Hirshhorn

There were two things that especially struck me at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. I almost bought one of them.

We braved Sunday's storms to take advantage of D.C.'s free pieces of culture and made it there with soaked ankles and a couple of soy-based granola bars, courtesy of a storm that did not apologize for danger, excitement, wetness and inconvenience, and some hippies who did not apologize for believing the world would be safer and cleaner if we all ate more soy.

Hirshhorn is in a cylinder-shaped building with bronze sculptures dancing in the grass all around it. They did not seemed to mind the rain, and I tried to follow their example. The building is also skirted by a convenient roof so we could enjoy the wet, delicious air and watch the hippies run for shelter as we squeezed rain out of our pant-legs.

The first thing that struck me was a current exhibit called The Cinema Effect: Illusion, Reality and the Movie Image, Part I: Dreams. According to the Hirshhorn website, Dreams "addresses film’s ability to transport us out of our everyday lives and into a dream world. Using a series of artists’ installations, the exhibition moves us through the different stages of consciousness and dreaming, from those moments between wakefulness and sleep to the darker recesses of the imagination and fantasy. Dreams is curated by chief curator Kerry Brougher and associate curator Kelly Gordon."

It succeeded for me, and it seemed to succeed for other museum goers. The darkness of the whole exhibit, each installation, kept me in a constant, isolated feeling between awake and asleep. (Incidentally, the effect gave my wife a headache, but she was nice enough to wait for me while I meandered through to get the whole effect) These were not Disney dreams, but honest explorations of the subconscious. Parts were strange, fascinating, morbid, beautiful and frightening. It explored isolation, fear, sexuality, violence, desire, love, abandonment, and many other abstract echoes from the deep that we have all felt waiting for morning to approach. Each installation was a piece of film, set up by artists from all over the world (most of whom found their way to New York, London or Berlin). The use of film, screen, sound, light were all different. Some were interactive, some were traditional. In "You and I Horizontal" the viewer feels himself to be part of the light of the film itself (I won't explain it more than this - see it yourself). My favorite film was called "Eight," which follows a little girl in a dream-like loop through a party (her eighth birthday, perhaps?) drenched by a dark storm. Ok, it's better than I'm making it sound. I'm looking forward to part II.

The other thing that struck me was a book I browsed in the gift shop called Street: The Nylon Book of Global Style. Perhaps the title is a bit unfair. It only explores interesting fashion cities - New York, Paris, Berlin, Hong Kong, etc..., leaving important populations and styles unexplored. It really was not the style that interested me. I had never heard of Nylon the magazine before. Indeed, I am not that interested in reading the magazine itself, but I loved the concept of the book, nonetheless. They found interesting people, the kinds of people that I used to be drawn to in Germany as we would carry a tray of soggy salad and strange noodles to speak with isolated students about Jesus. They would take a picture each person and fill the page with it. They would ask them their name, occupation, what they were wearing and fashion icon (I can imagine the puzzled looks many gave at this one. My favorite answer was the young woman who said her grandmother). Many of the clothes were hand-me downs, many of the occupations were artists, many were too thin but attractively cool. They were pictures of people who cried for a spirituality, the kind of people I hope for, pray for, want to meet.