As much as I would have loved to devote an entire day to the National Gallery, we soon headed over to the Institute of Contemporary Arts. The area between the National Gallery and the ICA was pleasant. The ICA itself was... different.
I've summed up my basic reaction in these three doodles I did in MSPaint:
MSPaint doodles do not accurately indicate my artistic abilities.
Nor was I bald at the time.
Nor was I bald at the time.
Some may argue that art makes the viewer think. If that's the case, the works I saw were highly successful! The first one that caught my attention was Kristian de la Riva's 'Cut'--a looped animation of a person causing severe physical damage to himself. The animation was black and white line drawings, but the violence was very graphic. Yet I couldn't stop watching it, as much as I knew what would happen. Like watching a trainwreck that's about to happen. Or rubbernecking on the highway. Do people get some twisted satisfaction in seeing other people hurt? There's a hilarious story about someone slipping on a banana, of which I've never actually seen, or seen any documented footage. But apparently, it's funny to see someone slip and fall.
Still, we go through so much trouble to prevent violence: gun laws, age restrictions, safely designed, user-friendly objects. Perhaps those laws are meant to protect the self, mainly. Violence is more funny when it happens to someone else.
I liked the books in the ICA gift shop. One titled The Interrogative Mood: A Novel? had me amused for a long time. The book only had questions, but they were funny and got me thinking. I remember this one: 'Do we have enough time? Does it bother you that I didn't specify for what?' I would love to ask that to a group of people just to see the reactions on their faces. It probably will look like such:
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