(no subject)
Jan. 11th, 2007 07:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
roadrunnertwiceI failed to get in to see Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean at the Walker,* so I went to see the Eva Hesse drawings instead, since it was a free Thursday and I'd just gotten a tip in that direction from Dan.**
It was an odd collection. Hesse was (again, according to Dan) a 60s and 70s post-minimalist who worked with ropes, cords, and other fibers to create semi-sculptures that she then covered with fiberglass.*** Her drawings were, predictably, non-representational, opaque, and repetitive. So I had a bit of a hard time connecting with it,**** especially since they were mostly planning documents and orbiting ephemera for a corpus of work with which I wasn't familiar.
The one piece that really interested me was a simple drawing of a section of garage wall, presumably in her studio, detailing all the pipes, sinks, valves, and detritus packed into that fifteen feet or so. The line was very tentative and crabbed, so that I had a hard time telling one type of item from another (is that a faucet? some kind of pressure bulkhead?), but the whole composition exuded a confidence that showed the artist's familiarity with the space and everything in it. I couldn't tell what all was in there, but I had full trust that she did.
Maybe that's what I should have gotten from the rest of the pieces. But I didn't.
(Oh, and there's also an exhibit called "Heart of Darkness" going on that is absolutely bonkers. Check it out, I promise it will creep your shit.)
(Oh, and:)
_____
* Wow, who'd have guessed.
** Of Gay Beast fame, not to be confused with Dan W-C.
*** And then she got cancer and died, on account of fiberglass fumes.
**** I actually like quite a lot of non-representational art, but the way my mind works requires a certain amount of up-frontness about where the conflict is and how I'm supposed to emotionally connect to it. These drawings were emotionally and narratively blank, so I was kind of up a creek. I can think visually and tactilely to a certain extent, but not if there's nothing else in there.
It was an odd collection. Hesse was (again, according to Dan) a 60s and 70s post-minimalist who worked with ropes, cords, and other fibers to create semi-sculptures that she then covered with fiberglass.*** Her drawings were, predictably, non-representational, opaque, and repetitive. So I had a bit of a hard time connecting with it,**** especially since they were mostly planning documents and orbiting ephemera for a corpus of work with which I wasn't familiar.
The one piece that really interested me was a simple drawing of a section of garage wall, presumably in her studio, detailing all the pipes, sinks, valves, and detritus packed into that fifteen feet or so. The line was very tentative and crabbed, so that I had a hard time telling one type of item from another (is that a faucet? some kind of pressure bulkhead?), but the whole composition exuded a confidence that showed the artist's familiarity with the space and everything in it. I couldn't tell what all was in there, but I had full trust that she did.
Maybe that's what I should have gotten from the rest of the pieces. But I didn't.
(Oh, and there's also an exhibit called "Heart of Darkness" going on that is absolutely bonkers. Check it out, I promise it will creep your shit.)
(Oh, and:)
 | My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Bishop Lord Nikolas the Encompassing of St Winifred by Winchelsea Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title |
_____
* Wow, who'd have guessed.
** Of Gay Beast fame, not to be confused with Dan W-C.
*** And then she got cancer and died, on account of fiberglass fumes.
**** I actually like quite a lot of non-representational art, but the way my mind works requires a certain amount of up-frontness about where the conflict is and how I'm supposed to emotionally connect to it. These drawings were emotionally and narratively blank, so I was kind of up a creek. I can think visually and tactilely to a certain extent, but not if there's nothing else in there.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-12 08:28 am (UTC)I like surrealist stuff, and... what was that American movement called that was all about "the sublime"? I think it was around the same time as Transcendentalist poetry?
My knowledge of visual art is basically nil, actually.