Go Go Gauguin!

So, I'm actually typing this on my fancy phone while sitting at the dmv...

Last weekend I hightailed it to Seattle, and enjoyed the Seattle Art Museum exhibit on Mr.Tahiti himself! Like most weekends at the SAM it was CROWDED, so I didn't get to spend quite the quality of time with the works as I would have liked. But, as usual, I highly enjoyed myself looking at the crazy sexist atheist who could paint thatch and palm trees with aplomb. These are lovely, candy colored paintings at their best, strange amalgamations of poetic reference and poor portraiture at their worst. What I can't get over about Gauguin is just how yummy his paintings are. If only you could lick 'em...

After seeing the Degas exhibit last summer at the MFA, this exhibit seemed heavy on the support materials (easily half the exhibit was Tahitian artifacts that should have had their own exhibit, but that's another paragraph...) and light on the comparitive artists work, which was too bad. For me, the references to contemporary Parisian artists' work were much more obvious than the references to Tahitian symbolism. Actually, compositionally, I saw more reference to Greco-Roman via dead green baby Christian than anything else. But Mannerism doesn't seem too far removed from Gauguin in any extreme, or so I figure.

Gauguin's carvings and ceramics, lauded by the exhibit, seemed rather silly and clumsy in comparison to the beautiful native works, and made me ponder just how much cred an artist should really be given just for trying, and sometimes failing, at other media. I say this as an artist who feels like they have yet to master any medium, and wonders if I ever will.

My goodness, this is a clumsy way of composing. However, in the time that I've been writing they've only called 3 numbers, so I may as well continue.

Other things on display at the museum included a room somehow asssociated with Jacob Lawrence and filled with collected and created stuff by a gentleman named Theaster Gates. There was a collection of trashed soul and jazz records that could be played into headphones, as well as wall pieces composed of fire hoses. This brought to mind the reading I'm about halfway through by Audre Lorde, about the understanding (or not) of alternative cultural, sexual, etc. experiences. In the room with the records was a wonderfully intense docent, who explained each object as having such great significance. Looking at the museum vatiety pack of records and looking around the dmv right now makes me aware at how what we really experience, as black, white, latino, etc is generally the "not quite" good. We all have to experience the dmv. And I dont think my experience as a white bisexual woman at the dmv is much different that the black male teenager across from me, except thinking makes it so...

And that's something that does drive me crazy. Why do I have to share Gauguins experience of Tahiti (and all of it's 13 year old carnal pleasures) in order to be thought to understand it? Can't I just enjoy my experience of looking at the lovingly interpreted thatch? Is it really necessary to know that he slept with his models? Can I just experience firehoses and records, or do I have to know I'm kibitzing on someone else's cultural identity? Hrumph! Art appreciation seems to have too much to do with historical mis-interpretation of cultural baggage, and not enough to do with plain art experience, too me.


As soon as I get out of here I'm gonna get a big cup of coffee and spend the rest of the day trimming up some apple trees. It'll be lovely.