The first, shown above, is "an exploration of the boundaries between sculpture, nature, and architecture," meant to "evoke ritualistic associations, transforming the viewer into a kind of archaeologist or explorer and heightening awareness" of the space around it.
Oh art and the things you're meant to explore and evoke! I've walked and run past this person's outdoor work by the lake a hundred times and always thought it was just a firepit. Which I suppose evokes ritualistic associations. But I've never felt transformed into an archaeologist or explorer, and I certainly did not feel a heightened awareness of the lake. My god! I wish some of these contemporary artists would cut to the chase in their verbomanic descriptions and just admit:
It is something, rather than nothing. It's not really anything in particular, but you're looking at it, aren't you? And therefore, it is art.
That's what I think 99% of contemporary art exhibit placards should say, actually.
Case in point: exhibit #2, Reconnaissance by Christine Hiebert.
Three "wall drawings," one of which was basically blue scotch tape strung and splotched along the wall. The strewn scotch tape was meant to "utilize the language of line on a large scale," and "command and engage" "the monumental architectural space of the light-filled top floor gallery."
This whole idea of calling the viewer's attention to space itself seems to be the latest trend in art, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. I certainly see where it fits in on the timeline; starting with Pollack, we began calling the viewer's attention to materials used in the painting, and then as the movement of modern art continued, our attention was directed toward the surface itself and the picture plane.
Now we're going beyond the art object itself into the space around it, which is great for the field of art history, because it will have something new to add to its textbooks, and a new concept to quiz its students on.
But while I get it- yes, space! We don't always notice it, or at least not all of it; it took me ten years to notice that my best friend's house had baskets hanging from its ceiling ...
and while I was stimulated for a surprisingly lengthy ten seconds by the scattered lines of blue tape, looking to and fro and thinking "wow! that wall IS big!"
I am still annoyed by the placard.
Because while this might certainly be true:
Christine Hiebert's artwork is an exploration of space: she draws, articulates, and redefines it, evoking a personal, metaphorical, architectural space of her own...
We could just as easily say this:
Christine Hiebert has strewn scotch tape all over the walls of the Wellesley art museum so that we notice the walls themselves, which is cool, because usually you don't look at walls in an art museum!
Or even this:
Christine Hiebert has done something rather than nothing, and you're looking at it, and therefore it is art.
If I sound belligerent, maybe it's because for the past half a century, art has been getting increasingly boring. The wall descriptions get longer and longer while the objects themselves get flatter and simpler, less colorful, less existent. I don't care about concepts.... I want stories! I'm sick of being told how to look at something, and how to consider it. I shouldn't have to be told why something is art; I should feel it.
Can you imagine a mother telling her child why van Gogh's Starry Night is art? Or Munch's The Scream, or John Singer Sargent's El Jaleo?
Granted, there was one exhibit that did emphasize the pictorial:
"George Legrady and Angus Forbes explore the intersection of user generated visual narratives and descriptive social tagging in their installation Cell Tango."
It's basically a big screen of people's cell phone pictures, repeated over and over again.
You're invited to send in your own images, so that the "dynamically evolving archive of cellphone-transmitted images" will "dynamically change as the image database grows over the course of the installation."
It's all very dynamic, you see.
Don't get me wrong, I love contemporary art. I love all its pomp and pretense and all the belligerence it spurs in me. I love watching old overly-dressed up couples and stuffy neurotic professors and hyped up type A cardigan-clad Wellesley girls jostling elbows for grapes and cheese and wine at gallery openings. I love listening to people's droning commentary as they walk the exhibits, and I love my own internal irreverent commentary as I scale four flights of stairs just to see some blue scotch tape on the wall.
I am half watching Vicky Christina Barcelona as I write this, and right now the characters are discussing an artist who is mad at the world, who creates beautiful works of art and then denies them to the public as revenge. I think that's a pretty awesome line of reasoning- it's the surest way to tell that an artist is doing art for art's sake and not for the promotional value and wall placard. But while we wait for the pure art to be post-humously discovered, we might as well poke around galleries looking at the pomp and scotch tape and drivel. After all, it's something rather than nothing, it gave me something to do on a Wednesday night, and it gave everybody an excuse to have wine and cheese. What more, really, are we here for?
More irreverent art reviews to come if you liked this one!
Stay cool and classy,
"The Wanderess"
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