A BEACHED WAIL

     In 1998 I wrote a book, “HOW TO BECOME A FAMOUS CONTEMPORARY ARTIST”, which was a tongue-in-cheek primer enumerating 100 easy rules for an aspiring artist to follow to achieve success in the contemporary art world. The book poked fun at the artists, curators, museum directors and art critics who found beauty in what I considered a “sow’s ear” and scholarship in their description and critique of the sow’s ear.

     I explained that the art cognoscenti used a special language, “Artspeak ” that is used to explain (for example) why an empty plain old shoebox on the floor of The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a work of art. (Yes, the Met has purchased that work of art for its collection. I wonder how much they paid.)  It’s on the left below and on the right is another plain old shoebox, also by Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco, that was exhibited on the floor at the Tate Modern.

     

Here's a behind the scenes peek at Orozco's studio in Mexico.

    My book also provided examples of art critics who stumbled over one another to “pontificate” the true meaning of a piece they were reviewing, some of whom felt that their interpretation was more important than that of the artist who created the piece.

     I didn’t write this article on my Blog as a ploy to get you to buy my book (send check for $50 to me) because you can read it free of charge at my website: earlbronsteen.com/

     What brought this whole subject to mind was a review I just read in  The   New   York   Times   of   the   current   Gabriel   Orozco show at the Guggenheim titled, “ASTERISMS”. The title the curators at the Guggenheim chose is right on point, because I doubt there are many people in the world who know what that word means. I looked it up and came away with this definition: Asterisms are popular groupings of localized stars, similar to constellation stick figures. The Big and Little Dippers are asterisms within the constellations of Ursus Major and Ursus Minor.

      If you or I took a group of people to a local beach and spent several weeks collecting the flotsam and jetsam that washed up on the sand, AND then photographed each of these say 1,200 pieces, AND then framed these snapshot-sized photos in grids, AND then presented them in a rectangular configuration on the floor do you think any museum in the world would want to exhibit this assemblage? If you answered, “NO” you are correct EXCEPT if you are famed contemporary artist Gabriel Orozco and the Guggenheim Foundation and Deutsche Bank commissioned the work.

     A companion piece, “Astroturf Constellation” consists of nearly 1,200 objects also recovered by the then (I’m sure), flotsam-weary artist and his assistants (I bet mostly by his assistants) from a playing field on Pier 40 in Manhattan that had sunk into the artificial grass.

The curators at the Guggenheim described the installations in this manner:

      The exhibition Asterisms overall, in which the two bodies of work play off each other in a provocative oscillation between the macro and the micro, invokes several of the artist’s recurring motifs, including the traces of erosion, poetic encounters with mundane materials, and the ever-present tension between nature and culture. It also underscores and amplifies Orozco’s subtle practice of subjecting the world to personal, idiosyncratic systems.

     Bloomberg’s art critic chimed in with:

     Everything on view is grouped systematically by shape, color, material and texture, to suggest progression, migration, kinship and evolution. Orozco’s installation is understated and coldly scientific. Yet he has lovingly attended to his trove. The overall effect of its archaeological homogenization is melancholic -- akin to putting the ruins of our own civilization under the microscope.

     The review went on to comment favorably:

     Here the found object is closer to the visual poetry of Joseph Cornell than the predictable gamesmanship of Duchamp. In his recent, smug midcareer retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, Orozco displayed an empty shoebox and hung four plastic yogurt lids, one per gallery wall. (More about these four yogurt lids later on.)

     The New York Times critic opined:

     A popular way to make art in recent decades has been to collect many examples of some sort of object and exhibit them all in a more or less orderly fashion.

The idea is that something greater than the sum of its parts will emerge. That does happen, but not to any unusually revelatory degree, in "ASTERISMS"a show by the sculptor Gabriel Orozco. (Earl’s comment - - - for a critic who seemingly was not too impressed with the show and in particular with fact that the exhibition “offers raw information with limited transformational vision” this did not stop him from going on in two lengthy paragraphs (below) to explain their meaning. (Perhaps the Times pays by the word.)

     Together “Sandstars” and “Astroturf Constellation” operate symbolically on two levels, one literal and one metaphorical. On the literal plane they speak to relations between humans and nature. Nature is equipped with its own systems for maintaining balance between life and death. Stuff that dies gets flushed and recycled for the benefit of still-living things. This seems to have worked pretty well for some eons but has been upset in recent centuries by the evolution of human technological know-how and the exponential growth of the earth’s human population. Nature is evidently hard-pressed to digest the volume and kinds of waste that humans generate. So Mr. Orozco’s projects serve to promote more conscientious stewardship of our fragile natural home.

      As for metaphorical reading, nonliteral meanings are not asserted, but they do come to mind. The transformation of detritus into art and chaos into order resonates, for example, with ancient alchemical procedures in which the processing of low-value stuff into priceless material is supposed to have the magical effect of advancing undeveloped souls toward higher orders of consciousness. But any such flights of interpretive fancy are left for viewers to supply, since Mr. Orozco has not framed the project in ways that would connect it to psychological or spiritual spheres. Imaginative liftoff stalls at ground level.

I BET YOU DOLLARS TO DONUTS NO ONE READ THROUGH BOTH OF THE CRITIC’S PARAGRAPHS.

         And now back to the yogurt lids. The work of art in question was, “Yogurt Caps”, which Mr. Orozco had installed at the Marian Goodman Gallery in 1994 as part of his first solo show in the United States. The installation was a provocative one, (according to the New York Observer) consisting as it did of nothing more than four clear, blue-rimmed Dannon lids, each attached to one of four walls of an otherwise empty room in the gallery. (An unidentified foreign food manufacturer is rumored to have provided funding for this show.)

      You’d think the lids would have the good sense to gracefully slip away into oblivion: but no. In 2009 The Museum of Modern Art gave a retrospective of Orozco’s work and the curator really wanted the original Yogurt Caps in her show. Though the piece “obviously involved no craft on the part of the artist, no hours of apparent labor, and no decisions that would have seemingly been considered aesthetic choices,” the curator said, it was nevertheless an important work: one that got people to contemplate their relationship to the gallery walls and the nature of empty space. “It was an astoundingly audacious move, to just nail those yogurt lids onto the four walls of the main gallery and call it a show,” The curator continued, “In many cases people walked into the exhibition and didn’t even know that anything was there at all.” (Earl’s note: They were the lucky ones.)

     But the curator pulled a fast one. The four lids on exhibition were not the original ones (A collector had purchased these. I can only assume that it was serendipity; he just happened to have four opened yogurt cups in his refrigerator and the lids were missing.) But Orozco had provided the gallery with back ups which were still available. Nowhere did MOMA let on that these were surrogate lids (P.T. Barnum must be smiling up there.)

P.S. My title of this story, “A Beached Wail” is a very clever play on words since the site on which Orozco’s team collected their detritus (artspeak for garbage) was a Mexican beach where gray whales go to mate and return to die. I bet it was so clever no one noticed the allusion.

P.P.S. One of my art pieces is related to this subject and it stemmed from an experience Judy and I had on a guided tour of the Whitney Museum many years ago. Our group was standing in front of a contemporary painting that left most of us in the cold. One member asked, “Is this art” Before the guide could respond another member of our group answered, “If it’s hanging here it’s art!”

    This colloquy inspired me to create, “WHITE ON WHITE”, two white canvases each inscribed with the words shown below which were also in white and just about visible against the white background:

    

NDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2012

SENIOR MOMENT # 2

    Well that didn't take too long. Just a day or two after writing about my misadventures on Memorial Day I received a phone call this morning from a very good friend, Sylvia Robinson who is Don the photographer's wife, calling to ask how I was feeling. I considered that a very thoughtful act, since she knew I was home alone with Judy being away for a few days.
   Then the ax fell. Sylvia wondered why I hadn't shown up last night for their wedding anniversary party. I was dumbstruck. I hadn't written down the date and I was so embarrassed to have missed sharing this very important anniversary with them. I also felt badly because I had eaten a a frozen chicken pot pie for dinner - - - Mrs. Paul you should be ashamed of yourself, there is supposed to be chicken in the pot pie not just in the picture on the box.
     I asked Sylvia what they had had for dinner and listened as she rolled off a list of entrees of my favorite dishes - - - and the food at their club is the best in town.
     
      I wonder if  I should tell Judy.

     I wonder if Emily Post would say that I still have to reciprocate, even if I didn't attend.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2012

SENIOR MOMENT # 2

    Well that didn't take too long. Just a day or two after writing about my misadventures on Memorial Day I received a phone call this morning from a very good friend, Sylvia Robinson who is Don the photographer's wife, calling to ask how I was feeling. I considered that a very thoughtful act, since she knew I was home alone with Judy being away for a few days.
   Then the ax fell. Sylvia wondered why I hadn't shown up last night for their wedding anniversary party. I was dumbstruck. I hadn't written down the date and I was so embarrassed to have missed sharing this very important anniversary with them. I also felt badly because I had eaten a a frozen chicken pot pie for dinner - - - Mrs. Paul you should be ashamed of yourself, there is supposed to be chicken in the pot pie not just in the picture on the box.
     I asked Sylvia what they had had for dinner and listened as she rolled off a list of entrees of my favorite dishes - - - and the food at their club is the best in town.
     
      I wonder if  I should tell Judy.

     I wonder if Emily Post would say that I still have to reciprocate, even if I didn't attend.