Art of the Brick exhibition

[EvilTwin]

Hello

I live in the UK but recently I have been working in Amsterdam so one afternoon I took the opportunity to visit The Art of the Brick exhibition which is currently showing at the Amsterdam Expo centre (http://www.amsterdam...l/en/art-brick/) and I thought I would post something about my visit.

Location: the Amsterdam Expo centre is very close to Amsterdam Zuid train station so it is not exactly central but it is easy enough to reach by train or bus on Amsterdam's excellent transport system and it is only a couple of minutes' walk from the Mahlerlaan exit from the station. You can't miss it - there is a massive advert for the exhibition on the side of the building

20140627_172409 by freshfroot1, on Flickr

Tickets: I didn't know how busy it would be so I booked my ticket online before I visited, which I also thought would be a good idea since the site offers a discount for online bookings. The on-the-door price is €19, but the online price is €16. But! With the credit card fee of €2.76 and a €1 transaction fee it comes to €19.76. And.. I don't know how busy it is at other times, but I went on a Friday afternoon after work (it is open until 9pm on Fridays) and I pretty much had the whole place to myself (I think I saw one other visitor). I guess the people of Amsterdam have other things to do on Friday evenings . So pre-booking was not really worthwhile.

When you enter you are also issued with an audioguide (included in the price) and the first thing you see is a short video of Nathan explaining how he became a Lego artist after first qualifying as a lawyer but eventually after getting commissions from friends etc for Lego sculptures he decided to follow his dream and become a full time artist. This "follow your dream" idea is a bit of a recurring theme in the exhibition. Nathan is also a motivational speaker and the audio guide and the description panels next to the artworks nearly all have motivational quotes included- "follow your own path!", "find the courage within!", "we are all capable of more than we think!". OK Nathan we get the idea

Nathan also claims that he is the first person to become a full time Lego artist. I think the largely-unknown people who create the amazing pieces we see in the various Legolands might have a better claim to the particular title.

(Incidentally watching the video also demonstrates a clever feature of the audio guide- the guide acts as a radio receiver and the narration of the video is played directly into the guide rather than being audible in the room. This means it is always audible even if the room is full of noisy kids.)

The main exhibition is divided into sections that also act as a kind of timeline for Nathan's evolution as an artist. The first room is mainly interpretations of famous artworks, rendered as flat mosaic-type pictures, or textured, or as 3D sculptures. Next to each one is a description of the original artwork, and a little description from Nathan about how he approached his interpretation. Here are three examples:

Vermeer's Girl with a Peal Earring is one of the flat mosaics:

20140627_173759 by freshfroot1, on Flickr

Note the use of a Harry Potter crystal ball as the earring itself

Van Gogh's Starry Night is textured:

20140627_174704 by freshfroot1, on Flickr

While Munch's Scream is rendered as a sculpture:

20140627_173601 by freshfroot1, on Flickr

Some of these pieces work better than others and, like real paintings, reveal different things to the viewer as you move towards or away from them. As someone who (I hope) appreciates art, and as a Lego lover, I found I was looking at these pieces on different levels- close up I could pick out the individual pieces and although we sometimes complain about it on this site, I found that the occasional small difference in hue between pieces of the same colour actually lends "realism" to the Lego artworks. From a distance some of them are amazing. But, I don't think the Scream works particularly well, and the same goes for the version of American Gothic in the same room - it loses something in translation.

Next we start to see some of Nathan's original work and large-form sculptures, such as the famous Yellow:

20140627_180832 by freshfroot1, on Flickr

Incidentally (although we are not allowed to touch them to find out) it looks like all the spilled-out guts are loose bricks (not glued as the main body of the sculpture is), which means that this piece would change a little bit every time it is exhibited somewhere.

And Gray, which again the audioguide (which is all narrated by Nathan himself) explains is Nathan's depiction of him "letting the real me out". Enough with the motivational stuff already!

20140627_180724 by freshfroot1, on Flickr

There are more interpretations of well known pictures and sculptures, including Degas' little Dancer (which I personally thought was one of the best pieces in the exhibition):

20140627_180320 by freshfroot1, on Flickr

And a mosaic version of a famous picture of the legendary Jimi Hendrix:

20140627_183008 by freshfroot1, on Flickr

Probably the most ambitious item in the exhibition is the full-size (well, full-size baby) T-Rex, which has 80,020 pieces and took an entire summer to create- a very distant relative of the one in the Research Institute set

20140627_184712 by freshfroot1, on Flickr

There is a room of Nathan's original sculptures, mostly humanoids in various poses, such as My Boy:

20140627_183954 by freshfroot1, on Flickr

The audioguide explains that this piece was a turning point for Nathan- this was the first time he created something that had an emotional impact on its own terms, rather than people looking at it and thinking "ooh what a clever Lego thing". Personally I still felt it was a clever Lego thing especially since he explains that none of the sculptures have any internal metal supports or anything- they are all pure Lego through and through (although, in Lord Business style, they are all glued)

Hands is also a good one- I like the way he has captured the curve of the torso and neck of the person looking down at his disintegrated hands:

20140627_184116 by freshfroot1, on Flickr

Almost the last room is a small cinema where a video is playing that is basically a long advert for the Lego Group. I didn't watch it all but I did wonder how up-to-date it is- the bit I watched was about Lego Universe and how it was the biggest investment The Lego Group had ever made in a single product and how they were expecting it to be a big success... doh!

At the end of the exhibition there is a room with crates of Lego where you can have a go at making your own sculptures. Although I didn't stay because I felt a bit self conscious of being the only person there and not having any kids with me and I would have not really felt comfortable sitting on the little chairs This room also has a couple of statues of familiar Lego characters such as a life size version of one of the Friends:

20140627_185346 by freshfroot1, on Flickr

I do think that the closeness in colour of the character's top and the things she is holding makes this look a little weird...

Of course as is traditional for such exhibitions, you exit through the gift shop where you can buy souvenirs of the exhibition and there is also a selection of Lego sets including (rather optimistically on the part of the exhibitors, I thought) a shelf full of modular buildings and so on. There is a guide book for the exhibition, which was only available in Dutch- of course, I don't expect everything in the Netherlands to be available in English, but it was a bit odd that it wasn't in other languages since the audioguide and all of the materials relating to the exhibition were in English. I can read Dutch a bit, so I bought a copy anyway.

What I would have really loved would be to buy a Lego kit of one of Nathan's artworks. Of course, since they are all Lego, it is possible for anyone with enough time and skill and a large enough Bricklink budget to recreate any of them. But, something like the little "Hugman" sculptures (Nathan's version of "street art") would be a great kit (or even just a set of instructions). I did notice that on the Lego Ideas site there is a miniature version of Yellow, I hope that gets produced one day.

Overall, I enjoyed it. I did find Nathan's constantly overzealous motivational sloganeering a bit tiresome after a while- I can only be told to follow my dreams a certain number of times before I start dreaming of punching someone- but really I guess his narration suits the theme of the exhibition and he seems like a nice enough bloke. Although I liked some of the renditions of famous art, I would never choose to look at them in place of the originals, and as clever as I thought the sculptures were, I could never quite overlook the fact that they are Lego bricks. But I still enjoyed looking at them.

I was in the exhibition just under an hour and a half, and that was with careful examination of the building techniques used in each sculpture so I am not sure if it is really good value for money, but I guess if I was there with kids or had felt a bit less self conscious about playing with the available Lego myself I would probably have been there much longer. I read somewhere that the exhibition will also be in the UK later this year, so if I am in the area I might visit there too.

Sorry the pictures are not great, I only had my phone camera with me. Incidentally people are invited to take pictures in the exhibition (without flash) and I took loads

EvilTwin

[paul_delahaye]

I agree, the exhibition was over in New York when I was over visiting at Christmas, so we went along, whilst his scupltures are no doubt impressive, (especially the TREX), I too found myself trying to make the visit last longer than it did. Maybe as a AFOL, I struggle to see my hobby as art, maybe this is the issue? To me they are a construction tool/toy.

I go along to steam and pay £10, and can make that last 2 - 3 hours or more easily, I personally prefer to see all the AFOL built models. This was not for me.

Paul

[Legogal]

Thanks for the lovely photos even if taken with your phone! They show so much of the exhibition that folks who could not be there can enjoy the art.

Much of his work here was shown in NC a year ago at a the Graham Childrens' Museum with no admission free through a grant from an NC foundation. I thought the show was brilliant! It does belong in an Art Museum type of place because it appears to me to be art rather than LEGO. If you use LEGO as the frame of reference, you could miss much of the "art" value of the exhibit. Even if the admission fee had been 20US, it would have been worth it to me. And the drive of 45 minutes or so was easy at this end. No crowds and free parking next to the door was also big pluses.

I spent about two hours just gazing and taking photos of the works. It helps to sit down and take a few minutes to think about the pieces during your visit so that the art does not overwhelm you. Whenever I began thinking of it as just "bricks," I tried to shift my focus back to art and how we view art in other museums. By doing this it was easier to compare his sculptures to that of other artists and to visualize his messages contained in each piece. Art can be a form of communication of how you view the world and how you make sense of what is what. And what represents what it is in your own view. It is different for everyone. No one sees a museum piece in the same way; it always is subjective. You cannot take yourself out of who you are and view anything without being influenced by your background and preferences. And if you have professional training in art or art appreciation, you will undoubtedly see things that the rest of us miss. On top of that, the amount of "fine" sculpture that you have viewed in person greatly affects how you rate an exhibit like this. (Of the many art museums I have visited, for some reason this exhibit pulled out of memory my love for the d'Orsay in Paris.)

Sculpture can be very moving if we let it soak in slowly. Revisit your favorite sculptures if possible and see how they affect you many years after your first visit. Our individual preferences change over time as well. It surprises me how I now feel about sculptures I first viewed 40 years ago. What often seems to happen when I visit museums is that I get a quick glance of everything there, take photos of the ones I might like, and feel quite overwhelmed by all of it. While editing the photos a month or so after returning home, my perception of the art usually has changed quite a bit. Pieces that did not catch my eye while in the museum often jump out at me. It makes me very glad I took the effort to photograph so much during the visit. When reviewing the photos years later, other works become my favorites. Looking at your photos of Nathan's work a year after seeing them in person helps me see things I missed in person.

As to the self promotion comments, it is necessary for artists to market themselves and their work these days because there is so much competition for entertainment spending. But I can agree that it can get tiring at times.

Thanks again for the outstanding commentary and photos.