the wonderful louisiana museum of modern art is open 'til 10 p.m. on week nights. so, after work today, i decided to pop up there and see the kusama exhibition that's on at the moment. polka dot explosion and precisely what i needed after starting my day with a rather nasty email from that infamous deficit person i've mentioned before (more fodder for that novel that i need to get to writing). kusama and a solitary, but not lonely, dinner at the museum was precisely what i needed to shake it off.
in the kusama exhibition, there are several places where there are mirrors and which invite one to partake in today's selfie culture.
ok, it was kind of a lot of places. lots of mirrors and many, many polka dots. kusama is an amazing woman. i sat for a long time and watched a film with her. she's got quite the ego, actually, but i suppose at this point in her life, she's earned it. and she does, after all, live in an insane asylum and has for many years, of her own choice. you may think it's all just polka dots, but it's much more than that...a kind of search for but obliteration of the self in endless repetition. much deeper than it may appear on the surface. and she has enviably lived her art as a way of life.
and it got me thinking about these endless selfies we take these days. are we also searching for who we are? or are we obliterating ourselves in the repetition?
and what does it mean that we see our own reflection (quite literally) in the art we obsessively photograph as we go around the museum - like me in this rothko?
or the ghost of me against william burroughs in this mappelthorpe? maybe it doesn't mean anything other than that i really should put away my phone and just be there with the art. but those polka dots do make an excellent screen background on my phone(s).
1 comment:
Regardless of why one does a selfie these are pretty awesome. The first one is a piece of art for sure!
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