Museum Gallery Visit #1 (AP 2D)
For this museum/gallery visit, I visited the National Gallery Singapore and viewed multiple exhibitions.
1) Modern twists on old/classic genre
I saw a couple of Southeast Asian takes on a very traditional European exercise, the still life. One artist drew Southeast Asian fruits (rambutan, durian, etc.) with nontraditional colors with batik fabric in the background. Another artist who studied in Paris drew mangos with the brush-strokey, textured impressionist style. What I took away from this is that even boring-ish genres can be spiced up and significantly more interesting when they're influenced by other cultural components.
2) How tinted highlights influence tone
I saw multiple pieces with green-toned highlights, which made the subjects look like they were bathed in green light. My immediate reaction to this was that the image had something to do with witchcraft or otherworldly elements. Another piece had red highlights with blue shadows, which reminded me of police flashers. It made the piece feel panicked or urgent. I know that shadow tones can influence a piece and that using pure black to create shadows is a missed opportunity. But are highlights like that too? Maybe working with specific colored highlights are something I should experiment with.
3) The role of art in social activism
A lot of the pieces I saw had to do with colonialism and a reclamation of Southeast Asian culture. More specifically, they were a commentary on the fantastical representations of Southeast Asian culture in European art. A question I saw on a plaque really got me thinking: should realism aspire to be an aesthetic achievement or a form of agitation for change?
I'd like to think it's nobler for it to be the latter. I mean, yes, the aesthetic achievement is important, but especially as photographs can capture physical exactness so perfectly, I think it makes much more sense for art to be something more. The realism, in this case, isn't a study in beauty, it's a study in making people understand that culture is real and tangible and not some odd caricatured image.
4) Georgette Chen and the relevance of women and minority artists
Walking through the gallery, I found myself captivated by many pieces by an artist named Georgette Chen. She was a Chinese Singaporean who studied in Paris and her work was displayed in the Autumn Salon in the 1930s. Seeing her work and her style, reminiscent of impressionists and post-impressionists like Cezanne, made me wonder why I had never heard of her before. I don't think its a stretch to say that this has something to do with her being a woman and Asian. I remember this hashtag going around a while ago that asked everyone to name 5 women artists, and I remember struggling with it originally, so I've been keeping an eye out for their work and the specific circumstances of how they rose to greatness. Chen was the daughter of an art trader and had the opportunity to travel to New York and Paris because of his career. Seeing her work in this exhibit made me wonder what other women and non-white artists have been lost to history, at least for now.
1) Modern twists on old/classic genre
I saw a couple of Southeast Asian takes on a very traditional European exercise, the still life. One artist drew Southeast Asian fruits (rambutan, durian, etc.) with nontraditional colors with batik fabric in the background. Another artist who studied in Paris drew mangos with the brush-strokey, textured impressionist style. What I took away from this is that even boring-ish genres can be spiced up and significantly more interesting when they're influenced by other cultural components.
2) How tinted highlights influence tone
I saw multiple pieces with green-toned highlights, which made the subjects look like they were bathed in green light. My immediate reaction to this was that the image had something to do with witchcraft or otherworldly elements. Another piece had red highlights with blue shadows, which reminded me of police flashers. It made the piece feel panicked or urgent. I know that shadow tones can influence a piece and that using pure black to create shadows is a missed opportunity. But are highlights like that too? Maybe working with specific colored highlights are something I should experiment with.
3) The role of art in social activism
A lot of the pieces I saw had to do with colonialism and a reclamation of Southeast Asian culture. More specifically, they were a commentary on the fantastical representations of Southeast Asian culture in European art. A question I saw on a plaque really got me thinking: should realism aspire to be an aesthetic achievement or a form of agitation for change?
I'd like to think it's nobler for it to be the latter. I mean, yes, the aesthetic achievement is important, but especially as photographs can capture physical exactness so perfectly, I think it makes much more sense for art to be something more. The realism, in this case, isn't a study in beauty, it's a study in making people understand that culture is real and tangible and not some odd caricatured image.
4) Georgette Chen and the relevance of women and minority artists
Walking through the gallery, I found myself captivated by many pieces by an artist named Georgette Chen. She was a Chinese Singaporean who studied in Paris and her work was displayed in the Autumn Salon in the 1930s. Seeing her work and her style, reminiscent of impressionists and post-impressionists like Cezanne, made me wonder why I had never heard of her before. I don't think its a stretch to say that this has something to do with her being a woman and Asian. I remember this hashtag going around a while ago that asked everyone to name 5 women artists, and I remember struggling with it originally, so I've been keeping an eye out for their work and the specific circumstances of how they rose to greatness. Chen was the daughter of an art trader and had the opportunity to travel to New York and Paris because of his career. Seeing her work in this exhibit made me wonder what other women and non-white artists have been lost to history, at least for now.
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