At the MOMA there was one particular piece that caught my attention. It was a sculpture of a mother who looked as if she was bearing another child while hanging another over an edge. It could be interpreted in many ways and depending on the viewers interpretation, it would say a lot about their own self. Initially it brought on a feeling of how unfortunate it is for a mother to be bringing another child into the world when she can barely hang on to the one that is already there barely over the age of 2 or 3. After coming back to it a few times my mind allowed another interpretation to form. What appeared to be the women having another baby could actually be a belly after just giving birth. Her face was so calm. What looks like her barely being able to control the child hanging over the edge could actually be her being so skillful with children that she was able to catch or handle the child with ease. For anyone else who had more than one different interpretation, this could reveal that the viewer is very openminded and looks for various explanations. For those who had interpretations that shamed the women, it reveals a certain standard that they themselves have when it comes to parenting. Overall this piece of art was very interesting to observe and try to understand. It’s medium was simple, but the piece as a whole was packed with a much deeper meaning.

We can see in the movie of Greta Garbo we see how people fall in love with her face. There are many overwhelming feeling of happiness as I watched her in “The Grand Hotel”. She plays a dancer in distress from people not appreciating. We can see all her facial expression and how soft and white her skin is in this black and white movie. 

She play a character that is distressed and she place the part really well with her facial expressions. You fall in love with her face despite her role. You can see how she makes her facial expression even in her eyebrows. We can see how the camera really likes her face because the cameras focus really closely to her face. 

When she smiles you can see the beauty of her face. She is the center of attention and it makes the movie very popular at the time because you come to an awe when you watch her perform. You can really focus on her face and see the beauty. There is no flaw and it just brings joy just watching her talk.

I really liked the movie even though it was in black and white. I prefer color movies over black and white films. I think the story was very nice and Greta Garbo’s face really did an amazing part of the movie it brought it to a whole new level of beauty in a black and white film. Even though her role was in destress her face just brought something else to the table.

There are many things that I learned from the movie 13 which was very surprising to me. There were many things I did learn as I was growing up and seeing what was happening around me when I was young. The overall of the movie was good and I really liked how they incorporated music to each time period.

Many things like the civil war and the civil movements reminded me of history class but the idea of laws passed by Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton really made me see how black people were targeted. The images bring many different emotions from horror to sadness to numbness. There is no words to described to all the horror that all these people have gone through.

We can see how black people’s life are shortened from the beginning of the civil war. The story of Trayvon Martin and many other black people sheds a light on the lives of black people during my time growing up. Donald Trump becoming president will set us back on fixing the problem of mass incarceration.

When I first finished the documentary I was quite stunned. I thought about how they said that in order to get people’s attention they have to use shock and realized that this was so depressingly true. I thought about how the political candidates use fear to manipulate citizens to vote for them, and to counter this extreme emotion of fear, one has to use another extreme emotion like horror. While I’d like to think that racism in America has improved drastically over the decades, this documentary really opened my eyes upon my ignorance. While in my past courses I have learned about slavery, racial segregation, and even mass incarceration, it wasn’t as effective as watching this documentary and seeing how the effects of this racism has harmed millions of Americans. At the same time I think it really relates to the current events that are going on in the country. I feel that despite our best efforts at eliminating racism in the world, there always seems to be someone who is ignorant or maybe just misinformed about racism that contributes to the problem. We live in an era where there’s so much information that’s accessible to everyone, no matter good or bad, and I often find it frustrating when others are misinformed. Therefore I think I will keep this documentary in mind and perhaps recommend it to those who are not very informed about the issues that are happening around them.

I originally thought that the movie 13th was based on the story of Friday the thirteen but it was much more scarier then I thought. Criminal is emphasize to describe what society saw black people as after the civil war. We see throughout the movie that history seems to repeat itself. Every obstacle a color person goes through a new one arrives. Freedom then separation, separation then incarceration, and it seems like society won’t give a break to colored people.

I was very interested in the fact about ALEC and how it had a great impact on making laws. It was a private organizations that is made up of cooperations and politicians. The make laws that benefit the big cooperations and there were many republicans that supported ALEC. I have never heard about this before and seeing this really opened up my eyes. It was very socking to find that out. We shouldn’t be creating laws for cooperations but instead for the good of the people.

Its really makes me sad when I watched the movie and it made me want to stand up and help. All the people who went to jail because they were black and media portrayed them as criminals or “super predator”. We see how the law is against the colored people and then we see how the law helps the white getting away with killing black people. Its kind of scary to see how the law is created based on many corporations. Its even more scary how people are put into prison or because they took up a plea bargin. The overall movie was very interesting and very scary.

Kai Althoff’s exhibit at the MoMa is a sensory experience. As one walks into a makeshift Bedouin tent, sights and sounds greet the viewer on all ends. The works come in every imaginable medium: drawings, paintings, statues, built items, found objects, trinkets, garbage. As one meanders about the space, sound effects and ambient music create a powerful suspension of reality – as if one has left their own world completely, and entered Althoff’s fully.

One piece that stood out to me in particular that I returned to repeatedly, happened to be the first work I viewed upon entering the exhibit. One of the many untitled works, this piece was a painting roughly 2’ x 3’ in dimension. Loosely resembling the outline of a top hat, there is an image of a woman getting her hair done. She is suspended over what can vaguely be described as an image of a city. The colors are limited, but vivid – consisting of bold navy, yellow, orange, and white space. The work is dense at its base, shifting to a sparser, perhaps more cerebral mood as the eye moves up.

The cohesiveness of the exhibit was impressive, again considering the sheer volume of works and varying types. There is nostalgia here, and it is powerful.

During the trip to the MOMA the exhibit that we visited was unlike anything I have ever seen before. Each piece of work was so different but everything blended together, the art, the contrast of the background, and the smell all contributed to the experience of viewing the exhibit. At first the work that stuck out to be was a black town with asphalt on the ground, but I figured that this was just because it was the darkest thing in a room full of bright white light. I kept looking around the exhibit and noting really caught my eye until I saw one image in particular, this was the image of a naked man on his hands and knees slicing his back open with a knife. For some reason this really spoke to me, it was a little distorted and eerie but it was real, it was something I feared. Usually they say that friends or even family can stab you in the back but this portrayed something more, it portrayed a more personal outlook. You are the only person who should be able to let you down, others shouldn’t influence how you live you life, yes people can stab you in the back but at the end of the day it is yourself who is in control. I feel like I connected to this piece so well because of my personal life right now, I recently went through a breakup after almost 5 years of dating, my ex was not a bad person he just wasn’t supportive and didn’t display emotion. I would let his and others view of me drag me down and dictate how I lived my life and also my happiness. Why should I let others control my thoughts? my happiness? why should someone else’s opinion of me matter more than my own? By having this mentality I was essentially stabbing myself in the back, there was no one to blame but myself and if I’m not happy with things in my life it is up to me to change it. I don’t want to be left vulnerable, walling in self pity, when I am the one who can change my situation. The image stuck to me and I realized I am allowing myself to be that person, and I sort of had an epiphany and realized I have to do whatever I can to not be my own worst enemy and end up like the person in the picture.

Kai Althoff’s exhibition at the MoMA, “and then leave me to the common swifts” was a very eerie atmosphere to absorb. As soon as we walked in, its ambience took a toll on me. Dark sounds were all throughout its all white interior consisting of damaged planks of wood and soft fabric going up to its tent-like ceiling. The sounds were mostly unintelligible but at one point sounded like a woman creepily reciting the alphabet in German. These sounds gave even the most innocent of Althoff’s pieces an ominous feel. From his mannequins to his baby dolls, if they were to be observed under another light, they probably would have been a bit more welcoming. Then there were other pieces that did have a sort of menace in of itself: used blood sample tubes, a drawing of a man slashing himself along his spine, a loveseat stained with blood on one of its ends. All the exhibition was fraught with fear and a sense of terror filled the room for me.

Once I settled a little and took another circle around, I noticed a lot of violence between the characters in his drawings and not one involved a woman – all were men.  Two of these drawings seemed to have been drawn up around the same time. One was of a man with a pink hat who appeared to have just been attacked with a vase by another man. The second drawing was of said assailant held by the hair by another man who is dressed just like the gentleman with the pink hat (a long green piece, probably a dress, with pink leggings underneath) while the victim of the first drawing, the man with the pink hat, screams to ridicule his attacker. I was/am under the impression that some of Althoff’s work conveys an oppression he was subject to in a country that was non-receptive to his sexualities.

In all forms of art, classical, contemporary, or otherwise, it’s the job of the artist to convey self-expression in each body of work they produce. With that being said, visiting Kai Althoff’s exhibit and being able to view his pieces was an experience like no other, and undoubtedly left a lasting impression on me. I’m not sure if it was the specific layout of the room, the artwork itself, the ominous background music, or the unnerving silence that occupied the exposition, but during my entire time there I didn’t feel like I was simply viewing someone else’s ideas or thoughts, I felt like I personally stepped into the mind of Kai Althoff.

Never before have I felt so immersed in another person’s world through their art, and because the majority of the items in that exhibit bordered surrealism, it seemed to me that I was a spectator being allowed to peek into the head of a very troubled man. Numerous art pieces stood out to me during my visit. The bloodied hand holding a mason jar of blood, the creepy dolls that were arranged to give people jump scares, the destroyed bedroom towards the back of the exhibit, and the mother dangling what seemed to be a deceased baby. However, none of those kept calling me back like the bloodied chair in the corner of the room. No matter how long I stared at the chair, no matter how long I reasoned with myself, I believed that someone actually died in that chair. It may have been the music in the background but I had a foreboding feeling that stuck with me, telling me the blood splatter on the chair was authentic, telling me that while Kai Althoff was making this specific piece he was in a very dark place.

Today’s class trip to see artwork made by Kai Althoff at the MoMa was very interesting. It was the first time that I have been to an art museum in over five years. The room was filled with a numerous pieces varying from sculptors to painting but one piece in particular caught my attention. The piece appeared to look like a burnt down church. It was out on the floor and looked like it was made of cardboard. The colors were mainly black and white with the exception of what appeared to be bags of chips and snacks in one of the buildings. When I first looked at the piece it reminded me of another painting that we looked at as a class when we were first learning about Romanticism and the sublime. The setting was also a gloomy church scene. I got a feeling of “sublime” when looking at the piece. Although it looked tragic to have a church burnt down, it captured my attention and I admired the details. I also connected with it because it reminded me of the civil rights era. During that time period church’s that had black attendants were occasionally burned down by the Klu Klux Klan. I saw a cross with a white flag that made me wonder if that was a possibility as to why the church was burnt down in the first place. However continuing theme of Romanticism, if felt a feeling of negative capability as a walked away from the piece. I knew would not be able to get a definite answer for the meaning of the piece but i accepted it for what I saw and admired its beauty.