8. The "art" of travel

Concentrating on art history and Italian, going to museums in Florence was one of the aspects of this city I was most looking forward to. I had visited the Uffizi, Bargello (with Donatello's David), and the Accademia (with Michelangelo's David) on a previous trip here, but I had not visited any smaller museums. In Florence, most if not all the smaller museums are in old Florentine palaces, antique shops, and houses of art collectors. Since I am in the class "Art Collecting and Museology," I was given the opportunity to be a tour guide for the "Stanze dei Tesori" exhibition at the Palazzo Medici Riccardi. This exhibition is very much tied into the history of Florentine art collecting and the smaller house museums scattered around Florence and its outskirts. It focuses on key art collectors, both during the 19th century and early 20th century, when the biggest art collectors were flourishing. Working at this exhibition on Monday mornings has not only given me a chance to look at all of the items and photographs many times, but also I have learned a great deal about Florentine history through its art collectors. It amazes me that there was a time in history when Renaissance works were being taken out of the churches and put in stores and sold to private owners. Also, from visiting house museums like Stefano Bardini's antique shop turned house museum, this dream that they had of the medieval home existing during the 1900's, makes this idea of Florence being stuck in a medieval-Renaissance time period much more clear.
 
While the "Stanze dei Tesori" exhibition gave me a sense of Florence's sense of time warp, the "Americans in Florence" exhibition at Palazzo Strozzi, the former Strozzi family's palace, applies much more to me directly. This exhibition displays scenes from the time when Americans, with a new wealth, started to come to Florence for a step into the past, for a step into a place that hasn't changed all that much since the Renaissance, quite similar to what I am doing here, except they weren't doing it with thousands of other college students. On the banner for the exhibition and on all of the advertisements, there is one painting, the name of which has escaped my memory but is by John Singer Sargent (and is attached) that shows a few women in long white dresses laying, sitting, and standing in a beautiful Tuscan garden. One of my favorite things to do here in Florence is to visit the gardens, particularly the gardens on campus. On nice days, I will go alone or with a few friends, find a nice spot and lay and relax. Some days I bring my sketchbook and draw statues that are sprinkled about and make you feel like you are in some sort of vacuum of time, art, relaxation, and sunshine. I make it sound like heaven because on a warm spring day, it is complete bliss, and this is what this painting brings to my mind, the "tempo libero" spent amongst cured nature.

    What is most striking about the narratives of Orwell is that they don't fit squarely into any of Redfoot's four classes of tourist. Unlike Flaubert, who might easily be pegged as a first-class tourist, Orwell acts with several goals and performs many behaviors that are unclassifiable. If you've read my previous blog, you might remember that I didn't care much for Redfoot's ideas. Although his classes of tourist are useful as general guidelines for categorizing motives and behaviors within modern patterns of voluntary movement, they cannot be hard and fast rules. Orwell, for one, does not fit hard and fast into what Redfoot has to say, and I find that refreshing.

    This is how. Orwell "tours" the cities of London and Paris by visiting the dirtiest, grimiest sectors of those cities, by taking "breaks" from normal life and donning the clothes and manners of the lower classes, and even taking lower class jobs. Some element of this is inevitably voyeuristic, and for that he shares something with the first order tourist. His drive to see the impoverished sectors of European city life puts him more in line with second order tourists who want to see the "authentic." I am hesitant to use that term, though--I only mean that he is searching for the way that most city-dwellers in these places live most of the time. And yet Orwell's experience in these places is more academic and--despite the criticisms to the contrary--quite immersive, making him also akin to the third and fourth order categories respectively.

    What's the point of de-classifying Orwell? Most criticisms of Orwell's travels seem to point at him being inconsistent in some kind of way. If he is voyeuristic, why is he legitimizing it with muckraking motives? If he is anthropological, how does he dare experience pleasure at suffering in the way that the poor do? I find all of these criticisms quite flat, because they attempt to, whether they realize it or not, box him into one category more than another. Why can't Orwell experience a sort of masochistic or intellectual pleasure at being (albeit artificially) poor? Do we want our muckrakers and "anthropologists" to be uninspired in what they do? Or more generally, what's wrong with his muckraking or "anthropological" motives? I have one friend who tried to do something similar--he spent a lot of time simply talking to homeless people in New York to figure out how they lived day by day. If I remember correctly, he even slept on the street once to see what it was actually like to live that way. Of course he didn't understand their lives completely, because he only did that sort of stuff for a few days, but I think his attempt to at least break the social barrier was quite commendable. It's going to be hard to find middle or upper class people who are willing to live as the lower classes do, completely and totally, for a long time.

    I'm sure you can gather from all this that I support what Orwell is doing here. Why? He finds a way to wed what he likes--travel and writing--with something that has a higher purpose. As long as he stays relatively humble about his motives--meaning, he doesn't profess to understand everything about these people--I think what he's doing is nicely rounded out. Even if most of us aren't brave enough to actually mingle with people far outside of our social group (let's be honest--how many of us are planning on going to a factory or a slum and just talking to people?), it shows us that one way to really enrich our understanding and experience of other cultures is to simply talk to people outside the tourist industry. And I think that doesn't have to include assumptions about whether you've finding the authentic or should be looking for the "authentic"--as in Orwell's case, that's too much of a generalization.

The very real mental schism that forms upon arrival in another country manifests itself in many different ways given the personal endeavors of the individual.  In some, the shift brings one back to childhood. For others, the shift has no real manifestation aside from small difficulties in adjusting to the new environment. Having had the privilege of being a primarily artistic personality, I realized that this schism broke apart many preconceptions and reservations concerning my own work. Suddenly it was as if the proverbial mental cork stoppering my most personal issues and feelings exploded outward, and everything I wished to express artistically detonated fantastically in all its moving glory. And what was most odd was that the things that I wished so ardently to convey in the past suddenly found themselves at my fingertips: both in skillful execution and in personal resonance. 

As for the types of art that Berlin is usually highlighted for, I would say a large part of the graffiti here is essentially well done street art. The murals and individual styles of each of the larger murals tend to be really well done in comparison to the graffiti typically on the walls of New York. As a general rule, the graffiti is never really cleaned off either, so there are layers upon layers of old and new tags. However, for the most part, it lends to the beauty of the city, splashes of color on decaying infrastructure. 

In my personal experience, I have had the privilege of working with a local Berlin artist, Sophie Erlund. She works primarily in the primordial psychology of space and installation. Currently working on an exhibition that will be showing in Colonge, and is working on some higher installations with sound and hair highlighting a personal journey through the ancient self on through the more modern self. The hands on experience as an intern has given me a lot of insight to how the business works, and am excited to learn more about Berlin culture. 

I could not tell you why Berlin was such an important part of my artistic expression. I do know this: Berlin is much more open to the art world than any other place I have experienced. Not only is it accepted here to be a professional artist, but it is easier for younger artists to get started in their careers. Galleries are a large part of the social fabric of the city, dotting the neighborhoods as competitive hubs for entertainment alongside bars. Federal funding is higher for the arts as cultural devices for improvement. Overall, the arts are a large part of Berlin's social fabric, and it shows in the quality of life in the individual. 

                When I first visited the neighborhood La Boca, which I wrote about in my last post, I instantaneously fell in love. Not because it is “the birthplace of the tango” but because it was the hub of the artists. The subject of all the art in this tourist-attraction of a neighborhood was of course, the cultural icons of Buenos Aires such as the colorful tenements of “el caminito” and couples embraced in a fiery Tango. Of course there is an economical explanation for this reoccurring subject—in a way, artists need to “sell Buenos Aires” to tourists, to provide them with souvenirs, to create for them a way of imagining Argentinia . However as my studies here are focused on the history of Argentinean culture, the origins of the Tango, and the ways in which it has been adopted as a national icon pertaining to Argentinean identity, the visual representations of this in the art in La Boca is extremely fascinating to me. I have a certain perception of the culture here from the literary texts that I have read and the people I confront here on a daily basis, but in the street art of La Boca I get to see the perceptions that these artists have of their own culture. Collectively, I see all that I have studied manifesting itself in these artists works.

Personally, this chapter of Art of Travel was my favorite. It put into words so eloquently the power of artwork. What I liked the most was the ways in which it explained the relationship between the style of a piece of art and what it conveys. “The world is complex enough for two realistic pictures of the same place, at the same moment, to look very different, as a consequence of differences in artistic styles and temperaments” says de Button. A piece of art is not meant to be a reflection of the real world, it is supposed to be an expression of it. The artist chooses what to include in a piece, and how to portray his subject based off of us his own personal perception. I saw many interesting pieces of art and styles in La Boca, but there was one artist, Roberto Jofre, who particularly stood out to me. The picture for this post is one of his pieces but really does not do it justice. I was instantaneously captivated by his work for two reasons: his stupendous use of colors, and his very distinct brush strokes that lend his subjects a special type of character and movement. His paintings of tango dancers and the Buenos Aires nightlife embodies everything I have learned about the history of the immigrant culture of Buenos Aires, the “bordelos”, or neighborhoods, where the Tango became popular in prostitution houses and cabarets, and the “compadritos” which were very macho men of the lower classes who dressed in suites and top hats and were central to the culture and attitude of the Tango.  His painting style creates a very specific “mood” descriptive of this Argentine culture.  Just like Van Gogh’s paintings from Provence helped de Button appreciate specific characteristics of provence, Jofre’s painting expressed to me a certain beauty, mood, and life that to the artist defined Argentina.

Ghanaian art is everywhere. But is it authentic Ghanaian art? The question, “what is art” is always a subjective blur no matter how many professors ask the question. Relating back to the question of authenticity, which is more authentic, the art I pass on the street every day or the art I see hung inside of a museum? I would say both, but the real genuine and interesting art (to me) is the omnipresent art I experience every day here in Ghana.

The beautiful fabrics that Ghanaian men and women wear are the first factor in bringing amazing color to the city of Accra. The fabrics are usually bright colors with traditional prints and beautiful patterns. Not only are the fabrics part of this culture, but the way in which a seamstress arranges and is able to display the fabric in a certain style is another art in its own. I have gained so much respect for designer and seamstresses all over after seeing the amazing work they do first hand. The way they arrange the fabric to create new patterns and the traditional styles of Ghanaian fashion all require an artistic touch.

Alongside the beautiful fabrics being sold at almost every street corner and Makola Market stall there is bound to be paintings, wood carved animals, and jewelry of all sorts. The paintings are actually quite beautiful and on canvas rolled up for easy transport. What we didn’t know, but learned quickly, was that these paintings are all the same and mass produced. Almost every vendor will have the same paintings and will overcharge a tourist claiming that they are “one of kind, authentic, Ghanaian paintings.” We see the same pictures of beautiful orange sunsets delicately drawn on canvas from three different street hawkers; perhaps the question of “what is art” walks a fine line here.

In the end, my experience with art has been that it is a thriving and tangible essence that thrives in the city of Accra. You can put your hand out and touch almost anything worthy of the label “art.” It doesn’t take going to the Artist Alliance or The National Museum of Ghana to feel the pulse that art has in this culture.

Picture above is of a Ghanaian Flag painted on someones garage door.
*Sorry for the late posts, I was on Spring Break!*
 
 
 

My apologies for the neglect of timeliness for this post. Honestly, the art scene in Berlin seems like a difficult and daunting thing to try to represent! Where do I begin? The museums, the architecture, the politics associated with the artists here... the city is bound up in it's art scene and Berlin seems like the place to be if your looking to be immersed in the modern art scene.

 

Almost, I feel, there is too much modern art here. Almost every corner you are presented with a cool wall of graffiti or some vague sculpture- perhaps a memorial, perhaps a community project, and many if not most aren't obviously marked, and even less in a language I can understand. I begin to take Berlin along with it's art scene as a background for living here. The city's art is sometimes for me a bunch of graffiti art- there, sometimes amazing sometimes annoying, but generally (at least here) part of a common landscape.

This experience of embedded art is complicated and perhaps deepened by my new internship experience. I now have been working in the studio of a modern sculpture artist, Sophie Erlund, helping her with her upcoming and still unnamed series of sculpture pieces to be featured in a festival in Cologne this April. Although I have literally been glue-gunning tiny metal spikes onto a giant net for the last two weeks straight, I have gained a load of experience working in a studio with an artist that definitely seems to have her shit together and has recently begun, while also mothering two children, working almost exclusively on her own projects, and doing successfully as well. She, in keeping with the vibe of Berlin, seems to be doing something always cool, always new, and so far very much with a relaxed manner.

While occasionally I visit museums such as the Hamberger Bahnhoff and a gallery or two when I get the chance, I find the process of making contemporary art, now that I have a feel for it, the more intriguing thing to muse upon rather than the piece itself. Personally, the modern and contemporary pieces that I am moved by emotionally, rather than intellectually, are few and far between, and I feel myself moving on from most of the things I see- storing them up for later reference perhaps for conversation or to bring up in my own studio art class. Regrettably, I glance quickly, treating most as another two minute intrigue I would maybe re-blog on tumblr. I think it really takes a moment of relaxation, pondering, and a serious effort to empathize with the artist before a lot of modern works reveal their full potential because unless they are slapping you in the face with a vibe, a form of presentation, or sheer size or beauty, there must be something subtle the artist is trying to achieve for the viewer. This is what I find interestin

However, there are occasional wondrous days where I explore the city, seeing a new place, and find something amazing- something moving on a deeper level than modern aesthetics. As mentioned, I visited the Hamberger Bahnhoff Museum and saw a Ryoji Ikada exhibit, somebody I had never heard of before (this is not surprising, I'm very behind in the art world, as I'm finding out now that I'm surrounded by an impenetrable click of Steinhardt studio art students). It was memorable, and an all-consuming experience I rarely feel from new pieces. There was a d room and a b room. The d room was dark, the whole room black save for screens that from a distance looked like was playing static, but when examined closely was a lot of tiny numbers flashing on the screen, freezing when the “musical” tone permeating the atmosphere of the room changed. There was, in the very end of the large room a whole in the wall that leads to a plain white room into which a giant, and I mean giant, spotlight was aimed. It's quite indescribable. The b room was opposite, bright, and the numbers were instead painted in white canvasses. A different tone played. Unlike myself, I was drawn to this piece for reasons I can't explain.

I haven't seen any artworks of Berlin, but surely the city wouldn't be anything without the modern art scene, not even to mention music scene (I could talk about that forever) that creates the vibe here. I feel that this constant additions of strange, new, and sometimes awesome pieces around the city sets Berlin apart from the rest of post-war and post-unification Germany.

A few weeks ago, I make the trek out to San Telmo to visit MAMBA, El Museo de Arte Moderno en Buenos Aires. It was the perfect opportunity to dive back into the art world that I had so cruelly neglected for a month. I planned out my entire bus route to make sure I didn't get lost, but of course, the girl with absolutely no sense of direction, hops off the bus only to discover that she has no idea where she is. There were no street signs to be seen, but a few kind strangers helped me on my way as usual. I arrived in the museum’s gorgeous open hallway with sweat dripping down my face and looking like a complete fool when I asked about the price of admission (it’s free).
 
A grand metal stairway led me to the topmost of the museum’s floors. I was quite shocked to find myself surrounded by paintings and sculptures that similarly echoed American and European minimalism art. I thought I had just stepped into one of the galleries in MoMA that I always breeze right through because Mondrian’s solid lines and a slew of other artist’s geometric abstractions hardly interest me. Seeing art similar to this in Buenos Aires, that I have come to know for all its quirks and genuine colorful character, seemed so out of place.
 
These flat geometric shapes, hard lines, and muted earth tones reminded of a class discussion that occurred at the very start of the semester. The professor had said that at one point in Argentina’s recent history, European formalism in art was adopted by local artists and subsequently idolized as a path to a more “civilized” society. I couldn’t get this thought out of my head as I walked through the exhibit, and though I tried to really focus on a few individual art pieces and attempt to know them on their own terms, without comparison to other art works, I failed miserably. I felt like they had nothing to tell me and wasn’t really sure what the artists wanted to convey through their pieces. However, this was not completely the fault of the art pieces, but also my own for entering that gallery with a mind full of preconceived notions and generalizations about Latin American art. Leaving that space made me realize that I still have a long way to go as a thoughtful, critical art viewer.
 
Feeling confused and disappointed, I made my way to the basement gallery and upon entering, was transported to an entirely different place. The works in this room were very contemporary compared to the room before, and also created on a far grander scale. Gone were the sharp lines and limits of the canvas, instead replaced by silver glitter and text applied straight to the museums foundations. Brown touch sensitive paneling covered an entire wall, and since I was the only person in the room (seriously) I took complete advantage of it, wildly sliding my fingers and arms over the brown material, creating a path of stark white through my body’s applied pressure which then faded almost instantly. It was an intriguing piece that spoke to the transience of physical human presence and our obsessive need to try and leave a “permanent,” visible mark on society; needless to say, I really enjoyed it.
 
However, the piece that interested me the most in the gallery was a short video art piece shown within a pitch-black room. The setting was a pale blue and pink rooftop in an area, definitely within South America, that was very compact, with other roofs and buildings in the background as far as the eye could see. But, the focus was this particular roof, from which the camera never strayed, surveying the whole scene from afar. The sun slowly rises over the rooftop, and eventually a person comes out on to the roof. More people come, and we begin to realize that we are watching a daily, though intimate, family gathering. There is a small boy playing with a toy off to the side, a young woman talking to a young man, a grandmother figure styling the hair of a middle-aged woman. Others come and go, and the scene plays out in front of us, until the sun slowly begins to set and the roof empties of its inhabitants. In this work, I experienced the daily routine of a family not unlike my own, although the place and the characters were completely different, and came to really understand feel at ease with them. Anxious voyeuristic feelings ebbed as the sun reached its zenith, and disappeared as it set on the family and myself. It was a feeling that I have experienced on a larger scale as I slowly become increasingly accustomed to life in Buenos Aires.

I always knew that Florence was a city filled with art, but until I arrived here I often associated Italy with ancient religious art. At school, I had learned about Brunelleschi and Michelangelo’s masterpieces such as the famous sculpture of David. From the Academy to the Uffizi, it is obvious that these great landmarks define Florence.  Although the artwork often appears to be similar and resemble each other, I noticed how different each painting really is. Each artist expressed himself differently, whether it is in the brushstrokes or colors depicted in the paintings. During my first week in Florence I visited the Uffizi, one of the most famous galleries in the world. I could not believe that I was surrounded by some of the most well-known and important masterpieces. I was even living a block away from the David! However, after visiting Pitti Palace, the Academy, and the Uffizi, I decided to visit museums that were not as famous and somewhat ‘undiscovered’. I was interested to see if there was something other than paintings of Madonna and child. And so as I walked through the streets, I stumbled upon the Anthropology Museum. When I first entered the museum I assumed that, with its simple façade, this exhibit would obviously be unable to compete with the Uffizi or Pitti Palace. But it turns out that I was wrong. The museum was filled with different types of dress from all over the world. Stunning and unusual textiles were showcased in glass boxes. Feathers and beads hung from the walls. As I skimmed through the different rooms, I was amazed. Although the exhibit showcased types of dress from all over the world, it was clear that Florence has always played a dominant role in inspiring fashion and art. It was evident that inspiration was taken from Renaissance art after examining the decadent fabrics, charming florals, and intricate gold detailing. Although Florence will always be identified as the home of the Renaissance, it seems as though many artists have learned to embrace their city’s history and use it to contribute to their great masterpieces. I guess I am not surprised that art and fashion and are often associated with each other. Although much of Italian art seems to somewhat dwell on the past, it is evident that Italians embrace their culture and appreciate their surroundings. Florence is truly the fashion and artistic capital of the world.

I’m currently enrolled in a class entitled “Arte y Cultura Visual en América Latina” taught by a lovely professor who also teaches art history at la Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA).  Every week we visit a museum in the city to experience directly the art we’re studying at the time.  Thus far we’ve explored colonial art, castas paintings, the beginnings of Romanticism and landscape painting, and are moving on to the start of the twentieth century.  And Buenos Aires is filled with this art and much more in various locations and museums throughout the capital.  Exactly where the art is housed is inevitably art itself.
 
How galleries are organized is a technical art, and the buildings that act as museums are architecture, and thus also art (a favorite in the city so far is Museo de Arte Hispanoamericano Isaac Fernández Blanco, which used to be the Blanco family mansion; a beautiful building of neocolonial style with a glorious patio one could spend hours in).  The walls of buildings, even when they’re not museums, can house public art, as is the case with graffiti.  Having been to a slew of large cities in the states known for their graffiti (New York, Chicago, Austin) I can honestly say that the graffiti here in Buenos Aires is unrivaled by any other city I have been to (I’m not going to discuss this in my post, but to see what I mean, check out Gaby’s post on the brilliance of street art in this city).  The best and most unique example, in my opinion, true to Buenos Aires life and culture that is both art and the housing of art is Caminito in the barrio of La Boca, where the houses are the art.
 
Caminito today is an incredibly touristy area that is a quintessential, postcard image for the city of Buenos Aires.  What many people do not know beyond it being a stretch of brightly painted houses is that Caminito is actually a museum, a street museum (una calle museo).  Caminito itself in Spanish means “little path” because it occurs in an alley / small, pedestrian street in La Boca.  I previously had no concept of what a street museum was before visiting Caminito, and frankly had never heard of one anywhere else before.  There’s no entry of any sorts, and there is no label anywhere explaining that it is a museum.  There are simply the houses, and signs labeling all shops and restaurants are solely marked as being located in Caminito.  Stranger yet, beyond the houses, the entire walkway acts as an artisan market (or really, since so many of the items resemble souvenirs, perhaps more of a ‘gift shop’).  So people are selling art, while amongst the art (the houses), and more often than not the art is of the art (the paintings one can buy are of Caminito).  So it acts as a museum, albeit a very informal one, because there is art everywhere.
 
So just as Botton describes how van Gogh’s paintings could easily lead someone to want to travel to Provence, the images I was exposed to (mostly photographs) of Caminito lead me straight to La Boca as a place to see.  What is interesting about Caminito, however, is that the images that came before it and the art that is all about it helped shape and create what Caminito is today, which is a different take on what Botton discusses, for how could van Gogh’s paintings change the cypresses and fields in the countryside of France?
 
European immigrants flocked to La Boca and made it the first real barrio of Buenos Aires in the nineteenth century.  It eventually became a poor man’s land, yet still full of cultural significance because of the mix of backgrounds present in a confined area.  The neighborhood was restored by a local artist in the 1950’s, giving it its unique style that eventually lead for it to be commissioned by the city government as a street museum.  One of the most famous songs in tango history is titled Caminito, written by Gabino Coria Peñazola (and was eventually recorded by Argentina’s most famous tango singer, Carlos Gardel), whose bust rests on a platform against one of the walls of the houses.  So the song and the photographs on the postcards drew me here.  Despite how kitschy it may seem and how crowded it is with foreigners during the day, I still find Caminito to be the most interesting example of art in Buenos Aires, and sincere to the city’s past of mixing cultures and social struggles, and, of course, what may be the only street museum in the world.

This week I finally did the Graffitimundo street art tour of Buenos Aires – a three-hour walking tour that highlights and explains the evolution and existence of the ample street art that enhances the walls and buildings of this city. The street art movement in Buenos Aires began in the 1990s when Argentines went to Europe and the United States and saw the art there. Laws in Argentina permit people to paint their buildings how they please so oftentimes, artists get permission from building owners and are able to paint during the day. Spray paint is imported and, therefore, expensive so young artists rely on their parents funding. Because of this, street art is treated in a more accepted, respected light from outside their community than in other countries. Additionally some artists use creative materials for their pieces such as regular house paint, dirt and petrol.
 
The variety of themes was extensive, ranging from goofy images such as a Bart Simpson smoking weed to political. There was a house painted with the same three phrases repeated in various fonts using the colors of the Argentine flag in support of their president, Cristina Kirchner. The artists have tags, which are their signatures or symbol to indicate that the work is theirs. Some have themes and images that they use continuously. One artists paints men in Mexican tiger costumes fighting in shades of blue and another does large bears in muted tones with strong, visible brush strokes. Stencils are also a popular form.
 
The tour guide, a native Porteña, was clearly friends with the artists and shared their process for each piece and anecdotes. By the end of the tour, I had a clear sense of the graffiti community. It seems relatively small and tight-knit. There are rebels within it, but for the most-part, the artists know and respect each others’ work. They’ll even occasionally add onto their friends pieces as a sign of approval.
 
Street art is a great medium to represent Buenos Aires because it’s wacky and constantly evolving. I’ve been to fine arts museums here; I’m in a class where we go weekly to see classic pieces of the Argentine art oeuvre. Buenos Aires, to me, isn’t a still life or a war scheme captured in oil. It’s silly and unexpected and sometimes doesn’t make sense or the references are dated, but at the end of the day, it’s fun. I hope the United States evolves to a place where we can appreciate street art more as a serious art form and therefore it would be more abundant. It adds a great deal of spice to the urban landscape. 

I took this picture of a wall in San Telmo.

Before coming to Italy, my impression of Italian art was that it was religious and from older periods. From studying Art History, I thought all the Madonna paintings would look the same and that statues of naked David’s wouldn’t be that interesting. My experience in Florence has changed this impression completely. The moment I entered the Academia and saw Michelangelo’s David in person my jaw dropped. The size of this statue was outstanding and the details were insane! After seeing this, I realized that the other statues of David were very different and unique because they each created by a different sculptor and depict a certain scene of him slaying the goliath. This is similar to the way that Alaine Bottom pointed out that Van Gogh interpreted Provence differently than other artists before him.
Florence is the home of the Renaissance; some of the most important artists lived and worked in this city.  I spent hours in the Ufizzi museum and noticed that while many of the paintings were of the same subject or location, each artist has a different interpretation of the religious stories depicted. The style and interpretation differ because of their own personal life and position in society. The artists could be using the religious scenes to express their own lives. Walking through the museums taught me more than the history of art but also the history of Italian culture. I began to notice this trend when I saw Carrivagio and Gentileschi’s Baroque style. Carrivagio painted the scene of The Calling of Saint Matthew, although it differed from previous paintings because it was placed in a bar setting with peasant characters at a table. I loved this style of painting because it showed the fashion and what the life was like in Italy in 1599.
The use of art to depict society is still used today in Italians modern art as well. While I am surrounded by masterpieces in Florence,  I also learned from my photography class that the Italian community values modern art just as much as its classical art. I have come to recognize the landscape around Florence and Tuscany in paintings as well as photographs. At a local cafe in Santos Spiritos called Volume, I noticed that the second time I visited that the paintings on the wall were different than the ones before. The following week there were new photos. I was impressed by the local artists because they captured the people, culture and architecture of Florence in different ways.  These modern artists in Volume and on the street (graffiti in picture above) each say something about the Italy’s current environment. Art in Italy is highly appreciated because it has always been a means of expression and education about its culture and society.

As someone who is working on an art minor for their study abroad semester, I couldn’t write about art and travel without talking about the particularities ofcreating art in a new, foreign place.  I came to Ghana looking forward to creating art in a new and inspiring environment, and instead was forced to confront truths about my art practice, and Western art practice in general that I had not previously considered. 
It’s said that Picasso created modern art by engaging in new practices in response to his interaction with African masks.  This reaction could be take a variety of ways, but in my Post-Colonial Practices in art, we looked at this sort of work through the lens of colonial and post-colonial interactions, and saw that what could be an iconoclastic and positive reflection of value of this response could also be taken as a new form of exoticism, an imperialism of ideas and appropriation.  These are the questions we face every time we snap a shutter, every time we make as sketch of the world as we perceive it.  The motions of making art become more directly and profoundly political as we engage with out relationships with Ghana, with post-colonial countries, with anything outside our own context that we view as the other.
While being in the consistently new and therefore exciting world of Ghana is inspiring, I find that I am constantly questioning the things I create, even as I create more.  This semester, I am writing more than ever, sketching more than I have in years, and engaging with my ideas about art and documentation in entirely new ways.  I tend to stay away from the political in both my writing and my art, feeling more comfortable when the only thing I am making a statement about is my own experiences and myself.  Here in Ghana, I’ve become increasingly aware that even the self is political, the way one perceives and the way one interprets the world around them.  I am reading post-colonial art theory and can feel its relevance not only in my work but in my everyday experiences.
Choosing to come to Ghana, I am realizing, was one of the best things I could have done for myself, and for my concentration.  I could shy away from important questions of identity and politics when I was in New York, hiding in a cocoon because there were so many people around me and I could allow myself to be drawn along.  Here in Ghana, with less than forty students, and less than ten students in a class, there’s nowhere to hide, and you are forced to engage in a way that is unlikely the classroom in New York City.  The same goes for engaging in your own artwork and writing; with these topics as your only classes, your are forced to engage in your own work in whole new way.
 
 

Having had a near melt down this past weekend spurred by my constant fear that I am “not doing enough,” I rushed off to the Musée D’Orsay to see the new “Degas and the Nude” exhibit at my first “dull” moment.  It was so gorgeous out that I could barely justify choosing to be inside for a few hours.  But it was what I had set out to do.  I. Needed. To. See. Art.

My roommate and I waited in line (as I found out later it was the first day of the new exhibit) in the sunshine discussing things and stuff.  We headed straight for the Degas as soon as we got in and at first, I was a little underwhelmed.  There were many small sketches hung up on the walls of his different “studies” of what would later become paintings.  My roommate walked up to me and said “this is making me miss my drawing class” and I think I mumbled something like “mmhmm” because it really wasn’t making me feel anything at all.

It all turned around for me in the room of his sketches from various brothels.  They were not beautiful exactly but they depicted life in a way that was more moving than any of his other sketches I had seen in the exhibit up until then.  In retrospect, perhaps it seemed fitting that these women were all naked as that defined a large part of their lives whereas in the other sketches there was not a reason as clearly defined as to why the women were naked.  Perhaps it was just that the brothel ladies had better surroundings.

As the exhibit went on, I began to understand why it was set up the way that it was.  In the ending rooms there were sketches matched with the paintings with which they corresponded and then the next version of the painting and then the next and the next and so on until we got to see a “finished” version of what Degas had set out to do.  This man either sketched, sculpted or sketched and sculpted his figures completely naked before he painted them fully clothed (although many times they remained naked).  Fascinating. 

I found it to be an interesting parallel to the alchemical process of “solve et coagulatio.”  This essentially means that one must break down all that there is of a substance in order to see it for it’s full value and truth before putting it back together in a more meaningful way (as you now have the knowledge to do so having seen your material at its most basic).  Degas was able to create such beautiful paintings because he knew where they came from and what they truly were underneath everything.  This exhibit allowed me to see that break down from some sort of start to finish.  Particularly in the painting above (“Petit déjeuner après le bain” 1893-8)
 
Towards the end of the exhibit there was a display of a Degas quote:  “One must do the same subject over again ten times, a hundred times.” (Okay maybe not a hundred times.  The guy was drinking absinthe.  He probably brushed his teeth a hundred times a day.  Or never…one of the two.) Nonetheless, the guy was disciplined and unknowingly (or perhaps knowingly) broke himself down through repetition until all that was left was the good stuff that he would then re-form into the really good stuff.  I hope to someday find something in which I can be disciplined enough to do one hundred times in order to make it really good.  Or maybe I’ll just drink some absinthe and see what happens.

Sources:
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/e/edgar_degas.html

When I read the prompt for this week I got nervous because I hadn’t been to any art museum in the Emirates!  However, I quickly realized that this was because there are none.  I double checked online, and yea- the only museums (and there are like two tops) are largely cultural and focus on development.   We have to take into account that only 50 years ago this was hardly even a town, and the people were not really well-off enough to spend time making much art.  Also, a lot of art focuses on religion, and Islam prohibits the prophet Mohammed’s image from being drawn, so. . . yea, not much art around here. Though there are plans to open a Guggenheim and a Louvre in Abu Dhabi and some other art museums in Dubai- but still, nothing really yet.
 
But, then I started to think back to the extremely meta required course in the IB (international baccalaureate) “Theory of Knowledge.”  One of the sections of the syllabus, which is uniform for all IB students, is “What is art?”  Is art just creation? Or is it just expression in visual form?  Or does it have to be high-class painting, sculptures, prints or the other usual things we see in art museums? 
 
Well, the more that I thought about it the more I realized that there is a lot of art in the Emirates- most noticeably the urban development.  There are beautiful walking paths along the coast, awe-striking skyscrapers, variously shaped man-made islands, and dozens of fountains.  Inside these buildings we have elaborate elevators, chandeliers, rugs, and even toilet seats.  There may not be a huge presence of “art” in the traditional or usual sense in the Emirates, but everything is for show in one way or another, and to me at least, that is art.
 
So for my favorite piece of art in the Emirates I would have to say the Burj Khalifa.  I know it is a bit cliché to say that the tallest building in the world is my favorite, but seriously it is INSANE.  To put it in perspective, it is more than twice as tall as the Empire State Building.  Just stop for a second and think about what that means. . . it is ridiculous.
 
The first time that I saw it was at night, and because of its black color it took me quite some time to realize it was there- I legitimately thought that the blinking dot on top was a plane.  It towers above the other buildings in Dubai, and yet they are all astonishingly tall as well- including the Burj, there are 9 buildings in Dubai that are within 100ft of the Empire State Building (only two are taller).  It is astonishing, and though I know in New York we make fun of tourists who can’t do anything but look up, with the Burj Khalifa you can’t help it.
 
In the end, I love that studying in the Emirates has made me rethink so many things like: culture, language, wealth, identity, globalization, human rights, development, and now art.