6 January – Becky Goes to The Tate

When is detritus just that, and when may it be elevated to something more, and who may be the arbiters of this jetsam?

I’ve spent an illuminating afternoon at The Tate. It was the final day of the Francis Bacon exhibition. Whilst there I viewed the 2008 Turner Prize nominations. I am a great fan of modern art, but admit that much contemporary art seems to be the sort of trickery that might be pawned off on a gullible emperor vs. a piece or series of pieces that are deserving of my time and consideration. When I walk through galleries lined with the fruit of our current genius’ minds, too often, two memories butt their way to the front of my mind.

1. In my friend’s first days of film school at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, a young man presented his first assignment: slides of photos shot pap-style of children in a play ground, backed by a soundtrack of jackhammers in action.

The still patient professor asked the student to speak to the meaning, inspiration and story of the project. The student, stunned that all was not obvious or far too profound to require explanation said words to the effect of “Dude – it’s art. If you don’t get that – well – there’s nothing I can say to help you get that. Dude, it’s art. Dude”.

It wasn’t art. Here is how each student and long-suffering prof knew it was not art. It was lazy. The kid was lazy. He expected the viewer to do all the work. He had no intent, no story. It was mere assemblage. In other hands, directed with a better mind, the same tortuous, self-absorbed slide show might find meaning by acknowledging that it is in fact a lazy bit of nothing. Perhaps it could be a postmodern masterpiece, but maybe, and even so…

2. The more potent memory is one (well reenacted in numerous galleries over a period of years) in which my actually painfully talented friend Chris would enter the room – survey – see – walk out of room -exit to street and say “Well, that was crap”.

Chris was always right. What he said wasn’t spoken out of a jealousy laced with late-20s hipster ennui. It was said when what we had just seen was crap. We might have gotten a complimentary glass of 2-buck-chuck or (ugh) a can of PBR, but he would usually be tweaked (for a short while, at least) on some talented-guy cellular level that is not understood by the majority of us.

***
The Turner nominations (on exhibit until January 18 ) were interesting, and some of it was both inspired and shared said inspiration*, but too much of it needed too much talking by the artists to get their points across.**

This bothered me. Not a great deal, on par with a kernel stuck in a molar. This is due to the fact that I approach viewing art as I do reading. This of course would be a problem if I were an art critic, but as I am just me, it will remain such with no harm done.

When I read, I consider 1. the story and how much I enjoy reading it, how hungry I am to read it…2. the writing style^ 3. How it effects me, my interpretation, etc. and 4. What secrets has the author hidden; what the words really mean.^^

When I was younger, my friends and I spent a great deal of time focused on point four, often to the exclusion of 1 – 3. We must have spent 47% of junior-year english class deconstructing Isabelle Allende’s House of the Spirits and 15% of that time was devoted to what Allende was really saying through Rosa the Beautiful’s green hair. The summer following graduation, we attended Allende’s lecture at Boston’s Harvard Club. One of us asked the question we had spent hours debating+: What is the meaning behind Rosa’s green hair? What are you saying?

“Well…Rosa was beautiful and otherworldly, so I though ‘mermaid’, and to me mermaids have green hair”.

“And the symbolism of the mermaid would be – “

“No symbol – mermaids are beautiful and otherworldly. That’s why the green hair. It is uncommon”++

We were silenced+++.

“But…”

“No but. Sometimes green hair is just green hair. This is important”.

And it was. And it has been. From that day, I began to look and see – or to attempt to look and see – differently. It is, in our hypoanalytic world<, it is hard to see and often harder to accept what is really there. To see what is real. This is the trick. This is the 42. This is important.

But I digress…

When I visit a museum or gallery, I will look – read the card – look again – listen to the commentary, but I look first. I want to know what I see with only my own self to give context. I read and listen because I enjoy knowing more about what the artist was thinking, how the critics have reflected, but that doesn’t mean anything if I don’t try to see from the first.

When I come upon a work I really fancy, I feel a catch – a first kiss kind of catch. At times my eyes will fill, at others, when my legs have moved forward, my eyes protest and swivel back for one more stare. It may be an old master or a void sliced in burlap, but they are beacons, they call and I have no resolve to fight them.

With too much contemporary art, I find myself sans catch. Much of it feels soulless or deceitful or pretentious, too If you were meant to get this you’d get this. Nope. It is worth my estimation and appreciation, I will, but don’t expect me to exalt because you told me too. I am – all of us watchers are – worth more than your foxes and have a right to expect more from you, our artists.

This, patient reader, brings me to the crux. The second artist, Cathy Wilkes, specializes in found object installations. I unexpectedly spent a great deal of time in her room. I walked around the sculpture. I listened to the commentary. I was not caught at first, but neither was I sure what I felt. She was refreshingly less eloquent in her interview than through her work and this allowed the piece to stand on its own. It played with my ways of seeing. Reminded me to look in new or other ways. It opened in me ideas and internal discourse, but did not scream and was neither intrusive nor a bratty interloper. It remained in the back of my mind; allowed me to be floored by the Bacon exhibit. It did not impose. It waited until I was quiet and then it spoke. And then I listened. And then I saw. It is a very, very fine work of art and much deserving of the mantle it has earned.

***

*The standouts for me – on initial inspection were Goshka Macuga’s collages and Runa Islam’s short film Cinematography. Mark Leckey was awarded the prize on December 1.

**I wonder if the secret to becoming a successful artist in contemporary times has more to do with having a silver tongue than golden hands.

^I yearn for the day when the Brave Editor of legend, armed with a sole red pencil slashes away deadwood adjectives and burns to char heavy handed, insultingly pedestrian metaphores# so as to rescue us from the villainous Sententori. The Sententori are a tribe of writers, late of much renown, whose “gift” and “talent” can be had by anyone in possession of a Roget’s. They use 10 middling words when one well chosen one would do – and do much better. They write sentences – not stories. They know that a critic can excerpt only sentences and not whole works, so they fatten up unassuming clauses with innocent words, which are then offered like so much blood sausage. Believable dialogue, character development, plot development – humbug! It’s the juicy, fatty, sentence that gets noticed, that sells books.

What we need is a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Stories. It’s in our best interest. Stories have a life of their own, and are willing to take others in their wakes.

And to you, dread Sententori – Lighting. Lightening Bug. Mark Twain. Google it.

#I don’t have an editor; see what can happen?

+So sad and yet, so true.

++Or words to this effect.

+++A feat myriad armies have tried and failed to repeat since.

<And we New York girls are nothing if not Queen over-analyzers.