Blue (Dabadee)

This week, we went to the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal and saw two exhibits: Bleu and Actes de Présences.

John:

Ah, contemporary art. Whenever I go to see contemporary art, I usually have this conversation in my head: "I could do that." "Yes, but you didn't, did you?" "No, but that doesn't make it good art, that just means the person who had the idea to paint the entire canvas blue has a better agent than I do." Ok, maybe that's not exactly fair or true, but I can't help but roll my eyes at some stuff. Don't get me wrong: I like the colour blue! In fact, the two canvases, each painted two shades of solid blue by Claude Tousignant, were quite nice to look at. The darker blue was almost exactly the same shade of blue I chose to paint my living room in Fredericton. Yes, it's true, and though I was criticised for it at the paint store, once we got it on the walls, my decision was valourised.

At least I did learn something new: blue as the representative colour for water emerged only in the 1400s. Prior to that, water had been coloured green on maps. That was the only bit of information I gathered from the exhibit, as the decision to highlight the elements of the collection based on the colour blue seemed to have no other common thread than that. I'm surprised there was no Virgin Mary. There were, however, skies. Genius!

As I was underwhelmed (but not disappointed) by the Blue exhibit, I thought perhaps the Actes de Présences would be more inspiring. It was hit and miss.

First, the misses: The blue canvases were on the simple, minimalist side of things, and that's usually the side I'm on. I'm not a big fan of meta-art, or artist-centric, self-indulgent stuff. A series of photographs of the artist cutting herself with the thorns of a rose? Does it get more high school angst than that? I didn't even bother getting the name. I was also disappointed to read the info next to the Michael Snow piece, Venitian Blind 1970, which told us that the blurry self-portrait head-shots taken by hand with Venice as the background are supposed to remind us that "someone made this." Wow, thanks, I hadn't thought of that. I mean, I understand that perspective is something artists like to play with, and it can be interesting, but this was basically just a series of post-cards of Venice ruined by Snow's squinting mug. Next.

Ok, so there were some things I liked. Dennis Oppenheim's "Two-stage transfer drawing Dennis and Erik" 1971 was pretty cool. The artist, Dennis, had his son, Erik, draw a pattern on his back in magic marker. As Erik was drawing, Dennis tried to draw the same thing on the wall, based on what he was feeling on his back. Then they switched places. The result was not all that attractive or interesting in and of itself, but this is a cool trick of perspective. Not sure it's art, exactly, but it was cool.

The piece that I loved was Francis Alys 4:12 video called El Gringo, from 2003 (second video down in the link). The artist took a video camera into a Mexican village, and was confronted by the local gang of dogs. At first, you see the dogs approaching, from the perspective of the person holding the camera. Then, as the dogs get angrier and more aggressive with their barking, the artist seems to shove the camera in their faces a bit. There are some serious fang shots: cute little dogs become raging wild beasts! Eventually, with six or seven dogs at his heels (or throat!), he abandons the camera to the ground and runs away. We can hear the dogs barking and chasing him away. Then they come back to the camera (still running, left laying in the dirt), nose it, lick it. Back to being cute puppies again!

Well, you can watch the whole thing yourself, but I wanted to describe it, because it was really neat. To me, that's what makes good art: when you want to, no you have to, describe it to someone. The need to share the experience is the essential element for me, which is why some things that are maybe too private (self-cutting? really?) or too banal (measuring tapes stacked as a cone--I have done that one!) turn me off. I guess what I'm saying is, artists, if you want to impress me (and this should be your goal! Ha!), you'll need to come up with a story of some kind, a good colour (like blue!), and cute puppies.

Miriam:

A la demande générale je vais écrire mes pensées en français. Aujourd'hui nous sommes allés au Musée des arts contemporains de Montréal. Pour être entièrement honnête je ne suis pas une grande fanatique de l'art contemporain. Ce n'est pas tout à fait vrai, j'aime beaucoup certaines pièces, mais je n'aime pas les pièces accompagnées de longues descriptions abstraites qui asseyaient de me convaincre que la moitié de la patate trempez dans la gouache rose représente les amours perdus par la sur-urbanisation des terres fertiles durant le 20e siècle. Je trouve que lorsque l'art doit être expliqué c'est parce que l'artiste n'a pas fait son travail. L'exposition "Bleu" a su trouvé des pièces qui évoquaient chez-moi un sentiment de compréhension. En les regardant, j'ai cru être capable comprendre l'état d'âme de l'artiste, sans explication et d'une façon plutôt innée je crois. Ces pièces sont rare mais Bleu a su en regrouper plusieurs. Mais je dois donner une mention spéciale à la boutique du musée. Elle est remplie de curiosité et d'idée cadeau, mais aussi plusieurs créateurs locaux un groupe qui mérite d'être encouragé. Je n'ai rien à dire sur l'exposition "Acte de présence" allez-y un mercredi soir l'accès au musée est gratuit et dites-moi ce que vous en pensez.