Art Visit

For my art visit assignment, I visited the Crocker Art Museum, which is located in Sacramento Valley Capitol Region. I visited the museum over the weekend on April 18, 2008. There is a huge difference in actually visiting a museum and seeing that art work right in front of you and in person rather than viewing art work in a book or on a screen. By viewing the art work in person, one can see the actual size of the art work and compare it to how big it really is.

When viewing an art work on screen or in a book, one cannot see the actual size of the piece. The book gives the height and the width of the art work, but one can only imagine how big it is, but once one see’s it in person and really see’s the painting is as big as a car, one can come to appreciate that piece of work more because one cannot imagine what this particular artist went through in order to finish this piece of work. There was a piece that the Professor Pacansky-Brock put up in one of the announcement walls of an old dead mans face, but I forgot what the piece was called. Anyways, it saw it at the museum and I did not realize that the painting was that actual size. It took up almost the whole wall, and was probably bigger than a car. I was amazed by the art work and truly appreciated the piece a lot more than I did before. I saw many paintings, some that were small, some medium, and some even as large as a car. Also, viewing art work in person gives one a much better experience because one can see the texture of the piece. If the art work is rough, smooth, bumpy, etc. Another plus for viewing art in person is one can see the true colors of the art work. Again, when I saw that painting of the dead man in the announcements it sort of looked like a gray and white painting, but when I saw it in person, it was much more than that. The colors in the painting looked gray and white from afar, but once I got closer, it appeared to be very different. There were certain patterns in the art work and also consisted of different colors, which I did not appear to me on screen, but appeared to me when I saw it in person.

On my visit I witnessed many different types of art works, paintings of landscape and nature, paintings of portraits, conceptual art, and modern art, which I all enjoyed very much, but there was one particular art piece that really stood out. This art piece was a portrait of our current President George W. Bush and was made by Richard Notkin. Notkin is American and was born in 1948 in the city of Helena, which is in the state of Montana. This particular piece was medium-large in size. There were not too many hues in this art piece, mostly black and white, which I believe plays a significant role in the piece because like many know, Bush has two answers, yes and no. Either we go to war with Iraq or we don’t or universal health care or not and so forth. This piece was made up of square pieces made of earthen ware tiles fired up in sawdust filled saggers. The colors were painted on by water color highlights and this particular piece was mounted on a panel. I loved this piece because from far away it was a portrait of Bush, but when I got closer it was a bunch of square pieces put together, and each square had a different picture on it. Most of the pictures on the squares were different, but some of the pictures also repeated itself throughout the art piece. The certain pictures that were on the square pieces were dominos, dice, skulls, missiles, barb wire, a man with a hood over his face, Jesus Christ’s feet, little sperm, ears, brains, heart, nuclear bomb, Iraq, and corpses. Each picture was symbolic of only some of the tragedies the countries go through when they experience war. I had my personal interpretations about this art piece and what the pictures on the squares symbolized. The dominos symbolized the domino effect, which is when dominos are lined up and placed together, once you knock the first domino over, then the rest all fall down, which shows me that once America invades a certain country, all the countries next to them will eventually after the first one falls. The dice symbolizes the chance we took in invading Iraq in the first place, we either invade them or we do not, and we did. The skulls symbolize all of the dead civilians that died during the war. It may also mean the Skull and Crossbones, which is supposedly a top secret group of the elite that run this country. The barb wire and the man with the hood over his face represents Abu Gharib and the torture the Iraqi civilians went through when the American soldiers tortured them. The little sperm, to me, symbolizes germ warfare. So many people in Iraq are dying from infectious diseases and viruses, which probably effect the sperm so when they have babies they will come out all disfigured with many problems. The art piece is a critiques and questions morality of the brink of destruction politics we have here in America. The art piece said so much to me, and it was like nothing that I have ever seen or experienced before. I loved the symbolic meaning of the square pieces and like I stated earlier, I love how from far away it is just a normal looking man, George W. Bush, but when you get closer and get to know him more or analyze the art work a bit more, one can see the hidden secrets behind this mastermind.

Overall, I loved my experience at the Crocker Art Museum. I am pretty sure I visited this museum when I was younger, but I have no recollection of my visit back then. When I visited over the weekend I had a blast. I did not realize a museum could be so fun. Growing up, people would always talk about museums being boring because when I was a kid, I did not know any better and I did not know how to interpret art and did not see all the symbolism in it. Now it is different and I can catch and pick out the symbolisms in the pieces and I really enjoyed doing that. Each artist has their own particular way in expressing their feelings, and each art work made by that artist has its own taste to it because of the environment that they grew up in. One can view many art pieces at a time, and can see full detail of the art piece and not miss any detail, like what happens sometimes viewing it on screen or in a book. I had a great experience and would love to visit another museum, hopefully this time in San Francisco!