Review THe Armory Show 2008

It was a maze of white walls with attention grabbing art tucked away or sometimes staring you down blatantly. The event was well organized, not realizing you could buy tickets on-line we waited about 20 minutes to get in. My original plan was to buy a book and run through the exhibit, I don't like to ponder over a black square for half an hour trying to decipher its meaning, I've taken enough art classes to figure out what it means and if its incorrect I will blame some art critic for steering me the wrong way.


Almost all of the art was resented through an art gallery with the main purpose to sell. In each station/room there were tables with the representatives sitting behind their mac books checking email, of course dressed in black and the managers running around trying to find out how many pieces were sold that day. I did not get to run through due to a compelling array of artwork, each time I thought I am in a curiosity free area, more fascinating art appeared. It was really an attack on my senses and a constant exercise for my brain.



Overall, for a commercial/capitalistic art event, I thought it was inspirational and fairly creative. I do feel that it did not live up to the name "Armory Show", it should of been called something else. The Armory show of 1913 brought modern art to America, it brought much needed inspiration and new thought. What I saw at this current exhibit was the same old repetitive work. A lot of it was pornographic. Really? Pornographic art is that popular? Its definitely not breakthrough. Its not innovative or inspiring. Might have been new at the beginning of last century at the old Armory show but this is 2008, try something else... Also you would think with all the technology available today... all the modern advances, it would be represented at the international art fair? There were a couple of LED pieces scattered about, but not enough to make me believe this is the representation of today. Art has always been at the frontier of innovation. Artist have embraced technology faster than any other group. It seemed at this event galleries chose pieces that will sell well and look good on the wall at oppose to taking a risk. There should be a venue for art that is no longer post-modern, I believe we are pass that. Let the armory show continue to represent post modern art after it changes it name. Because it should not carry a name that stands for change. If it continues to be "armory show" it should evolve and find artists of today who are breaking ground no with their use of oils and canvases but with led, digital interfaces, and laser. I'm sure there are ways to hang such art on the walls.

The "New" Armory Show

The "New" Armory Show

is being held on the west side, New York. March 27th - 30th.
The exhibition is named after the Armory Show of 1913 ("International Exhibition of Modern Art") Unlike its predecessor, current exhibition is more commercially oriented and certainly not as ground breaking or shocking. I will be attended this weekend and if I feel inspired, I will share my thoughts and impressions.

Brian Leetch

View from my Window

The Work of Jonathan Harris

http://www.number27.org/

Perceptive Pixel

www.perceptivepixel.com

Dreaming a Fingertip Conversation with You

http://www.tactualseries.info/main.html

Thomas Coke

(... Masked parties, Savage parties, Victorian parties, Greek parties, Wild West parties, Russian parties, Circus parties, parties where one had to dress as somebody else, almost naked parties in St John's Wood, parties in flats and studios and houses and ships and hotels and night clubs, in windmills and swimming-baths, tea parties at school where one ate muffins and meringues and tinned crab, parties at Oxford where one drank brown sherry and smoked Turkish cigarettes, dull dances in London and comic dances in Scotland and disgusting dances in Paris - all that succession and repetition of massed humanity . . . Those vile bodies...)

—Evelyn Waugh, Vile Bodies

South Boston shore

Voluntary solitariness is that which is familiar with melancholy, and gently brings on like a syren, a shoeing-horn, or some sphinx to this irrevocable gulf; a primary cause, Piso calls it. Most pleasant it is at first, to such as are melancholy given, to lie in bed whole days, and keep their chambers, to walk alone in some solitary grove, betwixt wood and water, by a brook side, to meditate upon some delightsome and pleasant subject, which shall affect them most; amabilis insania, et mentis gratissimus error: a most incomparable delight it is so to melancholize, and build castles in the air, to go smiling to themselves, acting an infinite variety of parts, which they suppose and strongly imagine they represent, or that they see acted or done: Blandum quidem ab initio, saith Lemnius, to conceive and meditate of such pleasant things, sometimes, "present, past, or to come," as Rhasis speaks. So delightsome these toys are at first, they could spend whole days and nights without sleep, even whole years alone in such contemplations, and fantastical meditations, which are like unto dreams, and they will hardly be drawn from them, or willingly interrupt, so pleasant their vain conceits are, that they hinder their ordinary tasks and necessary business, they cannot address themselves to them, or almost to any study or employment, these fantastical and bewitching thoughts so covertly, so feelingly; so urgently, so continually set upon, creep in, insinuate, possess, overcome, distract, and detain them, they cannot, I say, go about their more necessary business, stave off or extricate themselves, but are ever musing, melancholizing, and carried along, as he (they say) that is led round about a heath with a Puck in the night, they run earnestly on in this labyrinth of anxious and solicitous melancholy meditations, and cannot well or willingly refrain, or easily leave off; winding and unwinding themselves, as so many clocks, and still pleasing their humours, until at last the scene is turned upon a sudden, by some bad object, and they being now habituated to such vain meditations and solitary places, can endure no company, can ruminate of nothing but harsh and distasteful subjects. Fear, sorrow, suspicion, subrusticus pudor, discontent, cares, and weariness of life surprise them in a moment, and they can think of nothing else, continually suspecting no sooner are their eyes open, but this infernal plague of melancholy seizeth on them, and terrifies their souls, representing some dismal object to their minds, which now by no means, no labour, no persuasions they can avoid, hæret lateri lethalis arundo (the arrow of death still remains in the side), they may not be rid of it, they cannot resist.

—The Anatomy of Melancholy, Pt. I., Sec. 2., Mem. 2., Subs. 6.