Nostalgic seventies
An essay…
I took my Art Appreciation class to the Mobile Museum of Art this last week to see their new exhibit called 1960s Hard Edge and Op Art Tribute to the Responsive Art. And long story short, it brought back nostalgic memories of the 70s for me. I was born mid sixties. But the fashion of the 60s spilled well into the 70s while I was growing up. Hence my title.
The show itself is magnificent. It was curated and written by Matt Thompson who is the Exhibition Planning Manager: Senior Preparator at the museum. He gave the students the tour explaining what Op Art was and how to best interact with the show. It was really fun to see the students walk around, ask me questions, take photos, comment on how things looked to them, and how impressed they were with the colors and patterns. One of my students came to me in the museum to tell me how much they enjoyed the trip and how they had never been in a museum before. They were beaming and smiling. I was too. After the tour was over, many of the students ventured to the children’s show: The Elements of Art and Design. It so happened that the entrance to the room is an optical illusion made with a checkered pattern. They loved that!!
The show greets you with a collage of photos from the 60s: a comic book page, a movie poster, and others. I felt like my childhood came back to me. I remembered most of it. Back home we did not get all of the shows or printed material from the US, but we got enough. Here is a picture:
I used to read Archie and Susie comics. Susie was more of a romantic comic book, kind of a soap opera type. There was always someone crying. Archie was cute and from what I remember, he was a goofy teen with two love interests, Betty and Veronica. The halftone pattern of the above photo also reminded me of the comic section of the Sundays’ newspaper. I would wait for the Sunday paper just for the special comic section.
But, I think the one artwork that really took me back was this one below.
The boots!! The dress pattern!! I remember the fabrics back then, the mini skirts and the go-go boots, the iconic makeup, and the hairdos. I remember my mom with the bee hive hair do in my kindergarten graduation.
The show also features the color experiments by Josef Albers. I got so excited to see one of the images from our textbook in the show!
But, my favorites in the show were the works by Victor Vasarely and Frank Stella. Vasarely is known for his Op Art, kinetic art, and geometric abstractions. In fact, he is now considered the grandfather of Op Art. In the 70s Vasarely designed the logo for the car manufacturer Renault, which remains very close to it to this day. Below is the one designed by Vasarely. I had not been familiar with his work until I visited the museum and I am now a loyal fan.
This piece by Vasarely above captivated me.
Then there is Stella’s work. Magnificent use of line, shape, and color.
For many years the 70s’ aesthetic still had much from the 60s. But to me, things changed with the movie Saturday Night Fever, 1977. Not only did the music changed, but also the skirts. They were longer and flowing, the makeup got lighter, lipsticks got glossier, the hair was now worn loose and flipped, and dancing—social dancing came back. Walking through the show, all I could think about while admiring the work, were the songs from the movie by the Bee Gees and the others. You can check the movie here on YouTube. It is hard to explain what all of these mean to me.
It was a nice time, the field trip got them out of the classroom, and after the tour was over, they looked around some more. One of the students took a picture of a landscape with a cabin. When we walked out he said to me “this is where I want to live when I retire”. And I thought, hopes, ideals, aspirations, and looking at the future are things we should not take for granted. This student in particular comes from a country where these hopes are fragile. For this student, that painting became a window to tomorrow.
And that is what an art museum should offer: a view to the past or the present in order to imagine a better, a much better tomorrow.
Love,
Alma