JHK’s Three-Act Play
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Behold the Eli and Edythe Broad Museum of Art at Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI.
Wait…. Is that the museum or the dumpster behind the Museum?
Oh, okay, it’s the Museum. Designed by the late Zaha Hadid. Her firm styles the job thusly:
This dialogue of interconnecting geometries describes a series of spaces that offer a variety of adjacencies; allowing many different interpretations when designing exhibitions. Through this complexity, curators can interpret different leads and connections, different perspectives and relationships.
Well, since you put it that way… of course! Says it all! Adjacency! Complexity! Perspectives!
They also aver to the “the vitality of street life” generated by this new addition to the campus.
Okay… if you say so. (Did they mean plant life?)
Thanks to Bruce Bills for the nomination !
Below, some of the “artwork” featured lately:
On the plus side, the building should be invisible to radar at least.
As for the ghastly interiors, they remind me of my one (and only) visit to MOMA in New York: I walked into one empty white-walled room with flickering lights and mumbled, “What’s the name of THIS exhibit, ‘Lights Blinking On and Off’?” And sure enough, it was.
Haha! I love unwitting absurdity on full dsiplay like this. Even better is the “Emperor has no clothes” folks ooohing and aaahing the absurdity.
During the 1990s I’d go to D.C. a couple of times a a year for work. During my free time I’d wander the sites and museums. The National Gallery of Art was a staple. I spent several hours there. One trip I wandered over to the modern art building. I spent about 20 minutes there. That 20 minutes was one of my first true realizations that this culture of ours is absolutely vacant, void and heartless. The art felt like it all relied on “gotcha” wit and “ain’t I so clever” cleverness…complete with a “metaphysical manual” (nice one Jim) to explain the artist’s intentions. Many years later I read Morris Berman’s books about America being a culture of hustlers and then it all fell into place.
That’s not to say there aren’t good, competent and very capable artists today. I’ve seen many in our local galleries. But a lot of this contemporary art is just in the “oh please” camp.
Don’t take the brown acid.
Does the building have a doorway or entrance? It must be adjacent to something …
It looks like a cousin of the Granoff Center at Brown University, generally referred to as the Broken Acordian. So I thought the guilty party would have been Dildo, Renfield & Scrofulous, who did both the Granoff and Broad in LA. Surprise! October is the time of year to reflect on the undead, however, so Ms. Hadid has returned to haunt us despite her eviction from Tokyo.
unflushed toilets look better
Oh, it’s the art critic, Jim Fucking Kunstler. I suppose anything more complex than a Kincaid or a John McNaughton isn’t art in your eyes. Asshole.
Sounds like an East Lansing artist.
… or curator.
The “artsey” language they use to describe it is as ugly and meaningless as the building itself. All I see is alienation.
Uh, bitter. And triggered. Try to relax. Take a long walk in woods.
Sorry, this comment was intended for smoothtom.
What am I looking at, an armored vehicle ready to assault one’s aesthetic sense, a new AAAV, a new ‘anti-art assault vehicle’? The asynchronous, awkward angularity can be quite alarming.
One couldn’t be blamed for thinking it the wreckage of a B-52 Stratofortress, since the sign isn’t visible, the sign that says, “Scrap Metal Sold Here.”
But I must confess that it has a certain charm, the architect perhaps remembering old tin roofs and going for that inimitable ‘corrugated cachet’ look.
I’m quite disappointed though, in the exhibits themselves. That climbing, hanging? elephant is something to talk about, but there’s no elephant dung, urine, or shrunken heads of ivory poachers.
Whatever the second exhibit represents, it’s unravelling, and as for the third, I just can’t help but look down upon it.
Oh well, you can’t have everything. ‘Ars Gratia Artis’?
Like a Jawa sand crawler, without the rust, but not as impressive.
These are not the droids you’re looking for.
It looks like something that is about to fall on a squirrel.
Damned thing looks like cooling fins on a lawn mower engine.
The elephant lynching and melting people are grotesque.
The elephant aspect is historical, per this old event.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_(elephant)
It’s another alien drop-ship from the August invasion. This time they’re using psychic warfare by torturing elephants and unleashing armies of red melting-crayon zombies.
This comment has more subtlety than this crushed shipping container, and the ghastly Halloween decorations inside.
No problem – the building can always be repurposed as a heat exchanger for a wastewater treatment plant.
Clearly out of the same box as featured August 2019, and not that easy on the eye too. Reading the architects commentary out loud is arguably more offensive on the ears [an earsore] and sensibility [chainsaw], including the patronising reference to curators. Having said that, it clearly has a spacial ambiguity that goes beyond the visual [or two].
This “building” looks like it was birthed by a bunch of sheet metal workers on a four day acid trip. And the “art”, I mean seriously a preschool class could do better. Arranging a bunch of rocks? Attaching a stuffed elephant to a ceiling? Melting crayon men? Is this the fodder that passes for creativity today? Lord help us.
Well, for me, it’s not that bad, it’s just that there’s some irregularities which is maybe that’s what the architect really want. I can’t say that I have an OCD but, it triggers me when I see some irregularities that you have to fix no matter what. Anyway, love your forum, I hope I can see more of this, this year. Before I go, maybe I can drop some games here for you, Have you played this game Among Us? – https://games.lol/among-us/ Very fun game, also you can try Creative Destruction – https://games.lol/creative-destruction/, game for a battle royal fanatic.