Tuesday, 11-June-2024
I tracked down the Art!
As is tradition, I started my adventures in Riga (after my first evening of wandering, of course) with the National Museum of Art. I really do like this tact for getting to know a city… Art really does follow culture, and while I do enjoy reading about the raw historic timelines of a city I prefer getting the overarching cultural side first, and then reading about the events that influenced the culture.
Also, walking around a nice air conditioned building is always a nice start to the day. I’m just saying.
The Latvian National Museum of Art was fun – it wasn’t massive, but it was fairly extensive in an absolutely beautiful / traditional building… It felt like an art museum, if that makes sense? The main entryway was undergoing construction too, which reminded me of all the years I went to the MFA in Boston when their front entryway was under construction… a fun little memory connection.
I walked, I appreciated, and I enjoyed the placards and the beautiful paintings.
The coolest thing, or at least the most unique, in the museum was their basement storage system. In no museum have I ever seen their entire collection – we just see what the curators choose for each exhibition. In the Latvian National Museum of Art, they had the cold storage area open for viewing. Racks upon racks, rows upon rows, more paintings and works than I could count. All just hanging in a temperature and light controlled room.
Just… so cool.
As an interesting note, there were three exhibits which specifically stood out to me as a great example of my thoughts on modern art. Since this is my blog, it’s my turn with the mic and I get to pontificate.
The three were called Walls, In the name of Desire, and Sologamy.
Of those three, I adored Sologamy, was almost insulted by Walls, and was simply bored with In the name of Desire. To me, the simple reason was that Sologamy was the only exhibition that actually spoke to the human spirit in a creative vein. It built, offered insight, and formed a hypothesis… but moreover, it took effort and thought to create.
Sologamy was an installation piece in the attic of the museum – wide rafters, meandering pathways, and large canvases with video projected on them. The idea of the installation was someone living with themselves – each canvas was physically split into two parts, that came together when you stood in just the right spot… and each part had one “side” of the artists personality. One pair would be a kitchen table with two images of the artist, one their physical self and the other their internal self. They’d talk, converse… it was really interesting.
Walls was… paintings of walls. There was some meta self-referential commentary that we’re supposed to infer (walls separate people), based on some previous works that weren’t included (?), but the paintings themselves were just… wooden slats. It was art because the artist is an artist, and seemed to be selected because the artist had been selected. One of those, “I’m famous for being famous” situations.
In the Name of Desire… I didn’t bother taking photos of, because it was just nudity for shock value. Yep. A sculpture of a penis. Man. Never seen one of those before. And a video of the artist having sex, with a commentary about how sexuality shouldn’t be repressed. Truly, a work that will live on in the public consciousness for an eternity. Or for approximately 10min after they leave the exhibit.