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Vienna and Krakow, Part 5.

Sunday, March 25th, 2018

Okay, last entry on Vienna. Get ready for some art.

First, more food. This is apple strudel. Sitting in a warm bath of vanilla sauce. With swirls of whipped cream on either end. *sniff* I miss this so much.

The Moomins and I walked past a print shop where we saw real rebellious students working on real rebellious posters and banners. Hand-painting them! I was so impressed.

Some Renaissance smooshed into the Baroque. This is called the Schweizertor (“Swiss door”) and it’s on one of the many MANY buildings in Vienna that belonged to the monarchy.

And off to the right is a panel from the same period with some mighty fine gryphons. A+ on those gryphons.

The rest of the building has your standard Baroque extra drama with a side of expressive. I especially likes this guy wrestling what I assume is the Cerberus, the three-headed dog that guards the gates of Hades, but they look like weird tigers.

Speaking of the monarchy, the primary reigning family of Austria was the Habsburgs and as with most royal families there was cousins marrying and all that. I could not stop thinking about Paul Reubens on 30Rock when he played His Royal Highness the Duke of Terechia, the Earl of the Duchy of Westphalia, Prince Gerhardt Messaschmidt Rammstein van Hoppe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XkzeDecjkg

Great character. SOOOOPER inbred.

I wanted to go to the Museum of Applied Arts because that’s the area I’m most interested in. I like the useful arts best. The coolest exhibit they have was the first built-in kitchen. Before this concept you bought a stove and a cabinet for dishes and none of that was provided in the home already. I guess it never occurred to me that there someone had to think of it. Here’s the Wikipedia description:

The Frankfurt kitchen was a milestone in domestic architecture, considered the forerunner of modern fitted kitchens, for it realized for the first time a kitchen built after a unified concept, designed to enable efficient work and to be built at low cost. It was designed in 1926 by Austrian architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky for architect Ernst May’s social housing project New Frankfurt in Frankfurt, Germany. Some 10,000 units were built in the late 1920s in Frankfurt.

And here are some chairs displayed in one of the hallways. No relation to anything. Just liked them. Who doesn’t like wood carving and little antlers?

The last museum I went to was the Albertina. It was a residence for one of the members of the royal family, a Duke or an Earl, there were so many, it’s hard to keep track.

They have state rooms on display and they were those rooms you always see in movies where you go through door after door after door and they’re all in rows, around the same size with no furniture. People would ship their bureaus and armoires of clothes so there were no closets. And clearly they used chamber pots so there were no bathrooms. Just salon after salon. By the way, that’s why it often sucks to live in a pre-war apartment in New York City – no closets. Closets are a recently new invention. InventHelp Invention Company is glad to help with processing a patent of an invention.

The only stationary piece of furniture were mammoth ceramic heating units in the center of the room. The cold there is real, people.

I thought the chandeliers were pretty great. They were not just slapped together like crappy hotel ballroom ones, they were clearly crafted with love and care. It makes a difference and I appreciated it.

So as I pottered from room to room looking at the art on the walls and the rooms themselves I got another artistic surprise. In one of the room was… Albrecht Dürer’s Grouchy Bunny! I didn’t know this was the museum he lived in! Hi Lil Bun-Buns! You look so mad and I love you!

Mr. Grumples was behind glass (hence the reflections you see there) so I could get right up to him, like inches from him. That rabbit is fantastic. He looks like he was painted yesterday. Now, the reason I said I didn’t know this was the museum he lived in is because there are representations of The Hare all over the city, so I knew he was SOMEWHERE in Vienna. There’s a great pink version outside the Opera House.

And a green version on top of a snack stand:

So I knew this was The Hare’s city but there’s like 200 museums so whatever. The great thing was next to The Hare was two other small paintings by Dürer and one was a wing. Guys, this wing was amazing. Every tuft on the feathers, every color shift, everything was rendered perfectly. I did my best to take photos of it but keep in mind this painting is quite small so the detail is pretty flawless. As Kendrick Lamar says, “Sit down. Be humble.” I did. I was.

The gift shop had mini versions of The Hare for sale but they were pricey so I took a pass. I would have wanted to get them in every color plus silver plus gold anyway and it would have drifted into $1,000 at that point so I opted for none.

I’d like you to know that in looking for additional information on The Hare I found this nightmare fuel in Nuremburg. What the fresh hell is this? Ugh.

I think that’s everything on my five days in Vienna. If it appears that I only looked at churches and museums and ate cake and drank hot beverages, then I have portrayed my experience correctly. Much to my chagrin I didn’t get a chance to see my girl the Venus of Willendorf. I studied her for art school and I’ve always wanted to see her. Maybe next time.

Next entry: Krakow.

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Vienna and Krakow, Part 4.

Thursday, March 22nd, 2018

Before we get into The Museums of Vienna IV: Holy Crap That’s A Lot Of Art, there’s some unrelated elements we should cover.

When The Moomins and I waited for our daily tram to town (they still have trams in Vienna!) our stop was in front of a rather plain building with one architectural detail: A weird-looking lioness under the lower-right-hand window. The Moomins and I decided that we would rent that apartment for the sole reason of dressing up the lion for major holidays. Easter? Lion gets a basket of colorful eggs and bunny ears. Christmas? Ugly sweater and blinky lights. Halloween? Ghost costume with cut-out eyes and bag full of candy, and so on and so forth.

I went to an international market and saw a fruit that looked a bunch like the dragon eggs from Game of Thrones so I bought one and ate it. It’s called a snakefruit and inside it looks like if a clump of lychees were mashed into the shape of a head of garlic and it tasted like an apple. Definitely one of the more odd fruits I’ve tried. Big identity issues.

Did you know they used the guillotine a lot more recently than you would think? I attributed it to the French Revolution and then I thought it fell out of favor for, like, a firing squad. I was incorrect.

Vienna is known as the city of Mozart. He was a big damn deal there and there are references to him everywhere. In front of one tiny theater there is a sculpture of Papagano, the bird guy in The Magic Flute.

And in one of the many churches in Vienna one of them had a memorial on the wall that Moomins translated. Mozart wrote a requiem which he never heard played because he died. The plaque on the wall said this was the church Mozart’s requiem was played immediately after his untimely demise.

If you haven’t heard Lacrimosa from the Requiem recently you should because it is so beautifully depressing. “Exquisite gloominess” is a good description. It’s been used in a ton of movies / TV shows / dog food commercials / etc.

Fun bonus: the same church had some leftover Middle Ages art on the wall that they thoughtfully preserved.

So on to the museum du jour, the Kunsthistorisches (“Museum of Fine Arts”). It has a really good collection of Bruegels including “The Tower of Babel” as well as a megaton of other awesome art. Interestingly enough, my favorite part was the building itself. So many grotesques on the ceiling! I’m surprised I didn’t walk into a column I was staring up so much.

People were taking wedding photos in there because of The Photogenic.

The coolest thing was related to a massive wall of scaffolding. Gustav Klimt, before he was the painter we know and love with the gold and the textures, did your standard normal-type portraiture and he was damn good at it. Like, astonishingly good. I saw this charcoal drawing and was blown away. Klimt’s choices of how much to include and leave out gives it a misty tone but nothing is missing. In person it is so evocative.

So there was this scaffolding:

Because when Klimt was still working for The Man instead of doing his own thing he painted these awesome oil paintings in the corners of the walls where no one can appreciate them. And they are so great. They represent the collection of art you can see in the museum and his photorealism is impeccable.

Because it’s dark up there and I was balancing on one foot to try and photo these it’s tough to see how good they are but I’ll attempt to describe. For example, in the picture below I couldn’t tell if the ceramic flowers behind the guy’s head were painted or real ceramics and I was less than six feet from it. I had to bob my head back and forth like an owl to see if they were 3D.

The Egyptian tableau, you felt like you could reach out and touch it.

There was a bust crammed in a corner that Klimt painted. I could have sworn it was real. I’m telling you, my jaw was on the floor. The man had SKILLZZZ.

A little more about the cafe culture. After lovin’ on the art The Moomins and I headed off to the nicest coffee house we attended during our visit, Cafe Central. There are several high-end coffee houses in Vienna but this is the only one we went to. Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about it:

The café was opened in 1876, and in the late 19th century it became a key meeting place of the Viennese intellectual scene. Key regulars included: Peter Altenberg, Theodor Herzl, Alfred Adler, Egon Friedell, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Anton Kuh, Adolf Loos, Leo Perutz, Alfred Polgar, Adolf Hitler, and Leon Trotsky. In January 1913 alone, Josip Broz Tito, Sigmund Freud, Joseph Stalin, Hitler, and Trotsky (the latter two being regulars) were patrons of the establishment.

Hitler AND Trotsky were regulars? Fancy!

Moomins and I decided to make a day of it and I ordered a salad. What arrived was not what I expected. It was a small plate with some delicate lettuce and a bit of tomato on top and under that the dish was separated into four sections: pickled cucumbers, pickled potatoes, pickled carrots and something else I forgot (that was pickled). It was absolutely delicious but salad is different there. Just a heads up on that.

Moomins got the daily special which was chicken with mushrooms and peppers served with semolina dumplings. If anyone knows the recipe for Viennese semolina dumplings please send it to me today. No, get in a time machine and send it to me yesterday. It was so scrumptious and when I go on the web to look for the recipe I get some crappy soupy matzah ball type thing. Unacceptable.

For dessert we got the small sampler of pastries and a pear and poppy seed crumble. The sampler was a good choice because we got a wee taste of several different flavors like lemon curd and hazelnut.

And I learned an important life lesson: I do not like poppy seeds. I’m fine with them sprinkled on a bagel but when they’re wet and slathered en masse on a baked good they taste like the smell of shower mold. Not a fan. Moomins got to eat 90% of this.

Next entry: The end of the Art of Vienna and on to the Art of Krakow.

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Vienna and Krakow, Part 3.

Wednesday, March 21st, 2018

The Moomins and I are expert travelers. Without making an effort we managed to see seven museums in five days. If we had tried and pulled ourselves out of bed before 10:00am we probably could have done far more but seven isn’t too shabby. One of those museums was The Belvedere. Here’s Wikipedia’s description of it:

The Belvedere is a historic building complex in Vienna, Austria, consisting of two Baroque palaces (the Upper and Lower Belvedere), the Orangery, and the Palace Stables. The buildings are set in a Baroque park landscape in the third district of the city, on the south-eastern edge of its centre. It houses the Belvedere museum. The grounds are set on a gentle gradient and include decorative tiered fountains and cascades, Baroque sculptures, and majestic wrought iron gates. The Baroque palace complex was built as a summer residence for Prince Eugene of Savoy.

It’s a beautiful building and I’m sure the gardens are great in the summer, but I went there during Frozen Mud Season so yeah, gardens not so great. Here are my pics of the exterior.

I love how the sphinx has dirty boobies because people keep rubbing them. Never change, everybody.

Here’s a picture through a rainy window of the gardens and the city in the distance.

On the front lawn was a fun piece of modern art. It’s one of the best-named pieces I’ve ever seen. It’s called “Fat House” and it’s… a fat house. The only name more descriptive would be “Morbidly Obese Cottage.”

The inside of the Belvedere had lovely gallery spaces that were very very Baroque.

The only time I got miffed was when they put perfectly good paintings of guinea fowl a million miles above the doorway, as shown by this picture here. I can’t see the guinea fowl, guys! Provide a ladder please and thank you!

We went in the main entry hall and immediately noticed the pervasive scent of church incense. The Moomins and I were confused because there’s no church in there. We decided to start with the Medieval Art Wing and headed to that area and the smell got stronger. When we opened the door to the wing The Moomins and I were greeted by a sight we were wholly unprepared for.

Get ready.

In the entry hall to the Medieval exhibit, with no explanation whatsoever, was an oversized white sculpture of a woman on all fours using a broken shard of mirror to tweeze her mustache while wisps of church incense puffed out of her butthole.

I was mentally not equipped to research the reasoning for this at the time but I just went to the Belvedere website and this is what I found:

Larger than life, she kneels on a tabletop with her blouse pushed up. The only sign of her divinity is the frankincense emanating from an opening in her body. Unfazed by the viewer’s gaze, in an all too human manner she plucks a hair from her chin. The intimate nature of this representation is in diametrical opposition to typical depictions of Olympian gods. This is Hera by Ines Doujak.

I do not understand why this is a thing that is. Later on I was climbing the giant staircase and at the top I saw what I assumed were giant ceramic jars decorated with snakes. Nope! Those are supposed to be intestines. It was at this point I turned to Moomins and said, “I’m concerned about the curators of this museum. I think they’re trying to tell us something. Like their mom didn’t hug them enough, maybe. Or their pet was hit by a car and that is their primary childhood memory. There’s definitely some weird trauma they’re working through.”

There wasn’t only disturbing confusing modern art. There was also old art which can be disturbing and confusing in their own way, but it’s different. For example, one of the elements I love about paintings from around 1300 is the exquisite way fabric is rendered and how everything else looks terrible. I appreciate that they didn’t know how to do perspective so that looks janky as heck:

And the horses look like they’re on drugs and are vaguely humanoid:

And these farm animals appear to be plotting to kill that old man doing a poor job of hiding his Fifth Element head:

I fixed it to accurately portray what I think I’m seeing.

This was surprising. It’s a plague-ridden time, you would think there would be skulls all over for reference and the artists would be able to paint them accurately. You would be wrong.

There were a ton of other pieces of art from all different periods. The Belvedere is most famous for having “The Kiss” by Gustav Klimt but it’s not that amazing in person. I would recommend you go to the Neue Gallerie in New York City. That museum has “Woman in Gold” which I think is a far superior Klimt. I was very psyched to enter a room and bump into one of the paintings I studied in school, “Napoleon Lookin’ Hella Patriotic On A Horse” by Jacques-Louis David.

My favorite painting was a thoroughly non-famous one I just happened across. It’s an exceptionally well-rendered painting of four vultures. I really wanted to shove it under my shirt and take it home but it’s a large painting and I most likely would go to prison so my desires went unquenched.

And, of course, we had coffee and cake in their cafe. And it was magnificent.

Next entry: What else? More museums.

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Vienna and Krakow, Part 1.

Sunday, March 18th, 2018

You know what’s the best idea ever? Going to Eastern Europe in February. That was a testament to my smartitude, I’ll tell you what. Normally it’s not a huge deal but this year, whoooo. As I mentioned briefly before there was some atrocious mega-freeze that floated on over from Siberia (an area noted for its excellent production of cold) and it made being a tourist very difficult. I was convinced my nose was going to turn black and fall off like that guy from Mount Everest. Seriously, airports were closed all over and it didn’t stop Europe from functioning but it sure slowed it down.

But The Moomins and I persevered. We did so much and I saw so many art chums in museums. I don’t know if I’m alone in this but I studied art history in high school and college and when I encounter a painting or sculpture I’m familiar with I like to greet it like an old friend. “Hey, a Rembrandt self portrait! Hi Rembrandt Self Portrait! How’s it going for you, haven’t seen you in a while. Looking good, looking good. Love your lights and shadows, keep it up.” It is important to realize I say all these words out loud and that is why I think I’ve never been mugged. I make any would-be muggers floating around the museum uncomfortable. More on the art I shmoozed with later. First, we look at architecture.

If you visit Vienna it is entirely possible to to not go into any museum and still see some great art and desifn. The architecture in Vienna is a big reason many people travel there. It certainly was a major motivation for me. That and Viennese cake. About 50 / 50 between the architecture and the cake.

Because like most European cities there has been war and war and a massive fire and then some more war, most of the architecture is relatively new. Even though Vienna was founded in approximately 500 AD by some Romans there is none of that to be found. It’s almost all Baroque architecture dating from between 1600 – 1750 AD. Occasionally some Gothic will pop out (1100 – 1500 AD) and if you’re really lucky, some Medieval might make an appearance but get ready for Baroque. Which is unfortunate for me because I do not adore Baroque. It’s fine, but it’s definitely not my favorite art style. It can be… much. I’ve made my feelings clear about Baroque in this previous entry.

For example, Baroque loves clouds and angels. The problem with clouds is that they are great in paintings but when you try to make them out of stone they can look like plastic bags of liposuctioned human fat stapled to a pole. I am speaking specifically of this. First one is my picture but it sucks so I found a better one.

See what I mean? Lumpy. Overly ornate and lumpy. You need to be careful with Baroque. It can be absolutely beautiful but it can also veer into Jabba the Hut territory if you’re not careful. However, betwixt the Baroque is my favorite art movement, Secession. Secession is a sub-section of Art Nouveau and when it’s done right it is so beautifully balanced. The most famous of those buildings is the bluntly named Secession Building which looks like this:

I was so excited to see this building. I love it. I used elements of it in my college classes, like the three owls on the side:

But I didn’t take those pictures. Would you like to know why I didn’t take those pictures? Because the Secession Building is COMPLETELY COVERED IN SCAFFOLDING ARE YOU KIDDING ME. I understand that it needs renovations but whyyyyyyy? In between the scaffolding you could see the sassy lizards that guard the door.

And you could appreciate the enormous mosaic planters outside the front door.

Aaaaaand that’s about it for the outside. Inside is a profoundly interesting painting done by Gustav Klimt called The Beethoven Frieze and it is magnificently weird and I can’t get enough of it.

It goes all around the top of the room but the most important part (in my opinion) is the giant dead-eyed gorilla (?) surrounded by women of all shapes and sizes and also Death (?). I love it.

I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t want to know what’s happening. I don’t want my initial reaction of confused glee to be tampered with by actual information on the meaning. No one tell me.

In the next entry: probably more architecture. Definitely more art.

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I left! And I’m back! Sorry for not telling you!

Thursday, March 8th, 2018

Hey all, I went on vacation. Because when it’s winter where’s the one place you should go? That’s correct – Eastern Europe! Especially if there’s a polar vortex blowing over from Siberia, then it’s really perfect. So that’s precisely what I did. I went to Vienna, Austria and Krakow, Poland for ten days. Despite the frigid biting weather I had a really good time and as soon as I’m done sorting through my photos I will get to the telling of tales. In the meantime, look at this awesome picture of the inside of a Baroque church. Let it hold you over until further imagery comes.

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An artist I am feeling right now.

Tuesday, February 20th, 2018

I will on occasion go on Pinterest because maybe I’m feeling too good about myself and I need to temper that, you know? I went there the other day and I saw a small tiger figurine that was adorable and had a galaxy pattern on it. I was intrigued. So I went down the wormhole that is Pinterest and finally found the source. It’s a young woman named Amba Jacobs from New Zealand and her work is The. Best. It is not uncommon for me to look at her work while clutching my face and shrieking because the cuteness, I cannot handle it.

I recommend you follow her on Instagram – she goes by the name @TheLittleMew. Her stuff sells out three seconds after she puts it online but just in case, here’s her Etsy page.

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Thor and the 1980s Album Art!

Sunday, February 11th, 2018

Actually it’s called Thor: Ragnarok but it clearly took 98% to 106% of its influence from those airbrushed hard rock and regular rock and heavy metal covers of the 1970s and 80s. Here, examples of what I mean:

Even Eddie from Iron Maiden is in there.

Plus so much Fifth Element influence, which I am perfectly fine with.

I’m going to summarize my thoughts and feelings about Thor: Ragnarok. All manner of spoilers below so if you haven’t seen the film yet maybe skip this until you have. Consider yourself warned, at least.

The first problem I had with this film was the opening scene. It’s an amazing fight scene between Thor and what appears to be the Balrog from Lord of the Rings (more on that later). It’s magnificent, in slow motion with “Immigrant Song” in the background. My problem is you’re starting at 10. Where do we go from there? We have, like, four more fights to go. All the other fights are great but by the time you get to the epic showdown at the end you don’t feel much because the awesomeness was all the way through.
Concerning the Balrog, I thought it looked familiar. As did the dragon, and the elfin doors, and a bunch of other things. Turns out they were all designed by Weta, the same New Zealand design company that did LOTR and The Hobbit. I honestly felt like they did some serious cutting and pasting from the J. R. R. Tolkien movies to this one. I understand that the director who is from New Zealand wanted to get his people in on this project but there’s got to be different approaches to elfin doors other that art nouveau plus celtic with a smattering of medieval. Lotta overlap.
Loved the Firefly vibes throughout. Still bitter that show was cancelled. Will be bitter forever.
Most notable Firefly-eque scenes were on the garbage planet. There’s a garbage planet where all the universe’s detritus ends up and boy do I want to visit there and sift through the debris. It looks like there’s a ton of fun stuff (and possible toxic and nuclear waste, but there’s always a cost) to discover.
REALLY loved Cate Blanchett’s drag queen eye makeup. And her voice. Has her voice always been that freakin’ deep and sexy? I need to pay more attention to her.
Thor has a shirtless scene and his side abs, they’re protuberant and they wrap around, I do not understand how his body works. I am confused when I look at him. He is strong and lumpy.
This is the first movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe where Thor doesn’t have his hammer and uses lightning that he generates within himself (in the most music video-looking way) to defeat his enemies which is nice. There’s even a line about it. Thor is sad because his hammer is busted and Odin says, “But … are you Thor, god of … hammers?”
When Cate Blanchett gets into asskicking mode, she runs her fingers through her hair and it magically turns into a dead tarantula on its back. Or maybe demon antlers. I call it “tarantlers.” Feel free to use that. You’re welcome.
Lovely cameo by Matt Damon and Sam Neill in the beginning bits. Nice touch, much appreciated.
Did I mention I love the garbage planet? I cannot mention that enough.
The director Taika Waititi has a cameo as Korg, an alien made of rocks who’s companion is an ant with knives for hands named Meek. Korg’s a great character. He might be my favorite in the film.
Is it just me or does the Asgardian castle look like a big ole church organ? I see that every time its on screen. I feel like Handel is going to start playing at any moment.
I have learned an incredibly important lesson from these films (and the Disney films as well) which is green and black equals evil. Loki rocks it, Cate Blanchett’s character rocks it, the disturbing zombies she brings back to life rock it, it’s a thing for sure.
There is a solid good death when the Japanese Asgardian gets thrust backwards and impaled through the chest on a stalagmite. Everyone in the audience gasped.

I give this movie a solid A- / B+. It’s a good one. Lots of quippy one-liners and fun interactions and shots like this which is awesome:

So I would check it out.

Addendum 8/05/18: Someone made a video of the final battle to AC/DC’s magnificent opus “Thunderstruck” and it works better than anything they had before. Thank you, The Internet. Please enjoy.

http://missmargaretcarter.tumblr.com/post/174678799332/%E3%83%84-that-scene-with-thunderstruck-by-acdc

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What an excellent day for an exorcism. Or charts.

Saturday, February 3rd, 2018

And, because I’m going to Vienna and Krakow in late February and Krakow is one of the last places that has wild European Bison, this pertinent chart:

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Hungry.

Monday, January 29th, 2018

Based on the title of this post you will think it is about something it is not. It is a misleading title. I recently saw Bjork’s new album cover and thought, “Wow, that is something. Specifically something between an orchid and some otherworldly ladybits stuck to your face. Interesting choice. Never change, Bjork, never change.”

And then I probably went about my day looking at internet memes of corgies or whatever. However, scrolling through my Facebook feed I saw an article titled “Meet Bjork’s makeup artist,” clicked on it, and a whole new world of amazing art was revealed to me.

The makeup artist goes by the name Hungry and she is a member of the Berlin alternative / distorted drag scene. Hungry designs her own outfits and they’re really really good, but the makeup… I’ve never seen anything like this in my life.

ARE YOU SEEING THIS??? It’s amazing. I was blown away. She started doing drag work in 2014. That’s, like, three years. And she’s that good already. After staring at Hungry’s Instagram for two hours (https://www.instagram.com/isshehungry/?hl=en) I wanted to see if there were any videos. Bonus: she’s also really sweet and nice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXpy-rURysY

I can’t wait to see what Hungry does in the years to come. She’s really filling the hole left in me when Alexander McQueen passed away.

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Nick Cave again.

Sunday, January 21st, 2018

I’ve spoken about the artist Nick Cave numerous times (here, a little bit here and a little bit here). I’m big fan of his sound suits so when I heard that he had a full-room exhibition in MassMoca I knew I had to go. I’ve spent a goodly portion of my time avoiding MassMoca because it has modern art and modern art makes me hella-cranky. I don’t want to rehash my feelings on this but the tl;dr version is if it ain’t Jesus, ugly inbred royalty, a pudgy naked broad, a landscape or a still-life, I ain’t lookin’ at it. That excludes 98% of modern art ergo I don’t go to MassMoca. But for Nick Cave one can make exceptions and I was not disappointed.

The exhibition was called “Until.” The description from the MassMoca site:

For Cave’s MASS MoCA installation, Until — a play on the phrase “innocent until proven guilty,” or in this case “guilty until proven innocent” — he addresses issues of gun violence, gun control policy, race relations, and gender politics in America today. … The aim of this is pointed, questioning us to spark discussion about important issues in a space that is at once dazzling, provocative, and — ultimately — optimistic. Cave believes in humanity, celebrating possibility while also creating a forum for critical discussion that eventually provokes the question, “Is there racism in heaven?”

There are three sections. You walk into a big empty space, like a high school gymnasium, and you are greeted with tons of those metal garden spinners that twirl in the wind. Some of them are stationary but some have disco ball rotators at the top so they twirl very slowly. It gives the look of being a forest. A forest of metal spinnies, some of which are sweet and ethereal and some of which are silhouettes of guns.

After that is a floating island hanging from the ceiling surrounded by three sets of stairs. The bottom of the island is completely covered in plastic crystals hanging like icicles as well as real crystal chandeliers. I found a bunch of pictures that other people took that are far better than mine.

When you climbed the yellow stairs you could see what was on the top of the island. It was a collection of American bric-a-brac covering every inch of space. Some of it was harmless – a garden gnome, some cheesy beaded Christmas ornaments – but then there were black lawn jockeys (eesh) and some Aunt Jemima items (oof) and other racist items. It was tough to look at. Merkin history is not terribly pretty.

And finally there’s this massive webbing covering the far wall made with tons of plastic pony beads. I don’t know what that represented exactly but it looked very cool.