Ladies who lunch, and art
Apparently when Ruth told her colleagues that we were coming to visit, they said “Oh, you must bring them to lunch so we can meet them”, and so it was that I had a shave this morning, and we set out along Broadway once more.
We were late setting off again, especially since I sneaked in a few more turns of Civilisation before leaving. We got a pastry and a coffee at Starbucks, then caught a bus to Ruth’s office. Yesterday, we had walked past it unknowingly.
We went to a Malaysian restaurant very nearby, and while we were waiting for our table, the colleagues arrived. I’m ashamed to admit that their names were too exotic for me to remember. They were friendly and nice, and I think it’s OK for my sister to continue working with them.
My nasi goreng was huge and carb-heavy, and with my breakfast barely digested, I managed to eat less than half of it, which is a shame because it was very nice, and different from the Balinese version I’m used to, being sweeter and more tomato based.
After lunch, we caught a bus downtown. We both browsed the t-shirts and tat at Urban Outfitters, and found some fun things. Thereafter, we separated, so Debbie could do more shopping, and I could visit Vancouver Art Gallery.
I wanted to see their exhibition Krazy, which covers comics, graphic novels, manga, anime and video games.
I have mixed feelings about the exhibition. There were certainly a lot of fantastic exhibits, and I spent a long time looking at them in detail. Part of the show’s rationale was that although there have been exhibitions covering each of these areas in the past, none has combined them before. Yet by comparmentalising the exhibition into sections — you move from the comics section into the graphic novels section into the manga section, and so on — the show missed an opportunity to exploit the synergy within these art forms. I would rather have seen the art forms mixed up and grouped by theme or their place in history.
Anyway, why should manga and comics be in separate sections? Just because one is Japanese and the other is not? By that logic The Wrong Trousers should be in a separate section to Toy Story.
Each section had guest curators, and it seemed as if at least some of them felt the same way as me about this. Cartoonists Art Spiegelman and Seth, it was noted, had pointed out that the sections they curated, comics and graphic novels, really belonged together. A graphic novel is just a long comic. A comic is just a short graphic novel. It seems that the structure of the exhibition wasn’t flexible enough to absorb this realisation.
Every section showed the bias of the guest curator, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, unless you’re claiming to be comprehensive or at least representative. In this case, for the comics, the focus was very much on the American golden age, followed by the underground comix of the 60s and 70s, and indie comics from the 80s onwards. There was no room for Marvel and DC, let alone anything that wasn’t North American. Still, what there was, was great, including lots and lots of original drawings, where the pencil guidelines were visible under the ink, alongside the final printed versions.
I’m really don’t know enough about manga or anime to comment on those sections, but Studio Ghibli was notably absent.
The computer game section was cursory. I suppose they couldn’t hope to rival the fantastic Game On exhibition that was shown at the London Science Museum recently, but all we had here was one room showing material relating to eight games chosen by Will Wright. How could he possibly sum up the visual art of gaming in eight games, especially when he needed to fit two games of his own in.
In case you’re wondering, the games were:
- Pac Man
- Super Mario World
- Civilization
- Quake
- Grand Theft Auto III (and sequels)
- Legend of Zelda
- The Sims (Will Wright’s most successful game)
- Spore (Will Wright’s upcoming game)
I think all of them would probably belong in a major exhibition of games, but there are lots of games I think are more representative. Of course, Will Wright has his own perspective, and if he was really limited to eight games, he had his work cut out.
The best part of the exhibition, however, was a part I almost didn’t notice was there, and that was the exhibition of ‘real’ art inspired by the consumer art shown in the rest of the exhibit. It was hit-and-miss as art must be.
Obviously, there was some Roy Lichtenstein. I have seen Blam!, elsewhere, an oil painting disguised as newsprint. The exhibits here were enameled steel disguised as newsprint. I longed to touch them, but it wasn’t allowed.
Christian Marclay’s works were so derivative of Lichtenstein, that I didn’t see any point in them.
The No Ghost - Just a Shell series of works in various media, by various artists, in which an unremarkable female manga 3D model bought from a catalogue is utilised in various artsy ways, works better as conceptual art than as anything you’d want to spend time looking at.
The three best works were all in the same room, and really made the exhibition worthwhile.
Dominating the room, was Strawberry Voice by “Mr”, a huge manga-esque pigtailed girl’s head, like the head of an enormous Strawberry Shortcake doll. Her eyes were painted with the reflection of a happy family scene, she wore a huge smile. The huge ties holding her huge pigtails in place were adorned with huge beads. If you weren’t observant, you might miss that there was a door in the back of the head, through which you could see a bedroom absolutely crammed with girlish dolls and toys. Snoopy was in there, asleep on his kennel. I don’t know what it all meant, but it was cool.
A friendly warden occasionally directed people towards the door in the back of the head, which I’m sure was helpful.
Opposite Strawberry Voice, was City Glow, a video installation by Chiho Aoshima and Bruce Ferguson. Spread over five widescreen monitors, it was like a panoramic, super-colourful, modern Yellow Submarine, in which the viewer traverses a psychedelic city through various moods as buildings, trees and flowers grow and morph. It held me transfixed for its seven minutes. I want to share it with people, but without dragging them to Vancouver and paying $20, it’s tricky. If it’s shown near you, see it. Chiho Aoshima has other works in other media with the same title and the same basic look, including a permanent set of murals at Union Square station in New York.
Finally, Mariko Mori’s Play with Me, is a giant photograph in which the artist (a strikingly attractive Japanese woman) stands dressed in body-hugging fantasy armour straight out of an anime inspired video game. She is at the doorway of an arcade, probably in Tokyo’s gaming hotspot, Akihabara, looking bored and needy, as arcade customers file past, studiously ignoring her.
In the museum shop, I scanned the expensive exhibition book to see if it contained my favourite bits in any worthwhile format, and decided it wasn’t worth getting. I bought Seth’s graphic novel Wimbledon Green, actually mistaking it for a completely different work, by a completely different artist, Milt Gross’s 1930 He Done Her Wrong: The Great American Novel (With No Words), which was exhibited. Clumsy. That’s what comes of looking at the pictures and vaguely comparing drawing style from memory, instead of actually reading the front cover. Still, Wimbledon Green appears to be worth having.
Trying to get home, I was advised not to take the bus which later turned out to be the right one, and instead took a different bus, which took me to Kitsilano Beach, a short but steep uphill walk to Ruth and Dave’s house. Debbie was still shopping, it seemed. I half read my comic, and half shared with Dave in his exploration of various Xbox demo downloads.
Once Debbie had returned, and shown us her purchases (a paltry haul for such a long session - she is an inefficient shopper, almost as if there is pleasure in the process itself), we plotted dinner.
We walked a short distance to a sukiyaki restaurant on Broadway. They were busier than expected, but they took Dave’s phone number and promised to call when our table was ready. We spent this time getting tipsy on cocktails at Earl’s, a chain restaurant down the road, then staggering around Future Shop looking at gadgets and DVDs until they threw us out. I must stress that they threw us out because they were closing, not because we were unruly.
The sukiyaki was interesting and good. It was also very cheap, at $14 for all you can eat. The table gets a gas burner over which there is a bubbling pot of thin, sweet, brown sauce in which some cabbage is cooking. The waiter brings plates of raw pork and beef, along with a plate piled high with noodles, raw vegetables, leaves, tofu and funghi. As beginners, we allowed him to make a selection for us, but there are order slips on which you can request a specific mixture.
With chopsticks, we put bits and pieces into the bowl, and ate them when they were ready. We each had a bowl into which we cracked a raw egg. This was to dip the hot freshly cooked meat into. It worked.
At the start of the meal, there was a terrifying moment when it appeared the restaurant didn’t serve alcohol. Everyone was nervous to broach the subject. The menu was turned over and everything was OK.
Tomorrow is an early start, so we went straight bed when we got home.