Section BJL3B

I attended gallery tour on November 17^th at 22^nd street. This workshop was amazing. We waited on line for an hour. When we first walked in to the gallery, we putted our bags aside and started our journey to Mercedes Matter’s art. Matter was an American modern artist who is famous of abstract paintings. Our tour told us that Matter’s paintings are very abstract that audiences can not ask what the art is about.

The first set of art we saw was Matter’s painting from nine years old, adolescent, adulthood and old age. We saw the transitions of her painting from childish to thoughtful. Her nine years old painting was a toy which did not seem as abstract as her later paintings.

The second painting we saw was a painting full of triangles, color, and shapes. It was so abstract that I could only see the shape of an apple and few triangles.

The third painting was full of lines and texture. The painting was constructed during her late age, we can feel the freeness in her mind because the color and the texture are so casual. By looking at Matter’s painting, I was attracted by all the confusion that I want to know what is she trying to convey in the painting.

Even though I did not understand the meaning behind most of the paintings, the workshop was an open eye opportunity to acknowledge the different type of paintings.

December 1st, during the lunch break, I attended a gallery tour, which belonged to the Arts at Baruch workshop category. On this artistic tour, I had the pleasure to see Mercedes Matter’s paintings. Mercedes was born in 1913 and died in 2001. The guide introduced her whole lilfe to us. She was born in New York City and had somekind of relationship with Baruch (I could not remember what that is). In the exihibition room, paintings were classfied by their creted time. There were three main categories: early age, middle age, and old age. There was a painting created at her age of nine. I was so surprise that a nine year old could paint such a master piece. When she was older, Mercedes used a modernist style on her paintings. When I looked at her paintings, I could not tell what that was. But I knew she was telling us something. That something was her view of this world or something else. Our guid told us things do not ask in a exihibition room. Even though we may not understand the painting, we can not ask, “What is that?” Instead, we should say, “What is this painting trying to express?” This is a very useful technique, and I am sure we all should remember this in our deep mind. There were dozens of   abstract paintings in the exihibition room. Someone asked where we can buy her paintings. I thought we could  buy photos of her paintings. Actually, I googled Mercedes Matter and found many of her abstract paintings. It is a great tour, and I hope you will like the paintings as I do.

On November 17, 2009, I went to Baruch’s Gallery tour located on 135 East 22^nd street. When I got there, there are already many students waiting in a line. Most of them are freshmen. The staff at the gallery only allowed about 20 students to get in each time. I was in the second group to enter. After I went in and signed o a piece of paper, I was attracted by the colorful paintings hung on the wall. They were all painted by Mercedes Matter who began painting at only 6. During the tour, the instructor of the gallery explained how the artist’s work developed from her early time to the older. She also told us that unlike the writing, the art used shapes, colors, spaces and textures to express the meaning. For example, Matter’s most works were done by using triangles. The instructor pointed out every triangle in her painting. I can hardly see the triangles; it’s hard for me to interpret all the paintings. Maybe I am less talented, and I didn’t see a table that was painted in one of the paintings either. Although the tour was very short, which lasted about 15 minutes, I learned a lot of things. And I was impressed by the paintings. I really like this workshop.

On October 13th of 2009, I went to the Sidney Mishkin hall located in 22nd st. for the gallery tour. When I got there, there was a long line. Since there were too many people, they divided us by few groups and let us go in one at a time. As a result, I had to wait out side for about ten to twenty minutes. The gallery was very clean but small. It was so small that it just took me about 10 minutes to see all the pictures there. Pictures were mostly photographs that people took before. There were so many great pictures that was interesting. Some pictures seemed like other things, but actually it wasn’t the thing that I expected. My favorite picture was the mountain picuture with different overall blue color. Blue mountain was very interesting to see and looked very different even though it was same mountain that I’ve seen. I really enjoyed this workshop. I would definitely recommend this to my other friends.