When you walk into the Whitney, you will be faced with this tall, wide, and blue elevator where it takes you to the 6th floor. Located on the 6th floor of the Whitney Museum, a painting that almost took up the size of the wall with a lifeless aura around it. The painting is called Felix Partz, June 5, 1994, by the artist A.A. Bronson. The painting features a deadly, skinny man with brown hair and brown bread dressed in a black and white collar shirt that looks far too big for him. Lying down on a polka dot bed with a black and red plaid blanket over his lower body, the man, Felix Partz stares ahead into the distance with his hollowed-eyes. His cheeks were sucked in due to the contraction of AIDS, his mouth slightly opened. There are many colors in the background surrounding him; the yellow, blue, red, purple pillows, but the sullen look on his face makes the colors look so dull. The painting depicted Felix Partz few hours before he passed away and A.A. Bronson wanted to show that even when one is near its deathbed, they are still part of us. A.A. Bronson was very detailed with the colors and had a special way of painting. If one looks closely, you can see that this painting was painted by dotting the colors on. Looking specifically at the polka dot bed sheets, each circle is created by dotting the colors, CMYK on top of each other. It is really intriguing, as you take a step closer to examine the colors on the canvas. The colors that lay on top of each other to create another color.
Tag: #Whitney
Baruch Voices and Whitney
For my Final Blog post, I would like to talk about a recent class trip which my English block took to the Whitney. I will also discuss Baruch voices, the choice of choosing what to talk about was rather a difficult task since both of the academic life visits were one of my favorite.
“No to racists. No to Fascists. No to taxes funding racists and fascists. No mercy for rapists. No pity for bigots. No forgiveness for nativists. No to all of those. No hope without rage. No rage without teeth. No separate peace. No easy feat. No to bounds by genders. No to clickbait as a culture. No to news as truths. No to art as untruths. No anti-Semitic anything. No Islamophobia anything. No progress without others. No meaning without meaning.” Followed by “No means no,” repeated four times. Just read that, line after line, and let it sink in. That’s what you have to do when each line is so powerful and they come together as a whole as these very lines did. That’s what the Whitney Museum did, it plastered those lines all over the entryway making your eyes draw to the plain white walls with distinct black lettering. The protest exhibits on the 6th floor of the museum may be the closest thing to a well-rounded well-connected exhibit as it gets. Attending the Museum School, and traveling every Wednesday to all the attractions NYC has to offer, going on a museum trip was nothing new to me. However, The Whitney was a brand-new experience.
Overall, the exhibit was extremely thought to provoke, and many of the works included were surreal. It made one see, that although many of these are a thing of a past, they very much exist today. The Whitney incorporated this in a way that is not corny, such as when our favorite T.V shows try incredibly hard to implement real-world issues, but in a way that you understand what you are seeing. This was not an ordinary “oil on canvas,” but rather “then and now,” and a “how far did we come, and how much further do we need to go.”
Now let’s move on to Baruch voices. Let’s just say, each FRO class did a wonderful job choosing someone to represent them. Some of the monologues were passionate, sad, powerful, funny— it was like a whirlwind of emotions. Literally, ask Salma, we all were on edge. A particular favorite of mine was the guy who made his monologue on the iconic SpongeBob scene, but only a true SpongeBob fan would know what the scene is early in the speech. There was also this saddening breathtaking monologue that ended up taking us by surprise when the man reading it said it was made up. That one really got to me. Overall, I’m so happy I went to Baruch voices, it was a great time. Shout out to Flint by the way.
