SAM: Art in Seattle - Fun But Boggling

I went to Seattle for a week's vacation, and that means of course visiting any and all museums and galleries there!!  I look for art displays, works, lectures, prints, and fellow artists EVERYWHERE I go.  This museum, was the Seattle Art museum.  This is the one I will be writing about in this particular paper.

Where to start...

Well, when my partner Kayla and I walked in, we were expecting extraordinary works of art, like this painting I saw soon after walking in:

Big Blonde in the Weeds, 2001
Oil on linen
Lisa Yuskavage
American, born 1962

Or we were looking forward to seeing more amazing and interesting sculptures such as this one we saw:

Woman on a Bed, 1963
Plaster and metal
George Segal
American, 1924-2000
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Bagley Wright, 77.42

Or even a cool display like we saw wen we first walked in:

Well, we did see all those cool works and all, but the further we walked inside, we both had to start thinking more with our brains than with our eyes.  We did see a really cool painting that Kayla kept telling me she wanted me to buy for her.  I walked over to it, and I loved it too!  The only problem was, she does not know who the artist was: a Mr. Jackson Pollock.  She couldn't figure out why I laughed and walked away without trying to purchase this painting.

Sea Change, 1947
Artist and commercial oil paint, with gravel, on canvas
Jackson Pollock
American, 1912-1956
Gift of Signora Peggy Guggenheim, 58.55

We kept walking on and found a ton of minimalist and conceptual art, which neither of us have ever learned to appreciate or understand.  We both struggled a lot with a particular gallery's work, in the Theater of The Absurd Exhibition.  That is mainly what I will speak about in this paper.  It represents the absurdity of human existence from the 50's and the 60's, and they deal with violence, trauma, or anxiety.  The works span five decades and alternate from psychological states of mind and depictions of violence that serve as universal metaphors for personal and interpersonal tensions.  The earliest work in the gallery, painted during World War II, is Willem de Kooning's Woman, who appears in a state of high agitation, while George Segal's solitary seated woman conveys passive introspection.  Reactions to racism and violence permeate the work of Glenn Ligon, Philip Guston, and Leon Golub, while Katharina Fritsch captures fear and noise in a nightmare-like sculptural vision.  I chose this particular exhibit because it was the most confusing, and made me offended (which meant I was reacting to the work).  

I would like to start by discussing the first of these works that really caught my eye- and not in a good way.  Woman, by Willem de Kooning, shows a woman with frizzled hair and an extremely ugly face that looks terrified.  It was painted with only red and green it looked like, and it was very unimpressive and displeasing to the eye.  What in the heck is so special about this piece of art that could have been painted by a child?  

Woman, 1943
Oil on board
Willem de Kooning
American (born the Netherlands),
1904-1997
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Bagley Wright, 76.46

Well, as I stood there looking at it, I figured something out.  I figured out that this artist has other works like charcoal drawings and paintings, and probably went to school and/or studied art in daily life, just like me.  Also, he could probably create photorealistic paintings and drawings if he chose to, just like me.  Among several more of these compelling thoughts, was one: He had an idea, a voice to be spoken, just like me.  Well, he expressed not only his voice in this painting, but other people's voices who were experiencing the terrors of living around this time, and expresses a psychological state of mind, if not many.  In this painting I could tell how the Woman was feeling, and de Kooning completely ignored the idea of creating any sort of resemblance to the actual woman, (if she really existed).  This means all of these works succeeded in telling their stories, of how people feel and deal with violence, trauma, anxiety, personal and interpersonal tensions- the list goes on and on.  Now, it is usually very hard for me to be so open-minded and understand or interpret conceptual art, and art that is displeasing to the eye and does not appeal right away.  But although I prefer attractive art, this appealed to other senses- I felt a certain shock and relief when I began understanding this series.  A series I hated at first glance and giggled at in my head.  Now, I connected with it, and reacted to it.  I even wrote about it.

I walked into a separate exhibition, in the Barney A. Ebsworth Gallery.  I found a bunch of minimalist artwork, all paintings.  They were titled things like, "Yellow X" and "White Curve V".  Well, the paintings were of exactly that!  Pretty much, they were nothing more.  They had no deeper meaning to me and served no function.  I stood and sat there for a LONG time trying to figure out what was the purpose of these works, and I gave them a lot of thought- but got nothing back.

The Yellow X, 1965
Acrylic on canvas
Al Held
American, 1928-2005

This yellow X painting, along with the others below, were very confusing to me.  I understand that minimalist art exists, but I have to have it explained to me by the artists for each individual painting to make sense, otherwise I simply do not get it.  Are these just supposed to look pretty?  Did the artist perhaps zoom in very closely to some object and paint it large scale and that is the abstract shapes we see here?  I do not know, but that was the only idea I had to explain them.

White Curve V, 1973
Oil on canvas
Ellsworth Kelly
American, born 1923

Sabra I, 1967
Acrylic on shaped canvas
Frank Stella
American, born 1936

Now Sabra I made a little bit of sense, because although I still did not understand its reason for existing, I could see that the process of making this piece was significant.  The artist either had the canvas made specially for him and perfectly sized and shaped to what he wanted, or he created the shape either before or after the paint fell into place.  I could see this painting going two different ways: One way, would be that the canvas shape was random and he just painted shapes that corresponded;  The second way, would be that he either sketched it out or had a set and specific idea of the painting, and made the canvas to fit it.  I suppose I will never know for sure, but it is interesting to think about.

Me sitting in front of Hold, ca. 1974
Acrylic on canvas, by Helen Frankenthaler
American, 1928-2011
and
Wolfeboro III,  1966
Fluorescent alkyd paint on canvas
Frank Stella

Wolfeboro III,  1966
Fluorescent alkyd paint on canvas
Frank Stella
American, born 1936

The above images are all works I did not understand or connect with at all.  I honestly do not see what is impressive about them.  They are simple-looking and there is little to no level of painting skill shown.  The aspect I thought was interesting, however, is how the canvases are shaped so spontaneously.  I am used to seeing canvases that are squares and rectangles- I do not think I have ever even seen a circular one.  These are interesting to me in that aspect and that aspect only.  I do not see any significance or skill otherwise.  This work would require an artist's description for me to understand their explanation for why it exists and why it is hung in a museum.  This trip to this museum taught me that I am very quickly becoming aware of different types of artwork, and that I am slowly but surely becoming more and more of an understanding for different types of artwork- which is the big challenge for me.  But if I want people to respect my work one day, I need to do the same for them and be as open-minded as humanly possible, in today's art world.