November 28, 2007
claustrophobia meets agoraphobia
Urs Fischer has reduced Gavin Brown’s Enterprise to a hole in the ground, and it is one of the most splendid things to have happened in a New York gallery in a while. Experientially rich, buzzing with energy and entropy, crammed with chaos and contradiction, and topped off with the saga of subversion that is central both to the history of the empty-gallery-as-a-work-of-art but also to the Gavin Brown experience itself, this work is brimming with meaning and mojo. It was also a Herculean project.A 38-foot-by-30-foot crater, eight feet deep, extends almost to the walls of the gallery, surrounded by a fourteen-inch ledge of concrete floor. A sign at the door cautions, THE INSTALLATION IS PHYSICALLY DANGEROUS AND INHERENTLY INVOLVES THE RISK OF SERIOUS INJURY OR DEATH; intrepid viewers can, all the same, inch their way around the hole.
more from New York Magazine here.
Posted by Morgan Meis at 09:52 AM | Permalink
Comments
At the risk of coming off like a philistine, I've seen excavated pits before, some of them indoors; and many more costly than $250,000 bucks.
I've spent many years in the construction trades and I can tell you there is art in everything, including piles of 2x10s dumped inelegantly off the back of a 40' flatbed and complex arrangements of bent rebar waiting for a deluge of concrete, as well as excavated holes. As a matter of fact the art I've experienced looking up from the bottom of a 12' deep cellar hole looks exactly like Urs Fischer's work. If art is the mundane viewed from another angle the hole in Brown's gallery makes the grade (no pun intended).
What we're seeing here is is not extraordinary, what's extraordinary is that something so ordinary becomes art. What it tells us is how far urbaned and suburbaned humanity is removed from the nitty-gritty of how things come to be. Just as milk doesn't originate in the cooler of a supermarket, earthwork holes don't spring from the mind of an artist to be viewed in a gallery. But, being insulated from the smell and sweat of life in the glitz and glamor of our more sophisticated lives, we don't ever see the low beauty that exists everywhere we look. No, we must look for it in more elite surroundings.
That's probably Fischer's point.
Posted by: Jim C | Nov 28, 2007 11:48:34 AM
I want this hole! My hedge fund is doing pretty well and I just got my million dollar bonus, so I am willing to bid 2 million for this. My friends will be so envious! Problem: will it fit in my East Hampton living room?
Posted by: Jared | Nov 28, 2007 12:02:47 PM
Total agreement, Jim C. One thing I mind about installations like this is the presumption they make that we are desensitized to seeing what is remarkable in the course of a day -- the three lollipop sticks fallen on the sidewalk a certain way, the earthworks wrought by a back-hoe on an entirely other mission, the shift in light that changes everything. Many people routinely do look and stop for these things, and think about them. So that when the art world tweaks us as if we didn't, it generates a yawn.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Nov 28, 2007 12:03:49 PM
Hey my dad, a road foreman, is an artist too!
Someone pay him $250,000 x 1000!
Posted by: beajerry | Nov 28, 2007 12:59:17 PM
Now if they would just put all the faux artists into this hole and cover it up....
Posted by: Jared | Nov 28, 2007 2:37:09 PM
As the Animals said, "...I'm just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood."
I'm not saying Urs Fischer is not an artist, or is a faux artist, or that his work is not art. In fact, if an artist is in the business of taking what he finds and presenting it freshly for new consideration, his hole in the ground (as I said) makes the grade.
My point is that, as reality appreciators, we've drifted so far from the essentials of the ordinary world and what's beautiful or striking in it, that we need someone like Urs to dig a big hole in an art gallery to make it possible for us to see what we've looked at a thousand times before but have never seen.
He must be a Buddhist.
Posted by: Jim C | Nov 28, 2007 4:06:05 PM
Like Jared, When I saw this review over the weekend I initially thought how jealous my Hamptons neighbors would be to see this installed in my foyer.
How much better though, to put it in the Park Ave penthouse! I never did much like the downstairs neighbors anyway.
Posted by: Carlos | Nov 28, 2007 4:41:20 PM
Jim C., although I think I did misunderstand you -- poor Animal! -- I'm not saying this is faux art or bad art either, just that if it's predicated on the artist's assumption that people generally don't tune in, and that making this kind of art galleriable can catalyze an awareness that's MIA'd somewhere, then that's rather...tired. In high contrast, please consider the art of Rachel Whiteread, whose simple and brilliant idea of casting space -- the space under chairs, the space around books in bookcases, the space inside a closed room, etc. -- really does create a new awareness of space, something we thought we'd given thought to, but to which Whiteread gave form.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Nov 28, 2007 5:02:43 PM
When I washed the dishes this evening the soap made a clever little pattern on the plates before the water carried it away. The effect of a kitchen sink with soapy dishes would be very striking in an art gallery. Someone should try it. Oh, and vacuum cleaners in a kitchen closet? Like a Monet, they are.
How does one get into this art gig? Seems like a pleasant enough way of making a living.
Posted by: D | Nov 28, 2007 5:18:21 PM
Elatia,
Who knows what Urs predicated? Regardless, never having heard of Rachael (poor animal that I am), I took your lead and did a quick google. I see what you mean.
As a college student I remember having profound discussions with artsy peers asking such questions as, "What is art?" as if those questions had answers. Now I realize that the function of the question is the question. Ask enough questions about stuff like art (or religion) and you get more questions.
When confronted with any art the most satisfying response is a question. "What's Urs doing?" Beyond that is science.
Staring at Vincent's Starry Night you don't ask questions about hydrogen and helium. Hopefully not, at least.
Posted by: Jim | Nov 28, 2007 6:31:29 PM
For the sake of clarity, may be we should shift the discussion to the "Eye of the Beholder" premise rather than try to define what "art" is which as Jim says, is as slippery as religion to pin down. More than a year ago I had a protracted argument on this matter on my own blog with a reader (who happily became a co-blogger later). He had objected precisely on these grounds - art vs technical/ utilitarian enterprise. Part of what I said was the following:
"I don't think that I would go as far as to say that a scientific protocol or treatise is "as much" art as say, a poem or a painting. I recognize the distinct mental processes and creative objectives by which they were arrived at. What I am asserting however, is that "all" of them are capable of triggering identical "aesthetic" reactions in different people. That feeling can loosely be described as "my heart with pleasure fills" - as may be the case with either Wordsworth or a botanist stumbling upon a hillside full of daffodils. The elation in both cases has its roots in the fact that each observed and understood something beautiful. I am drawing a parallel between the "aesthetic" response rather than in confusing one discipline with the other where that response is going to lead each practioner to a disparate pursuit - to poetry or a scientific paper.
I had once participated in a heated discussion about the "artness" of Christo & Jeanne Claude's "The Gates" in New York's Central Park. To me, the installation evoked pleasant images from my childhood in India - of saffron banners flying over Hindu and Buddhist monasteries and of miles and miles of colorful billowing laundry that used to dry on the banks of the river on sunny days (hung there by Delhi's washermen and women). Another person on the other hand, was made uncomfortable by the color orange. It reminded him of traffic cones, "do not enter" tapes and other such obstructive objects, although orange was his favorite color!
Let's take Christo's Gates once again. Suppose I was a stranger to the world of Christo and had arrived in NYC on a cold fall day and chanced upon those orange gates. Not knowing if it was an artist or an artisan who had erected those structures, would they have evoked the same images in my mind of monasteries and billowing laundry? Certainly. And that's my point. Not that Christo and the construction worker have the same "motivation" (one artistic, another mechanical) in creating the gates but that their "creations" can have the same impact on my brain."
My rule of thumb in "understanding" art is that I don't let mavens tell me what amounts to art. Moreover, whether we appreciate fine arts or mere kitsch, doesn't make us better or less worthy human beings. I am with this guy on this one.
And Jim, it is perfectly alright to think of Helium and Hydrogen while viewing the Starry Night and this particular installation is just a "Hole In The Ground" as far as I can see.
Posted by: Ruchira | Nov 28, 2007 8:29:44 PM
You have something there Ruchira. I get your point. To think helium and hydrogen instead of something else is not only ok when gandering at Vincent's Starry Night, but it's to be expected. But is the art in the name whatever-it-is is given, or in how it affects a person and what he does with it?
Some people find their beauty and art in numbers. Others in colors. But are they just names for different views of the same thing?
Posted by: Jim | Nov 28, 2007 9:21:11 PM
Well. I enjoyed the Gates. I also observed how many more millions of people were drawn into the park while it was there. That was interesting. If they had been strung down 6th the effect might have been much different. I also, in my minds eye, know what you mean about your references to saffron banners, monasteries, and billowing laundry along the river, even though I have never been to India. Christo did something rather grand this time out.
The hole in the ground? A bit more than that. A reality warping hole in the ground perhaps. Surely you all can see that, that it is the violation of clean display space that is the display? That making you force your way in, only to find "out" in there is the thing?
I don't know that I like it much either, but it is a thought. We'll see after they move it up to my pad on 73rd.
Posted by: Carlos | Nov 28, 2007 9:21:21 PM
Thanks, Ruchira -- that was a very interesting excerpt from The Accidental Blogger, one of many, many reasons for making a visit to it.
I actually did happen onto one of Christo's works without forewarning. I was a schoolgirl in Rome, and he'd wrapped the entrance to the Borghese Gardens that gives off the Piazza del Popolo. I just assumed it was another Italian monument in the course of restoration. "No, wait --," a bystander said. "It has to be art." This was so long ago that no one necessarily knew who Christo was. Now, of course, all deeply swaddled construction sites look like Christo installations.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Nov 28, 2007 9:44:11 PM
I wonder how they got to $250,000. That's a huge amount of money for that little excavation.
Of course I guess that cost helps sets a floor on value so there is a good incentive to puff it up.
Posted by: Dave Sucher | Nov 28, 2007 11:30:19 PM
A bit of misdirection. Not quite an excavation. New York buildings all have basements after all. It's just a hole in the floor and the cellar filled with artful dirt.
No Art Museum would risk having indian artifacts discovered on their land and risk being reclassified as a Natural History museum. That would be no fun at all.
Posted by: Carlos | Nov 29, 2007 7:06:23 AM
I agree with Carlos that it does matter very much how and where (Central Park vs 6th street) art is presented - particularly true for abstract and installation art.
I once spent roughly ten minutes inside Houston's famous Rothko Chapel. They were among some of the most joyless minutes of my life. Large dull black canvases stare at you from all sides. A child one suspects, surely could have made them but probably would have thought better of it.
I did not need ten minutes to decide what I thought of the paintings. (The chapel itself is serene and pleasant) But my friend kept me there. She did not want to be seen as an "art yokel" by leaving in an unseemly hurry from the presence of what experts have told us is sublime, deep art. Later she admitted that none of Rothko's paintings would have elicited a second glance from her if she had encountered them in a flea market or a garage sale.
Posted by: Ruchira | Nov 29, 2007 11:44:54 AM
I was once nearly thrown out of the Met for putting my nose right up to a Vermeer so I could "watch" his brushstrokes (it's not my fault he used such small brushes and my hands were behind my back, but I guess the guard was afraid I was about to bite it or something).
Would it be worth it to tweak the exalted sensitivities of the non-yokels somewhere like the Rothko Chapel by pretending such a level of inspection? Probably not, but my favorite Pollock, whom I love, is nevertheless by Rockwell.
Posted by: Carlos | Nov 29, 2007 12:26:50 PM
Carlos:
May be the guard was afraid that in the throes of passion you were going to do this to the Vermeer.
It is indeed surprising how small Vermeer paintings are.
Posted by: Ruchira | Nov 29, 2007 12:40:44 PM
"The plain white canvas... valued at 2 million."
My guess is we won't know for sure how much the "painting," valued by the Judge at $2,196.50, is really worth until the jury at the civil suit appraises it.
I have a couple of scaled down reproductions of this masterpiece in my storeroom if anyone is interested.
Posted by: Carlos | Nov 29, 2007 2:52:47 PM
Not every oral worshiper of art wears lip-gloss or gets arrested.
Decades ago, I was a young painter in Paris visiting the Musee Delacroix -- his loft studio in the Place Furstemberg that used to look very much as if he'd just left it after a real tidy-up. His palette, for instance -- now under glass -- once lay casually on the painting table, the pigments dried in alluring little dabs of vermilion, Naples yellow, and flake white. There was nothing for me to do but kneel slightly and lick it. The guard saw me. I gave him a look both sheepish and defiant. He understood.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Nov 29, 2007 3:56:15 PM
For the sake of clarity, may be we should shift the discussion to the "Eye of the Beholder" premise rather than try to define what "art" is which as Jim says, is as slippery as religion to pin down. More than a year ago I had a protracted argument on this matter on my own blog with a reader (who happily became a co-blogger later). He had objected precisely on these grounds - art vs technical/ utilitarian enterprise. Part of what I said was the following:
"I don't think that I would go as far as to say that a scientific protocol or treatise is "as much" art as say, a poem or a painting. I recognize the distinct mental processes and creative objectives by which they were arrived at. What I am asserting however, is that "all" of them are capable of triggering identical "aesthetic" reactions in different people. That feeling can loosely be described as "my heart with pleasure fills" - as may be the case with either Wordsworth or a botanist stumbling upon a hillside full of daffodils. The elation in both cases has its roots in the fact that each observed and understood something beautiful. I am drawing a parallel between the "aesthetic" response rather than in confusing one discipline with the other where that response is going to lead each practioner to a disparate pursuit - to poetry or a scientific paper.
I had once participated in a heated discussion about the "artness" of Christo & Jeanne Claude's "The Gates" in New York's Central Park. To me, the installation evoked pleasant images from my childhood in India - of saffron banners flying over Hindu and Buddhist monasteries and of miles and miles of colorful billowing laundry that used to dry on the banks of the river on sunny days (hung there by Delhi's washermen and women). Another person on the other hand, was made uncomfortable by the color orange. It reminded him of traffic cones, "do not enter" tapes and other such obstructive objects, although orange was his favorite color!
Let's take Christo's Gates once again. Suppose I was a stranger to the world of Christo and had arrived in NYC on a cold fall day and chanced upon those orange gates. Not knowing if it was an artist or an artisan who had erected those structures, would they have evoked the same images in my mind of monasteries and billowing laundry? Certainly. And that's my point. Not that Christo and the construction worker have the same "motivation" (one artistic, another mechanical) in creating the gates but that their "creations" can have the same impact on my brain."
My rule of thumb in "understanding" art is that I don't let mavens tell me what amounts to art. Moreover, whether we appreciate fine arts or mere kitsch, doesn't make us better or less worthy human beings. I am with this guy on this one.
And Jim, it is perfectly alright to think of Helium and Hydrogen while viewing the Starry Night and this particular installation is just a "Hole In The Ground" as far as I can see.
http://streetball.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=29182 buy discount cialis online
Posted by: zloy | Mar 15, 2008 12:21:57 AM
Post a comment