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2013年5月10日 星期五

Colorful Crystals in Macau (梳打埠之幻彩水晶)

Have been working fairly hard recently. So I took some time off to visit Macau. I enjoy the more leisiurely pace there, especially on week days. The annual national long holidays in the PRC over, Macau has reverted to its more civilized rhythm. I had lots of surprises though, from this sleepy neighbor of ours at the mouth of the Pearl River Estuary. Although I had been there a number of times, I never really took a good look at MGM. This time, I did. I was dazzled.


I discovered these ceiling lights in the reception hall of MGM, done by or under the direction of the famous blown glass artist from America,Dale Chihuly originally from Tacoma, Washington who studied glass making in Venice in 1968, got a MA in Fine Arts at the Rhode Island School of
Design. In 1971, with the support of John Hauberg and Anne Gould
Hauberg, Chihuly cofounded the Pilchuck Glass School near Stanwood,
Washington. Since having a traffic accident in 1976 in England and lost his left eye and then dislocated his
right shoulder in a 1979 bodysurfing accident, he started hiring others to do the relevant work and describes himself as more a choreographer and director than a dancer or actor. He is now an extremely rich guy with sales of his works to be counted in tens of millions US each year and has enormously successful permanent collections of his work in various states of America, England, United Arab Emirates, Singapore and now Macau.  Having seen it, I think I know why.



Corridor where the crystals are displayed



Work in yellow, orange and green



Simple bowls and plates in yellow


Work in yellow with simple flowing lines



bowls within bowls



Work in green



Part of another work in green



Another shell like bowl



Another view of the bowl




Detail of the the bowl



More detail of the bowl



Some blue cabbages?



A blue and green blow with gold linings



Details of the bowl



Simpler blue bowls within bowls



details of such bowl collection



Bowls in orange



From blue to orange



Details of the orange bowls



A striped transparent flower with spherical bowl and ivory spirals



detail of the bowl with spiral


Close up of the tip of the spiral



Details of another bowl in yellow, green and orange

Art appears commercialized now. Has art become a commodity? Does art require more concepts than skills? If so, have they become detachable components in the world of capitalist production and marketing?Is the blurring of boundaries not typical of the world of post-modernity, post-Freudianism, post-structuralist and phenomenological flatness and époché of late capitalism? Have we now entered into the era where image is king, where the media is the message, where past and present, where different cultures and different aspects of the same culture, where the vertical and the horizontal, where production and consumption, where the interior and the exterior have become merged or are merely juxtaposed in the equalization and standardization of all values, where everything is finally reduced to mere images, images of images, where representation of the so-called "real" has completely disappeared, where the simulacra have replaced the signs and the symbols, and all that we have is the infinite jouissance of the play of surfaces and where all we've got left is the endless and ever accelerating narcissistic repetition and infinite self-replication or ritornello or refrain of the same themes, motifs of the virtual, where the surfaces have become folded, refolded or are folding, refolding or unfolding into each other until we can no longer tell where the interior and where the exterior is, where speed and momentum has replaced weight and direction, where the only meaning is the meaninglessness of meaning, where space has conquered time and everything and everyone is caught in the vortices created by waves upon waves of mass consumption. What is commodity?  What is art? Does it matter?

8 則留言:

  1. Beautiful crystals and I want to be as rich as Chihuly.
    [版主回覆05/10/2013 18:45:39]start learning glass blowing or how to direct the same!

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  2. Really beautiful!
    A fantasmagoria of solids in myriad fluid forms like indeed as Chihuly says, dancers waltzing under the command of a choreographer.
    Thanks for sharing.
    [版主回覆05/12/2013 08:47:44]You're right. You only find curves and folds in his crystals, seldom straight lines. His color combination is often dramatic.

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  3. 嘩. .好靚呀
    [版主回覆05/12/2013 08:48:18]Glad you enjoyed them.

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  4. 燈光照射加倍耀目。
    [版主回覆05/12/2013 08:50:26]He really knows how to make use of top and back light to enable the refracted light from the interior of the crystal to create special effects.

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  5. 美不勝收! 也很愛看水晶擺設、 晶瑩剔透、 幻彩迷離! 謝謝 El Zorro 的分享! ~~~~~~~~~~ 母親節愉快! ~~~~~~ 今天行山嗎? 行程愉快!
    [版主回覆05/12/2013 08:51:57]I was quite surprised too to discover such wonderful artwork at the MGM. Glad you find them enjoyable. Can't go out this weekend. Got work to do!

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  6. Hi El, this is not the usual Saturday stuff of yours! The second half is just way too heavy for me and I don't want to use a dictionary for your sat writings. I think the discussion of what art is is long enough to find it repeating itself, at least from the early years of modernism. For me, art is and can be merely about money and power, the former may be a way the latter is operating itself. So, there are only madness and power in art. Once in a while we have artists who can have both at the same time and they are damn blessed. Have a great day.
    [版主回覆05/12/2013 23:09:48]These are not meant as my Saturday jokes. Just enjoy the photos. Yes, some artists manage to make a successful transition from art to artifacts and become billionaires in the process. They need an acute market sense and the right kind of temperament to go with their talents though.

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  7. 去澳門總有得著喎.
    [版主回覆05/13/2013 22:43:19]Not as much as you do because you knew the place!

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  8. 即使是較商業化的作品,
    但仍很美啊。
    [版主回覆05/14/2013 11:08:05]There should be no distinction between "serious art" and "popular art". There is just a distinction between "good art" and "bad art" !

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