How to Have Real Experiences at the Art Museum

These are meant to be simple guidelines and basic approaches for getting the most out of a trip to one of the big art museums scattered through out the USA. These are to harmlessly encourage you on how to have a more engaging experience in the museum.

1. Do not come on an empty stomach.

I've noticed this problem over the years with friends or relatives or whoever. What happens is that after about an hour and half, people become distracted by their hunger. They didn't have breakfastor lunch and now while they're looking at a cubist fork by Picasso, all they can think about is twirling some pasta in some classic restaurant in Little Italy. Which isn't always necessarily a bad thing but if you're with your girlfriend and she hasn't eaten all day and after an hour or so you haven't even arrived at the contemporary art galleries yet, don't expect a long interesting and lively discussion on whether that penis is a pencil and what that does or does not reveal about gender identity in the 21st century.

2. Leave your cell phone in your coat! And check your coat when you come in!

That's right. The incessant picture taking on our phones of great paintings that goes on in this country has reached epidemic proportions. What is that picture going to do for you besides act as proof that, yes, you were in fact present in the art museum one fine day? Taking pictures is not a way of 'capturing' these paintings. You're not getting any of the magic or real energy and power of great paintings by reducing them to shrunk down digital images. Paintings are physical things made with human actions. They are not mere surface images. We would all do well to remember that.

3. Take your time in front of a single painting.

If you can spend 30 minutes at a time watching the Kardashians and an hour on the new hot Netflix show and all day long doodling at some game on your i-phone, then surely you can spend two to five MINUTES in front of a single painting. I realize that our generation and even the one before us is so accustomed to quick cut editing and constantly moving images that our brains are locked in a kinda perpetual flow of visual stimulus. It's ok. I understand. I don't blame you. (We also know technologically how the big internet giants are now programming our attention spans for us.)

But having an experience at the art museum should be much different than watching your favorite show even if it is one of the so-called 'smarter' shows on tv or browsing online aimlessly or playing games on our screens. If it is a portrait you land in front of, relax and dwell a bit on the face, the hands, the clothes, the colors and the color combinations. Maybe move closer. Are they wearing rings? If it is a portrait painted in the 15th Century, what might those rings tell us about the person?Maybe take a step back to get a better view of the whole. Maybe get close and see the thick brush strokes and feel the labor that went into the piece. Then go back and look at the face. What can a person's facial expression tell us about them? About human beings? How can pure color arrangements effect the way we feel? Must we always crave instant gratification? Or don't ask your self anything. Just look for awhile and see how it makes you feel. One power that paintings have is their sheer ability for the image never to change. We may change and our relationship to a particular painting may change but Van Gogh's 'Adeline Ravoux' will have always have those scrunched up eye-brows, that pulled back hair looking off to something beyond in an almost annoyed way. Her upper body will always radiate in part due to Van Gogh's use of color(the yellow and sea green in this painting seem electric) and it will stay like that forever.

4. Know that not everything we now see in the museum was ever intended to be seen as art in a museum.

Here I am referring to religious works that were for altarpieces and were strictly devotional objects or whole sections of the museum where old sculptures were meant to protect temples or villages from mysterious forces or neighboring tribes and now they are temperature regulated in a chilly, sterile room totally detached from their original purpose and place.

These were sacred objects and were understood by the entire community as such. So the next time you skip by a painting of the Madonna from the 1300's know that it was a central part of the life of every individual in the area and that as an icon was used to ward off evil of all kinds and used to be a protector. Before battles when people knew some measure of death was imminent they would invoke the icon. They believed these images reflected the actual presence of the Virgin and therefore worthy of veneration and hope. But the Museum has one floor of Madonna's and above it Warhol's many Marilyn Monroes as though they are all progeny of the same art universe--They aren't. (Though they are both protected by (once they are accepted in) the European Architecture Facade Institutional Wealthy Family and Inherent Hierarchies within Model that has been dominating since the 18th century.) Nevermind.

5. Just because you are inside an Art Museum doesn't mean you have to think everything you behold is valuable or interesting or worthy of the high praise heaped upon it by cloistered curators.
Use your own intuition and try to see more clearly the work's context and the overall context of the Museum space itself.
The great atrium space at the Cleveland Museum of Art is one of the great public spaces in the city of Cleveland but it should not go unnoticed or left unsaid that the Director's office and the Boardroom have glass windows that look down from high above onto the hoi polloi of Northeast Ohio wandering around in their allotted time, whose children are being warned by poorly paid, over zealous guards with sore feet, "Do not touch the art work, please."

Goya's Portrait of St. Ambrose

I would like to say a few words about this spooky and darkly beautiful painting done by Francisco de Goya in about 1796 or so that hangs in the Cleveland Museum of Art.

           First off, the painting is quite big; bigger than the biggest flat screen t.v. on your block, say. Here sits St. Ambrose in his bishop vestments emphasized boldly in white and gold, huge beard and tall hat with a large open book on his lap and quill pen poised to write. He is looking upwards. The background is pure black darkness. Out of the total nothingness we see St. Ambrose huge, imposing with a tortured look upwards towards his God. His expression indicates that a communion with God in all his immense power is about to take place and is no small matter.
          This bishop seems to tell us with his look that when the awesome force of God hits you you feel it in your body and soul and are made to remember your own earthly limitations by being totally exhausted from such an experience.He looks up as if to say, "O  Lord, one more time and then let me rest tomorrow night, let me rest for one night until the overwhelming force of your truth blasts my consciousness once again." The man looks like a tortured soul.
          The painting itself demands attention. Out of a deep darkness emerges the holy man in his elegant clothing on the cusp of another direct communication blast wave. Here comes the light. He's got his paper and pen ready. He's got that look. I imagine he takes a deep breath. He is outside of time.

Poem of the Month (March) Larry Fopote

                                                   Tantrum In The Lockeroom

                  
               Gee, how many nails can I fit into this hammer
               and how many hours has the t.v. been on?
               Another Dollar Store is being built in town
               And no body likes M.C. Hammer anymore

                Why must we throttle and king prattle thru life lying about almost everything?
                Have we no guardian angels to helps us seek truth in this day and age?
                You mean to tell me, lowest of lows, that they don't have an app for that?

                We'll then to hell with it. I'm gonna throw a tantrum and shake my brooding soldier
                And imagine we're in the locker room
                And its half time of the biggest game of our lives.



Larry Fopote

Pilot Mountain, North Carolina

About the Poet:
Larry Fopote was born in Boon, West Virginia in 1974. When he was seven years old, his father, who was a Cardiologist landed a job at a prestigious hospital in Boston, Massachusetts moving the whole family in 1981.

From the age of seven until the age of twenty he was a big city kid. Then in 1994 he dropped out of Boston College and went to live deep in the woods in Southern Canada for a year on his own. The experience would have a profound impact on his life. He began writing poems during this time and eventually his first book of poems, 'Cry Me A River' was published by Wild Goat Press a year later. His poem, 'An American Gigolo With A Stutter' was included in the Anthology 'Best Mid-American Poems' of 1996 as selected by Jim Daniels. In 1997, Mr. Fopote absconded from society once again, this time relocating to a trailer in the middle of the desert ninety miles south of Alberqurque, New Mexico. Here he wrote his second book of poems entitled, "Taco Abuses and other Yellow Flowers" published a year later by the New Mexico State Press in collaboration with Milk It Arts Ltd. His poem, 'Fake Flinchers Make Lousy Bedfellows" was included in the Anthology 'Best  Mid-American Poems of 1999. That year he went back to Boston College to finish his degree in Social Economics and graduated in May 2001. He wrote only a handful of poems in those two years. In 2002 he dropped out of poetry all together explaining to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, "There's so much bad poetry that its an avalanche. There's so many hungry poet dogs out there that I might as well let 'em keep yakking and eating eachother." He used his student loan money to finance a trip to Europe the last two months of 2002. He wrote only one poem in Paris, and legend has it it was a real doozy but he gave it to a waitress to whom it was dedicated and no one else has ever read it. In 2003 he was invited to give a Poetry Reading at Michigan State University as part of their Young Poet's Series.
 After reading the first two poems it became apparent he was intoxicated and Fopote stopped in the middle of the third poem and went on a fifteen minute rant on how technology was killing attention spans which spun into him insulting the crowd for their own stupidities. Somebody jokingly tossed a banana up and it hit him in the foot and this so infuriated Fopote he jumped into the crowd causing a melee. He was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct. He was arrested again in 2004 in Maine for possession of Cocaine. Three months later he marries a school teacher and they have one child and live in a cabin in Maine woods. in 2005 despite the incident in Michigan, he is asked to read his poems and does at Vermont University's, 'Young Poet's On the Rise' Series. By all accounts he's the most interesting and most authentically 'blue-collar poet' out of the group. He continues to work odd jobs to raise his child but in late 2006 in busted for possession of Cocaine. His wife and child leave him. His two previous books of poems are selling well for such small presses and were in the process of being reprinted. In 2007 His wife remarries and a long custody battle over their child ensues. While intoxicated crashes his car in Montreal and spends a month in the hospital.
While in bed writes first new poems in several years. The Book becomes 'Hokie Fudge Incinerator', a series of twenty eight poems. It wins the New England Young Poet's Award for 2008 and is nominated  for best book of poems by several magazines and journals.  He's arrested for drunk driving later in the year and also is beaten up by six men outside a bar in Manhattan during a visit to see his family. 2009 loses all award money and loan money in a three day gambling binge in Las Vegas. Arrested for a disorderly conduct outside a strip club in Vegas. Checks into a rehab facility in Maine in November of 2009. Stays until May 2010 when he marries a lady he meets while there and they have one child. They have been living happily tucked away in the woods in Pilot Mountain, North Carolina ever since and Missing Manifest Blog is glad to have received Mr. Fopote's first public poem in over three years and we think it should be our poem of the month for March.

Cleveland Museum of Art and Its Love for Technology

          Gallery One at the Cleveland Museum of Art is the new gallery space devoted to using touch-screens as a way to enhance information about various art works in the collection and as a way to interact more directly with a particular piece. Touch the screen in one spot and it may give historical context to the actual painting that hangs three or four feet behind the flat-screen on the wall. Touch the screen in another spot and it might give you information on how the painting's particular process is carried out. On another screen you can drag your finger and it gives you a splatter/drip effect with which you can fill up the screen with colors and it informs you that you're painting like Jackson Pollack used to do.(Of course Pollack had his canvas on the ground and would physically encircle it, but nevermind) Kids love it!
          On another screen, this one equipped with a camera, you see your self and when you strike a pose, the screen searches a particular sculpture in the museum's database that some how matches up to the position your body pose is in. It then takes the picture with the art work next to you posing and you can email it to a friend. People get a kick out of seeing their pose linked with a Greek statue or a Religious figure. They laugh and have fun with it and a trip to the museum should be fun and loose and a sense of play should be encouraged to an extent.
          The problem, and it is a major problem from my point of view, is that the museum is elevating the technology over the experience of looking at the actual physical artwork itself. In Gallery One, in one area there is a flat touch screen and three or four feet behind it is a Picasso from his Cubist period. All day long kids and students, young and old, go up to the screen and touch it and learn about the historical context of Cubism. They can drag with their finger the different parts of the painting on the screen and re-arrange them in collage fashion and be silly with the arrangement. They can do all kinds of things with the touch-screen. But all day long what barely nobody did, was to go up to the actual painting and just look and take it in. Cleveland, we have a problem.

          Another aspect of CMA's emphasis on technology for the experience of the casual visitor is in the ability to sign out i-pad's equipped with a special art app so that when you wander around the museum and stop at certain pieces in the collection with an 'Art Lens' distinction on the placard, you raise up the i-pad and look at the piece thru the i-pad screen (thereby forfeiting an experience with the painting in its real size and presence) and you learn all sorts of historical context or scientific analysis on the layers underneath the painting or even little video tutorials on process. I can't help but to think we are infatuated with more and more information while at the expense of less and less meaning. It's a big mess when it comes to approaching a painting and absorbing its presence.
This culture has made mere 'image' everything. I'm all for using new technologies to enhance the learning about and better appreciating of artworks and I'm all for finding ways to get young children interested in the art museum but I'm not for any of it (and neither should the director) when these technologies are to the detriment of experiencing the actual art work. Everybody needs to take a deep breath and figure a way to help people realize that a picture of a Van Gogh on a digital screen or in a book or on a website is not the same and not as real as the actual painting. At this rate, in fifty years there will just be ultra hi-def digital reproductions of paintings hanging up in museums while the real ones collect dust behind the scenes and no one will seem to mind very much at all.

(From the Craigslist Universe Archives--Missed Connections)

 h255d-3607445574@pers.craigslist.org 

flag ^[?] : miscategorized 

Posted: 2013-02-10, 12:44PM EST

D&W Gashlight Village Meat Dept. - w4m - 25 (Gashlight Village)

I came in yesterday with my friend to get some pork sirloin and fava beans for dinner. You were the gentleman in the black framed glasses that helped me out. You seemed very professional and established, so I was shocked to see you on that side of the counter. Either way, you were super cute and now I feel guilty for not saying something to you at that moment because I was with my friend and she can be like a rabid dog at times if she sees me flirting with a cute hipster cub. And anyways my tongue locked and my mouth froze when I went to speak to you. You looked in my eyes as if to say, 'This is a Long Life" and handed me the wrapped sirloin. Perhaps next time I'll have the courage to say something to you if there is a next time.I'm moving to Zimbabwe in two months to teach English. I know you probably won't see this, but if you do, please respond.

• Location: Gashlight Village
• it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests or flannels

Mystery Image of the Month (February)

George W. Bush, The Painter

          I was annihilated by shock and awe when I saw the recently leaked images of oil paintings made by none other than former and possibly one of the worst presidents ever, George W. Bush. Who knew? But the wildest, most wacked out thing about it is that I actually really like the paintings. I have only seen two. Both are paintings of a man in a bathroom. Presumably these are self-portraits though you can't really see his face in either one. In the first, he stands without shirt on, grey haired, facing away from the painter.
          The only glimpse we get of his face is in the small circular mirror in front of him. We can barely see it and so there is no obvious resemblance to the 41st President of the United States. The other one is a view that just shows the man's legs in a tub of water as he takes his bath. Its, well, odd. Although each one doesn't necessarily  reveal the presence of some great draughtsmen like Da Vinci or Rafeal or whoever, they fascinate me and not only because of who the painter is.
         There is a playfulness to them. They are not hyper-detailed ultra realistic depictions of the human body in a closed space. They are painted and you can tell.
Already I have seen stories from various websites where big Art critics have come out of the wood-work to spew their psycho babble in a cohesive manner. One guy from the New Republic linked the bathtub painting to G.W's regret over his handling of Hurricane Katrina. Really? What can we tell from the actual paintings by looking at them with out a thought about who painted them?
         A few things: The subject does not want to be looked at. He faces away from the painting and the view of the painter, who is doing the looking and from us. The subject is alone in a space that is usually closed off from others while being used. (Aka: a restroom in the home) Issues of Isolation, Reflection, and Peace vibe off the paintings without trying too hard and that's a nice thing to pull off. They are wonderfully simple. I like the playful style and the odd, sorta anti-portrait portrait function thats going on. They are also unpretentious as hell. I just wish the man who made these two paintings would have been a painter instead of a President.