The Mason Gross MFA Show

I've got three letters for this show. U...G...H, ugh, yes ugh, I know that's not a word, but this work wasn't what I'd call "art" either. Now I know many would give me hell for saying that, but hey it's my opinion so I'll voice it however I want. Let's see where do I begin, a lot of the work that I saw in there was simply no different from what I've seen in other MG exhibitions. Concept, concept, and more concept. Did I mention concept? I see that art as half concept and half technique, but that show right there was mostly eighty-percent concept and twenty-percent artistic ability. In fact, I have a bone to pick with the vast majority of the art world; I don't call them artists, I call them posers and opportunists. People follow the art "trend" just because randomly splattering paint on a canvas in a single color or painting a geometric form on top of a photo is now the new thing; and guess what folks? IT'S EASY!
(I'll be back with more to say on this later)

Zimmerli: Japanese Prints

Okay so here I am reviewing an exhibition that I saw over at the Zimmerli last week. Honestly speaking, I wasn't expecting much from the Zimmerli museum, due to the fact that it's a university attraction. I sorta have this bad bias towards such museums, thinking that they only exist for the sake of the univeristy's public recognition. Shallow yes, and it's something that I'm still trying to get over. However I was glad to see something that struck my misconceptions upside the head.

Wood block prints. Japanese related ones at that. Though they may not have been made by the hands of their cultural kinsmen, these prints showed remarkable craftsmanship resembling the likeness of the prints of old. One of the things I love about Japanese prints, is the color that is being used in a composition. How the colors are not vibrant but earthly, uniform in "temperature" and not fighting for attention. Such as the image up top, notice how the majority of the composition is supported by the variety of brown colors. This is one of the things that I admire about Japanese block prints, because it makes the atmosphere around the work seem "real". When I mean real I'm referring to the pressence of a more mundane surrounding; our world after all is not just a world of sunshine and bright colors, it is also gray and cold.