Richard Lin

Art 345

Clint Sleeper

Day of the Dude

        So what exactly is Day of the Dude? As one would expect, it is a pun on “The Day of the Dead” or in Spanish,  “Día de Muertos”. This exhibit similarly focuses on the dead, skeletons and all. The artwork is well done, with the huge canvas paintings giving a very three dimensional effect which surprised me. Moving onto the other pieces in the exhibit, there were shapes roughly shaped like triangles (I’m not sure if the objects have a name). These were made out of some kind of metal, and painted over in skeleton/dead themes with a lot of eyeballs thrown into the mix, with the exception of the middle one, which was shaped and painted like a horse. There were 5 in total. Next, there were showcases of various limbs and metal skulls of babies. Pretty self-explanatory. At the very end, there is a paper with various names of artists (probably associated).

        The exhibit must have taken quite some time to make, as there was most likely a lot of metalworking involved, and I can appreciate that. Similarly, I enjoyed how the skull paintings seemed to pop at me. The cumulative sum of all the pieces add up to a strong cohesive theme. Yet, I have qualms about the exhibit in that I cannot relate the exhibit to its name. Why is it called Day of the Dude? I see no dudes… and when googled, I find that results give me a day which celebrates Dudeism, a religion that was inspired by a movie. The supposed main motto of Dudeism is to enjoy everyday life, which I don’t really see. Perhaps I just don’t get it; it may just be cultural differences or simply an inside thing. In any case, I felt that the art was supposed to make me feel just a bit uneasy, with the skulls being babies, and the painted eyeballs looking like they were torn from an eye socket, muscle fiber and all. Perhaps this a nod to the Day of the Dead to give it a little break with the dead themes.