Metropolis II – Chris Burden (LACMA)
Although I spent most of my time in the Japanese Art Pavilion due to its reflective and calming atmosphere, the work that I connected with most in regards to our class was Metropolis II by Chris Burden. The work is a kinetic sculpture depicting a scaled, fast-paced modern city with miniature cars, 18 roadways, buildings, and trains. His idea is that “The noise, the continuous flow of the trains, and the speeding toy cars produce in the a viewer the stress of livening in a… 21st century city”. I always believe that the best pieces of art (in whatever medium) are those that evoke real life emotions. I find this piece to be associated with the Expressionist movement, due to its ability to evoke a real emotional experience. Although Expressionism is meant not to capture the external world, I feel that this piece is a very dramatic version of our own world, cars do not really speed at the 240 scaled miles per hour, freeways are not that closely interwoven, especially around buildings, and there isn’t 100k cars so close together in real life. However, being in the room and actually viewing the object for yourself is necessary because in just a picture of the piece you cannot hear the cars, your eyes cant race in an attempt to follow just one car, and you do not feel bigger than life from an image. Being in that room sincerely evoked a sense of stress and angst from my heart and mind due to the loud noises, cramped room, and the always-prevalent thought of “what if a car flips off the edge or causes a crash?” In the same gallery, oddly juxtaposed with Metropolis II, a piece making you feel like a Giant, is a piece in the next room that was a large mountain, Grand Canyon-esque steel construction which made the viewer feel insignificantly small and surrounded. Both pieces fill the observer with a sense of angst. 
different about the piece from any ordinary shovel, and it means nothing. Perhaps the only artistic aspect of the shovel is the title, which foresees a future of a broken shaft. This portrayal of art completely undermines the effort and skill of practically any other art movement we have studied, or the bourgeoisie had encountered at the time, causing anger and resentment. However, this is exactly what a Dada artist would want to occur – to force people to question the role of the artist, the purpose of art, and the artistic norms of the time. I find no contradiction between this art piece and the Dada manifesto which supports “nothingness” as art, which is exactly what this piece is. Although I am all for rebelling against societal norms through artistic means, finding admiration in similar pioneers such as Jim Morrison, yet the Dada movement to means seems pointless and simply created to seek attention through chaos, stress, and vexation.
The object I found most interesting in Special Collections was the first edition of Dubliners by James Joyce, published in 1914. This attraction is mostly due to my natural affinity for first-edition anything – when I buy records I prefer first-editions, not necessarily to play, but rather to transport me back into that time period as something my parents or the artist would own, advancing my appreciation for the music. A major component of my senior-year English class was based around Dubliners, in which several stories intrigued me due to Joyce’s writing style. Reading from a book with a cover elaborately decorated and with a few illustrations scattered here and there, it was quite interesting to see such a simple first edition, with a plain red cover and a simple “Dubliners” written at the top in gold lettering. With such a simple edition, I could see the images Joyce was attempting to provoke in his stories being solely up to the reader’s imagination, rather than supplementing it with illustration as in later editions. As with the example of the records, holding this first-edition gave off a very heavy feeling and brought me back to 1914, establishing a stronger connection to Joyce’s masterpiece. 
two tall and dark trees. It was very uncommon for impressionist painters to use black in their color scheme, yet they did intend on perfecting the different shades of light within a setting. The painting is mainly composed of short brushstrokes that fade into one another, especially visible in the upper part of the sky. His transition from blue to green to orange and to dark orange creates the illusion of a passage of time – another form of movement. Physical movement is effectively expressed in the smoke rising from the smokestacks in the distant city, flowing against the direction of the sun. Perhaps this was intended to present the conflict between nature and industrialism at the time.