This Belongs in a Museum
Bringing you museum-approved grammatical errors and typos since 2010.
Oh, and sorry - I DO NOT FOLLOW BACK!
On this date in 1966 the Beatles performed their final full concert at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Beatlemania swept the world in the 1960s, and it still continues to this day. If you’re a Beatles fan, you’d expect to see the band in bronze form in their hometown of Liverpool, England…but not in a place like Almaty, Kazakhstan. Yep, that’s right. John, Paul, George and Ringo will eternally hang out on a bench near the Kok Tobe mountains greeting tourists and hikers alike. The bronze statues were created in 2007 by artist Eduard Kazaryan to pay respect to the popularity and universal appeal of the group, especially in the former Soviet republics. It would be cool (or annoying) if the sound of the song ”Back in the U.S.S.R.” was coming out of the figures, or at least John’s shiny guitar.
Tomorrow might be American Independence Day, but let’s not forget that other countries celebrate their freedoms too. Maybe not with hot dogs and beer and fireworks and loud, drunk people but still…freedom isn’t always annoying-free. Uh…can you tell it is my least favorite holiday?
One country we have not yet visited on this blog, and who just happens to be celebrating their own independence day today (the liberation of Minsk from the Nazis by the Soviets in 1944), is Belarus. So what better way to honor the place than with a visit to a little known museum, once the home and workshop of Zair Azgur, one of the most celebrated Belarusian artists of the Soviet era. His plaster busts of soldiers as well as State and Party leaders (hey, there’s a giant head of Karl Marx at the entrance) are displayed in his home turned museum. With over 400 original sculptures, most found in floor-to-ceiling shelves on the second floor, there is also an area dedicated to Zair’s life with photos, archival documents and information on his family, including artist wife Galina. Before his death in 1995, he was awarded the Order of Lenin twice and received a number of other medals. His work still graces many plinths throughout the former empire.
Due to China’s internet censorship policies, I’m not sure if this next museum shows up in any Google searches over there. Next time you have a fit of paranoia, remember the size of China’s Internet Police is rumored at more than 30,000 (or the same number of people who die in motor vehicle traffic-related deaths every year). Anyway, China’s first (and only) Museum of Sex opened in 1999. The museum’s founder Dr. Liu Dalin, or the Dr. Ruth of China, completed a national survey on sex over twenty years ago. His findings have been called “The Chinese Kinsey Report”. So he’s obviously an expert. Or just a creep. Located fifty miles outside of Shanghai (because the city government drove them out of town, those pervs), the exhibits cover nine thousand years of people doing it and are divided into sections with names like “Unusual Sexual Behavior” and “Sex in Primitive Society”. It starts with rudimentary dildos (a label states that lesbians used them) and many ceramics in phallic form and ends with a contemporary poster of two muscular guys, shirtless and in tight jeans, with the caption “The Gays” (homosexuality was classified as a psychological disorder in the country as recently as 2001). Oh, and there is also an interesting artwork titled “The Apple and the Snake” (NSFW). And before you leave, don’t forget to check out the statue garden full of giant penises while meditating in the tea pavilion. Thank you and have a nice day.
The Angel of the North, located in Gateshead, England, is a contemporary steel sculpture designed over fifteen years ago by artist Antony Gormley. The thing is as tall as four double decker buses and has a wingspan as big as that of a jumbo jet. It is also seen by 90,000 people in cars every day on the A1 (here is the angel’s view…don’t look like heaven to me). Every time a car horn beeps a freakin’ huge angel gets his wind-resistant wings.
Yesterday’s post made me think all of you guys are secret practical Catholics (only one freakin’ like), so no more Knights of Columbus mentions here. That sucks because I was planning on lots of religious museums, collections and exhibits for the upcoming Easter/Passover holidays, well, maybe this next one will be better received. I have no idea where Macao (or is Macau?) is in the world, and because I’m an American I don’t have to. If I ever figure out where the hell it is, then I can visit artist Zhang Huan’s Ash Jesus and Ash Buddha. Standing over eight feet high, these steel and wood frame sculptures are made of incense ashes carried by pilgrims and taken from temples. The figures are displayed facing each other, the ash gives them an eerie look, but the artist hopes people will see the similarities between the Eastern and Western religions. Last year the two deities were shown in a large exhibition entitled “East Wind, West Wind” located in a Louis Vuitton store in Macao. Did visitors get a free Jesus purse?
Modern art has become so modern that it now needs to be displayed in a place few people go to…yeah, I’m talking about the bottom of the sea. In Cancun, Mexico artist Jason deCaires Taylor has an installation at the Museum of Underwater Modern Art. The “underwater” was included in the official name, so you wouldn’t get it confused with MOMA. You know, all those snorkelers, scuba divers, and tourists in glass-bottom boats would have no idea where they actually were. Sometimes happens. Today a total of 400 artificial reef sculptures ranging from depths of nine to twenty feet are floating off the coast waiting for spring breakers to take time away from their busy margarita drinking schedules and come see them.
As we near closer to the date of Valentine’s Day where single women over 30 are driven to near suicide with the “dinner-for-two” specials and men are forced to buy crap for their significant others that they clearly don’t need (oh, but how it makes them feel so loved), let’s take a moment to celebrate the art of the penis.
Outside of Samcheok City is Haeshindang Park, otherwise known as Penis Park. The story goes that a couple, madly in love and soon to be wed met a tragic end when the high tide swept the young woman into the sea. The next day, fishermen did not catch any fish. After that the sea dried up. Believing they were cursed, the townspeople wondered what to do, until a local fisherman relieved himself in the sea. The fish returned. And because of this so-called “miracle”, penis statues were erected (pun intended) and placed in view of the shore. Not sure why they didn’t also create a bunch of statues of men peeing into the sea, but whatever.
Today nearly fifty sculpted phallus, from a totem pole ding-a-ling to a penis-shaped nose, greet visitors who can sit on dong projectile benches and admire the sea while honoring the old folk tale. Small shacks house anatomy-esque art collections dedicated to genitalia; like a wang wind chime and a giant, orange joystick. There is also a penis shaped cannon and three penis soldiers standing guard. Considering the United States gets uptight about a nipple accidentally shown on television, well, I don’t expect a Penis Park in our nation’s capitol anytime soon.
So it doesn’t feel left out, let me also mention the Prince Edward Island Potato Museum. Museums about potatoes seem to have this thing for putting huge potato sculptures outside for visitors to pose for crappy iPhone pictures. Yeah, because it’s perfectly normal to sit on a bench with a giant piece of food behind you. This museum is in Canada where they have to go all crazy and celebrate Thanksgiving on a different day. So tomorrow it will just be a normal day, kind of like the rest of the world, while Americans eat themselves into a coma.
Time for another creepy museum, maybe not in the classic sense, but it’s still a bit weird for an art museum. What am I talking about? That would be the Vigeland Museum at Slemdal, one of Oslo’s best kept secrets. The museum is basically a mausoleum to artist Gustav Vigeland and his brother Emanuel’s life and work, which is actually true; besides the frescoes and sculptures, Emanuel’s ashes are still preserved in the belfry of the building. The main attraction is a dark, barrel-vaulted room, which is completely covered with frescoes, including Vita, showing human life from conception till death, although a bit erotically. In the darkness, there are a bunch of large bronze figures, all nude, depicting what procreation looks like. North of the museum is Frogner Park, where more life-sized nudes are on view, including a woman mounting a bear and a muscular man throwing and kicking babies in the air. That rhymed. Even though I don’t condone violence towards children, I can’t help but want the statue in my home…I can put it directly under a framed copy of my useless teaching certificate.
The Iowa State Fair is celebrating the 100th year of its butter cow sculpture. Whether you like your butter deep fried or prefer to sit in a gooey buttery liquid bath, I bet you didn’t know the earliest known butter art sculpture was shown at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia. Caroline Shawk Brooks displayed her Dreaming Iolanthe, a basrelief bust of a woman modeled in butter, which was kept cold with a system of layered bowls and frequent ice changes. Not a trained artist, but a farmer who made butter for decades, she began sculpting and selling her butter creations. Dreaming Iolanthe was so popular that Brooks would re-do it over the years at other regional exhibitions, including making busts of Queen Isabella and Christopher Columbus at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
