Back home

I got back home to Boston late last night after an 8 day trip to Silicon Valley. This afternoon we [my wife, daughter, son-in-law and I] headed up to the Museum of Fine Arts, since we had tickets for the Gauguin in Tahiti exhibit. As it turned out, none of us thought much of that show (a little Gauguin goes a long way, and his pedophilia is hard to ignore), but two other exhibits more than made up for it.

First, we saw the Japanese Postcards show. This is simply wonderful – see it if you get the chance. It’s drawn from a collection of thousands of Japanese postcards from the first half of the 20th century: New Year’s cards, art cards, humorous cards, cards celebrating the Russian-Japanese war, advertisements, Art Nouveau, Art Deco… just delightful. The one on the right is by Kobayashi Kaichi, entitled Woman Waiting for her Beloved at 2:25. We bought the book for the exhibition, and one of the staff confided that the Japanese Postcards book had been outselling the Gauguin in Tahiti catalogue by a significant margin.
The other delightful surprise was the exhibition by the English couple Tim Noble and Sue Webster. To quote the MFA: The artists integrate satire and punk strategies with the study of modern sculpture and a keen awareness of the self-importance of the London art scene. Responding to the media hype of the British art world, Noble and Webster find inspiration in pop culture and advertising, creating brilliant animated light displays, or illuminations, such as the fountain and dollar sign in this exhibition. By contrast, their �rubbish,� or shadow sculptures, are brought to life when a simple light is projected over a carefully arranged pile of domestic garbage. Tim Noble & Sue Webster explores the team�s mature work, including seven examples of illuminations, shadow sculptures, and their latest neon forms: a boy/girl couple covered with streetwise slang. The piece to the left is Excessive Sensual Indulgence. Exhilarating, and very, very English.
My favourite pieces were “Real Life is Rubbish” and “Fucking Beautiful”, shown below: