Flash Mob

I must admit, I liked the idea of the Flash Mob when it first started.

Performance art has always been interesting to me, because I enjoy art which uses human beings as part of the experience. An artist friend of mine created a sculpture once that utilized a clear gas which, when lit on fire, burned clear as well. He'd have viewers of the piece run their hand quickly over the invisible flame, and when they were startled by the heat....drew their hands back quickly, perhaps gasped or laughed...THAT, he said, was the art.

That resonated with me. Human emotion, basic physical response, as art. It's not much different from what Chris Burden does.

But the part that has always fascinated me is that I have felt that same human emotion...the chills, the startle response, pure physical joy...viewing static works that require nothing on my part other than standing before them.

What I enjoy about the idea of the Flash Mob is that instant when the crowd starts to figure out there is something going on. Something different. Something that shakes them out of the doldrums of their daily life, buying a newspaper and walking mindlessly through the train station without seeing it. Realizing that people have frozen in place. THAT moment. The basic moment of comprehension that life doesn't have to be dull. That's the art.

I hope the Flash Mob isn't becoming too omnipresent. The more of these events they stage, the less prevalent is that MOMENT. When you realize immediately what's happening, the power of the moment is lost. Too much saturation can dilute the art. It becomes a gimmick, or a stunt.

The difficulty with performance art, I think, is that the longer humanity exists, the more it takes to shock us. To give us that moment of startle, that takes us beyond ourselves. That's why contemporary art is so important, and why I admire artists who are constantly pushing the envelope, in search of that MOMENT.

There Is Something About You

In this post, I'm going to talk about music. Mostly because it's Friday, and I want to. Specifically, I want to talk about what makes music resonate with us. Why do we love one song so hard, and want to spork our ears out when we hear another?

My boyfriend hates Train with the white-hot heat of a thousand suns. It's a violent, visceral reaction that defies description. I feel the same way about Sheryl Crow. I'm sure she's a terribly nice person and all, but the opening notes of All I Wanna Do have nearly caused me to fracture my finger, so violent was my attempt to push the button to change the radio station.

I often wonder if there is something deeper behind our intense love or intense hatred for songs or musicians. Were the All American Rejects playing faintly in the background the last time they put lettuce on my friggin' hamburger, again, after I'd asked them not to, again? Did I make a subconscious connection between Gives You Hell and my desire to rub my open-faced burger all over the drive-thru window in protest? Is that why I hate it so much?

For the best example of the complete polarization music can create in people, I have only to mention one name. Lady Gaga. I find it interesting that there seems to be no middle ground where she is concerned. You don't hear folks say "That Lady Gaga....she's not half bad!" People either love her so much they want to take her behind the bleachers and have her freaky, besequined, human hair hatted babies, or they hate her so much they'd happily toss her into the nearest wood chipper. (As for me? She won my eternal love with her Cremaster 3-meets- Michael-Jackson's-Thriller video for Bad Romance.)

It makes sense that someone like Lady Gaga, who is as much performance art as music, would create such strong reactions in people. But why, say, Justin Bieber? He's a pretty harmless little dude, right? And yet, I have heard more people than I can count wish horrible, everlasting cases of laryngitis upon him. (Yes, his hair is annoying. I will freely admit that.)

My favorite thing about music is its ability to transport me. To this day, I can't hear Level 42 without being instantly taken back to an old red Ford pickup truck and a portable cassette player, and the excitement of a first crush. Music is so closely tied to memory, that I suppose it only makes sense we feel very strongly about the songs we love, and those we hate.

I will allow your everlasting love for N'Sync, if you'll never argue with me when I say that Licensed to Ill is the best album ever created. Because it is.

Art is what you can get away with.

Ah, the joy of popping the proverbial cherry on a brand new blog. And what better awkward first time in the back of a hatchback can one have, really, than with Andy Warhol?

When I decided to create this blog, I envisioned it as a tangible manifestation of my brain. As such, I should probably begin my inaugural post by apologizing to the populace at large for what you're about to experience. Expect a cosmic mashup of art, humor, oddity, trite prose, existential musings, mundanity...something you'd expect if the Italian Renaissance mated with Pop Art while reclining on a sofa with Manet sipping absinthe in front of Starry Night. That made more sense in my head...I promise. Also, in my head, the Xanadu soundtrack is playing.

Without further ado: my first exhibition review of 2010.

Andy Warhol: The Last Decade opened on Valentine's Day at The Modern in Ft. Worth. The Modern tells us that "Warhol entered a period of renewed vigor and enthusiasm in the 1980s that resulted in what was arguably the most productive period of his career." While I quibble with this being his most productive period, I will admit this is one hell of an exhibition, worth seeing for Warhol's Last Supper series alone.

But, in addition to the Last Supper, and the flowers, and the gun....there's URINE! How can you not love an exhibition that includes urine? You can't. It's not possible.

This is my second Warhol exhibition. I also saw Andy Warhol: Other Voices, Other Rooms at the Wexner Center in Columbus last year. That exhibit was fabulous in entirely different ways than the one at the Modern. Granted, there was no urine, but it did have an interactive, multimedia component that I think Andy would have enjoyed.

Possibly the most enjoyable moment of my Warhol: The Last Decade experience came when I overheard a fellow patron of the silver-haired variety trying to explain Warhol to his companion, also of the AARP set. "They were pretty cool people," he explained. I always enjoy hearing other art lovers try to recruit the non-artsy fartsy to our side. I imagine it's more difficult to do that when you're dealing with an artist who created a 35-minute single shot homage to the Blow Job (1963) than it is when you're showing off a nice Kinkade that would look lovely in the foyer, so props to the dude for trying.

In review: Go see the Warhol at The Modern. You won't regret it. (Also consider visiting the gift shop to purchase, as I did, an Andy Warhol action figure for your desk. It's an excellent conversation piece, because most people think it's Edgar Winter.)