Contemporary Art-Entering the Unknown...

I'm taking a class on Saturday afternoons called "Art in New York". We will be going to a different museum every week. Our professor's specialty is contemporary art. My specialty is to stay as far away from that crap as I can. However, I will be open to it even though after this first outing, I wanted to run screaming from the modern art section of the met to my safe place-the French Impressionists and lay in a fetal position! Here is some images and the response I wrote to them. Who knows-you might learn something too.

**To view complete collection go to:
http://www.metmuseum.org/home.asp
Click on Neo Rauch

Contemporary art is definitely not one of my favorite areas, however, I’m open to learning about it which will hopefully lead to an appreciation of this current period of art. With that said, I found myself surprisingly drawn to Neo Rauch’s Para exhibit.

Color is very important to me and I found that yellow seemed to have a reoccurring role in all of the paintings. Sometimes it is in the form of a candle or fire or simply an article of clothing. Yellow can mean different things to people but for me words like creativity, curiosity, wisdom, communication and optimism come to mind but many of the paintings depict some danger or sadness in them. For instance, Paranoia, which is my favorite of this collection, depicts three people seemingly having a secret meeting but being interrupted by some unforeseen person or thing. They seem very nervous, as if, “caught in the act”. And off in the corner a small curtain glows yellow. Also, the ceiling seems to be illuminated by yellow and there is a canvas of yellow on the back wall. The shadows and glows of yellow almost make the room seem haunting yet I don’t get the impression that this trio is frightened. It’s almost humorous to me because I want them to get caught-whatever they were discussing or planning could not have been good! The yellow, to me, may represent some intellectual pursuit on the part of the participants in the paintings or it could mean the lack of communication to whoever is about to arrive.

In addition to the Paranoia work, I found Vater (Father) interesting especially considering Rauch’s family background. I thought the combination of his obvious inspiration of classical cartoon animation and the self-reflection of his personal history quite touching. It shows the young person in Rauch wanting to be comforted by large but friendly hands but you also get the impression that he was smiling during the painting of this work.

Some of Rauch’s inspiration comes from his dreams and I think that’s one reason I like his work. I like surrealistic forms of art when there is a lot going on beneath the surface of what you are actually seeing in the painting.
Metmuseum.org states:

"The artist is inspired by misplaced memories
and momentary perceptions that are
lost before they can be named."

This is very similar to what we experience in a dream state or even a daydreaming mediation. There have been many times where I meet someone or experience a situation that reminds me of some memory I can’t recall-an experience that Rauch is trying to depict in a very strange way.

When I went through Rauch’s exhibit I kept thinking to myself that his work reminded me of something…The style of these paintings remind me of illustrations from my childhood: one memory is of a children’s’ bible I owned when I was about eight. Strange but true!