I would like to think that people are not built to embrace cynicism, and that cynicism represents the corrosion of the best in human feeling. If you’ve observed a toddler recently, you’ve probably noted and envied (apart from their unpredictable temper tantrums) the joyfulness that arises from their pure, unbridled curiosity. Touch. Sound. Cackle! The challenge, of course, is how to reconnect to that naturally reactive state with a pathology-riddled adult psyche. We want to be curious, positive and “open,” and science tells us we’ll live longer if we manage to be, but there are just too many environmental contaminants to grapple with.
Think about it: How much of what is around you—the art, the politics, the people, the places—have you grown cynical, resistant and generally distrustful toward? Maybe even this question? Or perhaps the very word “open” in the previous paragraph signaled, “Warning: Gratuitous, Recycled and Overwrought Self-Help Advice Ahead. Proceed with Caution.”
Traveling to New York last week to work with designers on a new ivyeyesediting.com, I made it to MOMA. In addition to revisiting the museum’s revered collection of de Koonings, Rothkos and Pollocks, I wanly pretended to marinate on a fair amount of new contemporary art. One room featured an artist who appropriated the fabric from striped beachside awning canvas, barely touching the material with his own paint. Voila! I reflected back on my art history courses at Yale, and the body of criticism that taught us how we were to think about art..and OH how we thought about it (Schnabel was such a hack and parasite on Basquiat’s too-short career—don’t even get me started). With my decade-old expertise now covered in synaptic cobwebs, I felt even more alienated by this exhibit and an artist who seemingly invested in nothing: not process (Warhol), high concept (On Kawara) or social commentary (Ai WeiWei). I wished he’d returned the fabric to its rightful owners, and that I might instead be dining in one of the many estantes along the coast of southern Peru.
I left MOMA feeling a tempered gratitude for seeing some of the beloved art commemorated in all of our mint condition coffee table books. And also underwhelmed. The next day, stepping into the Doug Wheeler exhibit in New York City’s gallery district was an immediate salve for this festering, post-liberal arts disillusionment. For those of you who haven’t seen this installation, I would suggest that you stop reading now.
Our tour guide (www.thetwopercent.com) did a respectable job of remaining neutral and giving away nothing before we entered the space. He offered one simple caveat: “Stay in there longer than you think you should.” We sat on benches in the waiting vestibule as small groups (no more than 3 or 4 at a time) entered the space, first taking off their shoes and putting on sterile white hospital booties. Originally I had been the one to sign us up for the private art tour, but with a reasonable amount of reservation (aka cynicism). So, when sprightly, too-Berkeley-for-her-own-good Gallery Girl commented that the rain heard overhead might “enhance the sensory experience,” I nodded my head glibly. (“Listen honey, the fact that YOU could be so enthusiastic about a piece already makes me feel like I’m going to be disappointed by it…” God I’m an asshole.) She was probably fresh out of college, and in 2003, I was still high on the intellectual elitism and esoterica of high art and art history, too.
As we placed the booties on our feet, I wondered what exactly we were being prevented from contaminating. We walked down a brightly lit hallway, where Gallery Gay waited. “Watch your step,” he warned. Looking to our right was a giant white room that looked like Jesus’ version of a blackbox theater. We stepped up an inch or two into the room, and I gave voice to the most toxic thinking in my head: “Shit.”
We were in a fucking big white room.
Running along the base of the posterior wall was a small groove—and the wall above seemed illuminated by light of varying strength. “More fucking light on a wall,” I mused. I actually like Dan Flavin’s body of work, though I would hesitate to whole-heartedly define him as an artist of the same caliber as Renoir, de Kooning or Picasso. In this installation, I was just hoping for an event versus an “it is what you make it” type of high art experience. If I was cynical before, this moment might be the nail in the coffin of my highfalutin gallery-blazing days.
Smirking at my two best friends—we have built a decade of friendship on finding humor in dispiritedness, despondency and despair—we begrudgingly walked toward the illuminated wall together. Slowly, we put our hand up to it, half-expecting Gallery Gay to blow the whistle. But we heard nothing. And, we felt nothing. No wall. No limit. The dark groove below wasn’t just a fissure; it was the threshold for a much more expansive space. But how far did the space extend?
I can’t remember which friend was first to move inside, but I just remember that I was not the pioneer. Optically, I had no idea how to make sense of what was happening. I have 20×20 vision and my best friends do not, and part of me worried I might lose sight of them in what looked like a zero-visibility fog. I should stay back and play human compass. If we’re being honest, psychologically I tiptoed along the delicate tightrope between curiosity and fear, with a slight predilection for the former. But as my friends moved deeper into the space, their forms remained just as clear. Where did this interior end? What was its shape? What was the artist’s endgame? Soon after, underscoring this admittedly one-dimensional line of adult inquiry, was our collective, childlike laughter. We’ve always been big laughers.
This was, after all, a hilariously well-orchestrated catharsis, elegantly provoked by the artist. The installation was not just an optical illusion, but a philosophical one. Looking at each other, laughing and grinning from ear to ear, my best friends and I seemed to be floating in a vivid, stark white Apple advertisement. And while we appeared more physically one-dimensional (imagine the look of an actor or prop against a green screen, or any number of scenes from the 80s cult classic Defending Your Life), the quality of our demeanors was more pure (and light?) than I’d remembered it being before entering the space.
We reached the back of the room and felt a slight incline, which the museum attendant promptly asked us not to ascend. Turning around to face the hallway where we had entered, on the nearside of the groove on the floor, we could now see an elaborate network of brightly colored lights. As our eyes adjusted, some (not all) of the perimeter of the room became more clear.
We were in a capsule.
Later, we would read that these lights coupled with the phosphorescent white paint had allowed Mr. Wheeler to create such a seemingly infinite installation. We would also read that the lights gradually changed colors for those who were resolute enough to stay in the space a bit longer (now I wish I had heeded our tour guide’s advice).
For the remainder of my visit in New York, this experience would remain the emotional touchstone for each of us. Well, certainly for me. I laughed louder, ate less gluttonously, and generally felt less depleted. I wanted to take it all in. This had been an incredible work of art and we were so happy to have experienced it together, breaking down some of our ossified misperceptions and free-floating ennui. We didn’t want to be intellectually elitist or feel out of touch with art, at the symphony or occasionally with each other; like anyone else, we just wanted to be moved by something. I’d seen that tension in myself and my friends dozens of times, and yet never articulated it before. It was a soulful, honest-to-God hunger alloyed with our brassy, impenetrable New York exteriors.
Facing the sloped wall one last time, my eyes again disappeared into the vacuous space. No end in sight. Now the only reminder of my corporeality was the small talk of the rain heard upon the tin roof. I wanted to give Gallery Girl a hug, apologize for being such an abhorrent asshole, and thank her for being so wise. I wanted to give Gallery Gay (in whom I admittedly saw a reflection of my former self) a hug and apologize for calling him Gallery Gay.
As writers, business leaders, corporate minions, and human beings, we can reinvigorate our goals and rediscover our zest for life by seizing these types of experiences (don’t roll your eyes at me). With the stress of modern life and all its suffocating expectations, we face any number of contaminants daily, and yet, we allow them (hospital booties off) to sully our houses. However, we can also take responsibility for the thinking that IS the most toxic contaminant. The universe is as small and infinite, as ugly and as pristine, and as flawed and perfect as its inhabitants are willing to make it in every single moment. But we must tenaciously preserve, protect and promote that a more curious, open way of thinking.
Walking out of the Doug Wheeler exhibit and into the New York City rain, I didn’t have an umbrella or even miss having one. I’m going to say it: I felt a sense of creative and spiritual renewal. I breathed differently. And, when I think back on the installation and the look on my friends’ faces as they simultaneously embraced the rational possibility of an infinite universe, I am reminded of that feeling again.
Cheers,
Janson
Managing Editor
Ivy Eyes Editing
www.ivyeyesediting.com
