Food for thought or Philosophical Molotov Cocktail?

<p>ww.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Introduction--the-future-of-permanence-in-an-age-of-ephemera-8540</p>

<p><a href="http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Introduction--the-future-of-permanence-in-an-age-of-ephemera-8540">HERE'S</a> a link that should work.</p>

<p>The article is mostly reactionary clap-trap. </p>

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<p>With this in mind, it is worth pondering what fearsome changes have been visited upon that little word “art” over the course of the last century.</p>

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<p>Art has always been a purveyor of change. Nothing fearful about it, except in the closed mind of the author.</p>

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<p>In one sense, what we have been witnessing is the application of the principle of affirmative action to culture.</p>

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<p>At least he lets us know clearly where he's coming from.</p>

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<p>Forty years ago, the typical art museum was a staid and stately place.</p>

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<p>It still is in so many instances. One wonders if Kimball has been to the Met, the new Whitney, SF's new MOMA, to name just a few. He ought to check out the austere, old world Nueu in Manhattan.<br>

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There's still plenty of staidness and stateliness to be found. But, yes, it has a different look and feel than it did 40 years ago.<br>

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And, yes, people now wear jeans to the opera house. SHOCKING! My guess is that the ones in jeans in the balcony are getting as much if not more out of the music as the rich folks full on foie gras and dressed in gowns with adorning jewels.<br>

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This elitist approach to art is neither terribly philosophical nor a molotov cocktail. It's just another excuse to fight a culture war on expressive progress.<br>

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His main problem is seeing the world as so black or white, that it becomes either the old masters or feces in a bag. By limiting himself to the extreme example, he doesn't have to bother himself with all the stuff in the middle, which is where most of art lies. It's easy and manipulative to give examples most people would laugh at, but he's dismissing much great art by lumping it in with some of the extremes he discusses. And, even those extremes, if this were at all philosophical, would be given a fair hearing instead of an immediate dismissal.<br>

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It's not that he doesn't make some good points about consumerism and some places where popular appeal has become more important than depth. But these get lost in a sea of impenetrable and burdensome stodginess.</p>

<p>This sort of sums it up - <em>It does not attempt to meet people on the level of their everyday experience, seducing them inside with quiche, cappuccino, and the latest art-world trend. </em>Apparently he is unaware that quiche went out by the end of the 1990s and that quiche is a 500 year old French dish. Using it as some sort of indicator points out that he probably hasn't really set foot in any of the museums he criticizes, since it's unlikely that any of them make quiche a centerpiece. And what's wrong with cappuccino? A museum serving a classic beverage dating back well over 100 years is suddenly a problem? </p>

<p>Not much else to say, he has his head stuck in the ground. </p>

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<p>The coffee bar or restaurant, the movie theater or gift store or interactive computer center vied for attention. Art merely added the desired <strong>patina</strong> of cultural sophistication, the increasingly faint echo of civilizational aspiration.</p>

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<p>My attention span was getting taxed plowing through the written article as I kept searching for all the "essay below" references and never finding them. So I needed to listen to the YouTube video. I got to the quote above and I just threw my hands up at Kimball's pronunciation of one of my favorite words.<br /> From Google search...it's pronounced pa-TEE-na. (Long "E"). Not PAT-inuh...DUH! I will not accept his pronunciation no matter how many learned bonafides he's acquired.</p>

<p>Other than that I just couldn't figure out what he was talking about. A failure to communicate effectively. </p>

<p><a href="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/KQjsWzcdlPQ/maxresdefault.jpg">hundertwasser wien</a></p>

<p>I love the Hundertwasser. Great concept and it didn't prevent me from enjoying the art. I'm not that easily distracted. I can appreciate complementary experiences, even at the same time. Different strokes. </p>

<p>The museum itself as a piece of art is a paridisal post-modern concept. There is absolutely no reason it shouldn't be as enjoyable, interesting, and fascinating as what is inside its walls.</p>

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<p>The problem arises when the purpose of the building ( any building, not only museums ) is for itself to serve as a tourist attraction.</p>

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<p><br /> Your original statement on this topic said nothing about tourism. However, I have never seen any dictum, rule, or law that states what a building housing art can or cannot be. In fact, if one assumes that art should be more widely appreciated, the "tourist" route is useful. The other direction is to follow the regressive view that the author of the article espouses, which seems to be something you agree with here.</p>

<p>I don't think of the Hundertwasser as staid and stately. And I agree that stately can still be enjoyable, interesting, and fascinating. I love staid and stately museums. Just don't think museums should be limited to that.</p>

<p>In any case, some of the focus in the article was on art itself, which the author seemed to think should be cast in more traditional aesthetic terms, and he seemed to be using the buildings as an excuse for his more reactionary take on art, dismissing performance art, dismissing Jeff Koons, etc. He seemed to me to be demanding both literal and figurative walls of austerity and "respectability" around art that would stifle much of it.</p>

<p>From a tourist perspective I'm of the belief just from media coverage over the years the more quirky the facade of the gallery/museum the more it attracts those that expect something weird, unusual and attention getting.</p>

<p>You can probably thank the long history of media coverage on the Mapplethorpes, Koons and others for slightly turning the art world into somewhat of a side show. Folks now want to see in a museum if it's true about someone displaying a sculpture of a 500 lb woman sitting on a toilet. In fact the movie "Nocturnal Animals" opening credits shows morbidly obese nude women dancing in slow motion to great effect. Very odd and trippy. Is that art? Or is that an attention grabber to draw the crowds?</p>

<p>It's definitely show biz, but at least it pays, right? What's wrong with that?</p>

<p>Simplified, is it the picture or the frame that is paramount, and should that figurative picture have a didactic purpose.</p>

Sandy, because pictures are shown, there will always be a frame, whether a literal one or a wall or context on or in which

the work is seen. For me, it's not a matter of a universal "which is paramount?" It's a matter of lots of possibilities. You are

going to get artists and curators who will want to play with different ideas and modes of presentation. And those can be

rather interesting, sometimes bringing out important aspects of the work. Of course, some will also fail. Theater, symphonies, operas pretty much have to be interpreted in order to be experienced as performances. Some prefer staid performances. Others will appreciate a wide variety of interpretations, even those that may stray from the "original intent" or means of the artist. We rarely hear Mozart "as intended" since his music is most often performed not on original instruments but on more contemporary-sounding ones. I can accept even the most classical paintings perhaps presented in more contemporary settings and ways. It can even give them renewed meaning and energy.

 

Some art may have a didactic purpose, in varying degrees.

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<p>I think the moral of the story [in "Nocturnal Animals"] was about the paradox of the 'tortured artist' unwilling to kill the life that inspired him in the first place and therefore unable to progress to something <em>real</em>. F*$k art. It doesn't mean anything without love.</p>

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<p>Phil, I take it then you interpreted and I'm assuming liked the movie as a good example illustrating how personal life affects the works of a creative artist?</p>

<p>I couldn't glean that once I heard the dialog at first meet up at the restaurant where he says to his future wife that her eyes are sad like her mothers where she answers back with the tired cliched line... "Please don't tell me I'm turning into my mother".</p>

<p>After that all the metaphoric imagery like the red couch just became a clunky way to tell a story.</p>

<p>In your view, Phil, was the movie a work of art or just an uninspired and contrived depiction of the art world?</p>

<p>Thanks for the link to Architecture versus Art.</p>

<p>The objective of the interior of modern museums being compatible with the displayed art is suggested by Gehry's Bilbao (good compliance) versus the Libeskind's Denver museum addition or perhaps the same architect's Royal Ontario Museum addition (bold and uplifting exterior, problematic interiors).</p>

<p>Gehry also succeeded I think in the Art Gallery of Ontario, the outside reflecting the late 19th and very early 20th century multiple small buildings it faces, while the elevated and curved interior volumes serve as an appropriate and relatively unconfined space for the sculptures and other art therein.</p>

<p>The addition to the new wing of the Musée national des beaux arts de Quebec (MNBAQ) in that city has an amazing complicity with its natural surroundings (Plains of Abraham), making one think a bit of the philosophy inspired by the Austrian artist who transformed visions of museums and houses in Vienna.</p>

<p>When I am not photographing, and even when I am pursuing that pastime (a strange word for it as the aim is not inherently to "pass time"), my other hobby is architecture. Four years of my younger existence living well within London's green belt nurtured my appreciation of Renaissance and Georgian architecture.</p>

<p>At some later point such Cartesian symmetrical beauty became as staid as the traditional museum (I'm not referring here to the works within it) and I sought freer expressions of the human enclosure.</p>

<p>That I found in the vernacular architecture of Europe, transposed and reinterpreted by local builders in the 3 and 4 hundred year old buildings of my region.</p>

<p>The doors and windows of those original buildings are placed only where internal needs required them. The simple but harmonious interactions of walls cut from local timber, roofs (once thatched then of wood) and dormer windows (again placed only where needed by the occupants, and not obeying some symmetrical plan of dictated harmony) proclaim a structure befitting human needs and lifestyle.</p>

<p>Much like the philosophy of Hundertwasser. That more of his thought frequent our places.</p>

<p>Just some thoughts . . .</p>

<p>Some of my most memorable and deep art viewing experiences have taken place in the totally messy, cramped, badly lit, creaky art studios and lofts of local artists. One of the best musical performances I've heard was Mozart being played solo by an Oakland Symphony conductor in the inner-city apartment of a friend on an out-of-tune upright piano.</p>

<p>It's interesting that artists often create in much less than "desirable" conditions and surroundings, and yet we insist on the optimum conditions (as if there is such a thing) when viewing. What if it turned out that the act of dealing with distraction and focusing through distraction actually gave us a particular kind of awareness that might aid us in art appreciation? We take paintings that are often made amidst splatters of paint on the floors, ceilings that leak in corners, patched walls, streaked windows and claim that the optimum viewing experience is in a staid and stately museum!</p>

<p>Many of the exhibitions I've seen actually seem to deaden the work by sort of purifying the surroundings. I think there are as many ways to show and experience art as there are ways of making it. Some of these ways work and others don't. When it comes to the presentation of art, I prefer to think there in terms of vision and possibilities. Architecture is art (and more). It's not art vs. architecture. It's art and architecture. </p>

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<p>What if it turned out that the act of dealing with distraction and focusing through distraction actually gave us a particular kind of awareness that might aid us in art appreciation? We take paintings that are often made amidst splatters of paint on the floors, ceilings that leak in corners, patched walls, streaked windows and claim that the optimum viewing experience is in a staid and stately museum!</p>

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<p>I want to add that these things may sometimes not be distractions or not be felt as distractions at all. They may be authentic material aspects of life and surroundings that help provide volume, texture, and inspiration.</p>

Architecture not needlessly clashing with the art inside is very different from architecture which is limited to the "staid and

stately." There's a universe between being staid and stately and not needlessly clashing. Architecture can be adventurous

and informal and still not clash with the art it houses. The article of the OP still strikes me as reactionary and has more the tone of a culture warrior than a thoughtful essay. The article you provided, Phil, is a more reasoned piece.

 

I think architecture may even impose itself without necessarily clashing. I've seen Monet's water lilies enough not to mind a strong

curatorial or architectural statement providing a context that insinuates itself in such a way as to give me a new, and

perhaps even exotic, perspective on them. I hope l'Orangerie is always around for its great presentation of Monet, but that

some houses and some curators will put a different or even radical spin on the lilies, I think, can also be welcomed.

<p>Art and function are not always companions. Architecture serves man (at its most basic it is the walls and roof that separate man from the exterior) and has a functional quality as well as an aesthetic purpose. More than 1.3 billion dollars later, the Olympic stadium in Montreal is art, and beautiful, but its suspended and oft reconstituted roof has been a disaster in practical terms.</p>

<p>On a much more humble level, and as an example of the effect of place on an exhibition, here are some photos of my seasonal art gallery that sought (2002 to 2012) to use a restored heritage coach shed ("barn") as a place for art. Other than a floor and Lighting that I built, it is a simple 200 or more year old vernacular structure. I would prefer to show here more of the modern art than the images of somewhat crowded photographs (exhibitions changed frequently), as the paintings and sculptures more strikingly contrasted with the rustic surroundings. </p>

<div></div>

<p>Old shed gallery interior 2</p><div></div>

<p>Old shed gallery 3</p><div></div>

<p>Old shed gallery 4</p><div></div>

<p>Phil, I also have the occasional bird that is looking for a larger habitat. I once (only!) had a garter snake come up through a vent from the stone foundation and the crawl space below the floor, unfortunately when a couple from the west was just about to purchase a large abstract painting. The environment doesn't always help.</p>

<p>The ambience and smell of the wood is great and the visitors have free range to walk the the farmer's apple orchard, but the floor has no squeaks. Contrary to the adjoining house that I restored earlier, I screwed rather than nailed the planks to the joists, something I did not realize earlier at the house which then guaranteed squeaks. Building is an ongoing education.</p>

 

<p>I apologize for being late to the party. I'm just back from a quick trip. The question of what constitutes an appropriate viewing/display venue for art is as old as art itself. It is unlikely to be resolved with any one approach or solution. There are several cases that bear consideration: The Kimball has already been mentioned. It represents the highest evolution of the mid-century modernist approach. It is successful both as a purposeful piece of Architecture, and as the setting for its contents. The Louvre likewise is successful, even though not purpose-built as a museum (though one can make the argument that any palace is a de-facto museum). The Getty Center in LA is an extraordinary piece of Architecture in its own right, while generally accepted as also being an outstanding museum experience. We have previously discussed what I consider to be less successful examples of museum architecture, such as the Experience Music Project in Seattle. I really like Arthur's Old Shed Gallery. It feels very apropos to its purpose and content, as do the caves at Lascaux. One oddity to consider is Wright's Guggenheim in New York. It is a fascinating piece of Architecture and is generally very popular. Yet it gets mixed reviews as a display space. The sloping floor and curving walls of the ramp add an out-of-kilter perspective to the art displayed on its walls, most of which was expected by the artists to be viewed from a flat floor on a flat wall. I am also reminded of the original Temporary Contemporary in LA, a simple warehouse intended, literally, as the temporary home for part of MOCA's collection during a remodel of the main facility back in the early 1980's. It was so popular that it has become a permanent venue. One can argue whether or not Gehry's remodel is an improvement. <br>

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In the end, the most basic criterion for any museum is whether or not it contributes in a positive way to the art experience. All of the successful examples noted in this thread do exactly that, whether it be a cave, a warehouse, a shed, a palace, or a purpose-built piece of Architecture. A "staid and stately" museum can be valid and apropos. It might also be simply boring. A case can be made for myriad approaches and solutions. I expect this to be true for as long as there is art to display. I try to take each on its own merits, just as I do the art that they contain.</p>

<p>A further thought: Architecture, no less than any other art, is subject to the whims and vicissitudes of popular styles. To the degree that art has become democratized, so too has much of the Architecture intended as art's home. To the same degree that society has declared that virtually anything can be art, so too, most any structure can serve as a museum. The risk is that not every piece on display nor every building in which such are housed contribute equally to the edification or enlightenment of humankind. Over time, likely many lifetimes, humankind will winnow its way through the prodigious outpouring of "art" we see today, and will decide what really is "Art". The social, political, and religious opinions that drive us today will be of little consequence to that process. This will happen in the same way we as societies and cultures decide which buildings to preserve and which to demolish in the interest of new construction. The great danger exists in the ratio of chaff to wheat. Our descendants may well lose some priceless artifacts lost in the noise of creativity run amok. We as photographers see this even on this site. How many of us have the time to view and consider every image submitted? How many truly wonderful images do we miss in the flood of postings? </p>

<p>I recently got to see <a href="https://mnaves.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/arbus-1.jpg">THIS</a> Arbus exhibit at the new <a href="http://media.vanityfair.com/photos/56d9b0f8f5e2b2b15abbcb2a/master/w_1920,c_limit/met-breuer-paul-goldberger.jpg">MET BREUER</a> in New York. (Here's an <a href="http://media.vanityfair.com/photos/56d9b0f5bab3b6473b8f937c/master/w_690,c_limit/met-breuer-paul-goldberger-01.jpg">INTERIOR</a> shot.) The building itself used to house the Whitney collection, which has recently moved downtown, now housing portions of the Met's collection. It's a fine example of brutalist architecture and has undergone a great restoration which revives its original flavor, which the Whitney had sort of papered over. Naming the museum for the architect (Breuer) himself gives the architecture its due and that was conscious on the part of the Met. In its newest incarnation, consistent with that period of architecture, the building avoids lightness and frivolity in favor of a kind of rugged seriousness and a highly graphic sense of the flow of space.</p>

<p>Lots of people find such brutalist buildings, including this one, uninviting. So the Arbus exhibit started with a strike against it just by being in this building, according to some critics. And then, curator Jeff Rosenheim conceived the exhibit itself in a kind of hall-of-mirrors fashion, with repeating alternating columns with one photo per column (as can be seen in my first link of this post), so viewers were walking in all different directions and the photos were not hung in any particular order, such as chronological. Again, some critics were vocal in their condemnation. Too distracting, people bumping into each other, overwhelming, lacks focus, etc., etc.</p>

<p>This was my first visit to the building since the Met took it over and I loved the building, not because I want every museum to have this institutional, heavy look but because it works for what it is, where it is, and when it is. In a strange way, I found its uninviting character rather inviting precisely for its toughness and unflinching lack of softness. It was like a challenge to penetrate, like shaking hands with the man of steel, only in this case it was concrete. And I loved the exhibit, not only for getting to see some rare Arbuses that haven't been shown before but because the photos are so good and the concept of the exhibit worked for me, again, not because I think every art exhibit would be effective if displayed this way but because I thought it was very in tune with Arbus's street sensibility and her subjects as well. The oddity, the randomness, the insistence on dealing with other viewers, all seemed to integrate so well with the photos on display.</p>

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<p>Inside the Guggenheim, I tend to feel like I'm forever on the way, never to arrive.</p>