January 2009

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An exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, ‘Looking At Music’, examines ways in which sound, poetry, film, video and movement interacted with visual arts in the late 1960s and 1970s. The exhibition stirs up a whole range of possible ways in which the idea of art, and the experience of art, can be reconfigured. Many of the artists in the exhibition have been seen and heard before; some are iconic cultural figures. The exhibition is gently suggestive rather than confrontationally iconoclastic. For viewers unfamiliar with this work, it is a useful introduction; for everyone else, it can be warmly nostalgic.

There are pieces by musicians, videomakers, dancers, filmmakers, poets, publishers, rock musicians, together with one or two known primarily as visual artists, although not in traditional genres. All worked in non-traditional ways, and all – from John Cage to The Residents – adopt a modernist programme somewhere between two slogans: Ezra Pound’s ‘Make it New’ and the Talking Heads’ ‘Stop Making Sense’.

So what does it mean to have to come to terms with things in a museum setting that are not paintings, drawings, prints or sculpture? An adjustment of the vistor’s time frame for one thing. Non-time-based works can be seen at the viewer’s leisure, as quickly or as slowly as desired. Video and audio require the viewer/listener to remain fixed for a certain duration. I find this annoying. If I want a filmic experience, I prefer to be seated in a darkened theatre, and if I want to hear something, I want it to be in a theatre, at a club, or at home, where I can do what I want while I listen.

‘Looking At Music’ ingeniously avoids these problems. First, it makes subtle but important distinctions between film and video, and between video as art and video as whatever I decide to film with my camera. A 51-minute film by Yoko Ono and John Lennon, Film No. 5 (1968), originally shot in 16 mm film, shows a cropped head (Lennon’s), its unblinking visage staring out endlessly. There is a suspension of time in the simple and clever choices made by the filmmakers that is the exact opposite of most films or videos seen in galleries and museums: you can watch Film No. 5 for as long or as little as you want, and still get the whole experience. Nam June Paik could have claimed to be the first practitioner of video art; he bought the first commercially available video camera on the day it went on sale and made a film of the Pope riding through New York City. Here, his collaborative side is stressed: we hear a musical recording made with Joseph Beuys and see a small television set covered with plastic pearls, showing a simple slit of tv glow, made with Otto Piene (Fig. 2).

Documentation makes an appearance in Lucinda Childs’ Vehicle (1966), a 16-mm film of a performance in which electronic sounds were triggered by the performers’ movements (Fig. 3). The decision to project this film at wall height again subtly subverts expectations, making it seem less like documentation and more like performance. Like many of the works in this exhibition, Vehicle owes a debt to the work and philosophy of John Cage. One of Cage’s major contributions was insisting that the sounds and sights of daily life could enter into art, or even be art in and of themselves. Duchamp had introduced this idea, but Cage added complexity to the basic concept. What this Cagean freedom allows in a work such as Vehicle is the feeling that the dance piece (and film of it) intermingle with life – the art and seeing or hearing the art are equivalent. It takes away the time obligation inherent in most video and audio works.

Another way to depart from traditional visual media is through the verbal. The music and visual imagery of poetry are brought into conjunction with visual art here through the publication Semina, put together by the artist Wallace Berman during 1955-64. Berman’s art, and that of Bruce Conner, also in the exhibition, leans towards poetry, or at least toward non-traditional ways of making visual art, embracing a particular outsider aesthetic that was burgeoning then on the West Coast of the United States, where those artists were based. Semina included graphic work, much of it by Berman himself, and poetry and texts by writers such as Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Michael McClure.

The final element in the exhibition is a selection of early music videos by rock artists. This could be the subject of an exhibition in itself, yet the knee-jerk response – Why wasn’t so-and-so included? – gives way to an appreciation of the artistry of these particular works. The Beatles (in a clip for ‘Penny Lane’ directed by themselves), David Bowie, Captain Beefheart, The Residents and devo (Fig. 1) belong in this exhibition because of their multifarious awareness and ambitions. The Bowie video is the
most conventional; the others use elaborate story lines, animated staging, props and acting to accentuate the theatrical and poetic nature of rock music.

The scope of the exhibition, curated by Barbara London, associate curator in the museum’s Department of Media, is the late 1950s to the late 1970s, and the sensibility stressed is non-mainstream. Even when the artist is John Lennon, the exhibition succeeds in showing the least mainstream side of that artist. Or to put it another way, the 1960s and 1970s were times when counter-culture ideas were taken seriously and could attract large audiences.

Good painting is not enough
Today, by contrast, the commercial media seem to hold such a grip on both artists and audiences that it is hard to find works of audio and video that do not reference mainstream culture and do not aspire to the same goals – one of which is the desire to control the audience, which is opposed to the Cagean idea that control is neither possible nor desirable. If one thinks about what is on view at commercial galleries in New York at the moment one finds a refreshing, if somewhat bewildering, variety.

I often see very good painting in galleries but sometimes wonder if good painting is enough. If I complain that there isn’t enough good painting out there, shouldn’t I be happy when I see the work of someone who is dedicated to the craft, who has spent years honing his or her skill? Yet more often than not, I am left wondering why good technique is not in itself satisfying. I then find myself wanting something more vulgar and in touch with daily life, or else I want to go to the Met and see an exhibition like the current Morandi survey, where I can have my cake and eat it too. I want good technique combined with a new way of seeing the world. Is that too much to ask for?

On a recent visit to Chelsea galleries, I was impressed by paintings by Kim Uchiyama (Lohin Geduld Gallery), Gary Simmons (Metro Pictures), Rita Ackermann (Andrea Rosen Gallery), Amy Ellingson (Charles Cowles Gallery; Fig. 5) and Joanna Pousette-Dart (Moti Hasson Gallery). As one might expect, the artists at the ‘hotter’ galleries (Metro, Rosen) presented work with more animated content (sex, violence, and social disarray), while those at more staid establishments showed work that was interested in modernist formal issues or appreciation of pre-industrial cultures. On this particular excursion, my sympathies lay with the latter. I liked the quietness that lines and areas of paint allowed me, without the turbulence that, I often feel, belies a desire to tap into the mass-media-inspired market.

Three sculpture exhibitions likewise provided space for reflection and for a more personal relationship with the work. Tony Smith (Matthew Marks Gallery), who died in 1980, was represented by strong sculpture (Fig. 6), thrown into relief by weaker work in painting and drawing. Louise Bourgeois showed new work at Cheim & Read, and continued to stun by the revitalised energy of her sculptures and works on paper. Stephen Antonakos showed slyly evocative geometric neon wall pieces from the 1960s and ’70s; as with Smith, Antonakos’s works on paper serve to highlight the lucidity of the three-dimensional pieces.

Was there anything in the galleries that continued the tradition on view in ‘Looking At Music’? Xu Chen presented a functioning store, ShanghArt Supermarket at James Cohan Gallery, complete with shelves of Chinese products and a checkout girl (Fig. 4). I did not purchase anything but was informed that I could have. Michael Krebber at Green Naftali was the low point of the day – an exhibition of surf boards, cut into segments. I can take Damien Hirst on his own terms, and think his recent Sotheby’s sale was a successful work of art, but Hirstism does not work, any more than Warholism would have. The emperors with clothes can be imitated; the ones without cannot.

Although I am a fan of Martha Rosler’s, I did not enter her exhibition at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, as visitors were required to pay 25c to pass through a turnstile. Proceeds went to an honourable cause, but I have a strong belief that there should be occasions to experience art that have no commercial contingency. Nalini Malini’s installation at Arario Gallery seemed contrived, or maybe I remained unconvinced by both the technique and the content. A large-scale video installation seemed to take moments from a generalised history, rather than a specific one, and the drawings and paintings on acrylic sheets felt like generalised, as opposed to universalised, sketches of human bodies. Mario Merz’s installation of two large sculptures at Gladstone Gallery’s new space on 21st Street was characteristically appealingly friendly. Nothing is at risk or frightening in his works, although they are supposed to be dealing with elemental issues.

For me, the most successful exhibition that was outside the box was really not outside the box at all. It was an exhibition of sculptures and drawings by Nathan Carter at Casey Kaplan. His steel sculptures use techniques developed by Julio González in the 1920s. His large-scale drawings in acrylic, enamel paint and collage derive from Cubist models. Many of the works in the show were merely decorative and not very good decoration at that (I’d rather have a Rita Ackermann in my hallway). But the large- scale sculpture and drawings looked entirely new and made time stop for a few seconds. It was a good day after all.

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