Encounter in Museums of NYC

I believe one of the biggest advantages of interning in Blue Sky Studios is it is very easy to visit New York City for some of the best art museums ever. Almost every weekend, I traveled from seemingly ever-green White Plains to crowded Grand Central Station. At the end of the day I always found myself end up in art museums. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is especially attractive to me. I am touched by the visual impact of sudden change in art style: walking out from the hall of Greek and Roman art, where so many marble sculptures standing gracefully showing one of the most culturally prolific period in human history, to another hall of arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, where woods and stones formed deformed figures that seemingly most obscure and mysterious, I would be deeply moved every time.
Guggenheim, on the other hand, is interesting to me by its architecture. By the time I went to Guggenheim there was an exhibition of Italian Futurism (which I don’t appreciate a lot), and the museum itself, a master piece by Frank Lloyd Wright, is visually fascinating and spatially intriguing. Internally it is unidirectional with its spiral nature, seemingly providing a natural flow line, a smooth transition from the 2nd dimension to the 3rd dimension. It makes me feel like I’m always on track of the exhibition by naturally following the way. The arts are always at the right of me, and to my left is nothing but the space itself. The huge, empty space visually balanced the weight that comes from the art works. The whole museum is like a source of inspiration for the game, Museum of Simulation Technology, that we are working on in ETC.
I went to Whitney Museum of American Art last week with friends from Rhode Island School of Design for the exhibition of Jeff Koons. It was impressive to see his art during his career chronologically. There is a small section of Andy Warhol in Whitney Museum as well, and it is interesting to see their art simultaneously. Recently I was reading a book by Danqing Chen, talking about his life and thoughts when he was an artist in New York in 1980s - 1990s. When I saw the arts of Jeff Koons I somehow felt what Danqing Chen described when he met Andy Warhol in a gallery at West Broadway in 1985: “He was holding a camera”, he depicted Andy Warhol, “just like another curious bumpkin or a passionate tourist, bending himself and taking photos of every works, with a subtle smile on his face, giving a half idiot half genius look… he passed away the second year. According to himself, his enjoyed Walt Disney’s cartoon the most”. Jeff Koons’s art gave me similar feeling: they are childish and bold with bright colors and shinny surfaces, in between of toys and some unrealistic objects, while at the same time sophisticated and somewhat sad. They reminds me the first time I was able to stand right in front of a self portrait of Van Gogh. It was an amazing and surreal experience.
Thanks to my friends, I was able to visit the new art studio of Cai Guo-Qiang, a contemporary artist from China. His studio locates near Union Square, near lots of good Japanese restaurants in little Tokyo. It has a small Chinese style yard in between two red brick apartments. The small yard is like a hidden island that shielded out all the noises of Manhattan. It is another visual impact for me that day coming out from an crowded exhibition of a famous pop artist to a small empty gallery that has some fine arts of nameless artists. Maybe someday, they could see their works in art museums. “It’s a different feeling for art works”, like what Danqing Chen said, “they watch the visitors in galleries, and being watched in museums”.