Sunday, May 07, 2006

National Museum of Contemporary Art

I went to the National Museum of Contemporary Art yesterday. I often associate contemporary art with abstract art, which I don't particularly like, but an artist friend wanted to take me there. The NMCA was a pleasant surprise. While I didn't like everything, there was a lot of very interesting art (the figurative art circa 1970 left me cold and some of the really early oils looked like the kind of still-life art you do in art school classes.). The art is mostly by Korean artists (as one would expect), but there are a wide selection of pieces by well-known artists from other countries.

The art ranged from paintings to video art to sculpture and crafts.

The 25th Grand Art Exhibition of Korea was definitely worth a look. The two pictures below were taken in the museum. Yes, I know. The rules are - no photography. However, everyone with a phone was taking pictures, so my friend told me to give her my camera and stand in front of some art. No whistles were blown. No guards appeared.

The NMCA has a cool website with an interactive feature that was great. I had to view it with Internet Explorer and install an ActiveX plugin (which I'm always hesitant to do), but it was worth doing. You can poke around on the exhibit maps and zoom in on the art.

You have to understand Korea's love affair with Spam to really appreciate the can opener below.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

That last picture was hilarious! I understand it on one level, but I can't see much more in it than a schoolboy's prank.