Personality

I have to admit, I'm not the best gallery-guard ever.

When an elderly person is leaning on a wall, or taking a photo of her grandchild in front of their favorite work of art, I tend to look away...

However certain things are unquestionably unacceptable. 1) No learning on Peggy's very fragile dining room table. 2) No touching the art! (You might think that's a 'duh,' but people nearly do it all the time.) 3) No sitting on the window frames - though I'm probably adamant about that because of the jealousy factor; after all, I don't want to watch you sit, while I'm on my feet guarding!

With that said, it's very interesting to watch peoples' reactions when they are told not to touch, or do, something. Half the people stop whatever it is they are doing as soon as they see the guard coming over, and sometimes even walk away from the area in which they were doing whatever it was that they weren't supposed to be doing. A quarter of the people say "I'm so sorry" nearly 1,000 times; honestly, you don't need to be over apologetic, I guarantee whatever you were doing is not that big of a deal. And the last quarter of the people take the denial route and say, "I wasn't doing that."

However, the other day I had an experience that didn't quite fall into any of these categories. A man was pointing to a Picasso while leaning against Peggy's table and I walked over and said "Please don't touch --"

Before I could finish my sentence harshly responded, "I didn't touch..." so loudly that other people in the gallery turned to see what was happening.

When he stopped his yelling I finished my sentence, "the table."

"Oh," he responded and walked away.

Interesting how even this small interactions speak volumes about our personalities.

So, what type of museum visitor are you? And perhaps more importantly, how much weight should we place on first impressions?

Sigh... Just a day in the life of a PGC intern...

Capturing a Moment

Maybe it’s me.

Over the course of January, on two separate occasions, people asked if I’d take a picture.

“No problem,” I said. “Hand me your camera.”

“No, no, no,” they responded. “We don’t want you to take a picture of us, we want to take a picture of you.”

This was strange the first time, but I didn’t give it much thought. Strange the second time, but also moved on pretty quickly.

In February, however, the experience was so bazaar that I’d label it unforgettable.

I was guarding in the museum and a middle-aged man ran over, put his arm around me, and next thing I know his wife is snapping photos, as if she was a paparazzo. The fact that photos are not allowed in the museum aside, I was mortified that a stranger was touching me, and that without asking someone was taking photos!

Just as I began to yell, the woman said, “It’s okay, it can’t be a bad thing. You just look like a creature from another planet, who will only be here a short time.”

Ummmm... Puzzled, the only words I could muster up were, “I don’t really know how to respond to that.”

Unphased, the woman asked, “I’ll take one with you too?”

Blown away by having just been told that I’m an alien, I was speechless.

Her husband took several photos of her standing beside me and then they proceeded to continue looking at the works on the walls, as if our extremely odd interaction never occurred.

Later, the couple found me again, guarding in another room, and proceeded to ask me questions about myself like what I’m interested in, where I’m from, how old I am, etc… They refused to tell me much about themselves, but they did note that they are from Romania and that she paints as a hobby.

Next, they went outside and took dozens of pictures of Peggy’s grave, from every angle.

Seeing as guarding galleries provides far too much time to think, I spent the next hour contemplating all of the reasons these people might have found me intriguing. I came to the conclusion that perhaps their deceased child looked like me.

Or maybe…

I’m a stolen child! Mom and Ab, did you kidnap me in the 80’s causing the news and the entirety of popular culture to spend these past couple of decades looking for me? Nah, probably not…

Anyway, despite having recharged my internet less than a week ago, as is monthly ritual, today my internet ceased to work. Bright and early, I walked my computer over to the Vodafone store and sat on the Rialto Bridge until the shop opened.

Lo and behold, a group of tourists came over and asked if they could take photos with me!

Finally used to this now fairly frequent request, I responded “of course, but let’s take one with my camera too…” So above, is a picture of me with my very own group of strangers…

Call me a narcissist, but was that movie The Truman Show based on my life? If so, I better stop those silent raves I’ve been having in my room, because that’s just embarrassing.

Originality

As I mentioned in a previous post, Linda was here this week. This meant adventuring to new neighborhoods, visiting new art galleries, discovering new beautiful buildings and corners of the city, being introduced to new types of coffee, eating delicious food, (Baccala, which is creamy-pureed-dried-salted-cod, a Venetian specialty, being her new favorite,) conversing about art and life, (two of our favorite topics,) and being reunited with New York City.

In my mind, Linda has always been representative of New York City. Yeah she may be from Kansas City, but she's lived in NYC for longer than I, and she's totally the quintessential New Yorker; you know, the artsy type who's always running from meetings at museums, to get-togethers with friends, to some hidden chocolate shop or patisserie to pick up a perfect little treat that might get squished on her way uptown but is destined to be utterly delicious nonetheless. She's the type who always knows the best place to find anything one might want or need, from food, to clothes, to beautiful things, to services, etc, in NYC or abroad. Oh, and she has the best taste in everything. As I think about it, perhaps you don't know a Linda type, because truthfully I don't really know anyone else like Linda. Linda is unique.

Unique is a funny word. On my Heschel high school application I was asked a very strange question: "what one quality makes you unique?" Well, I guess the question isn't as strange as asking what your preschooler's greatest accomplishment is, which is a question that’s asked on many NYC preschool applications, but that's a side point...

Anyway, I responded with a critique of the question. No one quality makes me unique. Any one thing I think, feel, love, or do, has certainly been experienced by someone else before, thus the only thing that is unique about me is the amalgamation of qualities that I embody, passions that I have, and experiences that I've lived through and learned from, which together make me who I am. And the best part is that at any given moment we are all in states of evolution. In other words, I am Gabriella-ing, Linda is Linda-ing, and the rest of you are in the midst of your own processes. And those combinations, those processes, are precisely what make us each unique.

With that said, it is natural that we seek to find what makes us, and the things we love and find interesting, unique. This desire stems from a fear, or a distaste for being a copy, or nothing but a number.

This is a feeling we often project upon works of art. We long to find works that we consider original – a sentiment I expressed in relation to Erwin Wurm’s work, which sparked interesting conversation about unique-ness and originality among my friends. (See their posts in response to my post.) Though we tend to agree that different feelings are produced by seeing, or experiencing art that we deem unique, we may not agree on what is unique or reappropriated, original or imitated. Regardless, we deal with this desire to find what is original, by using language to convince others of our point of view.

So desperate to communicate the experiences we feel, we continuously clarify ourselves, using a continuum of terms… We converse, and sometimes argue, but in the end there is no getting it right, because ultimately the question of uniqueness, the question of originality, is all a matter of interpretation. However, the reasons for those differences in opinions, along with the differences in the ways we express them, in and of themselves lie at the heart of what makes us each unique.

On that note, I can confidently say that Linda is among the most unique people I have met, and New York is among the most unique cities I have been to. And god, less than 48 hours after Linda has gone, I’m missing her and missing New York more than ever. But, leave it to New York Magazine, the most unique magazine I know, to come up with an article that reminds a girl that there is no place like home, at least if New York is where you call home… Check out New York Magazine’s "The Ultimate New York Playlist": http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/03/the_ultimate_new_york_playlist.html

DIY

Nothing better than art that is interactive, participatory, and live!

Check out Rob Pruitt's 101 Art Ideas You Can Do Yourself (1999), which I first learned about at Palazzo Grassi, (where this photo taken,) but can be experienced all over the world.

My grandmother Charlotte Kula would have loved this. She could have come up with thousands to add to Pruitt's list. Come up with book titles would have been her #1.

To learn more about Pruitt's project visit www.e-flux.com/projects/pruitt/index.php3.

(My) Art Idea #102: Add an art idea to the list .

(Too Much) Time to Think

You know when you are carrying a lot of things and you drop one, lean down to retrieve it, and drop another on your way back up?

I had an analogous experience when uploading my last post. Each time I added one photo, another one changed locations, or disappeared altogether! In fact, it took me as much time to upload and format the post as it did to actually write it! And it doesn't even look so great!

To avoid overwhelming amounts of frustration, I headed to the sunny outdoors, (yes one whole day of sun in Venice,) several times during the day for breathers and to hang out with Linda, who is in town visiting!

At one point before I met up with Linda, I sat on the monument in Campo S. Stefano, which you can see on the left, (who is he by the way?) and watched the pigeons. I strongly dislike pigeons, in fact so much so that I will not, under any circumstance, pass through Saint Mark's Square, (the city center,) which is known for being home to abnormally massive flocks of pigeons that some tourists enjoy feeding, petting, holding, and taking photos with.

Here are some questions and thoughts about pigeons:

1) How come I've never seen a baby pigeon? Discovery Online revealed to me that this is because pigeons hide their nests and don't let their children leave until they are full grown. However, in the spring and summer it is possible to spot young pigeons, as they occasionally have some down poking out from beneath their feathers, and they also have narrower heads. Based on the picture to the right, young pigeons are actually just the pigeons I always thought were diseased. (On a side note, Discovery online also taught me that the calcium in a bird's bones is amassed through the eggs shell which thins during the incubation process.)

2) Why do pigeons peck at each other's faces, as if they violently kissing? I learned from a pigeon breeding website that yes, in fact pigeons do kiss - it's called billing, and it's part of the courtship and mating process. (By the way, this question lead me to wonder how pigeons have sex. If you are interested in learning the answer search it on Youtube, home to hundreds of videos on the subject.)

3) Sometimes I see pigeon on the menu at restaurants here. Are those wild pigeons or farm raised? I could not eat a pigeon for the life of me - I know that's totally a matter of socialization, but even thinking about that grosses me out. Now that I've yucked what might be your yum, have you ever eaten pigeon? If so, what's it like?

4) What if pigeons had arms? I unsuccessfully Googled this one. Guess I'll have to invent a pigeon with arms in my sketchbook, or perhaps I'll leave that image to my imagination - at least then I'll smile, instead of run, each time I pass a pigeon...

Traveling

I know I’m always making excuses for my lack of updates, but this time I actually have a good one. My boyfriend, Alexander, was in town! He got here on the 20^th, his birthday, and we spent three days in Venice, two in Milan, and three in Florence. The week was the best of my life, though naturally too short…

The first few moments were surreal. 56 days had passed since Alexander and I had last seen each other and when I surprised him at the airport, part of me felt like no time had passed at all, while the other part felt like it had been forever. But enough with the sentimental, cliche stuff, since I already gave you a full dose of that in my last post…

Onto the art we saw and some of the fun, and funny, experiences we had during our travels!

Here in Venice we visited Palazzo Grassi and Punta Della Dogana, the Francois Pinault Foundation museums / two of my favorite museums in the world! I was excited to take Alexander to the museums because I’ve already been to both several times, analyzed the works, and learned enough to give him guided tours. Though I focused my academic studies primarily on modern art, my love for Palazzo Grassi and Punta Della Dogana have gotten my contemporary art juices flowing as of late. In my typical fashion I cannot select just one favorite work from the collections, however a piece that stands out in my mind is Takashi Murakami’s Kawaii! (2002). Kawaii is the Japanese word for “cute,” however according to Japanese culture, these flowers are not cute at all because it is considered quite rude to show your open mouth, as the Kawaii flowers do. As such, Murakami’s intention here, as is the case in many of his works, is to question the Japanese fetish with cutesy, kitschy things. He has suggested that this strange obsession stems from the emasculation of the Japanese people and their culture during WWII. When I told this to Alexander, he noted that paradoxically Japanese business is still very connected to the Samurai mentality, or code; for example, Honda didn’t trash talk Toyota when they were having issues recently, though of course in the U.S. Ford and G.M. had no problem doing so.

On a side note, over the past few weeks I’ve learned a lot about Murakami, and I really wish I could rewind a year or so and revisit his massive retrospective that was held at the Brooklyn museum, which I found interesting though I didn’t fully appreciate it at the time. Does anyone have thoughts about the exhibition or about Murakami in general? I know his work is controversial in terms of it’s relationship to consumer culture, sexuality, etc…

Anyway, in Venice we also visited the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, obviously, and while I worked, Alexander wandered the museum and enjoyed coffee with my lovely coworkers, which made me happy because one of the things I love most about Alexander is that he always makes an effort to connect with my friends…

The Milan segment of our journey began in a (mildly) unpleasant way: first Alexander and I walked to the train station in the rain – Alexander doesn’t like walking, or rain. Our train was delayed. The four-star Splendido Hotel, which we booked online and was supposedly located in the city’s center, turned out to be a negative-four-star dump, two miles from the city, which Alexander and I dubbed the Splendoodoo. The distress caused by the situation led Alexander and I to cab our way to the Four-Seasons where we sat in silence drinking our ten-euro coffee for the next several hours. That’s when our fairy godmother arrived on the scene, i.e. the phone, to save the day, or perhaps the trip – within moments we booked a new room in a chic, “design hotel” called the Straf, which was just steps from the Duomo. Unfortunately, while the grand hotel switch turned on the lights in our new room, the lights were turned off at Santa Maria delle Grazie, disabling us from seeing Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper, for which I had booked a reservation three weeks ago. The experience was reminiscent of my having missed the Sistine Chapel in Rome, so I cried for a few minutes and then went to relish in the comforts of the Straf and prepare for one of many delicious dinners.

Milan day two: We woke up and went to Novecento, Milan’s Civic Museum of Contemporary Art, however upon our arrival we found out that the museum will be closed for renovations until 2011, or 2012, which seemed nothing less than fitting, given my range of recent art viewing failures. Without skipping a beat we hit the Duomo, and though the outside is astoundingly detailed and gorgeous, the inside is not nearly as impressive as Venice’s fully mosaic-ed, golden interior. Regardless, Alexander and I enjoyed hypothesizing about how people were able to build such a colossal structure, over 500 years ago.

Next we went to the Steve McCurry exhibition, which was beautiful and moving, but also a painful reminder of all of the injustice in our world. With exception to the famous picture of the Afghan girl that was on the cover of National Geographic, (who by the way was found and photographed again just a few years ago,) I hadn’t seen any other works by McCurry. Aesthetically speaking the works are just beautiful – vibrant colors and handsome people – in fact, based on a quick glance at his lighthearted works, I’d venture to call him The Sartorialist of the developing world (See www.thesartorialist.blogspot.com .) However, as Alexander and I proceeded deeper into the exhibition it became clear that McCurry’s works are in fact quite heavy, as their content often relates to the effects of war and the oppression of children. Below I've posted McCurry's photograph of a Peruvian boy that I found just heart wrenching and continued to think about for the rest of the trip. There were no text panels discussing the content of the photos, however the curators did post the Declaration of the Rights of the Child as devised by the U.N. in the 1959. Seeing McCurry’s photos alongside the Declaration reminded me of the amazing animated shorts Seth did on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the rights of minority children, for the Human Rights Action Center and UNICEF respectively, which you can check out on his website at www.sethbrau.com.

A couple of food related pit stops later, we ventured on to the Triennale Design Museum. Though their permanent collection was entirely uninteresting to us, (and in fact featured many things that Alexander and I personally own, like an espresso maker I just bought for him and Mitch and my Persol sunglasses,) the institution was housing a Roy Lichtenstein retrospective, which was quite comprehensive and very well curated. When I say well curated, I mean that the organization of the works and text panels spark a sense of curiosity in the viewers that create excitement to enter the next room and continue to learn more about the artist and works on display… Though Lichtenstein’s most famous works, like Whaam! (1963) and Drowning Girl (1963) were not on display, there were several works from his Brushstroke series, which I love because of their ability to combine two of my favorite, though they are nearly opposite, movements, Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art. To the left you can see a picture I took of Naomi last summer, in front of Brushstroke (1996-2003), which stands outside of the Hirschhorn Museum of Art in Washington D.C.

After the Triennale, we headed back to the hotel for the Louis Vuitton fashion week party, which was hosted by our hotel! There we drank lots of champagne and observed Milanese hipsters at their finest. Interestingly, many of the men were dressed as women, and women as men, (Alexander called this “tranny-chic,” which I thought was very funny,) and lots of people brought their dogs as accessories.

Off to Florence!

In Florence we stayed with good family friends Amy and Richie at their beautiful apartment. In addition to hospitably opening their home to us, they also helped us find fun things to do, and took us out to dinner, both nights of our stay, to two delicious restaurants… So thank you, thank you, thank you Amy and Richie for your generosity.

We devoted our first day in Florence to wandering the city, which in and of itself was a beautiful experience. The second day, we visited Palazzo Strozzi where we saw the Gerhard Richter and Giorgio De Chirico exhibitions. The Gerhard Richter exhibition was fabulous and deserves its very own post, which is coming soon. The De Chirico exhibition was only okay, though perhaps I’m biased because my favorite De Chirico is at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. Additionally, Palazzo Strozzi’s De Chirico exhibition was cluttered up with Max Ernst works, (Max Ernst and the rest of the Surrealists were heavily influenced by De Chirico,) and I don’t like Ernst’s work at all, though the PGC owns dozens because, as I previously mentioned, he was, for a period, married to Peggy.

Next we headed to the Boboli Gardens, which were utterly stunning – the weather was beautiful, the trees were budding, and from the top there was a beautiful vista of the entirety of Florence. We proceeded to visit the Duomo, of course, and then headed home to prepare for dinner and a night of dancing at the Michael Jackson tribute night of a local discotechque.

On our final day, we went to the Accademia to see Michelangelo’s David (1501-1504), which we thought was displayed alongside Robert Mapplethorpe’s photos, but unfortunately, or should I at this point say expectantly, that exhibition had already been taken down and we thus saw nothing more than the exhibition catalogue at the museum’s gift shop. With that said, I was very moved when I saw David in the flesh, or maybe I should say in the stone, because it is a sculpture that I have seen, or has at least been referenced in every single art history class I have taken.

On that note, I’ll leave you with this funny little photo-log of “David’s visit to the U.S.” To wonderful adventures and good health! Enjoy!

1. Takashi Murakami, Kawaii, 2002. Acrylic on canvas mounted on board. François Pinault Collection, Venice.

2. Alexander on the train to Milan, smiling excitedly about having been forced by me to walk in the rain for thirty minute carrying both of our suitcases. Thanks for being the best boyfriend / friend ever.

3. Alexander and me in front of Milan’s Duomo.

4. Steve McCurry, Afghan Girl, 1884.

5. Steve McCurry, Young Boy in Peru, 2004.

6. Naomi in front of Lichtenstein’s Brushstroke outside of the Hirschhorn Museum in D.C. in 2009.

7. Alexander and me in our room at the Straf just after the Louis Vuitton Fashion Week party in Milan.

8. Me in the courtyard of Palazzo Strozzi.

9. Me at the top of the Boboli Gardens.

10. Michelangelo’s David after his trip to the U.S.

Birthdays

Thank you, thank you, thank you for all of your birthday wishes. Each and every one meant more to me than you know, especially because I am so far, physically, from many of the people I love most.

With that said, I had a wonderful birthday here in Venice! At the end of the workday, the PGC crew presented me with a poster of one of my favorite Picassos, which they all signed with sweet birthday messages; then we all headed back to my place for drinks, cake, music, and conversation. And I must say, Giulia and Jess really outdid themselves with their great gifts! (Art, fashion, and food - what more could a girl ask for?!?)

Birthdays are funny and in some ways paradoxical in their ability to make us both nostalgic and future focused.... On that note, here are a few of my birthday memories and wishes:

1) For each birthday until our Bat-Mitzvahs, Mommy, Talia and I made homemade cakes in bear shaped cake tins for our birthdays. Mom would take us to the candy store to pick out candy with which to decorate our cakes and we’d spend hours strategically adorning our bears with M&Ms and gummy worms. (It was always an especially good year if Abba could come to the candy store too, because that meant that we could get extra candy to eat on the way home and possibly a giant jaw-breaker that would nearly last until our next birthdays…) Funny that art and cooking are now my two favorite hobbies! Actually, my mom has always been creative in those sorts of ways – when we were young she insisted we make handmade cards for all occasions and until this day we still uphold that tradition!

I hope that my family will always be a source of creative inspiration for me, and I for them.

2) As a child, my leap-day birthday made me the brunt of a lot of "baby" jokes. For example, my best family friends Zach and Micah Fredman used to tease me about my age: when I was six they'd laugh at me and tell me that I was only one and a half, when I was eight, they'd mock me for being but two... Of course, at the time in my life when even quarter years were of the utmost importance, their jokes were extremely offensive, but now at the ripe old age of twenty-two I'm shocked by how quickly time has passed and though I would not ever want to go back in time, a part of me longs for the simplicity of childhood, particularly where emotions are concerned.

I hope that I will always have the ability to be self-reflective and emotionally aware, and that I will continue to be blessed with the amazing support system that I have now.

3) On my fifteenth birthday I was at the supermarket with my dad and we bumped into my lifelong friend Liviya Kraemer, who had planned to have me and two other friends over for a birthday sleepover that night. Liviya was carrying three large Entenmann’s cakes when I bumped into her. I noted that three cakes was excessive, but she casually responded with, “never too much cake.” As we were leaving the supermarket my dad said to me, “funny that we bumped into Livi buying cakes for your surprise party tonight.” I laughed and said, “Abba, it’s not a surprise party!” My friends always joke about my gullible nature and rightfully so, because yes, to my complete surprise, twenty or so friends were at Livi’s house that evening for one of the best birthday celebrations of my life.

I hope that my lifelong friendships continue to prosper and that the new friendships I have made here, and will continue to make throughout my life, will be equally valuable to me.

4) For my and Alexander’s 20^th and 22^nd birthdays we took a trip to Paris and for our 22^nd and 24^th birthdays, just days ago, we went to Milan and Florence… Details to come in my next post!

I hope that I will always be fortunate enough to travel to new and exciting places and share meaningful experiences with people I love.

Most of all, I hope to retain the loving and connecting energy that has been sent my way over the past 24 hours and to share that positive energy with all of you…

Oh and by the way, check out this video Mitch made for me in honor of my birthday. By far the best birthday card I have ever, ever received. Thank you.

Happy Birthday from mitchell Suter on Vimeo.