A Stop at the Kimbell

On a pleasant trip to Texas last weekend, we went to Fort Worth to see the Kimbell Museum.  I had been there once before, but not since the 2013 opening of its second building.

The museum is named for Kay and Velma Kimbell, who made their money in granaries and grocery stores and also collected art by the European masters.  They left the art and a considerable fortune to the Kimball Foundation, and the museum opened in 1972. 

For many years, the foundation was most famous for its building, a late work by Louis I. Kahn, the famed modernist.  It is made of modern materials, cement and travertine limestone, and its chambers nod to the classics with rounded top pieces. 

Here is a traditional southern view.

The first time I visited the Kimbell, its entrance was on its west side and seemed almost obscured.  To enter, you walked through a gravel courtyard with a stand of shapely trees, a Kahn specification that was, in fact, modest and rather charming. In addition, Kahn set other groups of trees and reflecting pools around the site, nice touches in the sere Texas landscape. 

Here is the original entry.

Four years ago, the museum added a second building (below) designed by Renzo Piano to accommodate more of the foundation's growing collection.  This building is more square and more concrete than the original Kimbell, but they work together.

Unfortunately, in my view, the new project included switching the Kimbell entrance to the other side of the building.  (The original entrance now gives way to greenery and leads to the second building.)

The new entry looks out on the street and the museum parking lot, and it is decorated with a great big Joan Miró statue.  The effect is less inviting to the eye but perhaps more functional.

Over the years, the most remarked aspect of the Kimbell's architecture has been its natural lighting.  There are all kinds of unseen tricks engineered into the walls and roofs to bring in filtered sunlight that is subtle and comfortable.  

The interior lighting is the thing I remember most from my first Kimbell visit, and it is true of the Piano Pavilion as well. 

Highlights

Since I just mentioned lighting, let me first note a 1986 Kimbell acquisition: "Interior of the Buurkerk."

This is a 17th century painting by Dutch artist Pieter Saenredam.  It likely is no coincidence that such a work, distinguished by subtle and indirect lighting, was chosen for display in the beautifully lit Kimbell.  

In fact, the Kimbell's team has been recognized from the beginning for aesthetic strength -- first for selecting the right architect and then for thoughtful additions to the original collection. 

In the years since the Kimbell opened, another foundation, that of J. Paul Getty, has been the bigfoot of the classical art world.  While the Kimbell has a fine endowment of about $400 million, the Getty's is much greater, more than $6 billion.  (Notably in this instance, the Getty has TWO Saenredam oils and several drawings, none of which seemed to be on display on my last visit earlier this year.)

The Kimbell Museum now defines its mandate as art created before the year 1950 and includes ancient  and tribal works from Central America, Asia and Africa.  None of the collections is huge, but each is interesting on its own and as part of the overall institution.  

Some other examples follow:

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Here from one gallery are two statues separated by time but effectively quite similar.

First is an Early Bronze Age female statuette from Greece, made thousands of years ago and acquired by the Kimbell in 1970.   

Nearby we find a rare Amedeo Modigliani work, "Head," sculpted in 2013 and donated to the Kimbell earlier this year.  

Do you think these works speak to each other?  I sure do.

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Below is "On the Pont de l’Europe" by French Impressionist Gustave Caillebotte.  The painting is harmonious in color -- blue blue blue -- but it also suggests tension between its human subjects, three men whose expressions are hidden and the prominent industrial beams of a 19th century railroad bridge.  

(Two years ago, the Kimbell and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., organized the first major Caillebotte exhibition.  The painter came from a wealthy family and did not try to sell his own work but instead collected other Impressionists' paintings and bequeathed them to a museum after his death; that endowment established the most famous names of the Impressionist period, but it took much longer for Caillebotte to get his due.  The Kimbell bought this painting in 1982.) 

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The gallery representing Central American art has a various works in clay and wood and gold, but two struck me particularly.  

This Seated Figure comes from the Olmec culture near Veracruz, Mexico, and may be 2,000 years old.  It is an informal rendering of a child and is interesting for its expression of the subject's personality.  (Who among us has not seen a young person in this mood?)

Across the gallery is this Tripod Vessel, a 1,000-year-old piece fashioned by a Mayan craftsman from a single piece of limestone.  Its walls are thin and translucent, and it rests on three round feet.  The shape would be recognized as classic in any culture.  Very unusual.

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Here from from the Asian gallery in the Piano Pavilion is a Bodhisattva Torso, a Buddhist work from the Tang dynasty (618-907) in China.  You can't get the full three-dimensional impact from this image (made available, like the others, by the Kimbell), but the statue's realistic rendering of bodily flesh is almost voluptuous, which appears unusual for its era, and which antedates the European Renaissance and its more realistic renderings of the human form by 500 years. 

Note

The Kimbell Museum is not large, but the pieces discussed here form only a small part of the collection, which is interesting throughout.   What struck me were the common themes in works from many cultures and time periods.  It suggests that art really does speak to us on a basic human level.

Toilets in Art

Below is an image of an 18-carat solid gold toilet.  It was made by artist Maurizio Cattelan and loaned to the Guggenheim Museum in New York last May, just in time for the spring season of art fairs.

The toilet is an exact copy of a popular porcelain Kohler model, and it was placed in a single-stall restroom to be used by museum-goers.

Unfortunately, as I noted in a May 7 post -- "Art's Shock Jock" -- the toilet did not work.

Last week it was announced that the toilet, which the Italian artist named "America," is now functional.  There were reports in the news of arts fans who had tried the golden toilet and affirmed that it did the job for them.

(I have no idea how it could take four months to rejigger the exact replica of a common toilet to get it to work. Our plumber could do this in a single day, easily.  You would have to pay him travel time and a higher hourly rate than that charged by any of our doctors, but we're talking a solid gold toilet here.  Relatively, though, the price would be quite modest.)

An earlier press release from the Guggenheim said the toilet was the artist's reaction to "the excesses of the art market." In fact, this work of art is an excess that, if sold, will redound to the benefit of the artist's already large fortune. (Cattelan's latest reported sale, of a child-sized statue of Hitler, fetched $17.2 million at an auction in May.)

There has not been much discussion of why the toilet was named "America," but my inner skeptic suspects that it is not an homage to our country.

The toilet now resides in the Guggenheim, where it probably will stay until a wealthy investor wants to purchase it.  Meanwhile, a full-time guard is on duty nearby, which is only to be expected in a country where people steal flip-flops in the changing room at the gym.

(Here's a thought:  Maybe Cattelan could convince Vladimir Putin to buy "America;" VP is by some estimates the world's wealthiest person, possibly because of smart 401k investments in his KGB days. He seems like the kind of fellow who'd enjoy having a commode with this name in his personal quarters.)

As you might say, "America" is good to go, literally, but I'm not sure it's a reason to visit the Guggenheim.  (BTW, I believe some insiders refer to the museum as "the Goog.")


Recycled Toilet Art

Over the last 40 years, many old toilets have been replaced with newer, more water-efficient models.  In some parts of California, the government will give you as much as $150 toward a new throne and carry your old one away.

In other parts of the country, people have tried to find new uses for old toilets.  One favorite use, which I have seen only in photographs, is as a planter.  Here is one example; there are hundreds of other such pictures on the internet.

Personally, I cannot recommend this look.

Here's another idea, circa 2014, from the city of Foshan, in China's Guangdong Province.  (Chinese cities tend to specialize in product areas, and Foshan is known for ceramics.)

This is called "A Waterfall Built out of Recycled Toilets," which was mounted by artist Shu Yong and his team during the city's Pottery and Porcelain Festival. 

All 10,000 toilets were synced up to a single tap, and when the tap was turned all the toilets flushed at the same time, creating the waterfall.  Pretty ingenious, if you think about it, and particularly impressive compared to the Guggenheim's four-month effort to get just one single toilet to flush.

The Original Toilet Art

Sometime around 1917, Dada artist Marcel Duchamp bought a porcelain urinal from a supplier, signed it R Mutt and submitted it for an art show in New York.  A few years earlier, a more conventional work of his had been rejected for an art show, and he was said to be offended by this.

New things were happening in art at the time, and his belief seems to have been that if an artist said a particular piece was art, well, it was art.  If you think about what we've seen in art since that time, the notion makes a certain amount of sense.

The original Duchamp urinal has since disappeared, but the Tate Museum in London has the copy pictured below.  Please note: In the artist's original display, the work was positioned reclining on its back, not upright as shown here.

Tate curators described the urinal this way:

            Simple in form but rich in metaphor, the work has generated many interpretations
            over the years, and continues to be seen as a work that challenges – or, at the least,
            complicates – conventional definitions of art.

Think about Andy Warhol encountering this piece as a young man.  If this is art, he may have said to himself, why not a Brillo box or a Campbell Soup can?  At that time, when the unsophisticated public was puzzled by and/or weary of Abstract Expressionism,  Pop Art gave people recognizable images that were more understandable.


Conclusion

The large picture is that art is a continuing conversation.  Most art (including, I'm guessing, toilet bowl planters) is forgotten over time, but certain ideas resonate and move the conversation forward.  I'm not sure that the golden toilet will be donated to and featured in a museum 200 years from now, but Duchamp's urinal idea is nearing its centennial and still is part of the discussion.

You never know.

What Is a Portrait?

I used to think that I knew what a portrait was:  an image of a person, ideally offering a view into that person's unique essence.

But after seeing a big show -- "Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney’s Collection" -- I'm not sure what to think.

The exhibit is at the new Whitney Museum in New York, a fine space designed by Renzo Piano.  The Whitney's focus is American art from 1900 on, and the current show unfolds over two full floors.

I went to see the exhibit about six weeks ago.  There are many truly great works on display. I recommend a visit if you will be in New York between now and February.

But if you go, be prepared to find that the definition of portraiture has been stretched beyond recognition.

In his review, The New York Times critic Holland Cotter called the Whitney event "a show that’s big on weird and basically all about ego. . . ."  That pretty well sums it up.

The first room of the exhibit features traditional portraiture, including Edward Hopper's painting of himself, done in the traditional style.

But then it's off to the races.

Soon comes a room of images called "Portraits without People" that perhaps takes its inspiration from the poet's question,  "How can we tell the dancer from the dance?"

The room includes a Georgia O'Keeffe painting, a Joseph Cornell box and a photograph of architect Philip Johnson's glass house in New Canaan, Conn.  All the works are easily identified with their artists, but none qualifies as a portrait.

On the other hand, an abstract painting by Marsden Hartley does seem like a portrait. It is a symbolic representation of a German officer whom Hartley loved and who died early in World War I.

Much of the rest of the two-floor show has to do with photography.

There is a Henry Taylor painting of Black Panther founder Huey Newton, based on a famous photograph of the man.

There is a 1929 Toyo Miyatake photograph of the Japanese dancer-choreographer Michio Ito.  Every reference to the photograph notes that Ito, who worked in the U.S., was arrested for espionage early in World War II and was sent back to Japan after two years in an internment camp.  

This information is interesting, but I wonder:   Does the photo stand on its own or does it require a backstory to rise to the level of art?  

Here's a self-portrait, a great big self-portrait, rendered in paint from a photograph taken by a friend of the artist.  Mostly it gives the impression that the artist takes himself pretty darn seriously.

This is another interesting piece, a series of photographs of raised fists, including protests and victory salutes.   One fist is apparently that of Richard Nixon.  The photos are mounted on wooden poles, suggesting marching banners or demonstrations.  Does this qualify as a portrait?

There are other odd pieces:  a series of large photographs of teenagers who committed mass shootings, a colored-pencil drawing of Amy Winehouse, a Richard Avedon fashion shot of 1950s super-model Dovima and two elephants,  a 3-D wooden rendering of every school its artist attended, a very realistic-looking statue of a tired old anonymous woman sitting in a chair, an Andy Warhol diptych of Elvis Presley, Diane Arbus photographs taken on the streets of New York and two Robert Mapplethorpe photographs (one of which of course is not appropriate for small children.)

In addition to leaning more toward photography, the newer pieces in the display lean more toward political statements.  I am not schooled in art history and do not know if politics-as-art always has been as big a theme as it is today, but I wonder whether the flowering of contemporary political art will resonate with people several generations from now.

The biggest draw in the show is a wax statue, seven or eight feet tall, of artist Julian Schnabel.  It was made by a younger artist, Urs Fischer.

What is unusual about the statue is that it is also a candle.  Every morning, the museum staff light the statue, which is melting down over time.  

What are we to make of this?   Hippocrates said "Ars longa, vita brevis," but this art is more brevis than most vita.  

Is the melting down a comment on the short shelf life of most human endeavors?  Of the output of an artist? 

My guess is the melting statue is there to attract attention.  It is a theme of mine that people want to participate in things -- they take selfies at crime scenes, they chase around cities playing Pokemon Go, they put bouquets in front of the homes of dead celebrities.  This giant candle allows people to watch the deliberate immolation of a statue.    It allows people to say, "I was there then."

Like much else in the museum show, it is not really a portrait.  Call it a process.  Or a novelty.  

Notes"interrogate"

1.  It is understandable that the Whitney's curators would wish to present some of the museum's best works for the opening of the new location and also that they would like to have an organizing theme for the show.  The problem is that the theme chosen doesn't make sense given the content on display.  

Words have meanings.  To call the Whitney show "Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney's Collection" is sloppy.  What is not "human interest?" -- human interest is the point of art.  And portraits are portraits, not images that involve humans in any conceivable or tangential way.

We are generally sloppy with words these days.  On June 30, I discussed how the word "interrogate" has come to be defined as "to examine a thing or an idea with hostility." Politicians and activists now misuse words with great abandon and little concern for the consequences.  If different groups adopt their own vocabularies with their own meanings, broad public conversation is going to become even more difficult than it already is.

2.  In publicity for the show, the Whitney staff noted often that what is on display is just a sampling of the "thousands" of pieces of art in its inventory.  Other major museums also have vaults full of material that is rarely, if ever, displayed.  I find this unfortunate.  If museums function as gatekeepers, deciding what people can see and when, they might as well be anonymous rich hoarders.  The effect is the same.  

One hundred years ago, Albert C. Barnes, a Philadelphia art collector with a great trove of fine Impressionist paintings, set up his own museum to make the work available to the public.  It is a wacky conglomeration of objects that no curator would tolerate, but you can see the stuff, as he wanted.

More recently, contemporary collector Eli Broad found that many museums were interested in acquiring part or all of his collection, but that none would guarantee to put it on display.  So he built his own museum in downtown Los Angeles.  

So here we are: Art experts or rich people control public access, or lack thereof, to important art. Strange situation.

Him Again

Several days ago, I referred to a statue called Him, which portrays an apparently humble Adolph Hitler kneeling in  prayer.

I said the statue was in Sweden, but I was wrong.  Apparently there are three Hims, plus a fourth, an artist's proof, which was sold early this week in New York at a Christie's auction.

During the sale, the statue was positioned with its back to the crowd.  Its scale is smaller than that of a grown man, and from behind it looks like a kneeling boy.   This may be the favored way to display the thing, allowing viewers to believe they are approaching the figure of a child at prayer and then to discover -- surprise! -- that the face of the figure is that of Hitler.

Even the artist, Maurizio Catalan, has mixed feelings about this creation.  Here is something he said several years ago about Him, as quoted in the auction catalog:

          "I wanted to destroy it myself.  I changed my mind a thousand times,
           every day.  Hitler is pure fear."

I don't know if encountering Hitler would inspire fear in me or revulsion, but I haven't seen the statue. My impression is that Him invites viewers to wonder whether a regretful Hitler, answerable for the death of millions, could with prayer receive forgiveness from God.  As politicians say sometimes, that question is a matter above my pay grade.

One Him was displayed in 2012 in Warsaw's former Jewish ghetto; virtually all its 300,000 residents died in concentration camps, and of disease and starvation.  The display certainly was meant to shock, but the shock of the ghetto's history would seem to be shocking enough even without a Hitler statue.  The Him placement was broadly condemned.


The Sale

Him was part of an event called "Bound to Fail," meant to describe works relating to a theme of failure.  The auction house estimated beforehand that Him would fetch between $10 million and $15 million, but my bet is that Christie's underestimates deliberately in order to generate an impression that the art values are going up, up, up.

In fact, the statue sold for $17.2 million in just five minutes.  It was the highest sale price in the entire lot.  The anonymous buyer paid more than twice as much as anyone had paid for any other work by the same artist.

You have to wonder who would buy a Him.  It's not something most people would want around the house, and a museum displaying it pwould have to take out a large insurance floater to protect against sabotage.

Most expensive art these days is sold to very wealthy people who believe themselves to have excellent taste in art and who also regard their purchases as investments.  And, as there have come to be more billionaires, their "investments" have been appreciating in value in recent years.

Maurizio Cattelan: Art's Shock Jock

America the toilet

Above is a recent piece by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, now on loan to the Guggenheim Museum in New York.   As you can see, it is titled America.

The plan is to have the 18-karat gold toilet, fashioned like an American-made Kohler model, installed in one of the museum's restrooms, replacing a simple porcelain number.  Visitors will be able to participate in the art by relieving themselves in the gold commode.

The website artnet.com describes the toilet this way:

     In a press release, the Guggenheim identifies (it as) Cattelan's reaction to the "excesses
     of the art market"  -- of which Cattelan himself benefits as one of the most expensive living
     artists -- and notes that the toilet functions as a facetious jab towards the 1 percent who can
     afford such ostentatious works.

The installation was timed to coincide New York's spring season of art fairs.  The best analogy I can imagine for this timing is that it is akin to inviting a drunken colleague over for dinner and watching him barf on the table.

(For what it is worth, I agree that much current art is shallow.  Most art in every period is less than profound.  A gold toilet doesn't tell us anything that we don't know already.)

The installation was supposed to be up and running, so to speak, earlier this week, but there has been a hitch.  The toilet is not functional, and it will take an uncertain amount of time to get it going.

Here we may have another metaphor -- the over-the-top America toilet that does not work as a symbol of our dysfunctional government and political arrangements.


Maurizio Cattelan and His Work

I was not familiar with this artist before the toilet tale came up, and so I did a little research.  He seems to be the shock jock of contemporary art.

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Here is an emblematic Cattelan piece, a marble sculpture that was placed in a Milan square in 2010.

Its title is L.O.V.E.; don't ask me why.

My bet is that locals describe the thing as "il dito medio," which can be translated even by those not fluent in Italian.  Love -- ha!

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Here is another fun piece, described unofficially as the Trophy Wife.

The woman is Stephanie Seymour, a former supermodel and the second spouse of billionaire art collector Peter Brant.  The couple's marriage has been tumultuous, and one of their sons has gained a reputation in New York for the kinds of behavior we have come to associate with the term "affluenza."

In an interview, Cattelan was asked how he decided to make this piece of art.  Here is his answer.

        That is another good story. I went to Peter’s house because he wanted to ask me for a
         commissioned work. As I went inside the house, the walls were covered with hunting
         trophies, with every kind of animal, and I knew immediately what I would do. It was
         consequential to add just one more, a portrait of his beautiful wife.

Take that, billionaire art patron!

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The piece below, which resides in a Swedish museum, is called Him.  As you can see, it is a statue of Adolph Hitler praying.   Hitler was an evil man; associating him with Christian prayer does not make him seem better and makes Christianity seem worse.  Very subtle.

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It is to be expected that an Italian artist who pokes fingers in people's eyes would have things to say about the Catholic Church.  Here again, Maurizio Cattelano does not disappoint.

Here is a statue of Pope John Paul II being hit by a meteorite.  My best guess is that it is a projection of a fantasy wish of the artist.   

John Paul II's election to the papacy was the first of several attempts by the college of cardinals to reform the institution of the church and its bureaucracy.  He was the first non-Italian pope in more than 200 years.
         After being shot and nearly killed in an assassination attempt, John Paul II forgave the shooter and urged Catholics to pray for his "brother." He befriended the man and his family and urged the Italian government to release him from prison and send him home to Turkey.
         I don't know what Catellan's beef is with this pope, but he seems in retrospect like a good guy to me.

And here is a statue of a dead horse.  The banner planted in the animal's hide reads INRI, an inscription found on Christian images of Jesus on the cross.  INRI translates as "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews," per Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor who ordered the crucifixion.

I was raised Catholic, but I don't understand associating the crucifixion with a dead animal or including the INRI reference.  The church itself has problems, but Jesus is not one of them.

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If someone could explain Catellan's art to me, I'd be happy to have a conversation.  But that isn't what he seeks.  His work suggests broad contempt, but not interest in other points of view.

Like me and like rich people and like the church, all human efforts are flawed. 

Maurizio Catellan seems to have made a career of giving voice to scorn, including deserved scorn, for the failings of mankind.  But his message is not new.  In some ways, its anger reflects a simplistic, almost adolescent disdain for the larger, more complicated project of living an honest life.   

I don't think I'm going to go to the Guggenheim Museum to see, or pee in, the golden toilet.

Michael Heizer

The other day I discussed "Levitated Mass," a large stone on display at a California museum.

Michael Heizer is the artist who conceived and organized "Levitated Mass," which in fact is his second work that carries the name.

The earlier "Levitated Mass" was installed in 1982 at the base of a Manhattan office building. Carved grooves denote the location - 5 and 6 grooves for 56th Street, 13, 1, and 4 for the letters M, A, D, Madison Avenue.  Water rushes under the 10-ton granite rock, giving the impression that it hovers in space over the fountain.

I have spent a fair amount of time in Manhattan, but I have never heard anybody mention this work. If I have walked past it, I have not noticed it.

(To be fair, people walking in Manhattan are more intent on reaching their destinations than enjoying the scenery.  On the other hand, the sculpture and its fountain may be too subtle for ordinary humans to appreciate.)

Michael Heizer

Heizer is the son of a professor of archeology and anthropology; as a boy, he spent time in remote areas where his father did field research.  This background seems to have interested Heizer in rocks and isolated areas, drawing him into "land art," a designation he sometimes rejects but that seems to describe much of his work.

Heizer's first big effort was "Double Negative," a 1970 etching of two large trenches that are 50 feet deep, 30 feet wide and a quarter-mile long in the open space of Nevada.

This seems to have been a prelude to his defining project, "City," which also is large enough to be seen whole only in satellite photographs.

City

"City," is a series of large-scale edifices that eventually will stretch for a mile or more on privately owned land in Nevada.  The land is surrounded by a 750,000-acre national monument conservation area that was created by presidential decree last year.

One arts writer described "City" as “a collection of enormous ceremonial mounds and abstract forms made of earth, rock and concrete that evoke both ancient ruins and industrial technology."

Last year, Heizer said this: “It epitomizes a fusion of ancient and modern forms. It’s huge in size, but antimonumental in its relentless horizontality and its sinuous, continuous curves. It’s also unphotographable and impossible to capture in its totality. It has to be experienced in time and space — over time, and distance.”

Heizer is nothing if not a hard worker.  Building "City" has consumed almost 45 years of his life and the efforts of many other workers as well.

In a 1977 interview with ARTNews, Heizer explained what "City" meant to him.

     “The work I’m doing out in the deserts has to be done, and somebody has got to do it.
     Where in hell are all these artists? I mean, we live in an age of obligation. We live in an
     age of the 747 aircraft, the moon rocket—objects that are constructed by man that range
     from the most minuscule complex electronic dial to airplanes that have wings weighing
     45 tons on them. So, you must make a certain type of art. Of course, there are limits.
     If you take your work too far, you end up with entertainment.”

He raises interesting questions.  Should art be scaled to the size of major commercial endeavors?  Has too much art -- like, say, Pop Art -- turned into entertainment?  Are our acknowledged entertainments ("Fifty Shades of Grey," video games, superhero movies, presidential debates) taking up so much attention that we are losing sight of the bigger questions?

He also spoke of the need for new art.

     “Basically, what I’m saying is that the European option is closed. The European tradition
     has to be honored, but that area is finished—it’s over with. The kind of art I’m involved
     with hasn’t really been done before. What I mean is, it’s the kind of art that was originally
     Indian art, then it was Pilgrim art—art by all those various visitors. That’s the tradition
     I’m interested in—the tradition of regionalism. That’s essentially what I try to do.”

Here is where I have to question Heizer's argument. The European project may be ending, as other civilizations have ended.  Those former civilizations left behind their structures and monuments, including the Terracotta Army, Roman ruins, the Great Pyramid of Giza and Stonehenge -- but in their time, those edifices were elements of actual cultures and actual communities.

By contrast, Heizer's works are expressions of his own personal convictions.  These ideas are perhaps shared by some art collectors and dealers, but they are not manifestations of broad cultural themes.  The isolation of "City" in the middle of a huge conservation area assures that it will stand as it has been built but also that it will not be taken up as part of a larger cultural discussion.

We have puzzled for centuries over the meanings of Egyptian pyramids and the Stonehenge monoliths.

 If mankind destroys itself and other beings come to earth several eons from now, they will discover "City," but they will have a hard time figuring out what, if anything, it meant to people of our day.

Is It Art? "Levitated Mass"

Above is the biggest exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.  It is described as a sculpture, and its name is "Levitated Mass."

As you can see, it is a very large rock -- a 340-ton piece of granite.  The artist located it when it was exposed on a blast site east of Los Angeles in 2007.  He proposed moving the rock to the museum, and the museum director, a major fan of the artist, agreed.

The relocation was accomplished in 2012 in a major effort that involved transporting the rock in a journey that took 11 days and required moving and then replacing electrical lines, traffic signals, cable wires and other impediments all along the route.

Below is a sketch of the contraption that moved the rock very, very slowly on the 105-mile trip to its new home.    

The original plan was for the boulder to seem to float in air above the walkway.  Seismic concerns intervened, unfortunately, and the rock now is secured by guy wires and metal buttresses attached to the trench walls.

Since no actual "sculpting" was performed on the boulder, "Levitated Mass" might be described more fairly as a triumph of engineering.  It took a lot of careful planning to lift and move the rock, as well as to design the trench and secure the exhibit in its new home.

The artist has compared "Levitated Mass" to emplacements like Stonehenge, and said he expects the boulder to last 3,500 years.  Nature formed the rock 150 million years ago.

Total cost of the installation, which was paid by donors, was about $11 million.


Levitated Mass Today

Last week I went to see "Levitated Mass."  Here are some pictures.

People arriving at or leaving the museum walked through the trench.  It seemed to be most popular with children, who do like to run and make noise before or after museum visits.  (LACMA is not the largest museum in the world, but it is darned big and requires at least several trips to absorb its various collections.)

An item as large as the boulder requires a large site to itself, and so "Levitated Mass" sits on a 2.5-acre lot covered with crushed granite.  The only vegetation is a line of 24 palm trees that define the area's boundary.

When I was there, people were coming and going in small groups.  Most walked through the trench to the far side and then back again.  Nobody set foot on the desert-like grounds, which may be appropriate for such a display but are also rather unwelcoming.

One fun trick when visiting the sculpture is to pose for a photograph in which you appear to be holding up the boulder.  Many, many of these have been posted on Instagram.

Two full-time museum guards keep watch over "Levitated Mass."  Their chief job is to tell children to stop running on the narrow sides of the concrete trench; the guards also ward off skateboarders and graffiti taggers.

I asked one of the guards what she thought of the display.

"I like it," she said.  "I don't have 340-ton rock in my backyard."

Meaning

Last year, a local arts writer reflected on "Levitated Mass" after many trips to the museum during its three years on the site.   

"Each time, I'm impressed by its power and weightiness — by its sheer neolithic presence," she wrote. "Often, it can make objects in the galleries seem almost trivial. What's a 400-year-old painting when you're staring at geological time?"

Still, she declared herself "underwhelmed by the walk underneath 'Levitated Mass.'"   Her favorite view of the sculpture was out the windows from inside the museum.  

Questions

My art education is limited, and this display raises questions for me.  Here are a few:

     ---Is the big rock art, or is it something else?

     --Is its artistic merit greater when viewed from a human-constructed building or on its
        own in the middle of an artificial arid site?

     -- What about all those rocks in Zion National Park or Yosemite or the Sandia Mountains;
         are they art or nature?

     --Does human participation in the form of joke photos validate "Levitated Mass" as an
        artistic expression or turn a granite boulder into something more like the exploitation
        of a caged animal at a zoo?

Next:  The Artist

Robert Indiana and LOVE

This statue sits next to a building in midtown Manhattan where the Significant Other used to have his office.

The first time I saw it, I said to myself, "Oh, it's one of those LOVE statues."

The last time I saw it, I said to myself, "Wow, it's still there."

The statue, one of about 20 in the US and many others -- in various languages -- around the world, may be the most iconic piece of pop art ever.  Some say that it is more recognizable than the "Mona Lisa."

"LOVE" is the work of Robert Indiana (he replaced his given surname with his state of birth), who rendered it originally on paper in 1966 or so.  Then the image was made into metal statues, a popular U.S. postage stamp and, unfortunately, a plethora of knock-off products from posters to paperweights to cufflinks.

While art critics weren't excited by  "LOVE," the public was.  Art writers ever since have lamented that Indiana did not copyright his image and so did not make really, really big money off the design.

In fact, "LOVE" captured the zeitgeist of the late 1960s:  love, peace, hippies, "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing," etc.  Some offshoots:

      --  Lore has it that seeing an exhibit of framed "LOVE" images caused
          a friend of John Lennon's to say, "You're surrounded by love," and
          Lennon to respond that "Love is all you need," which led to the
          famous Beatles song.  Brian Epstein, then the group's manager
          said, "It was an inspired song and they really wanted to give the
          world a message. . . . It is a clear message saying that love is
          everything. "
       
      -- Then came the execrable book, "Love Story," with an Indiana-
          inspired cover, that bequeathed us the line, "Love means never
          having to say you're sorry," and then a three-hankie movie that
          I doubt anybody has watched for 30 years or more.
       
      -- Many years later, the Lennon song was incorporated into one of the
          worst movies of the 21st century, "Love Actually."

We can't blame Indiana for all this twaddle, of course.  He was producing art before "LOVE" struck, and he has continued to produce art ever since.


Other Indiana Works

This pair of works from the early 1960s combine the last word his mother spoke before dying -- "Did you have something to eat?" and the fact of her death.

Then Indiana fashioned a lighted "EAT" sign that was posted either near or on the New York Pavilion at the 1964 World's Fair.  People got the wrong message and followed the sign, expecting to find not Art but a restaurant.  Fair officials ordered it turned off.

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These numerical metal sculptures from the early 1980s have been disaggregated and arranged in ones and twos, as well as issued in single-digit silk screen copies and other flat compendiums like the one below.  They're colorful, and any four-year-old would be delighted to see them.

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Like other artists, Indiana revisits his themes.  The large statue below was made in 2000 and based on a design from 1972.

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In 2007 or 2008, Indiana repurposed his most famous creation for a series of sculptures and posters that raised more than $1 million for Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

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Indiana created the large silkscreen below in 2014, also in an apparent return to earlier themes.

Another piece from 2014

And from last year

In All

Who could be opposed to messages of love, art, hope or peace?  

I am not schooled in the visuals arts, but I find it hard to see Indiana's work as more than typography, occasionally with light sloganeering.  It makes my yesterday's post of Oldenburg/vonBruggen sculptures seem novel and fresh by comparison.

Like all art forms, I guess, pop has its limits.