now or then
OK NY
Saturday, April 17th
8 AM. Bagel breakfast with Derek and Abby. There's a beautiful ceramic hand on their side board, black fingers and a crust of volcanic crystals growing from it. Abby tells me it was part of an installation at her Clementine Gallery by Alexander Lee on Thai creation myths ... one of the shows that ended up shutting them down. Amazing installations are typically hard sales.
Anthony says most of the "young galleries" in Chelsea have closed. Derek's is one of the few that has not.
12:30 PM. Meet with Adam at his home near PS 1. He shows me his stunning David Niven tattoo and packs me down with fresh strawberries and fun art projects. Then
(2PM) off to MoMA to meet Jacques, Nao, and Nao's new friend from the reality show they both were on--a cute young woman named Nicole. The Marina Abramovic spread is our goal. It feels less like art and more like history. I'm reminded of the King Tut exhibition I saw with my Mom; crowds rush past amazing artifacts and are herded into the gift lounge.
I first read of Marina and Ulay in an article about Imponderabilia, the piece in which they stood in a doorway, both nude. The audience had to squeeze through and turn their body towards either her or him. They also had to decide whether to look forward into the space or to turn and look at the person they were passing. These choices weren't laid out, but made in the spur of the moment, naturally and automatically ... in 1977.
In 2010 we see a reenactment. It is a way to get a sense of the work, but it's gimmicky, like the "hands on" sections of family-orientated history museums ("See what it was like to churn butter!"), or when they dress up mannequins in antique uniforms and pose them in battle.
Waiting in the long line of people who are there to walk through the naked people you hear them discus the models, which one is cuter, which one will they face? While we are waiting we file by the table artifact from another work in which Marina invited audience members to take any item from the table--ranging from feathers to weapons--and use them on her however they wished.
In 1974 the work was tense and revealed things over a course of six hours about human nature that were alternatively comforting and frightening. In 2010 there is no performer and you are not allowed to touch the objects. In fact, unless you are standing in the line for Imponderabilia, it's hard to even see the objects.
It seems odd to have these various artifacts--props, actors, videos, and explanatory texts--installed one on top of the other. In some rooms there are as many as four performance reenactments going on next to flat screen monitors and packed display cases.
Works that were once about taking time and observing, both the performance as well as your own part in it, are reduced to visuals that can be glanced for a few seconds to maybe a minute while you chat with your companion about where to eat afterwards.
The guard standing before the naked couple waves people through one at a time. On the other side of the couple, a second guard tells you to step aside so as not to slow down the train of people coming through. This is the 2010 performance, these two guards with their hands sweeping the air with an urgency that lasts the day long.
After the historical exhibition we go downstairs to watch Marina's current performance. Her staging of this shows she still knows how to give the present the attention it deserves. Her performance is intense and addresses the simple act of looking on a number of levels. Her costume is over-dramatic, but that is who she is now.
Is she then conscious of how cluttered the works upstairs are? Seeing the older performances like that saddened me at first, but the more time I'm away from the circus of it, the more I like that those performances fail in recreation. After all, one reason they were so appealing to begin with was that they could not be purchased and stored away in a museum's archive. This show, which was less about Marina and more about a museum trying to grasp intangible moments, proves that what Marina and Ulay did was in fact ephemeral. You can no more see it as it was than you could return to the first Woodstock concert.
In the lobby I hug Nao goodbye and kiss Fufu, her little poodle who she smuggled into the museum in a denim tote bag. In the teaser for her reality show Nao gives the last line: "I am not responsible for your experience of my art." It's funny, but true. Most artists try to influence the audience's experience; we make conscious decisions about what we show and how it is shown. In the end however, each viewer has to hold their end of the responsibility for what they walk away with.
Saturday, April 17th
8 AM. Bagel breakfast with Derek and Abby. There's a beautiful ceramic hand on their side board, black fingers and a crust of volcanic crystals growing from it. Abby tells me it was part of an installation at her Clementine Gallery by Alexander Lee on Thai creation myths ... one of the shows that ended up shutting them down. Amazing installations are typically hard sales.
Anthony says most of the "young galleries" in Chelsea have closed. Derek's is one of the few that has not.
12:30 PM. Meet with Adam at his home near PS 1. He shows me his stunning David Niven tattoo and packs me down with fresh strawberries and fun art projects. Then
(2PM) off to MoMA to meet Jacques, Nao, and Nao's new friend from the reality show they both were on--a cute young woman named Nicole. The Marina Abramovic spread is our goal. It feels less like art and more like history. I'm reminded of the King Tut exhibition I saw with my Mom; crowds rush past amazing artifacts and are herded into the gift lounge.
I first read of Marina and Ulay in an article about Imponderabilia, the piece in which they stood in a doorway, both nude. The audience had to squeeze through and turn their body towards either her or him. They also had to decide whether to look forward into the space or to turn and look at the person they were passing. These choices weren't laid out, but made in the spur of the moment, naturally and automatically ... in 1977.
In 2010 we see a reenactment. It is a way to get a sense of the work, but it's gimmicky, like the "hands on" sections of family-orientated history museums ("See what it was like to churn butter!"), or when they dress up mannequins in antique uniforms and pose them in battle.
Waiting in the long line of people who are there to walk through the naked people you hear them discus the models, which one is cuter, which one will they face? While we are waiting we file by the table artifact from another work in which Marina invited audience members to take any item from the table--ranging from feathers to weapons--and use them on her however they wished.
In 1974 the work was tense and revealed things over a course of six hours about human nature that were alternatively comforting and frightening. In 2010 there is no performer and you are not allowed to touch the objects. In fact, unless you are standing in the line for Imponderabilia, it's hard to even see the objects.
It seems odd to have these various artifacts--props, actors, videos, and explanatory texts--installed one on top of the other. In some rooms there are as many as four performance reenactments going on next to flat screen monitors and packed display cases.
Works that were once about taking time and observing, both the performance as well as your own part in it, are reduced to visuals that can be glanced for a few seconds to maybe a minute while you chat with your companion about where to eat afterwards.
The guard standing before the naked couple waves people through one at a time. On the other side of the couple, a second guard tells you to step aside so as not to slow down the train of people coming through. This is the 2010 performance, these two guards with their hands sweeping the air with an urgency that lasts the day long.
After the historical exhibition we go downstairs to watch Marina's current performance. Her staging of this shows she still knows how to give the present the attention it deserves. Her performance is intense and addresses the simple act of looking on a number of levels. Her costume is over-dramatic, but that is who she is now.
Is she then conscious of how cluttered the works upstairs are? Seeing the older performances like that saddened me at first, but the more time I'm away from the circus of it, the more I like that those performances fail in recreation. After all, one reason they were so appealing to begin with was that they could not be purchased and stored away in a museum's archive. This show, which was less about Marina and more about a museum trying to grasp intangible moments, proves that what Marina and Ulay did was in fact ephemeral. You can no more see it as it was than you could return to the first Woodstock concert.
In the lobby I hug Nao goodbye and kiss Fufu, her little poodle who she smuggled into the museum in a denim tote bag. In the teaser for her reality show Nao gives the last line: "I am not responsible for your experience of my art." It's funny, but true. Most artists try to influence the audience's experience; we make conscious decisions about what we show and how it is shown. In the end however, each viewer has to hold their end of the responsibility for what they walk away with.