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Loud art A Sight for Sore EarsBy Rick Horowitz
The woman with the pleasant smile and the painted-on eyeballs was nice, but she wasn't my favorite. My favorite -- my favorite work of art last weekend, that is -- was one I heard long before I ever saw it. This was in New York, art capital of the North American landmass. And not just anywhere in New York, but at the latest Biennial exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, or as it's known to us cultural aficionados, "the one that doesn't have the curvy ramps." Every two years, the Whitney displays some of the best, most exciting work now being done by American artists; we happened to be in the city at just the right time, and in the mood to widen our horizons. It was the perfect place to do it. This year's assortment included painting and sculpture, naturally, but also film and video and sound and performance art. There were peepholes offering holographs, mannequin heads debating the meaning of life from the comfort of a cardboard box filled with foam peanuts, computer printouts hung unframed on the famous Whitney walls with simple pushpins and metal clips. And, of course, there was the woman with the pleasant smile and the painted-on eyeballs. She was sitting in a chair right across from the elevators, right in front of a painting, chatting with passersby; at first glance -- and second glance, and even third -- she didn't look as if she had painted-on eyeballs. She just looked as if she had large eyeballs. Large, and unblinking. The reason she wasn't blinking, one of us finally figured out, was that her eyes were already closed. Those giant eyeballs were painted, or drawn or glued or something, on her eyelids. Which meant that she wasn't just a woman with a pleasant smile and enormous eyes and a pleasant line of patter. She was "an installation." She was art. I was impressed. So you'll understand why I was blown away even more by the "fire alarm." I heard the "fire alarm" when I was still two or three galleries away -- a distant, insistent whine, not nearly as melodious as the videotape of the Contemporary Christian gospel chorus, but more accessible, somehow, than the old black-and-white footage of TV personalities from Detroit. As I moved closer, the sound grew louder, and even more insistent. Finally, I entered a modestly proportioned gallery and saw it: a red metal box, perhaps eight inches on a side, mounted on a plain white wall right next to a doorway marked "EXIT." There were other works in the room -- a tree-like sculpture in shades of gray with branches sticking out at perfect right angles, a smooth brown paddle-ish thing with psychedelic designs on its bottom -- but it was the red metal box and the nearby doorway that demanded my attention. I moved still closer, almost close enough to read the lettering on the box; the sound was all-encompassing now. Other visitors entered the gallery, covered their ears and quickly departed. I stayed, and tried to take it all in. There was a woman standing in the middle of the room. Her eyes were of normal size (and open), and she was dressed as a security guard. We exchanged glances, and I decided to do what I'd seen people do with the woman sitting across from the elevators: I engaged the "guard" in conversation. "Where do they put their brains?" she asked me -- a puzzler if ever I'd heard one. She went on to complain about certain elderly men who seem oblivious to their surroundings, who would even open doors that were clearly meant for other purposes. I sympathized, playing along as well as I could under the circumstances, while the "alarm" continued its mournful comment about the state of society and the fragile place of our senior citizens within it. While the "guard" and I watched, a middle-aged gentleman arrived, dressed in the uniform of a maintenance man. He approached the "alarm" and pulled a series of keys from his pocket, sliding each of them in turn into a keyhole. The noise continued exactly as it had before, exactly as it would for the indeterminate future. With a theatrical shrug, the "maintenance man" lumbered off for points unknown. I think that said it all. Posted 5/30/02. Rick
paints word pictures -- brush up on fresh commentary right here!
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Rick Horowitz
