You remember the other day how i was talking about museums being boring in my journal? Well that sidetracked into a real-life conversation with a friend earlier this week and she said i should do the Guggenheim Collection at the National Gallery of Victoria. I thought back to the last time i did a museum, and aside from going to the Star Trek exhibit in the Queensland Museum with dad - plus a local art exhibit in Brisbane that a mate of mine had art showing at - i was about 13 years old. It was Rembrandt to Renoir at the Auckland City Art Gallery. I remember the European masters were quite pretty but nothing really mind-blowing, but we then had quick walk through the contemporary section and there was this really fucking fucked up photo series of someone slitting their wrists with a glass of wine. That shit gave me nightmares as a 13 year old. It was seriously, seriously assfucked. That sort of "art" should probably come with an "R" rating or something so kids can't just hit it by accident.
In any case, that probably put me off museums for a long time. But today i thought what the fuck and went to the Guggenheim Collection. I have to challenge myself, right? This has been the year of doing stuff i don't normally do. I spent about an hour and a half walking through the gallery and came out just... amazed. It was like i'd just seen an awesome movie. Way better than the rock shows i've been to this year that were also experiments in experiencing different art to clubs/raves. They had Pollock and Lichtenstein and Gilbert and George and Warhol all this other shit i've never heard of. Some of it was like eh, but some of these pictures that were just two-color blends or tiny little lines or a squiggle of random crap were fucking beautiful. I don't know the arty meaning behind it all, but hell it was pretty. There was this giant fluorescent pink canvas that turned orange on the other corner... this weird 3D perspective Chilean thing with psychedelic swirls, a really cool minimal moon landscape with smoking pears and bananas (!) and a giant sandwich with a face on it and all kinds of cool shit.
In fact the only thing i thought was really fucking pretentious was this video installation playing music video/horror movie type stuff with crappy ambient music burbling in the background. Even the blank empty room with nothing in it and the six (?) orange boxes were pretty nifty. And the orange fluorescent lights that were green on the other side. They were cool. There was this cool self-portrait photo by this chick.. Sherman something.
So yeah, i'm in Melbourne now, i drink cocktails, i drink premium beer, i listen to house music, i live in an inner city apartment and i fucking went to an art exhibition. Pinkies out, hey. I've turned all upper-class.
Still, i'm drinking margaritas and eating bean and cheese burritos for dinner so i have a little trash left in me. I also did a debaucherous mid-week clubbing event - secret $10 Derrick Carter gig on Thursday night, though admittedly it was after a $60 dinner meetup with some internet randoms from inthemix.
Anywho. Cool. I'm still not into rock shows or musicals, but i reckon museums are alright now :-)
