Friday, April 30, 2010

past art

Since I am nearly home I thought I'd start to post about some of the other great art I have seen overseas, or discovered but not actually seen. I have been to way more museums than I ever went to at home (there's only so many times you can repeatedly go to the South Australian Art Gallery) I think I am up to 39 that I can remember now. But the best ones recently were the Palazzo Grassi and Puento della Dogana in Venice. They are two parts to one collection owned by mega richFrançois Pinault, owner of a lovely art collection, and a bunch of other things including, Yves Saint Laurent, Gucci, Balenciaga, Alexander McQueen, Christie's Auction House and a couple of Football teams. But his art collection was amazing. What was on display at the exhibition I saw, 'Mapping the Studio' was only a selection of what he owns chosen to be displayed in the exhibition by Japanese architect Tadao Ando. It was spread out over two buildings, and included works by most of the major artists I had only seen in such publications as Art Now, and the Vitamin books. It was amazing to finally get to see some Luc Tuymans paintings in particular still ife which was enormous and imposing yet still gentle, when I was expecting it to be tiny.

Also finally saw Jake and Dinos Chapman's 'Fucking Hell'. I had previously dismissed this work as just boys playing with figurines or something like that, when viewing it in books, but it was amazing in actuality. Glass aquariums filled with countless figurines all disfigured, bloodied, mutated and doing battle with Nazis. And the glass aquariums were arranged in the shape of a swastika. What's not to like. Actually for me it was, surprisingly impressive and compelling.

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