dagblog - Comments for "Art Review: theanyspacewhatever at the Guggenheim, New York"

Don't get me wrong. That's

DF — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 01:03:33 +0000

Don't get me wrong. That's exactly what I got out of your review in the first place. I didn't mean to imply that you weren't allowing for the distinction.

Disorientation is not the

Michael Wolraich — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 00:57:26 +0000

In reply to Heh. Perhaps. Then again,

Disorientation is not the problem. I left Memento dying to resolve my disorientation. It provoked me. The anyspacewhatever did not provoke me nor my companions. There was no puzzle to solve.

To be fair, post-modernism is not about puzzles in the classic sense. According to post-modern principles, there is no meaningful answer to what a piece of art really means. The interpretation of art arises from the relationship between the work and the viewer. But the anyspacewhatever failed, in my opinion, because it did not effectively engender any relationship at all with the audience. The artists explicitly asked viewers to form relationships with the art and then closed off our options for doing so.

Heh. Perhaps. Then again,

DF — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 00:06:07 +0000

In reply to I suspect it's to make its

Heh. Perhaps. Then again, provoking disorientation isn't necessarily a self-serving agenda in art. Take, for instance, the film Memento. Since I'm not sure whether you've seen the film, and don't want to give anything away in the case that you haven't, I'll just refer to the manner in which the bulk of the story is told, which is backwards in ~5 min. segments. This puts the viewer in the same shoes as the main character, who can't remember anything that happened more than five minutes ago. Until the final act, the viewer has no knowledge of beyond five minutes prior either.

I suspect it's to make its

Nebton — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 23:48:33 +0000

In reply to Yeah, there's definitely art

I suspect it's to make its "tribe" feel superior.

Yeah, there's definitely art

DF — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 21:38:29 +0000

In reply to But when the art seeks to

Yeah, there's definitely art that exists to disorient, but I think G might be asking to what end this effect is sought.

But when the art seeks to

Nebton — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 21:09:21 +0000

In reply to Thank you for the

But when the art seeks to deliberately obscure its meaning--bewildering casual visitors, amateur critics, and hapless tour guides--then what has it accomplished?

Its primary goal?

Thank you for the

Michael Wolraich — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 21:02:00 +0000

In reply to respectable attempt at the

Thank you for the corrections, if not the condescension. Mea culpa on 1 and 2. I blame 3 on an uninformed museum guide. As for my winning bet, there is actually a world memory championship, and Konrad was the champion in 2008. Next time, let's both hire factcheckers.

But let's get to the heart of your sarcastic critique of my sarcastic critique, implicit in the snide "oil painting" and "angry young man" comments. I appreciate the Deleuzian objective of allowing museum visitors the space to form their own interpretations, but this exhibit went well beyond that objective--presenting the art in a decontextualized space and obscuring any contextual information that visitors might have used to form their interpretations. Most of the pieces were, in a word, opaque. And now you seem to be blaming my failure to engage with them on my ignorance and lack of appreciation for anything other than oil on canvas, explicitly articulating the condescension implicit in the exhibition.

Art need not be democratic, it need not be understood by everyone, and it certainly need not be understood in the same way by everyone. But when the art seeks to deliberately obscure its meaning--bewildering casual visitors, amateur critics, and hapless tour guides--then what has it accomplished?

PS For the record, I am neither angry nor young (alas) nor particularly enamored of oil painting.

respectable attempt at the

Anonymous — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 17:04:31 +0000

In reply to Art Review: theanyspacewhatever at the Guggenheim, New York

respectable attempt at the angry young man (let me guess, you like oil paintings?) however, sarcasm is only biting if it's accurate, so i mention the most glaring of your rhetorical inventions, for three reasons:

1. Audioguide II was Parreno's work, not Gillick's

2. the (not a) Roman Pantheon does have a hole in the roof...it's the eye of the oculus

3.Gonzalez-Foerster's Promenade was conceived as a tropicalization of space, revisiting a discourse of Latin American modernism. the Tokyo boulevard work (not a tropical city, by the way) was Moment Ginza, a 1997 group exhibition in Grenoble

however, you won your bet...we didn't know there was a world memory championship, because there isn't. Konrad is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records, as is Parreno's piece, because Konrad bested his previous time reciting the work.

Thank you for the

Michael Wolraich — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 15:09:03 +0000

In reply to And my favorite: If only you

Thank you for the explanation, Alina. Makes more sense now. I'm going to have brush up on my New Testament.

And my favorite: If only you

Alina — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 07:27:05 +0000

In reply to Art Review: theanyspacewhatever at the Guggenheim, New York

And my favorite: If only you were hot, or cold. But you are neither hot, nor cold. I am going to vomit you out of my mouth. (Ed. Talk dirty to me, baby)

This quote is from the Bible.....