Jimmy DeSana, Marker Cones, 1982. Silver dye bleach print. Whitney Museum of American Art.
Yesterday Mitch and I visited the Whitney Museum of American Art, where there's currently an exhibition on performative actions captured through photo or drawing. We particularly liked Jimmy DeSana's Marker Cones (1982), which you can see above, because it reminded us of an experience of our very own, which you can see below.
I initially loved the idea of capturing the essence of a performance in a snap shot, but after seeing DeSana's work and recalling all of the laughter brought about by getting stuck in a traffic cone with Mitch one silly college night, I was reminded that a still can never capture the full range of emotions that come with an experience. I'm not sure if that revelation was disenchanting in the sense that it made the exhibition less meaningful to me, or if it just meant that the works in the exhibition were a type of art other than performance, but it certainly made me nostalgic for my good old UofM days for the first time since graduating nearly a year ago...
