previous | 25 April 2006 | next After a weekend of soul-crushing commercial work, I forced myself out of the house - I'm probably the last person in DC to see the Dada and Sugimoto shows. I need to go see both again, but I know what to spend time with next visit. Notes to self, in brief: The NGA was inundated with chewing-gum-snapping teenagers - to avoid them for a little while I scoped out the French painting on the ground floor of the east wing - lots of wonderful little surprises like an uncharacteristically cheerful Redon landscape. The Dada show was packed [with teenagers] so I could only spent time with random pieces that didn't have 20 people in front of them. Examples of early abstract film by Hans Richter and Viking Eggeling made me think of taking video footage, then rotoscoping simplified forms in FLASH, a la Ellsworth Kelly. Yet another project for which I'll never find the time. A lot of great photomontage: why don't I remember seeing Raoul Hausmann and Hannah Hoch mentioned in discussions of Rauschenberg? Especially Hoch - she shares with Rauschenberg the capacity for political statement [I'm thinking particularly of Rauschenberg's Kennedy images] and, more importantly, a mastery of composition. A lot of the 80's pop music I listened to [especially on the ZTT label] was nostalgia - German Dada montage re-invented as sampling. A related quote I found yesterday: Chuck D says, "Rap makes up for its lack of melody with its sense of reminder." [This ignores the fact that work that doesn't use sampling or mechanical reproduction can quote or be derivative.] I've never given much thought to Arp, but I appreciated the work in the Dada show - for some reason his print portfolios remind me of Kim Hiorthoy's work. Max Ernst's reworking of found images really appeal to a part of me that hasn't seen the light of day in over a decade. Can I incorporate that into my work? Who made the coat hanger piece? Is it a Duchamp readymade? I couldn't find info on it. Had Dan Steinhilber seen it? [Man Ray - thanks Tyler.] Awesome name: Baroness Else von Freytag-Loringhoven. Sugimoto says, "The spread of democracy and the innovations of the Machine Age swept aside the ostentaion that heretofore had been a signifier of power and wealth." Fails to note that ornamental decoration also connected large-scale to human-scale and the individualy of things hand-crafted. The Sea of Buddha blew me away. But wait... The Seascapes *really* blew me away. If you haven't seen this installation then go now, it's a once-in-a-lifetime experience, I think on a par with the Rothko room at the Philips. This is the best installation I've seen at the Hirschhorn [or anywhere else] in a long time.