Other Stuff I Saw Or Experienced Or Thought

I think I should probably mention some of the other stuff I've seen since the start of this academic year - stuff I haven't mentioned yet. I think I'll just talk about these things briefly so that it doesn't feel like I'm just doing this for the sake of it, especially since some of it isn't really that recent anymore. Maybe I'll just bullet point some thoughts.

- Frank Stella! I don't like Frank Stella. But I think that's because his work makes me think too much about the purpose of art. I'm used to work being conceptual and "meaning" things. So to me his work all "means" the same thing. I get that his work is supposed to be the opposite of that... all this stuff about just being an object... but I just feel like that's an idea that can be expressed with one piece and doesn't need a whole career's worth of work.

- I saw some of Thomas Schutte's work at the Serpentine Gallery. As I was getting more into the idea of work that didn't have a complicated, long-winded concept, portraits seemed interesting to me. Portraits often say a lot that is beyond words. John Berger apparently linked them with self-discovery. I think that's an interesting idea.

- I saw Kiki Smith's "Behold." Her work sort of creates its own world and has a presence, possibly because of the scale of it and the mythological themes.

- Fischli and Weiss... I saw their work and wrote "chewy-looking." I like it when the medium itself is interesting because of its physical properties.

- I was at the David Zwirner gallery and saw Luc Tyman's work. I thought it was interesting that he took real objects and sort of reduced them to abstraction. Maybe "reduced" is the completely wrong word. Maybe I should mean the opposite of "reduced." That's possible.

- I was at the Walker Art Gallery and was interested by Peter Liversidge's "Proposal for the Jury of the John Moores Painting Prize 2012." I found it interesting that it wasn't actually painted by the artist. Also that it was a painting of typed letters.

- I found it interesting how the John Moores Painting Prize made it so obvious how different the approach to art is in China and in the UK. The UK work seemed more conceptual, and the work from China seemed to put a lot more emphasis on technical skill, in a very big way. Today I was talking to someone from China who said that over there to get into art school people have to really develop their skills. Over here it feels like it's a lot more ideas-based, and work has to be inquisitive and interesting. I was saying that art over here can be a lot more about social commentary than about skills and aesthetics, and she was telling me that there's probably no way they'd want that in China. I thought that was an interesting comment. I hadn't made that connection to censorship and such; I just accepted that traditions were different and technical skill was more important elsewhere.

- I saw Jarik Jongman's "Waiting Room." I feel like I'm almost obsessed with contrast and atmosphere.

- I found it interesting that Franz West's "Viennoiserie" used work from his friends, because I was thinking a lot about how interesting I found my friends as people and how that linked to me appreciating their art whether they were "artists" or not.

- I usually don't like Gilbert & George because I'm often repulsed by garishness, but I like their piece called "Cunt Scum," which I saw in Liverpool. It feels blunt and sincere.

- Kohei Yoshiyuki's "Love Hotel" at the Open Eye Gallery made me question our ideas of what is "explicit" and "inappropriate," and why. Why are vague, pixellated images of people having sex considered vulgar? Firstly, are they doing anything wrong? Did religion start this weird, almost purposefully anti-hedonist culture? Secondly, can you even properly see what they're doing?