Eleanor Antin at the SD Museum of Art

Helen's Odyssey

Tuesday was the weekly free tuesday event. (I was there, where were you????) A buddy and i went to the San Diego Museum of Art where we got to see an exhibition by Eleanor Antin.called “Historical Takes”. In her 2001 series “The Last Days of Pompeii,” Antin lingers behind the camera to stage the final, catastrophic days of Pompeii in the affluent hills of La Jolla, California. In “The Golden Death” from this series, the imagined citizens of Pompeii drown in the excess of their own wealth—an ironic parable of American culture in the throes of over-consumption. The exquisitely staged photographs from Antin’s three new series, Roman Allegories, Last Days of Pompeii, and Helen’s Odyssey, are witty and psychologically complex melodramatic enactments of mythological and fictional classical narratives. The artist’s friends and models pose in various locations throughout San Diego (including SDMA’s a classically transformed James S. Copley Auditorium) that are suggestive of sites from the ancient world.

The exhibit is on display at the San Diego Museum of Art in Balboa Park until Nov. 2nd.