POST 4: My own choice of a book dealing with the "Myths and Heroes" notion.

I'm going to speak about The Catcher in the Rye, a novel written by american author J.D. Salinger in 1951. The novel is mostly set in NYC and Pennsylvania. The narrator is a sixteen boy called Holden Caulfield, and the story begins the day he decides to run away from his boarding school and go back home, to NY, by his own feet. During his journey he discovers the "underground" life of New York as he sort of loses his mind slowly. The novel was at first destinated to adults, but it has become a classic for teenagers too. Holden Caulfield has been since then the most iconic figure of teenage rebellion, he embodies hate, love and naivety. 

Let's give a quick definition of the notion we're working on: "Myths & Heroes". A myth could be defined as an idea or story that is believed by many people but that is not true. And a hero is the protagonist of a story, the principal male or female character in a novel, poem, or dramatic presentation. 

In this particular novel we won't be talking about a hero, but an anti-hero. The anti-hero is a leading character in a film, book, or play who lacks some or all the traditional heroic qualities, such as altruism, idealism, courage, nobility, fortitude, and moral goodness.

Holden is the perfect exemple of the anti-hero because even if he has high expectations about life and others, he is a bit of a depressive person. He's a very negative person who always sees that glass half empty, he doesn't look forward to finishing his studies and changes school often because he is unable to focus on his duty as a teenager student. He is also very naive, mostly because of his little sister's influence on his life. Holden believes everything that he is told, this is illustrated in the elevator incident. Even if he isn't the perfect prototype of hero, Holden is a caring person, he believes in love and has a bit of a romantic attitude.
This novel illustrates the myth of the "teenage rebellion". It is believed and has been psychologically studied that teenagers have to go through a process of rebellion against their elders in order to develop an independent identity. In his journey home, Holdes goes through this process. He faces his parents and his teachers and discovers the undergroud world of NYC on his own. He learns independance but remind us tha,t in the end we still need our parents to take care of us. 

POST 6: An art exhibition review.

Today I want to tell you about the "Pop Art Myths" art exhibition. It was on the Thyssen Bornemisza museum in Madrid from june the 10th until september the 14th, 2014. The museum is situated in one of the most artistic districts of the capital at Paseo del Prado,8 , a hundred meters away from the Prado Museum and a few minutes away from the city centre by walk. For additional information go check out the museum's official website. 

This exhibition is about pop art, the late 50's and 60's liberating art movement, and its most famous and iconic artistic figures. Pop artists accepted and promoted the new culture of technology and consumerism. They believed that every image could be recycled and every object could become art. 
The exhibition is separated in six different parts: emblems; myths; portraits;  landscapes, interioirs and still lifes ; urban erotism and history paintings. In every of these sections we find multiple artworks from renowned artists such as Wolf Vostell, Andy Wharhol, Roy Lichtenstein and many others. This exhibition wants to group every pop artist of the time, from the British pop artists like Peter Blake, to the huge and worldwidely famous American artist Andy Wharhol. The exhibition is separated in diffrent small rooms in the lower level of the Thyssen Museum.

  Brillo Soap Pads, Andy Warhol                                                                         (1964), Mugrabi Collection

  Cleopatra, Mimmo Rotella (1963),                                                      private collection.

 Marilyn Idol, Wolf Vostell (1962),                                                    Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwing Wien, Vienna

 Still Life #34, Tom Wesselmann (1963), Mugrabi Collection

Black Light Self-Portrait, Andy Warhol (1986), Collection Würth

   Monica Sitting Cross-Legged, Tom Wesselmann  (1986-1990), Colección Carmen Thyssen‐Bornemisza

       

 Group Hug, Juan Genovés (1976), Museo                                                                    Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid

This was the first exhibition about Pop Art in Madrid since 1992. The curator of the exhibition Paloma Alarcó wants to show a 21st Century vision of the 20th Century artistic trend. It features more than 100 artworks from British, classic American and European artists.

This venue is just extraordinary, each of the seven different rooms of it it's full of life and color. Pop art represents the old and the new, the beauty but also banality. There are multiple paintings,collages but also sculptures such as the Brillo Soap Pads by Andy Warhol, or The Electric EAT by Robert Indiana. I believe that Pop Art is just about being creative but also clever, you have to captivate the eye of the viewer.

Moonwalk, Andy Warhol (1987), The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh.

As a senior year student in the French Lycée of Madrid, I'm not  an art expert at all. Indeed, I love art in its very form. Since a very young age I've been ebsessed with photography and visual arts, so I never miss an art exhibition if I can. As we have seen there are a lot of well known artists and their most iconic artworks in this exhibitions. Still, I have the feeling that we can point out a very important character in various of these master pieces, Marilyn Monroe.  Her pictures have been taken by Warhol multiple times, but also by the German Wolf Vostell in 1963. Vostell mixes the collage and decollage techniques in a canvas in which  he alienates multiple images of her face repeated in rows. Basically, I would like to emphasize the fact that Marilyn Monroe is the face of pop art. She is the most iconic figure of the 20th century pop culture, her pictures were spread all around the world and she became one of the most popular sex symbols in the 1950's. As mentioned before, Warhol also uses her face and pictures to make his own kind of art.

Marilyn Monroe, Andy Warhol (1964)

Nevertheless, I feel that Vostell's collage is more unique and original. He took a lot of different images and stick them side to side to create a visual accumulation of Monroe's face, on the contrary of Warhol's work. The latter only picked a picture of Marilyn and randomly changed the colours. I personally find much more interesting Wolf Vostell's Marilyn Idol than any other Pop Art work on Marilyn. In addition to this, the size also plays an important role on the finished impression of the work. It is a pretty big canvas (157cm x 122cm), so for a standard height person (1'60) it's almost as tall as yourself and pretty impressive. Yet, it seems to me that for colour, he works with the cubist palette, giving a huge importance to brown and earthy colours. This is a great idea to renew art, take the same tools as the latest avant-guarde movement but give them a different use to create something new and unique.

 The cubist colour range palette. 

For the moment, the Thyssen Museum hasn't scheduled any other venue on Pop Art or anything related to it, but it's always a good idea to go to the museum yourself and check out the actual and next venues.