The Rancher Artist

JAMES 

TURRELL

Guggenheim

Museum

June 21- September 25, 2013

If strolling down the street in New York this summer feels like walking on hot coals, head for the James Turrell exhibition at the Guggenheim.  It's a cool down for the mind.

Before the guards kicked us off the floor, I had a chance to experience Turrell's piece in the rotunda as I imagine the artist wanted us to.  Full frontal.  Absorbed in the light changes.  Surrounded. The colors change slowly and so does your depth perception.  Opening up and flattening, the rings play with your mind.

On a humid, temperature rising day, go to the Guggenheim and do what they tell you do in yoga class.  Do not look at your neighbor.  Let go it all go.  Focus on the rings.   It's the "OM" moment.

 

A peculiar benefit of the show is the Frank Lloyd Wright ramp.  We all know it.  It's usually filled with art.  Start at the top and spiral down or walk up the cone.   The railing is always open to the skylight at the top and it's customary to peer down into the lobby.  At the Turrell show, the railing is closed off with a white screen to create the rotunda piece.  There is no art in the spiral.  The additional Turrell pieces and other exhibitions are in the side galleries.  The ramp itself becomes a different kind of light piece.  I don't know if this was on purpose or not, but it really works.

If I lived near the Guggenheim, I would stop in often.  The Turrell piece, Aten Reign, is as refreshing as any Shaken Iced Peach Green Tea Lemonade.  It's soul food for the mind.


ATEN REIGN (2013)
from Wikipedia
Akhenaten (/ˌɑːkəˈnɑːtən/;also spelled Echnaton, Akhenaton, Ikhnaton,and Khuenaten; meaning "living spirit of Aten") known before the fifth year of his reign as Amenhotep IV (sometimes given its Greek form,Amenophis IV, and meaning Amun is Satisfied), was a Pharaoh of the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt who ruled for 17 years and died perhaps in 1336 BC or 1334 BC. 

He is especially noted for abandoning traditional Egyptian polytheism and introducing worship centered on the Aten, which is sometimes described as monotheistic orhenotheistic. An early inscription likens the Aten to the sun as compared to stars, and later official language avoids calling the Aten a god, giving the solar deity a status above mere gods.

The VOID is not DEVOID

 

Contemplating the Void

Guggenheim Museum, New York

February 12 - April 28

I don't listen to or watch the news anymore; it's too depressing.  An upbeat story:  scientists have discovered that lisping is genetic, not psychological.  If you lisp, this is definitely good news, but I get my kicks in other ways.

Going to museums and galleries is my pick-me-up of choice.  The current show at the Guggenheim Museum, "Contemplating The Void," is a buoyant moment.  Unlike most museum shows, which we think of as rarefied events, this show is hung unframed, each work just pinned to the walls (with a few fragile exceptions).

"For the building's 50th anniversary, the Guggenheim Museum invited nearly two hundred artists, architects, and designers to imagine their dream interventions in the space...

Organized by Nancy Spector, Deputy Director and Chief Curator, and David van der Leer, Assistant Curator for Architecture and Design, the exhibition will feature renderings of these visionary projects in a salon-style installation that will emphasize the rich and diverse range of the proposals received."

- from the Guggenheim webiste

Most of the proposals brought a smile to my face

and some even a little laughter.

 

Imagine clothes lines criss-crossing the ramps at the Gugg

OR 

Floating rope bridges connecting the ramps.

Others thought about decoration:

Taking that pristine white interior

and attaching red and gold decals to all the surfaces.

How about thousands of balls bouncing down the ramp?
 

On the extreme front, hot air balloons originating on the ground floor
of the atrium and exiting through the glass roof,
with of course Frank Lloyd Wright lifting the glass dome off the roof,
like a pot on a saucepan.
 

OR turning the entire building into a giant camera obscura?
 

And for a real pick-me-up: The Gugg as a container: a cup of macchiato.

If you are feeling a little down, and find yourself in New York City, visit "Contemplating The Void," I believe you will find it has restorative powers.

NOTE:  

For those with some bucks,

The Guggenheim will be conducting a live auction of work in the show on March 4.

http://www.guggenheim.org

Curator David van der Leer led a small group of us on a private tour of the show.  He is Dutch, which I only mention, because in my limited experience, Dutch people seem to be very open and extremely engaging.  Maybe that comes from living in a small, crowded country.  Most importantly, he brings a much needed new perspective to the Guggenheim.  I look forward to seasons of interesting shows at the museum.

*Photocollage at the top by Phyllis Odessey

24 Tons of Steel

Memory by Anish Kapoor

Guggenheim Museum

New York City

Commissioned by the Solmon R. Guggenheim Foundation
and Deutsche Bank

A blimp-like shape wedged in a small room at the Guggenheim Museum is unsettling.  24 tons of Cor-Ten steel constructed from 156 parts.  Anish Kapoor's sculpture, Memory sits there, waiting for the viewer.

Memory is an accurate name for this piece.  You have access to the piece from three different vantage points, but at no time can you see the entire piece.  You have to complete the sculpture in your mind and that is the interesting part.

Kapoor has described Memory as a "mental sculpture."  For the viewer, the only way to understand the entire piece is to navigate it in your mind.  The whole is only visible in your imagination.

Whereas in a Richard Serra piece (and it's impossible not to compare the two, both are large and both are made with Cor-Ten steel), you walk not only around the outside of the entire piece, but in most cases, you can walk inside the sculpture.  A Serra piece is the ultimate in feeling connected to the artwork.

And yet I felt, the Kapoor piece left a very strong memory: a memory perhaps more heady, than visceral, but extremely powerful nevertheless.

Being Jenny Holzer

Easter Sunday: The Guggenheim Museum: The Third Mind:
American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860-1989

The museum commissioned Ann Hamilton to create a site specific installation in the museum rotunda. Her work, human carriage (2009), "is a mechanism composed of two elements: book weights made from thousands of cut-up books that ascend and descend the rotunda via a pulley system, and a pair of Tibetan cymbals encased in a white silk bell carriage, which cascades down the balustrade along the rotunda spiral."

"Human carriage is a metaphor for the power of the transmission of ideas through books, which, in the artist's words, "leaves no material trace but which might forever change you."

Like most shows at the Guggenheim , it makes the most sense to start at the top and walk down the ramp. The human carriage descends from the top of the museum. One person from the museum actually ties the books onto the pulley and starts the carriage moving. As a result of loading the books onto the pulley, some little bits from the books fall to floor. If you are like me, you immediately pick them up. And try to make sense of these random thoughts, which someone in the universe once put together in a coherent fashion.