist philosopher's definition of hell as 'other people.'" And it goes on from there; just your classic case of "this is what you should be seeing, peons." Ugh. Also, someone noted in one of the guestbooks that the mobile sculpture (the middle, vertical pic above) actual continues into the rafters, and sure enough, unseen, there was more metallic amorphous shaping up above the rafters on the ceiling. Extnsion of artwork into the structure of the building like that always leads to ponder: is that security camera on the ceiling also part of this installation? How about the fire alarm sign by the Exit Door? (And hey, I though there was No Exit in this exhibition?). I don't actually mean this as a joke, more as pomo consideration: once your piece bleeds into the rafters, what's to stop it from bleeding into the entire room, the entire museum? How am I being affected by viewing this room after the room I just came from, the room I'm going to? I'm sure the iPMM will weigh in shortly.
The last exhibit we saw was Lyle Ashton Harris's Blow Up. Just a tremendously powerful display of what photography can convey. How's that for art 101 evaluation? Seriously, this exhibit was great; check out the link and/or the museum itself as the entire point will be lost if I describe it in text. I will say that it quickly raised pretty standard issue questions of porn v art - some of Harris's collages included explicit pictures which, outside the "I'm standing in a big white room" context, would surely have been labeled pornographic. I've got nothing in depth to add there.
So yes, the SMoCA was great. We spent some time in the gift store afterwards, where I re-acquainted myself with the notion that I could spend the rest of my life flipping though modern art books. Too bad they cost $120 each - seriously, my kingdom for 20th century images.
More to complete the trip to come... we're almost there, I promise. I just realized I'm going to have to leave out the Heard Museum and such as I didn't actually go, but I will hit up those spots shortly and have much, I assume, to share.
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