String, rocks, shards - ART at DIA: Beacon
R and I took down two significant (enjoyable) birds this weekend. The real estate one - Sunday - is another post, but art on Saturday was the kick-off.
On way up to see Bill and George (in Wingdale), in Christian's car, happily back on the Taconic which hadn't changed a tree, realized there was no way we'd make Hudson (by nightfall) so veered west to Beacon.
Beacon, surprisingly, only a little bit charming - maybe just a block's worth of arty cafes and thangka/buddha/crystal shops. The bulk of the town is sad still, brow beaten, people sitting on stoops. It looks from the Dia's literature as if they're trying for outreach with weekends free for locals, but you feel a bit of a poseur-interloper driving straight through to the museum. In a Porsche surely didn't help - I may have resented us too.
But, cultural-chasm aside it was worth crossing the tracks. DIA:Beacon fantastically invigorating. HUGE - 22,000 sq., I think (former Nabisco factory) scattered, layered with all the conceptual, environmental, minimal, piles of dirt in a gallery pieces that i'd seen severe slides of in fine arts class. It turns out, given the right space - as the DIA very much is - the pieces sing and make sense. Even the kids floating about got them. Even sceptics would get them. There was a purity that acted as a kind of scrub-down for the senses.
Oddly, the works (except for Warhol's - which felt sort of tawdry) also tied into the Wyeths of last weekend. Same brutal connection with nature, this just the next step.
I'll close my arty rant with some notes scribbled while walking, just having navigated Serra's 4 steel structures, en route to the enchanting string exhibits.
Brusquely confident - the really good pieces, holding their own in the vast space.
Light, texture, juxtaposition, passing around a corner - all stripped down.
Moving into Serra's rusted steel - R remembers the trick of dragging your right hand along the wall to navigate out of a labrynth. Childhood basics, primal basics, giddy engagement with everyone and the world.
And, better words:
"...the function of artwork is the renewal of memories of moments of perfection."
- Agnew Martin
Arty-out
c
On way up to see Bill and George (in Wingdale), in Christian's car, happily back on the Taconic which hadn't changed a tree, realized there was no way we'd make Hudson (by nightfall) so veered west to Beacon.
Beacon, surprisingly, only a little bit charming - maybe just a block's worth of arty cafes and thangka/buddha/crystal shops. The bulk of the town is sad still, brow beaten, people sitting on stoops. It looks from the Dia's literature as if they're trying for outreach with weekends free for locals, but you feel a bit of a poseur-interloper driving straight through to the museum. In a Porsche surely didn't help - I may have resented us too.
But, cultural-chasm aside it was worth crossing the tracks. DIA:Beacon fantastically invigorating. HUGE - 22,000 sq., I think (former Nabisco factory) scattered, layered with all the conceptual, environmental, minimal, piles of dirt in a gallery pieces that i'd seen severe slides of in fine arts class. It turns out, given the right space - as the DIA very much is - the pieces sing and make sense. Even the kids floating about got them. Even sceptics would get them. There was a purity that acted as a kind of scrub-down for the senses.
Oddly, the works (except for Warhol's - which felt sort of tawdry) also tied into the Wyeths of last weekend. Same brutal connection with nature, this just the next step.
I'll close my arty rant with some notes scribbled while walking, just having navigated Serra's 4 steel structures, en route to the enchanting string exhibits.
Brusquely confident - the really good pieces, holding their own in the vast space.
Light, texture, juxtaposition, passing around a corner - all stripped down.
Moving into Serra's rusted steel - R remembers the trick of dragging your right hand along the wall to navigate out of a labrynth. Childhood basics, primal basics, giddy engagement with everyone and the world.
And, better words:
"...the function of artwork is the renewal of memories of moments of perfection."
- Agnew Martin
Arty-out
c
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