Oddities and Attractions: A Museum Travelogue at the Whitney, Met, Neue, NYPL, Quebec's Museum of Civilisation and Montreal's Beaux-arts

At a question and answer session, the visiting juror said - with emphasis - that her venue would rarely curate a travelogue exhibit. You can guess why:  too many 'I was here,' too many places rather than art styles, too many trifles and oddities about weird cultures, and perhaps too many selfies. 

But what if the travelogue was about oddities in art museums? Not so much a comparison of current shows, but rather what makes these museums attractions for the curious mind.
 
Considerations for the curious mind
I imagine curators must struggle to get beyond art-for-art's sake: showing the outrageous for the sake of being outrageous; reflecting upon the glory of the artist as enfant terrible; a journey into the past; or maybe engaging the audience with a playful intent. 

I'm helped along when curators put their thoughts onto wall tags (and nowadays putting them online as well). The following images are from a half dozen or so shows I recently saw. This selection could be taken as advice to go forth and see these shows but it is more about how we can re-energize the exhibits here -- whether 'here' is in San Diego or elsewhere -- and bring this playfulness into the work we exhibit. Imagine the concept of 'portraiture':  it could become a tired framework for exhibits; or, it could be reimagined and compel us to think what is was that led us to think that category of presentation had become dull.

Animation and Dance at Musées de la civilisation (Museum of Civilization)
Quebec's Museum of Civilization was a different kind of adventure. In one area, the imaginative and provocative animated short films of the National Film Board of Canada (winner of several Acacemy Awards) was clustered into several areas, illustrated by models of various materials, drawings and odd sorts of camera work. Frame X Frame was a glorious exhibit in terms of the variety of subject matter, techniques and the opportunity to watch the films unfold. It would have been far more difficult for full length features.

Clay figures / Objects for an animation

Somehow, the short films seemed current even if the pictured imagery was from another era. 

Lipsett's short (Very Nice, Very Nice - see below) is spell-binding. The online inventory of many of these shorts allow us to engage with these materials,

From Wikipedia:  "While working at the National Film Board, Lipsett collected pieces of audio from the waste bins and pieced them together as a hobby. When his friends heard the product of this they suggested that he add images to it. The result was this film. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Short Subject, Live Action Subjects in 1962. Despite not winning the Oscar, this film brought Lipsett considerable praise from critics and directors. Stanley Kubrick was one of Lipsett's fans, and asked him to create a trailer for his upcoming movie Dr. Strangelove. Lipsett declined Kubrick's offer. Kubrick went on to direct the trailer himself; however, Lipsett's influence on Kubrick is clearly visible in the released trailer."

Arthur Lipsett / Very Nice, Very Nice (1961) can be seen on YouTube

In another area of the Museum is an equally compelling exhibit about contemporary dance:  Rebel Bodies. The goal of the museum exhibition was intended to "demystify contemporary dance." Instead, I was entranced -- to be more exact, I was mystified. The variety of approaches was splashed on numerous large screens, exhibiting both the dance and the choreographer's commentary. The online resources are hard to locate, but Victor Quijada's experience and innovative dance, the RubberBand Dance Group expands upon his philosophy of dance in Rebel Bodies.

Rebel Bodies -Victor Quijada

Culling the Collection to Consider a Puzzle:  The (new) Whitney Museum of American Art's America is Hard to See

The Whitney pulled art from its collection of 'American' art (artists who were born in America and/or did their art in America) and organized it in its new multi-storied building. The story of American art from the beginnings of the 20th century are organized in chapters, such as Forms Abstracted, Music-Pink and Blue, Free Radicals, Scotch Tape and the like.

From the Whitney website: The title [of the inaugural exhibit], America Is Hard to See, comes from a poem by Robert Frost and a political documentary by Emile de Antonio. Metaphorically, the title seeks to celebrate the ever-changing perspectives of artists and their capacity to develop visual forms that respond to the culture of the United States. It also underscores the difficulty of neatly defining the country’s ethos and inhabitants, a challenge that lies at the heart of the Museum’s commitment to and continually evolving understanding of American art.

The new building provides an opportunity to revisit those many niches in which artists have expressed their visions. The historical romp through the decades provides enough material in each chapter to give the viewer a sense of time, place and reflection. The availability of docents on several floors adds to the organizational presentation of this pluralistic enterprise. Most of the works on exhibit can be seen at Whitney online.

Viewing an exhibit drawn from the images of individuals with AIDS; see the 2013 exhibit I, You, We

The presentation of social activism that runs through the Whitney Museum's exhibit reinforces the artist's ideology - for better or maybe, not.  Below, the Metropolitan Museum's China/Asia exhibit takes a more informed approach to the ideology of the times. (See discussion below.)

Room with 3 videos (left) / Christopher Wool / Untitled (Run Dog Run) (R) with photographer inside room shown at left

A place to view what fascinates the viewer

Jonathan Borofsky / Running People (on the wall) - and a place to relax and sit

Upending the Stereotype and Confronting the Academic: The Metropolitan Museum of Art's exhibit - China, Through the Looking Glass

The opening curatorial remarks in the wonderfully juxtaposition of Chinese antiquities and Western high-fashion designers confronts the facile condemnation of Orientalism. While national and ethnic stereotypes truncate our understanding and appreciation of other cultures, such stereotypes can be re-interpreted and played with -- as a commentary on way in which we fail to understand one another and, yet, the possibility of figuring out how to reconfigure the pathways behind these stereotypes. (Compare this approach to the Whitney Museum's presentation of art by social activists -- see above.)

As an undergraduate at Columbia College in the early 1960s, I enjoyed the class Edward Said taught on the works of Jonathan Swift. I lost track of Said's work and was surprised to find his book on Orientalism referenced at the beginning of the Met's China exhibit:  "Said interprets Orientalism as a Eurocentric worldview that essentializes [ie. narrow stereotype] Eastern peoples and cultures as a monolithic other." The curator's notes argue that this exhibit of juxtapositions provides a doorway into rethinking the West's encounter with the East - a more positive and flexible one.  As a cultural anthropologist who addresses such stereotypes in an introductory course, my personal view was that this pathway is a productive one for looking the "other" through a multi-faceted lens and realizing that we, too, are the "other."

Antiquity (left) versus high fashion (right)

The Metropolitan Museum China exhibit:  "The exhibition features more than 140 examples of haute couture and avant-garde ready-to-wear alongside Chinese art. Filmic representations of China are incorporated throughout to reveal how our visions of China are framed by narratives that draw upon popular culture, and also to recognize the importance of cinema as a medium through which to understand the richness of Chinese history."

I could not get the Buddha's image out of my mind (image on right)

One can't help but appreciate how an image of a spiritual force in a culture (Buddha) can be visualized in a multitude of ways without provoking anger and violence -- unlike the inability of other cultures to allow such visualizations.

New York Public Library: A novel way to reinvent a photographic collection
Most of the photographic exhibit is drawn from the large collection held by the New York Public Library. What brings additional life to the exhibit (beyond the historical materials) are two interactive exhibits: the first is the novel entryway where the attendees become part of a constantly changing framework seen in the large mirror hanging above (i am in the public eye); the second is an interactive display that aggregrates the activities on those who inhabit Broadway.

i am in the public eye (the text is in reverse on the floor and reversed when one looks into the mirror hanging above)

Depending on where one stands below - whether in the area framed by the mirror or off to the side - and where the attendees pass by below the mirror, there is an ever-changing composition with some looking up at the mirror, others wandering unawares below, some simply looking and others, like myself, captivated by the area seeking a novel place to photograph the composition.  That frame of mind is captured by the text on the floor.

On Broadway:  "The interactive installation ON BROADWAY represents life in the 21st century city through a compilation of images and data collected along the 13 miles of Broadway that span Manhattan. The result is a new type of city view, created from the activities of hundreds of thousands of people." On the left: a slice of the moving set of images with data flow represented in bands of color; on the right: by pressing the lower row of images, the upper portion enlarges to enlarge the set of images surrounding the individuals on the lower row.

The On Broadway exhibit seems to attract less attention likely as a result of the intense amount of information presented. Hopefully, this effort to capture sense of the environment (in this case, Broadway, NYC) is replicated in other places. I can imagine each city have an information map that says "You are here" and adjacent to finding where you are in the simplified map that we all need to orient ourselves in a new place is this blooming, buzzing organized data flow that is THIS city (ie. whatever city one is standing in) - an immediacy effect of experiencing where you are in digital data.

Juxtapositions of form and content:  Defining the human perspective at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts 

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts' collections range from archaeology and world cultures to the decorative arts to photography and design. The Museum boasts as having one of the first encyclopedic collections in North America. However, what struck me among the expected and usual fine art objects, were two items that bracketed my experience of walking the museum; these were startling in very different ways.

First was Tony Matelli's Old Enemy, New Victim. It seemed repugnant. And it was, and it is.

Matelli uses silicon and yak hair to create a hyper-realist act of violence. The artist says, "I am interested in culture, not nature." But, we might wonder, what is the difference? Is the only difference yak hair? 

Tony Matelli / Old Enemy, New Victim

On further reflection, I am less repelled by Matelli's sculpture when I consider fabulous paintings such as Judith Slaying Holofernes by Artemisia Gentileschi or images from antiquity such as the Death of Pentheus, torn apart by Bacchantes on the wall of the House of the Vettii in Pompeii. Then there are the horrors of real historical figures such as the 15th century Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia who impaled thousands of subjects. 

Is this Matelli's not-so-subtle message about humanity? Worthy of many a conversation.

Looking outside through glass art and glass window, looking out from the museum into the city

The Artist Prank: Butting heads with the walls that define art history

The Neue Gallerie showcases Gustav Klimt's painting, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (aka Woman in Gold). But travel upstairs and find the artist prank that preceded Marcel Duchamp's Fountain by about five years. 

Not as well known, and upstairs from the Klimt exhibition, is an equally interesting exhibition. The Neue juxtaposes German and Russian artists from the early 1900s: Russian Modernism: Cross-Currents of German and Russian Art, 1907-1917. I would have liked the Neue to have posted images from this exhibition online. (Other holdings are viewable online.)  Still, one of the curators' notes stays with me. The collaboration of Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov was a benchmark worth knowing. They formed a rejectionist (of Western art) group known as The Donkey's Tail. Here we find rebellion against the perceived confines of Western art. However, the thrust of the Russian pranksters appears to have been aimed at finding a truer Russian narrative in their paintings rather than to question the very notions of art as set out by the Dada-ists, the readymades and singular Fountain of Marcel Duchamp several years later.

Note about the Donkey's Tail from InCoRM:  “The name, “The Donkey’s Tail”, derived from a famous Parisian hoax in which the art critic, Roland Dorgelès and Fréderic Gérard, proprietor of the Montmartre café, Le Lapin Agile, had painted a lurid red and blue seascape by tying a paintbrush to a donkey’s tail. The work was exhibited as Sunset Over the Adriatic under the name of Joachim Raphale Baronali at the Salon des Indépendants of 1905 apparently without comment. In 1910, Ilia Repin recounted the incident of the donkey’s tail in his review of Izdebsky’s International Exhibition and used the term as a critical epithet for the modernist work on show. Shortly afterwards, the Russian press satirized the Knave of Diamonds exhibition by publishing a cartoon of a donkey painting with its tail, with the cynical caption: “Off home already after looking round just one hall. Don’t be shy. Get your sixty kopeks worth and next year come again. Then we will change the name and under the sign of ‘the Donkey’s Tail’ we will show you the way we paint our pictures.” In adopting this name for his group, Larionov beat the critics with their own stick.”

What with all the fanfare about artist pranks, we are reminded of how artists continue to chafe against the prevailing normative styles. Even Gustav Klimt took issue with the then prevailing perspective of Historicism and his joining forces with the Vienna Secessionist group: "Secession artists were concerned .  .  .  with exploring the possibilities of art outside the confines of academic tradition. They hoped to create a new style that owed nothing to historical influence."

Since we are all embedded in history, and we stand on the shoulders of those who come before us, we might ask why pranks and why rebellions? Is it that the guards at the gates of social institutions (galleries, museums, libraries, auction houses) play a dual role? To celebrate and curate the artistic literacy of the past and contemporary favored few AND to weed out the noise: that's reason enough for pranks and rebellions.

At the Neue Gallery: No, that's not the REAL Woman in Gold, that's upstairs where no photos are allowed

The museum travelogue ends; what's left for the artist to do?

I'll pass on recipes for commercial success, getting known (marketing), and becoming the next Klimt, Picasso, Warhol or the next child wonder. I'll also pass on the cliches of finding one's inner artist or the center of true artistic beingness. We all do these things, myself included.

Instead, I am amazed at all the places I visited and what I discovered (re-discovered) for myself. These are illustrations of the artist wormholes that remind us of the unfolding adventures still left to explore. 

Make voyages! Attempt them... there's nothing else. Tennessee Williams