Review: theanyspacewhatever at the Guggenhiem

I groaned along with a few other people when the black and white film we were watching on beanbag chairs stopped in the middle, apparently on a continuous loop that never finishes. Since I had finished my free espresso, I got up and someone else jetted into my seat. The espresso bar’s line had died down, and people mingled up and down the white ramp. Where was I?

–the not-so-stuffy Guggenheim. The Guggenheim in New York has taken on a playful approach this fall, with an “invitation to a core group of these artists—Angela Bulloch, Maurizio Cattelan, Liam Gillick, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Douglas Gordon, Carstenller, Pierre Huyghe, Jorge Pardo, Philippe Parreno, and Rirkrit Tiravanija—to collectively formulate a scenario for an exhibition,” according to its press release for theanyspacewhatever.

‘Relational aesthetics’ makes an intimidating phrase. However, these artists, who take the exhibition as a medium, have turned the Guggenheim into a humanized and fun space where suddenly everything starts to look like art. The museum has been transformed into one sprawling art playground, where the whole experience becomes a user-friendly and interrelated series of experiences as one ascends the circular ramp. It starts with the marquee of flashing lights at the entrance, but this theatrical experience is one where the viewer is the star. The bare white spiral of the interior is punctuated with a plethora of details that humanize the space. On walking in, one looks up to see a glittering starry sky and down to see a Pinocchio submerged face down in the museum’s small pool. What’s the connection between these works? Only that they share the space with each other, created to work together to draw the viewer into the space, and make them more aware of their surroundings.

It works on you subtly at first, but becomes more and more interesting. I took my shoes off to watch part of a documentary on some cushions next to one of the TVs on the first level, thereby making myself part of the exhibition as I discovered when girls took photos of the scene, and me, from the balcony above. Associative chains of black words seemed randomly typed both in placement and meaning at first. They never take a structured narrative, but one becomes more in tune with a generalized significance. The sound of falling water immerses the viewer as he walks through a bare white tunnel, then he is lost in a brown cardboard maze with holes that you can peep through and art embedded where you are least likely to look. After a set of hotel bedroom furniture on a round glass platform, you arrive at my favorite part, the Illy espresso bar next to the beanbag movie theatre. Eventually, you reach a sign at the top telling you you have reached the end, and it really feels like a you have completed a journey.
This process-oriented way of experiencing the exhibit made me feel like a child, uninhibited. This is the kind of space where you can touch the art, drink the art, and walking through it makes you a part of the art. These ordinary objects, beds or words like half-formed thoughts, could be found outside the Guggenheim’s walls. The New York Times reported that, “For a price and with a reservation, up to two people can spend the night. (Like so many must-dos in New York, it is sold out.)” Does it get more interactive than that?

It will be up until January 7, 2009, and in conjunction with the Catherine Opie retrospective also being exhibited, makes for a fun day at the museum. Instead of being boxed into to rectangular room and seeing things in gilt frames, you see Frank Gehry’s design fully exploited in this spiral-patterned fun house. Instead of being told where to look and how, you are let loose to participate and peek where you like. How refreshing.

Ugliness, More than Skin Deep

“It is a fact universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a fortune must be in want of a wife.” So begins Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and this tongue-in-cheek maxim could perhaps be qualified by more recent research to state: “a single man in posession of a fortune must be in want of a beautiful wife.” As a New York Times article points out today, the more beautiful a woman is, the wealthier her husband tends to be.

Indeed, who wouldn’t want a beautiful wife? Beauty is more than just beauty. Because beauty, historically and today, is associated with virtue and intelligence. Thus, beautiful people are even payed more. The NYT article discusses ‘ugliness’ as a quality coming up more in public discussion, everywhere from the popular TV show “Ugly Betty” to Umberto Eco’s art history tome On Ugliness, which I’ve recommended in another post on ugliness. It ends by discussing a new awareness of ugliness as a quality discriminated against, similar to race or gender. Certainly a fair point.

More interesting though, is how ugliness has been systematically ignored throughout history and why, if at all, we should remove the stigma. Beauty has been discussed ad nauseum, while ugliness, as Eco points out, has simply been considered the opposite. Ugliness, in its grotesque mutations and fascinating sinfulness has all the appeal of Milton’s Satan, who remains far more compelling than his God. Beauty, like perfection, is boring. Absolute symmetry only means you need to see half the face before you know everything that you need to know. If one considers ugliness or beauty something more than superficial, then I think one has to acknowledge that it as a very powerful force. Look at the variations of ugliness below:



In defense of this misunderstood phenomena, I’ve pointed out the ugliness is more interesting and more complex than beauty. In addition, aside from the fact it is uneradicable and necessary to a conception of beauty, ugliness should have a stigma. Beauty and ugliness go behyond the skin deep. They express qualities beyond symmetry and proportion, and to limit them to simplistic ideas of Barbie dolls and Ugly Betty’s is to limit our cutural heritage. Why is uglyness such a loaded term? What is it we fear? Death. Sickness. Deviation from the norm. Evil.

Tomorrow expectations of beauty will be reversed. It’s Halloween, when people embrace the ugly and scary and creepy. However, it’s more fair to say that the scary, creepy, and horrible are in themselves ugly. With costumes of monsters and witches, people embrace their deepest culture fears. (Obviously, this article is not going out to all those skanky barmaids and Playboy bunnies. Yawn.)

Halloween is a celebration of all that ugliness signifies, and even if we as a culture only give it one night before shedding our talismanic ugly skins and returning to our beautified selves, it is an important expression of all the variety and power of ugliness.

Wanted: New blog template

Blogger seeking attractive new template. Two columns preferred, with posts on the right. Clean and simple lines but must have some flair, as blogger writes on aesthetics. Readability is key, as is sense of humor and preference for Italian wines. Don’t take offense, but no black and reds templates need apply. Similarly no skulls and no pink hearts. Prefer pale backgrounds. Looking for a long-term commitment; seasonal themes need not apply.