The Arts in New York City » Alexander Romov

Alexander Romov’s Final Podcast

admin — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 15:32:57 +0000

Neue Gallerie

Alex — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 22:19:50 +0000

A couple of weeks ago I went to the Neue Gallery on the Upper East Side. This was a new gallery that had been open for a couple of weeks when I went there. The gallery showed the art of Gustav Klimit. Klimit was a painter who lived in Vienna 100 years ago. He achieved his fame by making portraits of famous families in Vienna. The style that he used was borrowed from French painters of the time, like Monet. I find it hard to understand the meaning of the paintings, so I decided to go on a small tour of the gallery. The tour really was helpful. The guide eluded to other artists and other paintings. Probably at the begining of the semester I wouldn’t have been able to understand what she was talking about. Now I understood what was being said. This showed how far I have come this semester in my knowledge of art. However I felt like the only person under the age of 40 in the whole gallery. The Neue Gallery is a very interesting place to attend if one is an experienced art goer.

Alexander Romov’s Podcast Review

admin — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 18:19:26 +0000

What is modern art?

Alex — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 04:51:00 +0000

The Moma (museum of modern art) showcases the most modern art that could still be considered art. Before I went to this museum, I had a vague understanding of what encompasses modern art. However after I returned from this museum I came to the conclusion that modern art is a wide range of works that I didn’t even previously consider art. The Moma is six stories high and it feels like every floor is a unique museum onto itself because ever floor houses a different form of art. On the lower floors was a suspended stairway that got narrower as it reached higher. There were also objects made of steel that could only be described as futurist. To my surprise not all the pieces were form the last couple of decades, there were things there that were almost a century old. The upper floors of the museum contained the pictures. These pictures were of distorted objects, geometric figures or a wide array of colors. An example of this was the work by Pablo Picasso. My favorite was the pattern that playing tricks on eyes by making you feel like you were hallucinating. Although the museum was crowded with tourists during the time that I was there, I though my trip there was interesting and worthwhile.

Museum of Jewish Heritage

Alex — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 05:25:59 +0000

The museum of Jewish Heritage is located in the Battery Park neighborhood of Manhattan. The museum is relatively new, only 10 years old, and looks very modern from the outside. I have been to this museum once before, at age 12, but I don’t remember my experience there very well. This museum was particularly attractive to me because of my Jewish background. In attending this exhibit, I expected to learn more my heritage and culture. The sections of the museum that were worth viewing were the ‘Jewish life’ section and the ‘Holocaust’ section.
This museum didn’t just tell a story, it showed it. The exhibit on Jewish life a century ago had artifacts and memorabilia from everyday families. Some of the objects shown were silverware and holy books. There were also photographs from weddings, bar mitzvahs and births. To go along with these pictures was an actual dress that a woman wore at her wedding. These photographs and artifacts were of deep sentimental value for all of these people and just seeing them on display made you feel what it was like to walk in their shoes. This display was about Jews from all walks of life in both America and Europe. The displays on the walls all only told half the story. To get the full view, videos were shown of people giving the accounts of there own experiences of life as they saw it before the Second World War. Another video was about the Jewish writers, music producers and movie stars of the time and their impact on society. Several of the people featured included Franz Kafka, Ira Gershwin, and Irving Berlin.
The most moving exhibit in the entire museum was about the Holocaust. A whole floor was dedicated to this topic and rightfully so. The city of New York has no specific museum about the Holocaust, so this exhibit is the closest we can get. This wing of the museum is structured like a story, beginning in 1933 with the rise of Adolph Hitler in Germany. Mostly pictures and clippings from Nazi propaganda were used to show the discrimination that Jews suffered in the years following. Here also, there were videos of survivors giving their eyewitness accounts of the experiences that they went through. As you progressed through this exhibit, the story unraveled as World War II began and the Nazi spread their power over Europe and created their concentration camps. To further illustrate what was being shown, artifacts from the time were used. The most significant ones that I saw were a uniform from a concentration camp and letters that people wrote while in the ghetto. In order to show the human face of the Holocaust the museum’s creators installed a special section were they put the names and pictures of 2000 people sent to Auschwitz. Each picture was meant to tell its own story.
At first glance the Jewish Heritage museum might have been something a person could learn about in a history class. However this museum didn’t just show facts in a meaningless format. Instead it tried to bring to life the story of the Jewish people and the suffering that they faced. Especially at such a challenging time, when many people are still ignorant about the past, this museum serves the important purpose of preservation of events long gone. Unfortunately many of the people in the museum were older people who probably already knew about everything that was being displayed. Instead it should be the younger generation that is absorbing this material. I would recommend this museum to them; the young people who don’t know enough about the past but wish to expand their horizons.

International Center of Photography

Alex — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 18:07:56 +0000

For my second blurb I visited the International Center of Photography, otherwise known as the ICP. At this museum they are currently featuring the work of photographer Robert Capa. Capa’s most famous photographs were of the Spanish Civil War which lasted from 1936 to 1939. In these photographs Capa showed the lives of ordinary people during war as well as the fighting, suffering and destruction that the war caused. While the first floor mostly focused on Capa’a work during the Spanish Civil War, the basement showed his work in all the other places that he traveled to capture the world around him though photography. The photographs shown were of Japan’s war with China in 1938, D-Day and the fall of Germany in 1945. These photographs also seemed very real and graphic. Besides Capa’s work, there were also clippings from the time period from magazines such as ‘Life’. These pictures also were successful in putting the audience in the shoes of the people who experienced this war. Overall I found that the exhibit was longer then I had previously expected, but worth the extra time that was spent there. If you want to see and in turn experience the past through the eyes of people who lived almost 70 years ago, theICP is worth checking out.

No Standing

Alex — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 21:21:34 +0000

New exhibit at the Guggenheim

Alex — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 16:28:10 +0000

From September 28 to January 9, the Guggenheim Museum is showing an exhibit called Richard Prince Spiritual America. I went to see this exhibit over the Columbus Day weekend and found this artist’s work very interesting. Richard Prince’s career began when he moved to New York as a young man in 1977 and it has flourished ever since. Prince could be considered one of the post modern artists who have transformed the art world in the past 30 years by transforming what it is that the audience believes to be art. The style that is shown is provocative and thought provoking. The quality that made this exhibit at the Guggenheim unique was Prince’s style of appropriation in portraying everyday images and the jokes that he used as art in the exhibit.
The style that Richard Prince pioneered is called appropriation. This process involved taking material that already existed and making it a work of art that could be presented to an audience. What Prince began doing was cutting out pictures from magazines, then taking a photograph of them, enlarging them significantly and presenting them as a work of art. This style can be considered distinctly post-modern and could even be seen in some people’s eyes as stealing. What I found most interesting about this work was the topics that were used. Most of Prince’s early work was based on images taken from popular culture making them all the more powerful since we could better relate to his message. In other pieces Prince tried to convey a message of what was wrong with American culture and a general sense of rebellion since Prince himself was a child of the sixties. He made two large collections called Cowboys and Girlfriends in which he tried to show the hypocrisy behind the gender roles that society forces upon us.
One section that I found really odd upon first examination was the joke and cartoons section. This section basically was short jokes or just cartoons with an accompanying joke, enlarged and placed on a large background of a single color. The topics of these jokes were often crude like sex or booze. As it turns out Prince began to make these cartoons by hand-copying cartoons from the New York Times and Playboy magazine. In a different context these jokes would have been found disturbing but here they mean to serve as entertainment. Through these provocative and sometimes radical jokes, Prince pushed political correctness to the side in trying to portray the society that we live in today.
Whenever I was previously exposed to modern art, what I usually saw was a jumbled up picture with many different colors that had some meaning when examined more closely. In this sense this exhibit in the Guggenheim was very different. Prince took objects that already existed in the real world and made them art. None of the pieces had titles, since the simplicity of the things he portrayed made that not necessary. The audio player provided by the museum was very helpful because instead of telling us what was in the picture (this we could see on our own) it explained to us the rational that went into the artist’s mind when he composed a certain piece. The whole experience proved to be quick, only 1.5 hours, and well worth the train ride. I would recommend this exhibit at the Guggenheim to all art lovers including especially those who as of yet don’t understand modern art.

Paley Center for Media

Alex — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 02:42:48 +0000

The Paley Center for media is an exhibit in Manhattan that lets its visitors watch old clips from TV and radio shows that they consider to be classics. Indeed some of the more modern clips that they showed, like Mr. Bean and The Simpson’s I did find rather interesting. However since I am not an avid television and radio show viewer most of the shows seemed unnecessary to me. I felt that I could have seen the same thing if I turned on the history channel or watched old reruns late night on TV. I would recommend this museum to anyone who enjoys watching old shows or who just wants to reconnect with a time that now survives through these very shows and people’s memories.

The Arts in New York- Review #1

Alex — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 17:12:19 +0000

For my first cultural event I went to the Frick Collection in Manhattan. The Frick Collection is located on the corner of East 70th Street and 5th Avenue. The museum was the private collection of a turn of the century art collector called Henry Frick. Mr. Frick made his fortune in steel and then used his great wealth to transform his house into a small art museum, which bears his name. Before my visit to the Frick Collection I didn’t believe that one individual home in New York could be so beautifully decorated and have so many famous pieces of art. What stood out most for me about this museum was the architecture in the house and the well-known European painters represented there.
Not only is the Frick Collection located in a glamorous area of the city, but it also has an inside that is equally gorgeous. The living, dining and sitting rooms all sported fireplaces as well as luxurious furniture. The carpets, small sculptures and enamels made the place feel all the more inviting. There was a second floor of the house that patrons were not allowed to view, but I could see that at the top of the staircase sat a magnificent altar. My favorite room in the house had to be the garden court/music room, which boasted a fountain, plants and see through ceiling. According to the commentary many famous musicians and writers like Isaac Stern and T.S.Elliot performed there.
One of the things that I first noticed about the Frick Collection after I walked in was the vast amount of famous European painters. This came as somewhat of a shock to me since I didn’t think that such a small museum could house the same artists I had seen in much larger collections throughout the world. It seemed that most of the works of art were made between the 15th and 17th centuries. This collection wasn’t limited just to one countries artist, but instead Dutch, French, Spanish and Italian artists were represented in its halls. The theme of nature was one popular theme throughout such as in Monet’s “Winter”. Another theme that I noticed was prevalent was that of Christ like in Gentile da Fabriano’s “Madonna and Child” and Claude Lorrain’s “Sermon on the Mount”. Some of the portraits weren’t as formal like Rembrandt’s picture of himself in old age.
Overall I can’t say anything negative about my experience in the Frick Museum. The Admissions ticket is cheap (only 5 dollars for students). They also provide you with a hand-held audio to listen along at each piece. This is very convenient especially of art amateurs like myself. So instead of just wondering around, I was able to pause at one piece, listen to the commentary and absorb the culture. There is also a nice quiet place to rest in the music room in between exhibits when you grow tired. I would recommend The Frick Collection to anyone who enjoys art, doesn’t have a full day to spend at a larger exhibit and just wants a peaceful place to take in culture in New York.