Gallery Visit

Brooklyn Museum 2017 

Over my spring break, I decided to visit the Brooklyn Museum, for my art gallery assignment, as I was assigned to visit here for my gender, sexuality and culture class. I decided to kill two birds with one stone. This was a magical enriching experience, I have always been a great admirer of the arts, so I thoroughly enjoyed each exhibit, I went from floor to floor, marveling at each art work’s beauty. I enjoyed the ancient Egyptian art, as well as the intricate crafts and jewels from Africa.

My one favorite exhbit was the “Iggy Pop Life Class” by Jeremy Deller. These art works are not necessarily self portraits, but I was somehow drawn to the entire exhibit, as it portrayed the shifting image of how the societal male’s body has changed throughout history. A bunch of random artist’s from all walk’s of life, came to this class, where a famous rock star “Iggy Pop” was their nude subject. In Each of these still life drawing’s, through it’s shabbiness you can see details, details that are very important that showed how men’s body and the way they portrayed themselves and the way society portrayed them changed overtime. Some photos showed the men with larger, lax bodies in the past and overtime, you saw the concentration of men having muscular bodies in the more modern pieces. 

Iggy Pop Life Class by Jeremy Deller 2017

Iggy Pop Life Class By Jeremy Deller 2016

I also visited Marilyn Minter's Exhibit : Pretty Dirty, which was a series of bold and sensual paintings, photographs and sexual videos which directly focused on the portrayal of the sensual woman, and showed all of the emotions that somehow surrounds the way Western society views femininity and the female body. It mostly tried to debunk the stereotype that an "accepted" woman is the woman that secludes and hides under a mask of timidness. 

Marilyn Minter Green Pink Caviar (2009)

Pink Caviar was one of my favorite pieces, it was a video which was like about 8 mins long, it showed a model's lips with different slimy substances coming out, it seemed to range from alcohol to even candy , with a woman with tangled hair, it showed her sucking in these mystery substances and vomitting them out. it somehow resonated to me as the portrayal of all promiscuous women , from the porn star to the prostitute. it somehow enticed me as well as repulsed me. It looks like it belonged in a music video. it showed how the mouth is the central place of all activities, sexual and non-sexual. I stood and looked at this video twice it sort've tripped me out. it mesmerized me and made me realize that we don't realize the power of mouths, besides speech, we eat, we have sex and arouse others with the use of our mouths. I believe Marilyn Minter's goal was to show us how important the mouths are aesthetically. 

Mom Making Up 1969 

This piece shows Marilyn Minter's mom in her mirror putting on make up in a mirror, from reading the captions for the piece, it was part of a series that was only on display for about 25 years, as it apparently was very disturbing to many of her fellow classmates. Seeing the time this photo was taken , it probably came very shocking that her mother's role wasn't centralized to domesticity as the norm for those times, it gave a very idealistic vain view of this woman, one that was never portrayed, this woman embraced herself and seemed bent on not conforming to what standards society had set for her. I wish the rest of images from this series were accessible because i would love to see what so gravely disturbed her classmates, or were they just afraid of a powerful woman? 

Thoroughly i enjoyed each and every exhibit in this museum, and i plan on making it a priority to visit many more throughout my lifetime. There is nothing but great beauty and chaos in art work, the epitome of human life. 

Me and some art (2017) :)