Alrighty... I think we’re all caught up now, so for the
first time this summer I’ll actually be presenting you with the events of last
week. Huzzah for being caught up!
It was about this time last year that I went to the MFA
(Museum of Fine Arts) and gave you a virtual tour of all the different kinds of
art I’d seen that week. So it’s rather
fitting that this week I do a bit of the same, although from a slightly
different standpoint. This weekend, a
few friends and I went to the Institute of Contemporary Art (or ICA), which is
one of Boston’s largest collections of modern art. I’m going to say up front (as I did this
weekend) that I really don’t understand contemporary art, and it makes very
little sense to me. I’m really more of a
‘look how well this person was able to draw this flower... it’s so lifelike!’
sort of person. But, the museum was
free, and I’d never been there, so I figured it was worth a look.
I’m really glad I went, for a number of reasons. First, the ICA is located on the Boston waterfront,
which is somewhere I think I’ve only been once or twice in my time at
school. I’m not going to say the best
part of the weekend was being able to smell the ocean, but it was pretty great. We wandered around a bit (okay... a lot) and
found some cool things. There’s a museum
dedicated to the Boston Tea Party, and a café designed to look like a giant
milk bottle (I’m still sans camera, or I would have taken pictures... I really
need to do something about that. :P ) We had lunch on one of the piers, and
listened to small children gleefully noting the large number of jellyfish that
had decided to congregate in the water around the pier. And, due to my laziness and incredible
inability to be a responsible adult, I got my first sunburn of the summer. It’s not a bad one, but it’s bad enough that
I’ll hopefully remember to put on sunscreen in the future. Especially since I can just imagine the
lecture I would get at work for coming in severely sunburnt... these are the
perils of working in a lab that focuses on DNA damage. :P
In any case, the first set of art that I enjoyed this
weekend was the intersection of architecture and nature that exist on the
waterfront. I think this is true for
most waterfront cities, but it’s especially fun in Boston because you also get
a striking contrast between the very old and the very new. There were stone buildings that looked like
castles that must have been from the early 1900’s at the latest, standing right
next to tall glass skyscrapers and buildings that haven’t been completed
yet. There were sailing ships modeled
after those that would have been used in the 1700’s floating in a harbor across
from which you could see planes taking off and landing at Logan Airport. The double set of contrasts meant that there
was always something to look at. And
although my feet were rather sore at the end of the day, it was thoroughly
enjoyable to wander through Boston without any sort of agenda or timetable,
other than that at some point we would need to get home and eat.
The second set of art that I enjoyed was, unsurprisingly, in
an art museum. The ICA is a lot smaller
than the MFA, with only two exhibits currently open. One exhibit was a collection of pieces by
various artists, all exploring what we consider art, and how we use different
mediums to create artistic pieces. The
second exhibit was a collection of pieces by a single artist (Jim Hodges), all
centering around the same theme- “Give more than you take.” Going into this exhibit, pretty much the only
thing I knew was that Jim Hodges was a Spokane native, which made me like him a
bit before seeing any of his work. (I’ve
got sort of a bizarre ‘nationalism’ for anything and anyone from Washington...
it’s worked out pretty well so far.)
Anyway, like I said earlier, I really don’t understand modern art. But I really enjoyed Hodges’ work. From an aesthetic standpoint, the pieces were
very striking- most of them used color or form in a way that wasn’t immediately
intuitive. One of the most interesting
pieces, in my opinion, was a collection of sheet music with each page laid out
next to the other. Hodges had taken
colored pencils and covered up some of the notes with big blocks of color. It was pretty, but it also made you think
about the relationship between music and visual arts, and it sort of evoked the
idea of what it must be like to have synesthesia (one form of which means that
you experience sounds as colors).
I think the thing that I got out of the visit to the museum
was that contemporary art isn’t meant to be appreciated for itself in the same
way that classical art is. Yes, the art
is still often aesthetically pleasing on its own. But it also serves to make you think. It’s harder to appreciate modern art, I
think, because it requires you to give a bit of yourself into the
appreciation. With a lot of classical
art, you can get something out of just looking at it. Granted, there’s a deeper layer to it that
means you’ll get more out of it if you take the time to analyze the artist’s
brushstrokes, or composition, or the period of history they were living
in. But on a shallow level, you can also
just look at the art and appreciate the beauty.
With modern art, in my experience, that’s more difficult. It’s hard to look at bunch of concentric
circles and appreciate them for being circles (even if they are remarkably well
drawn circles). But when you understand
that each set of circles is meant to represent either the artist or his lover,
and that the height of the largest circle is how tall they were, you’re forced
to think about how circles represent the simultaneous simplicity and complexity
of being a human, and human relationships, and love (or at least that’s what I
was put in mind of... the piece might speak differently to other people).
The piece with the concentric circles (titled “He and I”)
was my favorite piece in the museum, because it was so incredibly simple, but
it must have taken forever to do. The circles weren’t very far apart from one
another, so drawing two sets of concentric circles up to a circle that was at
least 5’6” in diameter would have taken a very long time. It would be impossible to convey all of my
thoughts about the piece in a blog post of a reasonable length, but suffice it
to say that it made me think, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I did an image search
to find a picture, which is below. And
if you click on ‘image search’ in the previous sentence, it’ll take you to the
page of images that includes a large number of the pieces that were at the ICA,
so that you can see some of them. If one
strikes you, let me know! And we can talk about it. :)
Now that I’ve extolled the virtues of the ICA, I’ll continue
with the other types of art I enjoyed this weekend. :P Another thing I did was watch two movies- one
indoor and one outdoor, and both free. Which is always a plus, no matter who
you are. The first movie was indoors,
put on by LSC, one of the clubs here. It
was Captain America: The Winter Soldier. I thoroughly enjoyed it- it was an excellent
movie if you’re looking for gratuitous action sequences and lots of Marvel
Comics in-jokes. It was also an
interesting movie from a political standpoint... I can’t really go into it
without spoiling pretty much the whole movie, but if you ever watch it and want
to discuss conspiracy theories with me, and how terrifying the implications of
the movie were, I’m all for that. The
second movie we watched was outdoors, and significantly more lighthearted. It was Monsters
University, the sequel/prequel to Monsters
Inc., which is a childhood favorite of mine. The movie looks at how the two main
characters in Monsters Inc. met, and it was also filled with
in-jokes that created a resounding sense of nostalgia as I watched. Overall, it was a thoroughly enjoyable
experience, even if I did spend half of the movie getting kicked in the back by
the children sitting behind us (one of the perils of outdoor movies that are
catered to families, I guess).
Well. That takes us through Saturday’s events... now onto
Sunday. More art! We went to the SoWa open market and browsed
through the craft stalls, the food stalls, and the vintage goods. We also had some delicious tacos from a food
truck, and some rosemary lemonade that was equal parts delicious and confusing. I’m not sure how I feel about putting rosemary
into lemonade... but it was cold, and liquid, which was pretty much all that I
required on a scorcher of a day. As
always, I could have spent several more hours than I did perusing the market...
Farmers’ markets and the like always seem to have more things than you can
possibly look at in one go around.
However, our time at the market was cut slightly short by the fact that
we needed to be home to watch a very important game on television. I plan to go back at some point though... not
least because there was an ice cream sandwich food truck that I need to try (I
might skip lunch one day and just eat an ice cream sandwich.... what’s the
point of being young if you don’t enjoy it every once in a while? :P)
Anyway, back to the very important game. The final of the World Cup! Featuring Germany vs. Argentina! I was rooting for Germany, and I definitely
wasn’t the only one, although there were some Argentina fans in the room as well. The game itself wasn’t too exciting, given
that the score was 0-0 for the full regulation time, plus about 15 minutes of
extra time. It was, however, an
excellent soccer game, despite the amount of violence that the players managed
to pull off, either accidentally or intentionally. There were several hits that left me cringing
with each slow-motion replay. The game
eventually ended with only one goal having been scored- by Germany (Yay!
:P) It was a gorgeous goal, as far as
goals go, and the player who scored was only 22 years old, which is incredible
in and of itself. I read that he and the
player who assisted the goal are the first players on the German national team
to have been born under reunified Germany... which was a little bit mind
blowing. I knew, abstractly, that
Germany had only reunified very recently, but knowing that someone only a
little older than me is among the first Germans never to have known East and
West Germany made me stop and think for a minute. Time is a very confusing concept
occasionally.
Okay... three pages later, I think we’re caught up again. I could talk about lab, but nothing very
exciting has happened yet. I spent most
of last week reading and writing papers.
And I’ll probably spend a good chunk of this week doing the same,
depending on how things end up working out with some of our experiments. The only semi-exciting thing that’s happened
in lab is that my name has been added to the list of lab members that get
thanked at the end of everyone’s presentation slides, so I’m kind of a real
part of the lab, which is cool. And we
went out to a real bar for the semi-final of the World Cup in which Germany
sort of annihilated Brazil, which was exciting.
I’ve discovered that I’m still not a huge beer person, but there are a
couple that aren’t totally horrible. And
I’m probably the bane of every bartender’s existence, since I drank one beer
for the three hours we were there, but I think the rest of my lab probably made
up for that. :P
It was a pretty good week, all around, and this week is
looking pretty good so far as well.
Although there are several thunderstorms on the horizon, which might
make my walk to work a bit wet. But
maybe it’ll be less humid? One can hope anyway.
Until next week!
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