Mary and I went to the Brooklyn Museum to see the Edward Burtynsky show on Sunday. After the Times had pummeled the show for it's heavy-handed didacticism and stylistic monotony, I was prepared to be underwhelmed. Usually I'm not into didactic, monotonous work. Unless, of course, the artist is right. Burtynsky's photos a these drone on and on about mankind despoiling nature, and with great bombast. But the work on China is pretty revelatory, really bringing home the scale and density of China and what it implies for the future. A show worth seeing.
The fountain in front of the museum, however, is flat out fab. 60-odd choreographed jets of water shooting straight up in the air in variable rhythms. The kids love it. The ladies love it. You gotta love it.
Was also digging video footage of ritual African dancers. Wouldn't have expected to. Lone males in spooky masks and full body get-up doing either proto- or post-break dancing stuff on dirt.
Otherwise had no time to plumb depths of the museum's collection. Looked OK.
All told, two thumbs up.
Thursday, November 10, 2005
Brooklyn Museum, 11/06/05
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I was fine with the heavy handedness - i though at the time that the destruction of the world is after all a truly big bad thing, and sometimes you have to recognize its monumental and monotonous course forward directly, which i think burtynsky's photos do, as opposed to through another rhetorical strategy, like contrast. I realy liked the ship carcasses.
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