Tino Sehgal at the Guggenheim Museum
50th Anniversary Empty Nesters
By: Charles Giuliano - Mar 09, 2010
Arriving at the Guggnheim Museum late on a Monday it was fairly empty of visitors and pretty vacant.
Through reviews and word of mouth I knew what to expect in the exhibition by the Berlin based artist Tino Sehgal. Which is to say, nothing.
Before I arrived at the museum, making the trek uptown, I anticipated finding a void inside. At least not art in the sense of a visual experience. For more than a century artists have hammered away at those assumptions and reactionary paradigms.
Eons ago Marcel Duchamp declared that he found art to be "too retinal." So it is hardly surprising or even avant-garde to anticipate visiting a museum without objects. It was actually inevitable. Artists have toyed with that idea in galleries. Exhibitions in which the vernissage was the work. Or Chris Burton supine on a shelf above visitors. There but not visible.
So this experience, work of art, two actually, by a young European art star had that inevitable sense of samosamo; déjà vu all over again.
But, you intuit that I am being coy. It comes from piling on decades of looking at, thinking, and writing about art. Yawn.
Why then submit to an effort of experiencing work with such diminished expectations?
Mostly the challenge is about coming to grips with some previously untapped insight about self. To probe deeply into the psyche and yet again challenge the essence of aesthetic notions. Through, shall we say, a field trip. Well, it's a lot easier and more benign than dropping acid and having lunch with God or a dialogue with a fire hydrant.
That was then and this is now.
The exercise at hand was to ascend that ramp. A Dante like spiral through the void of self and the repository of memory. Now 50 years on if those walls could speak. If they were so inclined. Get the dada pun?
But this was a post Scientology Guggenheim. It has been deprogrammed from its reactive mind and is now evidently clear. Wonder if the curator had to hold tin cans and answer questions for the benefit of the e meter. Is the artist a celebrity member of the Sea Org?
Of course this was an occasion to see the magnificent Wright space on its own terms. Devoid of objects and populated by the soft passage of a few visitors.
But Sehgal has fouled that sense of pristine minimalism by populating the space with two works Kiss, a couple slowly writhing on the floor of the rotunda, and This Progress involving a team of collaborators. They randomly engage visitors with a brief but insightful dialogue. As the visitor and inquisitor proceed, at key bends in the curve, they are joined by another narrator. For a time the visitor is engaged and double teamed. Then one peels off to find another visitor.
Because, as usual, I took the elevator to the top and worked down, that seemed to disrupt the flow. I was never approached even though I stood in the middle of the ramp inviting an encounter. Now and then I shadowed a couple or group rather like a voyeur. So I got a variety of glimpses of the process but no direct encounter.
From varying rings of the spiral I gazed down at the writhing lovers. Rather than an erotic response I wondered about their endurance. There was nothing soft under their bodies to cushion them from the hard floor. You have to suffer if you want to sing the blues.
At varying levels I veered off into the more conventional satellite galleries. But on this day I had little patience for looking at the familiar works of the permanent collection. There seemed nothing new to think about Malevich.
Although there was a 1913 Portrait of a Man by Derain. It was hung near works of similar periods by Picasso and Braque. It seemed that the Fauve artist had captured some of their mannerisms with that same earthy, colorless palette and ersatz cubist like reductions of form. It made me think how Derain, by then an over the hill Fauve, flirted with but never embraced the developments that pushed him off the radar screen.
It was a moment. A flirtation at best. Then I returned to, no welcomed and embraced, the void.
Perhaps it was a matter of perfect timing. This Monday visit to the empty museum was a bit of sorbet to clear and refresh the senses. Over the weekend there had been the endless slog and glut of way too many art fairs. That non stop assault of art. The torment and exquisite corpse of sorting out all that good, bad, and enervating art. The torture of the retinal. Now and then I paused to apply eye drops.
But none were needed here as I drifted along in the soft, ambient light.
Such experiences always come down to time. Just how long do we want to submit ourselves? I tend to have a short attention span. When I look at my watch that is a signifier of displeasure. Another is a sore ass during a long show.
For me art always comes down to the body. The issues of physical challenge, travel, and endurance. When in NY, like an art shark, you have to keep swimming or risk drowning. It is just that primal.
On the subway I noticed a tall young man who has been one of the crew for Sehgal's piece. I asked him if he had gotten something out of the experience.
It is taboo to speak to strangers on a crowded train. But I felt entitled because of his role doing just that in the museum. He was at first surprised. The conversation was awkward but gained momentum. He recognized me from the museum so understood the context of my questions about the work and his role in it.
As the train progressed from station to station he glanced furtively at the platform for his stop. It was a natural indicator of when the conversation would cease. The dialogue in a sense was becoming my own conceptual piece. Actually I came to respect this young, handsome black man. The interaction was guarded but with a willingness to both have and remain cautious about the experience. He hinted at lost years of another professional life. His interest in philosophy. That this project was so satisfying for him. He got off at the next stop.
It ends today. Or is just beginning.
Link to NY Times article.