Display Patterns at the Met

Gary Tinterow. Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art (via).

Here’s another report on a DeFINE Art lecture, Gary Tinterow on “Building the Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.” Tinterow is the Engelhard Curator in Charge of the new Department of Nineteenth-Century, Modern, and Contemporary Art. His voice sounds remarkably like John Malkovich’s, but without the arrogance.

It’s interesting to hear how a museum established in 1870 carries out the mission of the founding members. Each slide presented a capsule of the collection’s evolution through time. The early galleries featured elaborately framed paintings stacked like puzzle pieces in salon-style displays, as seen in the homes of New York collectors in the 19th century—framing choices reflect their personal tastes. Tinterow says, “filling in the gaps between collections… is what we do at The Met.” It is apparent that curating is seeing relationships between the works. Today, the modern paintings are organized by artists’ rooms, but a glimpse through the doorway connects to another piece related to and honoring the collector/donor.

Tinterow describes the early history of the museum as a repository for the community’s interest in European art. Only recently has it started acquiring the works of living contemporary artists. Some work is too expensive to purchase with limited budgets. Damien Hirst’s The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, for instance, was merely on loan for three years. He notes that borrowing is another way of displaying contemporary art if the funds aren’t available. Besides collectors’ bequeaths, The Met believes that deaccessioning funds allow for new purchases to fill in the gaps for a well-rounded collection. There is controversy surrounding deaccessioning, so the museum looks to this option only if the donor allows it.

Kara Walker at the Met: After the Deluge, installation view, 2006.

In recent years, Tinterow has invited artists such as Kara Walker to interpret the collection. Additionally, the rooftop provides a unique space for displaying and viewing contemporary art like the work of Jeff Koons, which Tinterow says is “appealing to the public.” As a curator, he focuses on the museum’s display patterns. It is clear that his curatorial practice considers that the collection is connected by place—whether to the artist, the work, the collector, or where it was made. One thing that struck me was the frequent comparison to the MoMA’s practices. There is a competitive tension between the two institutions that is worth looking into as a footnote.

While this is a nitpick, I found it surprising that Tinterow used the artist’s name in plural form to describe the number of works in the museum’s collection. Art historian Thomas Crow believes that this act does an injustice to the work. In The Intelligence of Art, Crow writes:

The simplest act of substitution is to put the name of a maker in the place of his or her work, which amounts to a paraphrase in itself … All paraphrase sets aside the original: To put the name in place of the painting is to remove it from immediate consciousness; to narrate the life of an individual is an act profoundly different from looking into a painting and one that cannot be conducted simultaneously with it. To substitute a temporal narrative, already present in a name, for the physical work of art is to give up those features of the thing that were transient and unrepeatable, bound to a moment that is irrevocably ended.

On the other hand, the lecture was directed towards Savannah’s art community, which is comprised of students, professors, and locals. Paraphrasing - though it is derogatory - is simply a way to communicate with the public.

In closing, I’m so glad I attended the lecture because it was a completely different historical and curatorial perspective of The Met than I am familiar with. Even my professor, Alexandria Pierce, was surprised because she couldn’t find an in-depth history of the material. Every tidbit of antiquity left his lips with a slight smile of passion. I wish the images from the slideshow were accessible because I would like to illustrate these points. Afterward, I very much wanted to wander the galleries again! But I’m still waiting for the accessibility of teleportation.

P.S. It’s worth reading a two-part interview with Tinterow (part 1, part 2) by ArtInfo’s Jason Edward Kaufman.

Belief or Agnosticism in Art

Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917.

Sarah Thornton came to Savannah this week for SCAD’s DeFINE Art program to speak about her book Seven Days in the Art World. Before taking the stage, she wore a sleek microphone-headset and either forgot or didn’t realize it was on when she burst into a cackle at the Dean of Fine Arts’ humored introduction. Needless to say, it broke the ice with the audience.

Her lecture presented research on the varying degrees of belief for contemporary art as you move through the art world. According to Thornton, the definition depends upon whether or not Duchamp’s urinal is considered to be art. It changes from person to person. As a sociologist, her perspective is that the art world is not a system but rather “squabbling subcultures.” The ideologies of each institution, therefore, shape the rules of the game.

Though the book was published in 2008, the material reflects seven days in 2006. Thornton since acknowledges a global acceleration in this elite world. Her latest research is a result of her afterthoughts specifically about artists and the art market. She’s interested in the artist’s personas and highlighting various taboos. For example, a quirky anecdote explains how she wandered Los Angeles asking the question, “What is an artist?” Apparently, the answer to this question is simple. But Thornton wants to investigate the margins of persona and authenticity, and what this means. So far she’s found that visits to an artist’s studio frequently produce rehearsed performances—every artist has a pitch.

As the chief art writer for The Economist, some new topics of interest include: globalization of the belief in art in the Middle East and India (or the political economy of art); border crossing in artwork and in practice (Francis Alÿs / Kehinde Wiley); mapping artistic personas such as Jeff Koons or Ai Weiwei (varying degrees of narcissism in artists); gendered authenticities (Laurie Simmons / Lorna Simpson); and activism and ambition (Kelly Poe / Christian Marclay). Interestingly, her definitions of these topics is very different than I perceive. I consider border crossing in disciplines such as art and science, whereas Thornton observes literal leaps across cultural and global divides. Another example is her use of the word ambition with Christian Marclay’s The Clock, which features an appropriation of time-telling in 24 hours from movie clips. I consider this obsession.

Jeff Koons’ Heaven series work.

A brief mention of Koons warrants the desire to know more, but she limits her information by saying he’s “one of the most slippery characters I’ve ever interviewed.” No surprise there. Switching slides to the image above, Thornton points out “dirty Jeff on top” and the obvious differences in muscular bulk from the photo to the sculpture. He evidently builds a platform for his work by acting mysterious. Whatever the act may be, I see Koons as a stock trader.

Does she consider herself a critic, historian, or a sociologist? First and foremost, a sociologist. She doesn’t write art reviews or talk about the work, but rather the people and what they’re interested in. Will her ethnographic archive ever be published? No, but the curious student is welcome to contact her. What is her interview process? Access is important. It’s all about getting people to feel comfortable. An offer of commonality loosens the atmosphere.

Finally, she ends by declaring contemporary art evokes two emotions: belief or agnosticism. Inspiration or anger. A final (and presumably cheesy) question: what makes a good artist? Thornton responds, “the one who doesn’t feel bitter.” And the lecture concludes.

Jonah Lehrer: How We Decide

Tonight I experienced a major Aha! moment, a breakthrough in validating my thesis topic. This was all made possible by listening to Jonah Lehrer deliver a lecture on decision making at SCAD. He presented material from his latest book How We Decide, which explains how exactly our mind intuitively decides. I haven’t read it (yet), but Lehrer’s first book Proust Was a Neuroscientist was in my stack of initial thesis research. So I was surprised to see his name on the college events calendar. Had I not checked my student email message on Monday, I would have missed it.

Thankfully, and as a result of just listening to what he was saying, I was able to cement my idea(s). Lehrer gave six reasons, each with anecdotes, to formulate good decision making. It’s because of this that I decided my thesis topic already existed. But rather than let it happen naturally, I put too much stress on myself to find a starting point. What an epiphany! Here’s his advice in a nutshell:

1. Be an outsider. Think outside the familiar. 2. Learn to relax. Let your mind figure it out. 3. Make friends lots of different people. Rage against the self-similarity principle. 4. Don’t eat the marshmallow. 5. Learn how to allocate your attention. Harness your mind. 6. Nurture your talents. (Self-explanatory.)

My excitement for this is overwhelming. I feel ready and fully-equipped to trust my brain, start researching full-on and write my thesis proposal by the end of the quarter, which I need to do anyway in order to register for it. Phew. Big sigh of relief.

If you’re interested, the lecture can be seen in its entirety at FORA.tv (previously recorded in January 2010 in Palo Alto, California). I highly recommend watching this or reading the book. Maybe it will lead to your own Aha!

In Response to Alfredo Jaar’s “It Is Difficult” Lecture Alfredo Jaar began his lecture at SCAD by claiming to have “one foot in the art world and one foot out.”1 With over sixty community-based works worldwide, he strives to link the art world with the real world through, what he calls, public interventions. The world-renowned artist has a single mission: to engage communities in a dialogue. To do this, he combines conceptual art and performance art in the form of public interventions, which protest many terrible events happening around the globe. Each public intervention is the end-product of an investigative journey into a critical issue that the international community neglects to acknowledge including genocide, homelessness, famine, immigration and so on. Often times, these projects span over several years of research and include multiple trips. Such is the case of his most profound work from 1994 to 2000, The Rwanda Project, which resulted from witnessing the genocide in Rwanda firsthand. Jaar describes his art as his sole response to a “lived experience.”2 He explains, “There is no way to translate what I see into an artwork. It is absolutely impossible. The challenge is enormous and it forces me to come up with different strategies of representation.”3 A great deal of his process is problem solving how best to communicate a specific idea in each piece. Consequently, Alfredo Jaar has the responsibility of clarity and, in turn, he believes that because of this commitment, all of his projects fail.4 One specific failure is Requiem for Leipzig, a project in 2005 that took place in an abandoned church in what was once East Germany during the era of the Berlin Wall. Requiem for Leipzig is not an acclaimed piece of Alfredo Jaar’s. It is uniquely disconnected from his body of work due to the lack of visual language and imagery. Instead, Requiem for Leipzig relies on the language of music—to be precise, the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, a native of Leipzig. Fig. 1. Leipzig, a city in disrepair. Fig. 2. The exterior of the abandoned church. Fig. 3. St. Nicholas Cathedral on the other side of Leipzig. Jaar was invited by the community to create a project on the poor conditions of Leipzig, a city in shambles (Fig. 1), which lacks funding from the state for its upkeep. After accepting the project and visiting the city, Jaar discovered an abandoned church (Fig 2.) and chose to use it in the project to reflect the immaculate St. Nicholas Cathedral (Fig. 3), a staple of beauty and significance on the other side of Leipzig. Rather than focus on the apparent demise of the city, Jaar centered the project on the massive chandelier within the abandoned church (Fig. 4). The public was then invited to sit in the church and witness the descending chandelier as it slowly illuminated the space while Bach’s music climaxed for a dramatic effect (Fig. 5). At its peak, the chandelier would reverse and return to the ceiling darkening the church once again as Bach’s music faded away. (This is a similar technique to his work with light where he gradually enhances the light in a space to blind and disorient the audience to submerge them in the experience of the subject matter.) Jaar had hoped that the audience would engage in a dialogue during the lowering of the chandelier, but the audience was instead silent. The dialogue only sparked after the participants left the core of the dilapidated church. Fig. 4. A detail of the chandelier used in Requiem for Leipzig. Fig. 5. The audience during one of the performances. In 1995, Hal Foster criticized the artist that created work with the purpose of educating the viewer on different cultures and global problems. Foster questioned the role of the artist as ethnographer in contemporary art making a case that, “…despite the best intentions of the artist, only limited engagement of the sited other is effected. Almost naturally the focus wanders from collaborative investigation to “ethnographic self-fashioning,” in which the artist is not decentered so much as the other is fashioned in artistic guise.”5 In that capacity, the effect of Requiem for Leipzig is indeed an unintentional failure. While Alfredo Jaar tirelessly researched the city’s history to develop a concept for the project, he responded mostly to the rundown church as a symbol of the differences between East and West Germany. Jaar’s work distinctly addresses both the community of the culture he is researching as well as the gallery audience in the United States. Typically, such a concept would fall short for the removed audience, or the spectators, because meaning is difficult to replicate when it is out of context. The situation is reversed with Requiem for Leipzig; the use of the church and Bach’s music prevents the clarity of the concept. The piece fails in the eyes and minds of the participants from the Leipzig community because they are focused on the experience evoked rather than the immediate issue at hand. Requiem for Leipzig is meaningful, but the magnitude of the backstory is lost to the audience. While Alfredo Jaar intended to illuminate the death of the city, the audience’s experience conquers the significance because of the power of the music and the physical site of the church. Ironically, the only signifier is the title itself, as requiem is a song for the dead. Furthermore, meaning is hard to replicate in an auditorium far from the experience of the original location—especially in the Arnold Hall auditorium. The most crucial element of his work is not merely the subject matter or the politically charged message of human rights issues and ethics, but the importance of critical thinking—for both the artist and the viewer. In essence, he is his own nonprofit organization providing a service and a voice for the people of each selected community. Therefore, Jaar’s work is more activist and advocacy art than it is a public intervention. So is the terminology of public intervention always appropriate for Alfredo Jaar’s work? The projects he undertakes are a more subtle form of protest than an open forum. Dialogue is definitely a spin-off resulting from his projects, but sometimes the meaning is more complex and hidden in straightforwardness and it takes time to truly analyze and respond appropriately. The experience of Alfredo Jaar’s work ultimately relies on reflection in the process of perceiving and understanding. Furthermore, what Alfredo Jaar believes is transparent and clear, the viewer might have difficulty finding a connection. While Alfredo Jaar’s projects may fail in the sense of communicating an intended idea or experience, his projects must exist in today’s global society. Our visual culture is on overload and autopilot, so much that society no longer responds to photojournalism alone. The contemporary artist now carries the torch of communicating and responding to the world around us. Jaar has the unique ability to examine the world and ignite a chain reaction of empathy that compels an audience to think beyond borders, ethnicities, cultures and crises. All images © Alfredo Jaar. Endnotes: 1. Alfredo Jaar, “It Is Difficult: Recent Projects” (lecture, Georgia, Savannah, March 29, 2010). 2. Patricia C. Phillips, “The Aesthetics of Witnessing: A Conversation with Alfredo Jaar,” Art Journal 64, no. 3 (Fall 2005): pg. 14, http://www.janetzweig.com/RISDPDFPUBLICART/Jaar.pdf (accessed April 5, 2010). 3. Phillips, 14. 4. Ibid, 15. 5. Hal Foster, “The Artist as Ethnographer?” in The Traffic in Culture: Refiguring Art and Anthropology, ed. George E. Marcus and Fred R. Myers (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 306.
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In Response to Alfredo Jaar’s “It Is Difficult” Lecture

Alfredo Jaar began his lecture at SCAD by claiming to have “one foot in the art world and one foot out.”1 With over sixty community-based works worldwide, he strives to link the art world with the real world through, what he calls, public interventions. The world-renowned artist has a single mission: to engage communities in a dialogue. To do this, he combines conceptual art and performance art in the form of public interventions, which protest many terrible events happening around the globe. Each public intervention is the end-product of an investigative journey into a critical issue that the international community neglects to acknowledge including genocide, homelessness, famine, immigration and so on. Often times, these projects span over several years of research and include multiple trips. Such is the case of his most profound work from 1994 to 2000, The Rwanda Project, which resulted from witnessing the genocide in Rwanda firsthand.

Jaar describes his art as his sole response to a “lived experience.”2 He explains, “There is no way to translate what I see into an artwork. It is absolutely impossible. The challenge is enormous and it forces me to come up with different strategies of representation.”3 A great deal of his process is problem solving how best to communicate a specific idea in each piece. Consequently, Alfredo Jaar has the responsibility of clarity and, in turn, he believes that because of this commitment, all of his projects fail.4

One specific failure is Requiem for Leipzig, a project in 2005 that took place in an abandoned church in what was once East Germany during the era of the Berlin Wall. Requiem for Leipzig is not an acclaimed piece of Alfredo Jaar’s. It is uniquely disconnected from his body of work due to the lack of visual language and imagery. Instead, Requiem for Leipzig relies on the language of music—to be precise, the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, a native of Leipzig.

Fig. 1. Leipzig, a city in disrepair.

Fig. 2. The exterior of the abandoned church.

Fig. 3. St. Nicholas Cathedral on the other side of Leipzig.

Jaar was invited by the community to create a project on the poor conditions of Leipzig, a city in shambles (Fig. 1), which lacks funding from the state for its upkeep. After accepting the project and visiting the city, Jaar discovered an abandoned church (Fig 2.) and chose to use it in the project to reflect the immaculate St. Nicholas Cathedral (Fig. 3), a staple of beauty and significance on the other side of Leipzig. Rather than focus on the apparent demise of the city, Jaar centered the project on the massive chandelier within the abandoned church (Fig. 4). The public was then invited to sit in the church and witness the descending chandelier as it slowly illuminated the space while Bach’s music climaxed for a dramatic effect (Fig. 5). At its peak, the chandelier would reverse and return to the ceiling darkening the church once again as Bach’s music faded away. (This is a similar technique to his work with light where he gradually enhances the light in a space to blind and disorient the audience to submerge them in the experience of the subject matter.) Jaar had hoped that the audience would engage in a dialogue during the lowering of the chandelier, but the audience was instead silent. The dialogue only sparked after the participants left the core of the dilapidated church.

Fig. 4. A detail of the chandelier used in Requiem for Leipzig.

Fig. 5. The audience during one of the performances.

In 1995, Hal Foster criticized the artist that created work with the purpose of educating the viewer on different cultures and global problems. Foster questioned the role of the artist as ethnographer in contemporary art making a case that, “…despite the best intentions of the artist, only limited engagement of the sited other is effected. Almost naturally the focus wanders from collaborative investigation to “ethnographic self-fashioning,” in which the artist is not decentered so much as the other is fashioned in artistic guise.”5 In that capacity, the effect of Requiem for Leipzig is indeed an unintentional failure.

While Alfredo Jaar tirelessly researched the city’s history to develop a concept for the project, he responded mostly to the rundown church as a symbol of the differences between East and West Germany. Jaar’s work distinctly addresses both the community of the culture he is researching as well as the gallery audience in the United States. Typically, such a concept would fall short for the removed audience, or the spectators, because meaning is difficult to replicate when it is out of context. The situation is reversed with Requiem for Leipzig; the use of the church and Bach’s music prevents the clarity of the concept. The piece fails in the eyes and minds of the participants from the Leipzig community because they are focused on the experience evoked rather than the immediate issue at hand.

Requiem for Leipzig is meaningful, but the magnitude of the backstory is lost to the audience. While Alfredo Jaar intended to illuminate the death of the city, the audience’s experience conquers the significance because of the power of the music and the physical site of the church. Ironically, the only signifier is the title itself, as requiem is a song for the dead. Furthermore, meaning is hard to replicate in an auditorium far from the experience of the original location—especially in the Arnold Hall auditorium.

The most crucial element of his work is not merely the subject matter or the politically charged message of human rights issues and ethics, but the importance of critical thinking—for both the artist and the viewer. In essence, he is his own nonprofit organization providing a service and a voice for the people of each selected community. Therefore, Jaar’s work is more activist and advocacy art than it is a public intervention. So is the terminology of public intervention always appropriate for Alfredo Jaar’s work? The projects he undertakes are a more subtle form of protest than an open forum. Dialogue is definitely a spin-off resulting from his projects, but sometimes the meaning is more complex and hidden in straightforwardness and it takes time to truly analyze and respond appropriately. The experience of Alfredo Jaar’s work ultimately relies on reflection in the process of perceiving and understanding. Furthermore, what Alfredo Jaar believes is transparent and clear, the viewer might have difficulty finding a connection.

While Alfredo Jaar’s projects may fail in the sense of communicating an intended idea or experience, his projects must exist in today’s global society. Our visual culture is on overload and autopilot, so much that society no longer responds to photojournalism alone. The contemporary artist now carries the torch of communicating and responding to the world around us. Jaar has the unique ability to examine the world and ignite a chain reaction of empathy that compels an audience to think beyond borders, ethnicities, cultures and crises.

All images © Alfredo Jaar.

Endnotes:
1. Alfredo Jaar, “It Is Difficult: Recent Projects” (lecture, Georgia, Savannah, March 29, 2010).
2. Patricia C. Phillips, “The Aesthetics of Witnessing: A Conversation with Alfredo Jaar,” Art Journal 64, no. 3 (Fall 2005): pg. 14, http://www.janetzweig.com/RISDPDFPUBLICART/Jaar.pdf (accessed April 5, 2010).
3. Phillips, 14.
4. Ibid, 15.
5. Hal Foster, “The Artist as Ethnographer?” in The Traffic in Culture: Refiguring Art and Anthropology, ed. George E. Marcus and Fred R. Myers (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 306.

Chris Anderson: Atoms Are the New Bits As soon as the clock hit 7:30p tonight, I bolted from class. I rode to the Trustees Theater to hear Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine, present his “Atoms are the New Bits” lecture. Anderson wrote the article for the February issue of Wired (read the article here). The article presents the new industrial revolution of manufacturing your ideas - from conception through completion - through use of the internet. Anderson made several points. In essence, this is what I took from the lecture: 1. Tap into the DIY spirit 2. Align yourself with the culture of the community 3. Create an ecosystem of creators 4. Don’t ask for advice, just do it 5. Geek innovation, great hats, and Google PhDs Also, the idea that educational institutions are in place to teach you how to learn—not to teach you skills and techniques. The rest is just finding the tools and applying it. What a breath of fresh air. It’s great to hear encouragement for creative communities reaching their ultimate potential.
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Chris Anderson: Atoms Are the New Bits

As soon as the clock hit 7:30p tonight, I bolted from class. I rode to the Trustees Theater to hear Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine, present his “Atoms are the New Bits” lecture. Anderson wrote the article for the February issue of Wired (read the article here). The article presents the new industrial revolution of manufacturing your ideas - from conception through completion - through use of the internet. Anderson made several points. In essence, this is what I took from the lecture:

1. Tap into the DIY spirit 2. Align yourself with the culture of the community 3. Create an ecosystem of creators 4. Don’t ask for advice, just do it 5. Geek innovation, great hats, and Google PhDs

Also, the idea that educational institutions are in place to teach you how to learn—not to teach you skills and techniques. The rest is just finding the tools and applying it. What a breath of fresh air. It’s great to hear encouragement for creative communities reaching their ultimate potential.