Visual Language. Week 6.

The field trip to the Irish Museum of Modern Art.

On 22nd October we had a field trip to the Royal Hospital, to take a look at the present exhibitions of modern art. I went into one room and saw a bucket on the floor with an outboard motor screw (propeller) welded onto the inside of it. Well that boat aint goin nowhere nohow. It reminded me of an advert on the telly years ago with an American woman asking “Is this the modern art room” to which came the reply,  in a German accent  “No madam that is a fire bucket”.

I thought to myself  “What am I doing here”. I love art, but I generally only appreciate the conventional stuff. It may be that I don’t understand it, but there’s also a bit of mistrust on my behalf, that there’s too much pretentious rubbish put together in the name of art. Don’t get me wrong, I am open to debate, and there is some modern art I do like, but a lot of it is in my opinion “pulling the wool”.

When I entered another part of the gallery I saw a simple, blue silkscreen line print by an artist named Alex Katz. This was just a line representation of a human face. It used just the minimum amount of strokes, but I think achieved a great amount of detail and facial structure. It was 2D but appeared to be 3D. I attempted to copy it with a pen and paper. This is my interpretation of it. I really liked this piece. It is Untitled 2007, but with reference to one of my earlier comments, “It floats my boat”.

The next piece of art that I liked was of two menus inside a glass frame.The piece is by an artist by the name of Jack Pierson and it is also untitled. 2008. The left-hand menu entitled “Dinner” with the word fear as the main and only course. Fear was printed in such a shape as to give the impression that the first letter is whispered the second and subsequent letter is loudly exclaimed and the last letter draws back into a whisper. The right -hand menu entitled “Breakfast” has the word hope as the main and only course. The first letter shouted, the second and subsequent letter fades but the last letter returning to a shout.

I feel that the artist is saying that we can be locked up in problems and worry in our lives and sometimes try to pop our heads over the parapet, only to draw back into ourselves. Then comes another bright new day to allow us to shout, worry a bit more, but then have the hope to stand tall again. I feel that we all go through these feelings at one time or another in our lives, and the artist portrays these feelings very well through these two simple menus rolled into one piece of art. I liked this very much as it was so simple, and yet spoke volumes.

The third piece I have chosen is another simple pencil drawing on white card, in a glass frame.

It is by  an artist named William McKeown and is simply entitled “Snowdrop” 2008.

This piece shows the simple beauty of the little flower itself.

By nature they are white and pure, so no bright colours necessary.

There isn’t much more I can say about it except that he caught it in relatively few lines.