Trip to Wallace Collection, Selfridges, Jeff Koons + Insanerain09
Today, we got off the subway at Bond Street station to get to the Wallace collection. Here, the place started much in the same way as the Sir John Soane house, whereby a fellow collects so much work and pieces from a time or era that it becomes almost beneficial to open up a house-based museum. here, alot of baroque and rococo-era artworks have been collected for the museum’s displays (not to mention “The Swing”, a famous painting made by Jean-Honore Fragonard). Our tour guide, though quite imformative, made the experience a little dry with her talk. Not to mention half of the group was restless to try and jump from gerard’s plans in order to make it to a Harry Potter Premere at leicester square.
After the visit, we then headed down the street to check out Selfridges, the major, multi-level department store. Selfridges established itself in much the same way as other major corps, like Wal-Mart, by establishing itself with a close connection to a particular group of people. in the case of selfridge’s, it’s women. Selfridges created such standardized store layouts, like having perfume in front of the store, to attract the female buyers. The strore has quite a tight support for the women’s Suffagette movement, despite an attack of vandalism on the store in one incident.
After this, we headed to the Serpentine Gallery to see Jeff Koon’s Show, which was dedicated to Popeye, the Sailorman (yeah, you know who i mean). The show featured alot of work that made direct references to popular culture, with sculpture, installation and articulate painting being to three culprits for Koons work. The most astonishing thing (besides learning the Kanye West was in the gallery the morning of) would be Koons amazing attention to detail and the use of aluminum on objects that appeared to be just inflatable works.
The pieces, even with the direct popeye references, had a very Snarky, nearly masongenistic quality to them. His dedication to popeye comes from his appreciation of popeye’s overall atitude, summated by his phrase “I am what i y’am”, a bold and noble statement from an artist that is clearly not self-conscious in the art world and not afraid to raise eyebrows.
After this, we did intend on going to see the princess diana memorial, not oo far away from the Sepentine galllery. Unfortunately, for us, mother nature said a whomping “NO” and it downpoured on the whole class in a way that i’ve never seen rain fall before. We had hail,, some wind and a TON of rain, enough to even close down one of the rail lines we were depending upon to get back to Liverpool St. Station.
Me and jill made a prety epic journey down to Trafalgar square to catch the appropiate bus, only to wind up in the same Harry Potter premiere that part of the class hoped to attend. Nooo!
All in all, it was an event end to a very decent day into london.
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