Saturday, September 6th, 2008

Art to Heart

Iranian, flea-market art exhibits spark love in second-year students

Flea markets and cheeseburgers and Genghis Khan. Oh my! Nope, this isn’t Kansas anymore, Dorothy. Welcome to another Daily Bruin blind date.

This week, our daters went into the heart of Los Angeles, where they visited the Genghis Khan art exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. But not before they went to the Fairfax High School weekly flea market.

Ross Harold and Christina Dikas, two second-year Rieber Hall residents, embarked on their journey to love this Mother’s Day. And by the looks of things, mothers weren’t the only ones with something to celebrate on Sunday.

Harold, an American literature and communication studies student, describes himself as a party in your pants. Dikas, a sociology and museum studies student, is most known for her kindness and fondness of architecture.

“When I first met Christina, I thought, ‘What a stone fox’; (I) was taken aback by her stunning look and her exuding kindness,” said Harold. “She was the type of person who I seemed to know for a long time – we just clicked automatically.”

The two first went to discover buried treasures at the flea market. Looking at everything from busts with neon blue hair to belt buckles and vintage posters, they began to see how much they had in common.

“When we were at the flea market, we both kept looking at the same items while we were quizzing each other on ‘Saved By the Bell’ trivia,” said Dikas. “I felt like I could talk to him about anything and he’d know what I meant.”

After digging through the golden nuggets of flea market goods, the two proceeded to LACMA to look at art of a different type: the Art of Genghis Khan.

The exhibit examines the artwork of the Iranian world in the aftermath of Mongol invasion. With the fusion of Eastern and Western Asian art in the Iranian world, the exhibit aims to show the artistic diversity apparent during this time. “The art exhibit was definitely not something that was entertaining or enriching to me: Genghis Khan – more like ‘Genghis Yawn!’” said Harold. “It was organized well, but the architecture of the exhibit itself was more interesting to me than the pieces were.”

Both daters agreed the exhibit wasn’t as exciting as the artwork they saw at the flea market. In fact, they felt that the exhibit wasn’t organized well enough to know what the art reflected.

“I liked the inclusion of traditional Iranian architecture into the exhibit,” said Dikas. “It made the artwork more authentic in that respect but still didn’t catch my attention enough to actually (make me) want to know more about the art.”

The exhibit combined various types of artwork, from textiles to silk paintings. According to Harold, the most interesting part of the exhibition was a room where the door was integrated into the wall – set up in a very traditional ‘orientalist’ manner.

“While the exhibition was educational, it seemed very confined – not open and well lit like other exhibitions,” sad Dikas. “The warm lighting on the exhibit created a sleepier environment, rather than a more mysterious and intriguing one.”

Though neither of them enjoyed the artwork, they found the exhibit room with a Mongol-style tent on the wall fascinating.

“The tent was definitely the high point of the exhibit,” said Dikas. “It might be because I don’t know Arabic nor am familiar with this art period that I couldn’t fully appreciate the exhibit.”

From their flea market escapade to LACMA cheeseburger snack, the two created the foundation for a budding relationship.

“When I saw the equal love for the flea market and the exhibit, I knew we could appreciate high and low art together” said Harold. “I knew she was a keeper!”