When the MET Gets Insecure - Baldessari's Pure Beauty Take Two

Last week I went to the Metropolitan to see the Baldessari retrospective for a second time (I first saw it at the Tate in London). The Tate had it better. Maybe because the British institution had more room, the MET show felt cluttered. But in their spatial restrictions, I was happy to see the curators presented more of the artist's earlier and less well-known work (such as Baldessari Sings Sol Lewitt of 1972) rather than his 80s color dots on black and white footage. 

In their restrictions, however, they also decided on pretty much the pettiest of possible moves they could have done with Brain/Cloud (With Seascape and Palm Tree) from 2009 -  the image illustrates my post "Baldessari's Brain vs Koons's Penis". This installation is composed of a sculptural brain being filmed by a delayed low quality camera, giving the visitors the chance to see both the brain/cloud in reality and in a mediated reality themselves and the cloud/brain. For some reason - I heard rumors of weight - the MET didn't instal this work but still wanted to. Accordingly they went on presenting multiple flat large-scale reproductions of it as well as its illustration on all of the exhibit's published material.

Talk about being missing the point.

To forget how depressing it is when even the world's top museum is insecure about its collection and/or suggests a reproduction is sort of like the real when doing an exhibit on an artist who has perpetually made fun of such conventional ways of seeing:
Here is a little humor with John Baldessari's Baldessari Sings Sol Lewitt from 1972: 

OK GO's (music) videos as video performance (art)

Since their treadmill choreographed music video and youtube sensation (53,000,000 views) Here It Goes Again in 2006, OK GO has achieved the tricky operation of staying cool by continuing to impress us - at least me - with their music videos' creativity and wit. So good actually, it's hard to know if the music is catchy because of the band's musical talent or because of the band's visual performances. 

Earlier this year OK GO came out with This Too Shall Pass, a 4 minute music video based on the Rube Goldberg's chain of events machine. Like Here It Goes Again the real-time unedited quality of the short, and the way everyday objects play off each other to obtain unexpected lifelike qualities gives it an undeniable awe factor. And in many ways the same exact awe factor the Swiss artist duo Fischli/Weiss went for when they created their famous The Way Things Go with teacups, tires, explosions and buckets of water in the studio/loft in 1987.

A parallel that yet again brings up the rather banal question of what gives art it's aura (see Gaga vs. Jana).

OK GO's This Too Shall Pass (2010)

The Way Things Go by Fischli/Weiss (1987)

More recently OK GO's latest music video End Love brings up the same question: a mix of time lapse and stop motion, teletubbies, tamed geese and endurance, it's worth some great thought-out video art performances - minus the boredom. In particular:
- Tuner prize recipient Martin Creed's 2008 piece Work 850, a sprint athlete running every 30 seconds between 10am and 6pm the 86-meter dash from one end of the British Tate to the other, for four months; 

- Chu Yun's This is xx (2006) shown at the New Museum's Younger Than Jesus Triennial, of a female participant sleeping in the museum/gallery space after having taken sleeping pills; 

- of course John Baldessari's iconic 1971 I am Making Art; 

- and wonderful Guido van der Werve's The day I didn't turn with the world (2007) a beautiful 9 minute stop motion film of the artist in the North Pole turning in the opposite way of the sun for 24 hours.

OK GO's End Love (2010)

Guido van der Werve The day I didn't turn with the world (2007) (extract)

Jeff Koons' penis vs. John Baldessari's brain: what does it take for the 'what is art' question to be successfully conveyed?

Curious to compare the National Gallery's Pop Life: Art in a Material World exhibit to the one presented last October in the Tate Modern, I accidently ended up in Ottawa on Canada Day. Both in the UK and in Canada, Pop Life was, and remains, a blockbuster success.

If there are a few differences - particularly in Canada, the sad spacial absence marking the controversy around Richard Prince's photograph of young Brooke Shields' nude and the unnecessary addition of a room thought-out by so-called genius concept Reena Spaulings but based on a notion articulated better by others fifty years ago (see Nouveau Realist Daniel Spoerri in particular) - both exhibits are a shiny clutter of recognizable works, names, ideas, shows, things, accessories and humor by Andy Warhol, Andy Warhol's disciples (Haring, Basquiat, etc) and Andy Warhol's sons (Hirst, Koons, etc).

This success is obviously tied to the overt and cool 'contentious' issues that are embedded in the show's premise: Brillo Boxes (courtesy Warhol) and a calf in formaldehyde (courtesy Hirst) question art with an 'ironic' regard Mona Lisa incontestably can't. However how does this type of art get to be such a success when similar contentious questions have also been tackled by artists without the clunky use of their penis stuck in La Cicciolina waxed asshole (courtesy Koons)?

When I saw Pop Art at the Tate Modern, the neighboring temporary exhibition was a retrospective, John Baldessari Pure Beauty. After the bustling business and literal heat of the Pop Art rooms, John Baldessari's space was strikingly different - it was empty. Better to contemplate his thoughtful yet biting career of videos, words, canvases, collages and a final installation (see photo above) subtly questioning the nature of our contemporary human condition, the difference of public interest between both shows was a sad nod to what Pierre Bourdieu hoped for: the opening up of museums. Indeed in the 60s this French sociologist observed the exclusion of people lacking a cultural capital, and invited museums to democratize their spaces with better formulated labels, programs, visits, relaxed atmospheres, cheaper entrance fees, etc...

Ideally I'm all about this, I think art can be a powerful force to question our own assumptions on reality. Practically, though, exhibitions that are public successes seem to require the straightforward 'irony' and (at this point) boring 'controverse' of Warhol and this results in people like Jeff Koons and Cosey Fanni Tutti imposing their wet dreams to my face in the name of 'irony', 'mockery' and 'art.'

I believe in Baldessari. (the MET is opening his retrospective next October).