You decide...

this piece of art is in the de cordova museum in lincoln. a museum where we have been quite a number of times now. it has an outside sculpture park, and a museum with rotating exhibitions of modern art. the grounds are absolutely wonderful, and i am never bored there. there is "weird" stuff too. but i like weird stuff. since this year, every first wednesday of the month entrance is free, so last month we left work a few hours earlier and went to the museum.

the above is made by the american artist steve lambert (1976). as a visitor of the museum, you can, if you want to, vote whether capitalism works for you or not. as you can see, the votes are counted. currently, this work is traveling through boston, together with the artist, and people are asked to vote and i guess think more/discuss about this question through this piece (i wonder if he notes down the votes. if he sees a difference in outcome depending on where he is. i think for example harvard yard vs eeehhhmm... revere or so). glancing at his wikipedia page, the artist seems interesting. in 2006, for example, he launched "why they hate us". "this project invited users to tag photos on flickr with "whytheyhateus", acting as a display of pictures that users suggest contribute to a negative view of the United States or have the potential to be misinterpreted as negative. Some of the themes include gun violence, war, crude humor, consumerism, obesity and big government and big business". hmm, im curious to see what kind of pics are posted there. apparently they are uncensored, and anyone can post.

but... its bedtime yet again. i will check it out tomorrow!

All yellow

from above all i saw was yellow and i liked it so much! then i was curious to see what wikipedia has to say about yellow, and thats a lot (here). i see yellow as a positive color, but i do not have any clothes in that color (i do have a pair of shoes. i do have a lot of purple clothes, and purple is the RYB (wiki can explain you what that is) complimentary color of yellow). however, wiki tells me that yellow is associated with the word "caution, as well as with aging for both people and objects ("yellowed" paper).

well, with all that yellow you would almost miss the enormous piece of art in the midst of it. here you can see it from the front. i actually do not know whether i like it. its interesting though. its titled "Companion (Passing Through)". passing through because it came from hong kong, and with several stops along the way, ended up in the meatpacking district in NY, but only until this month. it is made by an artist named KAWS, who grew up in jersey city. originally, he was a graffiti artist and later worked at disney (the sculpture does remind me a bit of mickey mouse, but tim does not agree). but what i really wanted to know was why he has covered his eyes! what kind of companion is that? it took me a while to find it out. some suggested he is playing hide and seek, others that he does not want to see evil (here a lot of pics from the sculpture). well, originally KAWS was invited to make  a piece of art to be displayed in harbour city (the biggest hong kong shopping mall). when he went to look at this location, his immediate thought was “God if I had to sit out here, I would just be mortified if this many people walked past me.” since wikipedia tells me that yellow is also associated with cowardice, i guess that explains why everything around the sculpture is yellow....

Beantown festival

it is september 25. and it was HOT today. i guess 30 degrees? in fact, its almost 2 in the night now, and it is still pleasant out... amazing...

today was the end of the jazz festival going on in boston since a week. but today was for free (oh, the dutch!) and we didnt have to work, so... we arrived rather late and saw two performances, from grace kelly (pictured above; shes only 18 yrs old!! the shoes looked real cool on her) and the jon baptiste trio from new orleans. both were goooooddd! although the first ones were better... it was really nice, also because of the weather, and it was great to see everyone enjoying it so much. we took a lot lot of pictures....
this picture shows the frustration when arriving late, and all good spots are already gone. it was especially annoying since those music stands did not need to be there... (in the next performance they indeed removed them). but i also liked it, as we could see the sax and her shoes... nothing more needed! :)

Free entrance

on wednesday evenings, you can enter the museum of fine arts for free. as there was an exhibition of richard avedon, i really wanted to go there again. at the ticket desk the girl was very friendly and all, she asked for our zipcode, and an emailaddress (why do they always always want your emailaddress? at least now we just say no, but in the beginning we even gave them!), and then she said: "no entrance fee today. would you like to make a donation?" "um. no". and then it was probably our consience that made us feel from then on she was quite a bit less friendly...

anyways, i very much enjoyed avedon's photos. and wow, he had a long long career. he started in 1942, and in 2000, 4 years before his death, he still was photographing fashion. in fact, i just read that he died while shooting for the new yorker, on october 1st. i liked the fashion photos they displayed he made around 1956, i think they were quite ahead of his time..

there was one guy at the exhibit with a big profi camera, and he was photographing avedon's pics... why?? you also just could buy them at the museum shop!

Electric six

yesterday we were on a boat. to listen to electric six, a band from Detroit. ah well, i dont know them, but tim was crazy when he founc out there were cheap tickets, and that the concert would be on a boat floating around Boston. i liked that latter part and joined, as the music is rather ... well.. whenever he sometimes had it on, i asked him to switch to something else. :)
ah well, the views of boston were nice, unfortunatly no romantic sunset, it started raining instead. it was fun to observe all the different people there. 2 were in gala-outfit; they looked rather out of place. but maybe so did i, not going crazy on their music, but rather watching the sky, the planes taking off (one came really close!!), and the lightning! this is a pic of the guitar player, right after they were done. at first he was just walking "freely", and i found that soo weird! wasnt there no one who wanted to tell him how great it was? or whatever... but just as he started to go through the crowd (to get some attention?), a girl grabbed him and they talked for a while, then i lost track of him (ah, its the one in the white shirt on the left). according to tim he looked less impressive without his guitar (maybe thats why no one spoke to him; didnt recognize him anymore?), but this is all i saw from Electric six...