Parties, to London, Tate Modern and Mahjong
It's been a hectic but interesting weekend. Friday night saw a confluence of two big parties - Laurel's birthday as well as the quiz squad's annual "Quiz about Quiz" dinner and party. For the former, we had dinner at the Oriental Condor before proceeding to my room for drinks and general fun. The "Quiz about Quiz" is a wonderful spoof whereby its a proper quiz, but its set on all the wonderfully hilarious insider jokes that have happened over the course of the year, quite a few of which involved me actually, including one that involved a bet on an egg tart that somehow became a lemon tart. Things were aided and abetted a great deal by the generous quantity of wine that had been purchased, not to mention a punch made with a mixture of Sainsbury's Economy Vodka (never a good idea) and orange juice. As a consequence of setting up everything in my room, I arrived very late for Laurel's party, which was held in a function room in Catz which she had managed to book out. It seemed like it had been a really great party, and there were still quite a number of people there when I arrived, but it was unfortunately put to an end by the porters at 12 midnight.
Saturday involved a trip down to London to stay with Adrian and to meet up with Andrea. Met Andrea in the afternoon as we went over to the Tate Modern gallery. I really liked the way they converted the old bankside power station - which was an interesting enough design for a power station with its fluted red brick exterior - into an art museum, especially in the way they managed to preserve the sense of space, and create a design that blended in subtly with the original. As I have said often about modern art, some of it is undoubtedly inspired and the work of superbly creative people, some of it just seems to be completely and utterly pretentious and ridiculous. Some cases in point - one installation involved placing a glass of water on a small glass shelf. The thing is the artist claimed that it was not a glass of water - it was an oak tree and that he had somehow managed to transform the properties of the glass of water into that of an oak tree. The exhibit featured a short interview with the artist, something that resulted in convulsions of laughter on my part. Then there is Yves Klein and his famous canvases convered in his signature blue - which he even patented, caled International Klein Blue. Now, its definitely a nice shade, but how does a canvas, merely covered with a single colour, containing no other significant detail, constitute art? Similarly, I am somewhat dubious about the merits of works such as "a study in two shades of grey" that involved two large rectangular vertical blocks of different shades of grey on a white background.
Then again, there is some modern art which I do find interesting. I think that Jackson Pollock for one, did possess a special genius. For all the derogratory comments about his style of drip painting, which critics have associated with a child splashing paint across a canvas, I feel that his work is far less random that initially perceived. Pollock didn't just splash paint randomly - he saw subtle patters in what seemed to be utter disorder, and that is the feeling I get when looking at his art - a kind of gentle pull as the eye wanders over the canvas, looking for the pattern that one senses, yet one is totally unable to articulate.
In a large sense, modern artists were partly reactionary, and many modern art movements have striven to push the envelope of what is art, and challenge the boundaries of traditional Art. Thus, a group of them looked into the idea of movement, and created canvases with 3 dimensional properties, where the movement of the viewer would change what is being perceived. Other artists sought to challenge the idea that art was limited to being a 2 dimensional representation on a canvas alone with the artist limited to creating an illusion of space by working directly on the canvas - poking holes in it, tearing a rent in the middle and so on. One piece I thought wonderfull and subtly subversive, was an enormous canvas that seemed almost to blank at first glance. Upon closer inspection, one finds that there are subtle things that the eye fails to catch - a line running across the bottom of the painting, into the right border, subtle changes of shade as it progresses diagonally across, and on the left hand side of painting, a blob of paint that had been applied such that instead of being evenly spead out on the canvas, it stood out as almost a rough lump from the canvas itself. Thus, all these weren't necessarily hidden, but placed subtly, perhaps to illustrate the idea that things are not necessarily what they seem at first glance?
Later on, I had dinner with Andrea, her roomate Mary-Anne, and two of her friends in a little restaurant in Chinatown that served all the traditional Singaporean dishes. I had an immensely difficult time choosing from Hainanese Chicken Rice, Penang Laksa, Chicken Curry, Rojak, Char Kway Teow, Nasi Lemak, Mee Siam, Mee Soto and so on. It was as if I had entered culinary heaven. I have often stated that one of the things I miss unconditionally is that local food, and nothing serves to illustrate this better than an evening such as this. In the end, I reluctantly settled for the Chicken Curry, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I was definitely very impressed by how authentic most of the dishes were, though I must say that at 6 pounds (20 Sing dollars) it was equivalent to having a Chicken Curry at a place like the Raffles hotel back home!
To top off the "Singaporeaness" of the evening, Adrian managed to arrange a Mahjong session at his house with two of his other friends - one a Singaporean police scholar and another one a Hong Kong friend also studying at the LSE. We ended up playing two full rounds for 8 hours straight, only finishing up at around 8am, with the light already streaming in through the windows. I must say that it was a really good evening for me, as I won about 20 pounds in total, and I cleared up from the other three - who all lost money to me. The first round was especially kind to me, as I was up by as much as 27 pounds at one stage. All in all though, Mahjong is about luck and chance. Mahjong is definitely another thing I really enjoy and that I miss from back home.
Saturday involved a trip down to London to stay with Adrian and to meet up with Andrea. Met Andrea in the afternoon as we went over to the Tate Modern gallery. I really liked the way they converted the old bankside power station - which was an interesting enough design for a power station with its fluted red brick exterior - into an art museum, especially in the way they managed to preserve the sense of space, and create a design that blended in subtly with the original. As I have said often about modern art, some of it is undoubtedly inspired and the work of superbly creative people, some of it just seems to be completely and utterly pretentious and ridiculous. Some cases in point - one installation involved placing a glass of water on a small glass shelf. The thing is the artist claimed that it was not a glass of water - it was an oak tree and that he had somehow managed to transform the properties of the glass of water into that of an oak tree. The exhibit featured a short interview with the artist, something that resulted in convulsions of laughter on my part. Then there is Yves Klein and his famous canvases convered in his signature blue - which he even patented, caled International Klein Blue. Now, its definitely a nice shade, but how does a canvas, merely covered with a single colour, containing no other significant detail, constitute art? Similarly, I am somewhat dubious about the merits of works such as "a study in two shades of grey" that involved two large rectangular vertical blocks of different shades of grey on a white background.
Then again, there is some modern art which I do find interesting. I think that Jackson Pollock for one, did possess a special genius. For all the derogratory comments about his style of drip painting, which critics have associated with a child splashing paint across a canvas, I feel that his work is far less random that initially perceived. Pollock didn't just splash paint randomly - he saw subtle patters in what seemed to be utter disorder, and that is the feeling I get when looking at his art - a kind of gentle pull as the eye wanders over the canvas, looking for the pattern that one senses, yet one is totally unable to articulate.
In a large sense, modern artists were partly reactionary, and many modern art movements have striven to push the envelope of what is art, and challenge the boundaries of traditional Art. Thus, a group of them looked into the idea of movement, and created canvases with 3 dimensional properties, where the movement of the viewer would change what is being perceived. Other artists sought to challenge the idea that art was limited to being a 2 dimensional representation on a canvas alone with the artist limited to creating an illusion of space by working directly on the canvas - poking holes in it, tearing a rent in the middle and so on. One piece I thought wonderfull and subtly subversive, was an enormous canvas that seemed almost to blank at first glance. Upon closer inspection, one finds that there are subtle things that the eye fails to catch - a line running across the bottom of the painting, into the right border, subtle changes of shade as it progresses diagonally across, and on the left hand side of painting, a blob of paint that had been applied such that instead of being evenly spead out on the canvas, it stood out as almost a rough lump from the canvas itself. Thus, all these weren't necessarily hidden, but placed subtly, perhaps to illustrate the idea that things are not necessarily what they seem at first glance?
Later on, I had dinner with Andrea, her roomate Mary-Anne, and two of her friends in a little restaurant in Chinatown that served all the traditional Singaporean dishes. I had an immensely difficult time choosing from Hainanese Chicken Rice, Penang Laksa, Chicken Curry, Rojak, Char Kway Teow, Nasi Lemak, Mee Siam, Mee Soto and so on. It was as if I had entered culinary heaven. I have often stated that one of the things I miss unconditionally is that local food, and nothing serves to illustrate this better than an evening such as this. In the end, I reluctantly settled for the Chicken Curry, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I was definitely very impressed by how authentic most of the dishes were, though I must say that at 6 pounds (20 Sing dollars) it was equivalent to having a Chicken Curry at a place like the Raffles hotel back home!
To top off the "Singaporeaness" of the evening, Adrian managed to arrange a Mahjong session at his house with two of his other friends - one a Singaporean police scholar and another one a Hong Kong friend also studying at the LSE. We ended up playing two full rounds for 8 hours straight, only finishing up at around 8am, with the light already streaming in through the windows. I must say that it was a really good evening for me, as I won about 20 pounds in total, and I cleared up from the other three - who all lost money to me. The first round was especially kind to me, as I was up by as much as 27 pounds at one stage. All in all though, Mahjong is about luck and chance. Mahjong is definitely another thing I really enjoy and that I miss from back home.
posted by Caleb Liu | 1:22 PM
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