Tag Archives: art

Dioramas of suburbs and McMansions

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The New York Times has a story about photographers who build model homes and suburban scenes in order to photograph them:

Yet “Otherworldly: Optical Delusions and Small Realities,” at the Museum of Arts and Design, circles back to the two-dimensional image in ways that feel very sophisticated. A good number of the show’s more than 40 artists build model homes, cities and landscapes mainly to photograph them…

James Casebere, meanwhile, shows his photographs but not the architectural models of suburban housing developments on which they are based. By controlling the lighting and printing his images on a large scale, he makes sprawl seem even more aggressive and insidious. In “Landscape With Houses (Dutchess County, N.Y.) #8” tightly spaced McMansions tower over a quaint white-clapboard farmhouse.

Mr. Casebere is something of an anomaly in this show because he is so focused on the present. Other examples of model architecture tend to indulge nostalgia, along the lines of Michael Paul Smith’s bland 1950s strip mall and Alan Wolfson’s gritty little slice of 1970s Canal Street in New York…

The trip through all of these microcosms can be tedious: too many shoeboxes, not enough ideas. One exception is a video by Junebum Park, who uses his hands and a rooftop camera to turn an ordinary parking lot into a kind of moving diorama. A simple trick of perspective is all it takes to make him the master of Matchbox cars and ant-size pedestrians.

The article ends by suggesting that too many of the dioramas are similar. What would happen if an artist presented suburban homes in a positive light rather than portraying sprawl as “aggressive and insidious” – would this be different enough or unacceptable?

I am intrigued by the idea that a “bland” 1950s strip mall induces nostalgia. What exactly does this look like?

Putting together sociology and art in an old Brazilian chocolate factory

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Sociology is a field of study that can be paired with a lot of other disciplines. For example, combining sociology with art can lead to some interesting outcomes, including this example of a photographer working with families that moved into an old chocolate factory in Brazil:

Eight years ago, 60 families occupied the “Galpao da Araujo Barreto,” an abandoned chocolate factory in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil. Prior to setting up in this place, these families lived on the city’s dangerous streets.

Since 2009, I have been documenting the factory. From my studies in sociology, I understood that this was a unique community: Here was a large sub-culture within the city that behaved as one extended family. They built a microcosm in which the problems of drugs, prostitution and violence are tackled with the support of the community.

Sebastian Liste, 26, is a photographer currently living between Brazil and Spain. He is focused in developing long-term projects that mix his unique visual approach with his background in sociology to explore personal and intimate stories.

It would be interesting to hear Liste describe further how sociology better helps him understand this community and his art. It seems that sociology and art can often have the same ends: the betterment of society. This is achieved in different ways.  Art seeks to tell more stories or expose the conditions of people. Liste’s pictures on this particular webpage humanize these Brazilians who live in somewhat unusual conditions within an old factory. Sociology looks for data and theories that shed light on how to tackle social problems and in this situation could provide insights into the structural position of this group within Brazilian society and how their interactions benefit or hinder the social advancement of the group. Put together, photographs could reveal how this group moves forward in a post-industrial world (evidenced by the old factory) through human bonds that have now been separated (to some degree) from former lives on “dangerous streets.”

An architect places the McMansion in a box of mirrors

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An architect recently spoke at Dartmouth and discussed his thoughts about McMansions:

Cruz showed the audience his representation of “McMansions,” or luxury suburban residences, which have become a large part of the ideal American home. Cruz’s “McMansion,” exhibited at museums throughout the nation, is a small plastic model home placed in a box of mirrors. The image repeats into infinite space, epitomizing the monotony of traditional suburban landscapes.

Alternatively, citizens can come together to create new plans for their neighborhoods, Cruz said.

“The mythology of the American dream of ownership has become unsustainable,” Cruz said. “We need to rethink ownership, and rethink how a small house can become a small village.”

Cruz is well-known for his research on the Tijuana-San Diego border and most recently received the Ford Foundation Visionaries Award, which recognizes leaders’ efforts to improve economic opportunities. He is currently a public culture and urbanism professor at the University of California, San Diego, where he co-founded the Center for Urban Ecologies.

It sounds like Cruz defines McMansion in these ways: they are luxury homes, meaning they are expensive and have a lot of features, and they are monotonous (“cookie-cutter”) when placed with a bunch of similar houses in a neighborhood.

Here is a little more about Cruz’s 2008 work titled “McMansion Retrofitted” at the San Francisco Art Institute that emphasizes the spaces created in the suburbs by recent Mexican immigrants:

McMansion Retrofitted, 2008
Plastic model, pedestal with mirrors, and two videos
Courtesy of Estudio Teddy Cruz…

The areas of San Diego that have been most impacted by this nonconforming urbanism are concentrated in its first ring of suburbanization. At a moment when developers and city officials are still focusing on two main areas of development—on one end, the redevelopment and gentrification of the downtown area and, on the other, the increasingly expansive suburban sprawl resulting from an equally high-priced real estate project supported by an oil hungry infrastructure—it is the older neighborhoods of San Diego’s midcity that remain depressed and ignored. It is here in the first ring of suburbanization that immigrants have been settling in recent years, unable to afford the high rents of the downtown area’s luxury condos or the expensive “McMansions” of the new suburbs, though providing cheap labor for both.

Interesting – Cruz’s preferred neighborhoods sound quite vibrant and diverse. You can read more here about Cruz’s thoughts on how immigrants are changing neighborhoods in San Diego. Also, Cruz has in the past been involved with converting McMansions to multi-family housing (though this home is 70,000 square feet – more of a mansion or a castle).

Quick Review: Exit Through the Gift Shop

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In recent years, I’ve read about the exploits of Banksy, Britain’s most famous street artist. Therefore, I couldn’t pass up watching Exit Through the Gift Shop, a 2010 documentary about Banksy and street art. Here are a few thoughts about the film:

1. The main character of the film is not Banksy but a Frenchman living in Los Angeles named Thierry Guetta. Guetta ends up filming a lot of street artists, eventually meets Banksy, and then sets out himself to be an artist.

2. One of the most dramatic scenes of the film involves Disneyland where Banksy and Guetta stage an “art installation.” While the reaction of Disneyland is not a surprise, it is still interesting to hear how quickly and how seriously their security responded to the situation. The hidden world of happy Disneyworld and Disneyland is a fascinating subject.

3. The images and symbols of the street art world are interesting. Based on what is in this film, one could surmise that it is generally involves ironic or snarky takes on common images and ideas. Part of the allure is simply placing these pictures in prominent places – the artists have a fairly persistent threat of being caught. The other part of the allure is that the art is often “cheeky,” particularly Banksy’s work that challenges the status quo (see the paintings on the wall separating Palestine and Israel). Some of the images are new but many of them are repackaged or remixed.

4. The film also spends some time following how street art became lucrative art as collectors and the general public rushed to buy it. What began on the streets became institutionalized art that museums had to have in their galleries and wealthy people had to have on their walls. I would be curious to know if the value of these art pieces has risen in the last few years (particularly compared to more “traditional” art). The film doesn’t quite display an outright sneer toward this popularity, perhaps more of a wry and bemused grin.

5. I read something recently that suggested it is hard to know whether this is truly a documentary or not, particularly since it is a documentary that tracks the life of an amateur documentarian. Is this all smoke and mirrors or an authentic film about a burgeoning art movement? Have stories in the form of mock documentaries, such as The Office, ruined “truth” caught on camera forever? Ultimately, I’m not sure it matters – the real question about most films is whether they are entertaining or not. And this film is pretty entertaining.

I found this film, on the whole, to be fun. The art is interesting, particularly watching the street artists working hard to put slightly subversive images in interesting places, and the characters even more so, particularly Guetta and his created alter ego (and the questions regarding the truth of his alter).

(Critics loved this film: the film is 98% fresh, 96 fresh reviews out of 98 total, at RottenTomatoes.com.)

In NYC: an indoor park/art installation, complete with fake grass and sunshine

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Parkland is at a premium in urban centers, particularly in crowded Manhattan. One possible solution: build indoor parks/art installations that simulate outdoor parks.

It’s not truly a park, at least not in any sense that the parks department might recognize; it is the simulacrum of a park, an indoor copy that in weather like this becomes more real than the city’s broad but dormant expanses. The pseudopark, which occupies the Openhouse Gallery through the end of the month and which is open to the public every day from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., beckons visitors with a vibrant gardenlike environment and a warm, sunny glow (along with, at certain hours, food vendors like Luke’s Lobsterand Mexicue).

A sociologist tried to make sense of this space:

Strolling around the place and watching the strangers at play, Dalton Conley, a New York University sociologist who has written about growing up in the city, observed that it was a quintessential New York phenomenon.

“One of the factors which, despite perceptions, makes it easy to parent here is that there are no backyards, so you’re not atomized,” Professor Conley said. “You just go to a park,” he said, and automatically find a bunch of other kids to play with. Parks have the same effect on adults, throwing them into close and easy proximity, and promoting unexpected social encounters.

Similar results have been achieved in other unnatural settings, most recently when Pipilotti Rist took over MoMA’s second-floor atrium with an oversize video installation and an enormous round couch on which viewers could just lie back and take it — and each other — all in. But that was under the protective cover of high art. It was critically sanctioned. It was safe. Park Here, in contrast, is just some random storefront, and the people flopped about it don’t necessarily have anything more in common than a preference for being inside to being outside. (Or is it the other way around?)

“As a permanent thing, people probably would say, ‘We need real grass,’ ” Professor Conley said. “But as a temporary thing, they accept the lack of verisimilitude. In fact, I bet some of it is ironic.”

So a random storefront can be transformed into a park-like space where strangers gather together to relax. Is there a future in such art installations?

It would be interesting to hear from those using this art installation. Do they see the irony? Do they feel like they are part of an art piece or is this simply another park space? Are they mainly hipsters or do we have a full range of ages and backgrounds?

Cities using art as a development tool

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USA Today describes the attempts of some cities, including Grand Rapids, Michigan, to use art as a development and economic tool.

This is not a new phenomenon. Richard Florida, in particular, has promoted this with his ideas about the “creative class.” But, perhaps we will see a rise in this sort of activity as cities look for non-traditional economic foundations.

h/t The Infrastructurist

Making art out of sprawl

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The Infrastructurist comments on a story about an artist who uses sprawl and suburbia as his subject. The Infrastructurist and the story commentator suggest these images are alienating and ultimately, tragic:

The suburbs are totally self-contained, labyrinthine, and generally terrifying. The Times describes them as “static, crystalline and inorganic. Indeed, some of these streets frame retirement communities: places to move to once you’ve already been what you’ve set out to be.” We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

I don’t think one has to see these images as tragic. A couple of possible defenses of such images (and the one The Infrastructurist has on the story is a good one):

1. These can be seen as very ordered places. Not ordered in the sense of traditional city grid ordered but they still have a logic. The streets may be more winding but these communities seem to be centered around retail centers or parks. They may even have their own kind of beauty.

2. If one already thinks sprawl is bad, then viewing these overhead shots may just be throwing fuel on the fire. However, these images can be read as the American manifestation of particular social and cultural values: individualism and privacy as built in single-family homes and suburban streets for our cars. In America, the particular expression of these values may be best exhibited in suburbs. There are other ways suburbs/sprawl could be structured to still support those values – or perhaps these commentators would suggest these values themselves should just be done away with. But that is not a problem with these images; it is an underlying issue with sprawl and suburbs.

Debate over food portions in Last Supper paintings

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ARTnews reports on a debate concerning a study that was published earlier this year in the International Journal of Obesity. The study from Brian and Craig Wansink examined depictions of the food at the Last Supper in artwork dating back to the sixth century. Their conclusions: “the food portions became increasingly generous over time, with the main dish expanding by 69 percent, the bread portions by 23 percent, and the plates swelling in size by 66 percent.” The study hit the news wires in March; read reporting from the New York Times here.The implication in some of the news coverage was that food portions have increased over time, contributing to issues like obesity.

According to ARTnews, some art historians have taken issue with the study. Some of the issues listed in the article:

1. Is the Last Supper the best meal to examine?

2. Is the growing importance of still-life art over this time period more responsible for the growing size of plates?

3. Is there a growing amount of food because the cuisine of European cultures expanded over time?

4. Is this an appropriate methodology for measuring something like food portions?

An interesting study and an interesting debate over what it means.

California Picture #11

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During the final hours my wife and I had in California, we visited the Getty Center. In addition to the beautiful collection of art (and we only saw the European art) and the expansive views of the city and coast, the buildings and grounds are impressive. This is a view from the gardens looking toward some of the main buildings:

(My wife and I traveled to California for nine days in early July – this is part of a series of pictures from our trip.)