Tag Archives: asian art

Guggenheim as a Club

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A two-for-one Friday night will satisfy your clubbing and art craves—or at least the Guggenheim Museum in NYC attempts to do so one Friday night a month. This past Friday there was blaring music, people dressed to the nines, and The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia. How could this great combination go wrong?

  • By being a well-lit, lame music club experience with only sporadic fits of dancing

  • By displaying an underwhelming exhibition

The crowded atrium was filled with people pushing to get to the round bar in the center, a space that should have been left open for dancing. It was as bright as day, which hardly lowers people’s dancing exhibition. In addition, the Guggenheim, unlike the Museum of Natural History, didn’t hire a good DJ. Pure 80s cheese could have topped their mediocre mix and been much more fun. That said, there were drinks and not a few people were inspired to bust a move from time to time. It had the potential to be a great party but couldn’t live up to it.


Many of the pieces in the Chinese-influences on American Modernism show required more thought than the drinks inspired. The opening piece when you first ascend the ramp is stunning, a huge room of gold flaky paint called The Death of James Lee Byars. Continuing on, Minimalist canvases of white and stripes required a more subdued attention. I would have appreciated more information on the selected works, and the connection to Asian art.

Despite being one of many museums in New York City that offer late Friday nights, with drinks and dancing, the Guggenheim still has no problem filling Wright’s impressive interior spiral, and the mix of people (and outfits!) was a joy to behold. On the other hand, for $25 dollars you could go to a real club. For nothing, you can go to most major New York City museums, as they have sponsored free or pay-what-you-wish Friday nights.

Am I glad I went? Yes. Would I go again? No, not without a specific reason.

Korea Report: Art+Politics=BAD

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At least, it can stir up a lot of trouble for artists who wish to comment on North Korea.

Lovely, isn’t he?

With plenty of room for irony, some artists are highlighting the difference between the smiling pomp of North Korean state cultural institutions and the hunger and isolation faced by average North Koreans. They popped up on ArtCal Zine’s radar as well as the International Herald Tribune’s yesterday, and both artist’s works center around the concept of juche.

For our purposes, juche is a state ideology that emphasizes self-sufficiency and isolation, but all the people’s happiness with the ideology. One of its stated goals is ‘molding people ideologically as communists and mobilizing them to constructive action.‘ Somehow I don’t think these artists works would count as constructive, despite their use of juche motifs.
ArtCal reccomends the film The Juche Idea, saying “[it] delves into the isolationist state’s rich history of state-sponsored and propagandist film making (in the 1970s, Kim Jong published a treatise on cinema) and comes out with what appears to be a suite of shorter films strung along a playful meta-narrative of a South Korean video artist making work on a special North Korean residency program. Unlike so many contemporary artists who show nothing but naked contempt for such difficult topics, Finn approaches his with a unique humor and wit.”
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Similarly, the ‘faceless’ artist Sun Mu was highlighted in the International Herald Tribune for the paintings that he has done since escaping from North Korea. Remaining unphotographed to prevent familial reprisals in North Korea, Mu has painted juche ideals so well that he was almost arrested because in South Korea they have a law against propaganda and didn’t understand the irony intended.
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This reads and is titled, We are all happy children!, from a popular song.
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The use of humor to empty juche images of significance is powerful, and hopefully understood in Korea and elsewhere.