Apparently I am really, really, really stupid.
My mother was an art history major. I grew up with art books and paintings in the
house, including Degas prints in my room.
When I went to DC at age thirteen, I came home with prints I bought from
the National Gallery of Art shop. I'm a
huge fan of M. C. Escher, and I have a sincere appreciation of all kinds of
art, including unusual, modern, conceptual, and contemporary.
But this … this shit is just too much.
I visit the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston for the
very first time in my life. I have been
to the ICA before many times, but I have never actually stepped inside. My friend has two daughters who work nearby,
it's our favorite parking lot area because it's a stone's throw back to the
highway, the views of the city both by land and sea are spectacular here at the
wharf, and it's where the cliff divers leap into the harbor (from the ICA
roof).
Today, though, admission is free all day long. I can finally see all the treasures inside
and not have to spend a single dime to do it.
I am exhilarated, the anticipation killing me. I just came off of two trips to Boston's
Museum of Fine Arts and a full day at Salem's Peabody Essex Museum. This place sounds cool, its name is cool, the
glassed in views of the harbor are cool.
I mean, it's contemporary, man, right?
Cool.
My daughter and my friend come with me. We get dropped off at Oak Grove, hop the
orange line of the subway (well, we try to -- Sal apparently is
ticket-challenged and has to pay and extra $2 to get through, and even then,
the gates smoosh her as she screams by), and change to the blue line at State
Street. It's a short walk from the
Aquarium, and it's a beautiful day. We
walk into the ICA, find no lines (which is crazy on a day a Boston museum opens
for free), and promptly put on our disposable tags to prove we are official
patrons of the arts.
Expecting four floors of displays and a few hours of
contemplation, we are surprised to be told we must report to the glass elevator: The ICA only holds one floor of art, the
fourth floor, so move along, children, move along, move along, move along. Like cattle being prodded to the unknown
branding, we dutifully step into the small lobby area and wait for the next …
the only … elevator. There are two
smaller elevators behind us, but guards are standing there. I guess those elevators are too important to
carry passengers. Perhaps they are part
of the art.
As soon as we step off the elevator, we are greeted by
several young, hip, happening-type guides, who are presumably more versed on
the art than are we. We discover quickly
that the ICA is not a museum. It's a
series of rooms that house a few artists at a time, showcasing their work that
presumably moves on to another gallery somewhere else. This makes for an interesting show if you
like the stuff, and a deadly show if you do not.
The first piece of art we encounter consists of five photos,
one of which has some red lines on it from a magic marker, printed out on an
ink jet, and taped to a piece of glass.
Honestly, it looks like it took the artist less than five minutes to put
together. There was some hooey about why
the artists did this, but I lost interest when I came across the modge-podged
white paper. That's right, you heard me:
blank paper covered with glue to become a brittle blank piece of paper. Ta-da!
Yeah. So far, not
impressed.
It went on and on like this.
Pictures that were printed off a computer, artwork that looked like a
really pissed off kindergartner did it, and stuff that said profound things on
the plaques explaining the art, such contemplative words as "This art
represents the vacuum of reality" or "I like to dump entire buckets
of acrylic paint onto canvases and see what happens. This is what happens." I mean, really. I could've done that. Doesn't anyone have creativity anymore?
There are the awkward dimensional paintings made up of someone
squishing paint from tubes, even cake bags, we are told, and even cookie
cutters. Yeah, no shit. I can see the cacophony from across the room,
and I don't even have my glasses on yet.
There are two old chairs stuck to the wall because the artist likes the
thought that things can become … things.
I frigging shit you not. That's
his artist statement that things can indeed become, well, you know. Things.
There are weird movies by a woman dressed in white with
black lines and things poked into her eyes and occasionally with body parts and
body hair made out of yarn stuck to her in various places as she spouts WWI
poetry. This is creepy and scares the
hell out of my adult daughter, especially when the performer stares at the
camera, large black holes for eyes, and starts rhyming about murdering
people.
Yeah. Art.
There is room after room by a graffiti artist who believes
that even if you own property you suck and he hates you, so he will tag your
house because you don't really own anything.
He is obviously a Communist. Good
for him. But let me assure you, if he
tags my property, I will tag him right back with a .22 slug in his ass
cheek. That will be MY art. Maybe I'll use buckshot and make a pretty
pattern in his rear-end, and if a few pellets get wedged into his crack, I can
tell him he doesn't really own that crack; I have a right to tag it with my
shot gun. Maybe I'll get my own show,
too. He has animated set-ups of himself
tagging property with his paint, and he has a sculpture using shelves that showcase
his old spray cans. He has photos of
himself destroying and defacing public property, but, hey, he's an artist who
suffers for his art. He tags your
property because he's a dickhead.
The other depressing part of the show is a room full of
paintings that look like the whole room of art took less than 24 hours to
complete. It is a room full of
half-painted floated faces of white men sticking out their tongues. Why?
Well, according to the artist's statement it is because black Americans
were lynched.
Say what?! I mean,
truly say fuckin' WHAAAAAAT?!
So are you as an artist laughing about that? Are you saying that floating white men's faces
with tongues sticking out are responsible for it? You think this dark part of our country's
history is subject for your ridicule and a chance at an art gallery? Tell me the truth, artist, you just made that
shit up to make your art appear provocative so you could get picked for this
gallery show, right? No way are you
equating tongue-wagging, clownish, half-finished white painted heads on two
dimensional canvases to be a political statement that throws the race
card. Are you?
The most disturbing thing I see, though, is the video of the
tongues. Yes, apparently this show is
enamored with tongues. The
"artist," and I really do debate this label for this person, taped
models (because lord knows their tongues must be gorgeous for the camera),
videoed women licking colored sugar off a glass plate. The music is equally disturbing. For the musicians out there, it is G (wait
about five seconds) then F sharp then it repeats every five seconds like that
ad nauseam. While licking. Licking.
Licking colored sugar. Off the
plate. Art.
For the most part, I am not fascinated, enthralled, nor
impressed with this art. Some of it
actually makes me physically sick. There
is the painting of the woman with the massively misshapen breasts, one the size
of a fist and the other one sticking up in the air and large as a
watermelon. The statement says, "I
wanted to represent women's bodies as they really are…" Sweetcheeks, I can assure you I know no women
with such boobage.
Some of it, very, very little of it, is truly
fascinating. I like the television
pyramid for some reason, possibly because I've owned many of the old model TVs
on display. The inside of the garbage
dumpster is a life-sized animated artist tagging the women's room with
graffiti. How do I know it's the woman's
room? It's clean, there are multiple
sinks, and it's all stalls with no urinals.
For some reason, I find this attention to detail to be humorous, almost
like the male artist made a mistake.
Either that or he's a pervert.
All in all, the art is not that exciting, and the artist
statements are laughable. A guide
finally comes over to enlighten us about some of the stuff we are dissing. "Ladies, the artist who created this
awful, babyish smooshy colored blob was very angry that the university threw
out her 300-foot long comic strip she drew as her thesis."
Really? Threw it
out? Must've looked like shit, then, if
someone thought her thesis was leftover crap.
I'm terribly sorry and I hate that it happened to her, but seriously, she's
pissed off so she throws acrylic paint at square canvases? Oh, but
it's layered, it's textured, this represents her multi-faceted anger, the
guide tells us. Yeah, it's layered all
right; layered under a thick load of bullshit.
Look, if this is talent then I'm wicked talented, too.
I am a writer and a literature teacher. I can create connotations where none exist
and call it a research paper. I can pull
shit right out of my ass and sound profound ("e.e. cummings' 'In Just
Spring' not only talks about the goat-footed boy, the whole poem is shaped …
LIKE A GOAT FOOT!" to which Dr. V's eyes opened really wide and he replied
in awe, "I never noticed that before!") Profound, I tell you. Wicked, wicked, deeply profound.
This place, the ICA, might as well be the Unreality
Zone. For every professional art critic
nodding knowingly and praising this show at the ICA, you've been duped. This is not art, contemporary nor
provocative. This art is sad. That's all. Sad.
And while all the make-believers ooooh and aaaah their way through the
galleries, pretending the white glued paper has real-world significance, we
realists are left with nothing but logic and creativity clashing together
trying to make sense of what we are seeing here.
Sometimes white paper is just white paper. Sometimes a bag is just a bag. Sometimes making too intense a statement
leaves you nowhere but alone in the deep end, and you realize you probably
should've grabbed that life jacket after all, but you didn't so you just make
shit up to keep you afloat.
Sometimes the Emperor has new clothes, and sometimes I am
part of a trio that has no problem pointing out that the Emperor is stark
raving naked
