went to an art museum and saw some art

Besides seeing the buddha, I also went to an art museum in Taichong. My weekends were a little better down there for touristy stuff because I was all alone so I had noone to distract me from preparing for my classes, so I got my work done on Saturday and was able to go wander around on Sunday. Here in Taipei I sit around and talk to people instead of doing work, then I have to do it later and can't go to the museum.

The art museum was cool. It was pretty small, but it was free and air conditioned. It was a modern art museum. I guess with the fall of the KMT in the 80s -the dictatorship that was in power for about 50 years- when they went out of power there was an expansion in the right to free speech which caused was a Taiwanese artistic Renaissance. Some of the stuff was pretty cool. My favorite painting was one by Lian Jian-Shing called "Happy Land in a Corner of the Sea," which had a background of lush islands and aquamarine water, and a small island with a weird little amusement park on it. Then in the foreground there were powerlines, with elephants and giraffes moving along in cages and people on unicycles going around them. It looked like a weird dream.

I also liked one that had taken Mao's face and Dr. Sun Yat Sen's face (considered the father of the nation) and used puzzle pieces to turn them into one. It was creepy.

There was this wild painting called "Pachinko" by Lien Te-cheng. It was 3 panels, horizonal and stacked. The top one was a Japanese flag, the middle was the word "PACHINKO" in orange and blue, and the bottom was an idyllic and sappy Thomas Kincaid type of painting, with some big pachinko ball looking things traveling down it, and some surprised looking deer. Apparently, the word "evergreen" in Mandarin is also the Mandarin transliteration of the word "pachinko." (I think Mandarin. the card beside the painting said Chinese, so I think they meant Mandarin Chinese, but I don't know) So it is weird that pachinko and evergreen are the same word. And that is the Japan to Taiwan connection between the panels.

In addition to that, I guess that the Thomas Kincaid-like paintings were produced by the by the pound in Taiwan in the "early days" (days of the Japanese occupation?) and were exported to Japan by the ton where they were purchased at an alarming rate. Hugely popular, these crappy painting of idyllic scenes with dappled sunlight and evergreen trees. So that is the Taiwan to Japan connection. Evergreen to pachinko (Japan) in the form of paintings, and pachinko to evergreen in the form of language.

My favorite exhibit was this set for 4 flat screens showing videos of this guy, Kyang-yu Tsui doing sports in odd places. It was called "The Shortcut to the Systematic Life: City Spirits." The setting was London, and we saw him rappelling down trash piles, playing golf on small bits of green grass throughout the city, hurdling over inappropriate stuff and bowling. The hurdles and bowling were the best. You saw him earnestly running through the city and hurdling (as though at a track meet) over trash cans, fire hydrants, dogs, bikes, benches, and anything else waist high. In the background you could see him getting crazy weird looks from onlookers who were just out having their day and weren't expecting their day to include him and his nutty shenanigans.

For bowling, he would wander around London with a bowling ball until he found a long sidewalk at a park or cobblestone shopping area. He would get to the end of it and get into his bowling stance, take aim, and hurl his bowling ball down the sidewalk towards a bunch of pigeons, which, it turns out, look a lot like bowling pins. Then they would scatter and it would be funny. I guess he was just out doing his part to make everybody's day a little bit more surreal.

Oh, also, in one of the SAT essays that one of my students handed in, Bill Gates was called Bill Gazes. Heh heh. That is unrelated, I just thought it was funny.