My Friday At Lacma

I had a great time at LACMA. It is a big museum. There are a lot of interesting stuffs. It has many galleries from many different countries and cultures. 

I liked this paintings. It is like one of my culture's hero. When I was young, my teacher usually told me in class. The tale praised a hero who fought against enemies from another country to protect people. After he won the battle, he flied to the sky with a white horse. This tale inspired me a lot since everybody neither young or old, neither strong or weak, he still has the love for his own country and his culture. He loves where he was born and the way the place shaped his life .

Then I randomly took some pictures with Picasso's painting. I liked this Japanese Art style. They draw it on 12 pieces of pottery. It describes 12 months in Lunar Calendar.

12 months with many different views of landscape. Still only one country but its different beauty make it special. 12 months with its own special trees, flowers, and animals. The peace of surrounding makes people feel the love of nature and find their own peace inside. 

And the last one I think there is a relation to me is South Asian Art. There is a gallery about Buddha. As I was born in a Buddhist family, I love my religion. I like to look at some ancient artwork about my religion. I have read many books about Buddha and His life, how he established his religion. However, I have not got a chance to look at those real pottery Buddha images before. Like other religions, I have my own religious belief. Every single religion tries to teach their believers good things, how to behave and have a joyful life. 

MY COLLAGE

This is my collage. All of my life is held in those picture. Back in Vietnam, I have my family. I love them a lot. Since I moved to U.S., I have a new life, a new family. I have friends who can be with me when life is both fun and hard. Now I have my husband. A really new "everything" to me....He loves me so much. I am happy with everything I have. Even though life is not an easy road for me in U.S., I still have my family, my husband, and my friends with me. My life is full of love and happiness. I LOVE THEM ALL!!!

Artist Research

   I was so surprised by looking at Pittman's paintings. The whole chaos with many different colors, it is hard to define what they are about. 

Lari Pittman
"With appreciation, I will have had understood the decorum of my mobility"

   This is some information about his life. Lari Pittman was born in Los Angeles, California in 1952. Pittman received both a BFA (1974) and an MFA (1976) from California Institute of the Arts, Valencia. Inspired by commercial advertising, folk art, and decorative traditions, his meticulously layered paintings transform pattern and signage into luxurious scenes fraught with complexity, difference, and desire. In a manner both visually gripping and psychologically strange, Pittman’s hallucinatory works reference myriad aesthetic styles, from Victorian silhouettes to social realist murals to Mexican retablos. Pittman uses anthropomorphic depictions of furniture, weapons, and animals, loaded with symbolism, to convey themes of romantic love, violence, and mortality. His paintings and drawings are a personal rebellion against rigid, puritanical dichotomies. They demonstrate the complementary nature of beauty and suffering, pain and pleasure, and direct the viewer’s attention to bittersweet experiences and the value of sentimentality in art. Despite subject matter that changes from series to series, Pittman’s deployment of simultaneously occurring narratives and opulent imagery reflects the rich heterogeneity of American society, the artist’s Colombian heritage, and the distorting effects of hyper-capitalism on everyday life. Pittman has received many awards, including a Pacific Design Center Stars of Design Award (2004); the Skowhegan Medal (2002); and three fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (1987, 1989, 1993). He has had major exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Art, London (1998); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (1996); and Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston (1996). He has participated in the Venice Biennale (2003); Documenta X (1997); and three Whitney Biennials (1993, 1995, 1997).

He likes that the work is visually very declarative and available to everybody. The multiple viewers can approach it very differently. He is also interested in the work occupying a denser critical territory that would required a different type of visual demographic.
   He lives and works in Los Angeles. He thinks as chaotic as American culture is—sadly, ironically, or even perversely—I thrive on that. I’m able to carve out a tremendous amount of freedom. Particularly in Los Angeles. I don’t think I would be capable of carving that out in, let’s say, Europe or Latin America. I don’t think I could do it.
   Here is some idea from his interview that talked about craft and paintings. Craft has always been an ideological component in the work because it’s about a type of focus and social comportment that usually isn’t expected of a male. There’s a dutifulness that historically has been referenced or attributed to females, so he has always seen my devotion to craft as a type of protest. 
   His work appears very chaotic. It looks visually micromanaged. In the chaos. he is showing actually a rationalism of structure underlying everything. 

Beauty.

Everyone has heard that "Beauty in the eyes of the beholders".  Today, we were watching some videos about what women do to make them more beautiful. some of them have done a lot of plastic surgery. with them, after doing those stuffs, they think they are beautiful. however, I think beauty must come from the inside, not from outside. the way they look is important, but the way people consider their beauty is more important. The beautiful face, tall and skinny body can get much people's attention. meanwhile, people will consider carefully by the way they behave and their inside. I think an ugly but good manner woman will be better than a beautiful but no good behavior. In this real world, I can say there are not much beautiful women with good manner. But still, as a woman, I know how she feels when she wants to be more beautiful. Nevertheless, woman have their rights to be beautiful, they should make their inside beautiful before they change their outside.

The videos we have watched today were really cool. I love it.