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Museumgeeks: Okay, this is what I love:

Saturday, December 13, 2008

Okay, this is what I love:

What I love is the fact that I start researching the Argentinian artist mentioned in the post I put up earlier today (and she is pictured below), Liliana Porter, only to find that she is the creator of one of my favorite whimsical pieces of NYC subway mosaic art, "Alice: The Way Out," made in 1994. I have passed this mural for years at 50th Street; it always makes me smile. Who knew?

Here is a bit of information about the mural, courtesy of the New York Times:
Q. On the walls of the 50th Street subway station of the 1/9 line, are tile pictures of Alice in Wonderland. How do these pictures relate to the neighborhood?

A. The mosaic art you're referring to is ''Alice: the Way Out,'' a 1994 work by Liliana Porter, an Argentine-born artist who lives and works in New York. There is no explicit connection between 50th Street and Lewis Carroll, who lived most of his life in Oxford, England. Rather, said Sandra Bloodworth, director of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's Arts for Transit program, there is a genial conceptual link, a playful reference to the theater district above.

''Liliana is evoking the idea of the theatrical, and she's doing it with a sort of connection with the idea of being underground,'' Ms. Bloodworth said. ''You see Alice pulling the curtain back in one of the images, and you have the theaters above ground. It's her concept to connect it to the theater by way of 'Alice in Wonderland.' '

Alice in Wonderland images are in a number of her works--a description of one work (without a photo, agh) reads: "When Alice's White Rabbit and a bust of Che Guevara hold a private chat, Porter is questioning not only the nature of space-time but that of memory as a vast archive where anything and everyone can hold a conversation."

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