my parents asked me to take them to the
wexner center so i did, although i had been trying to avoid altogether the prospect of walking through an art museum with them. i am distressed at being in museums with people. i am especially uncomfortable talking about art with my mother, who thinks she knows a thing or two about art history & who often describes the stunning & the clich� alike as "neat."
we went to the wexner & i felt out of control the entire time. i set myself apart from my parents so that they couldn't ask me questions about the installations. they are always wanting to know The Point, or they want to make sure that they are liking the Right Art for the Right Reason, & i don't know how to talk about art the way they want to be talked to.
i did like the exhibition very much. i took in a lot of very wonderful reds.
:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:when i was younger i used to focus on every painting in a museum. i would stop in front of each one & investigate it & try to get to know it in some way. i would go on like this, slowing down everyone else who might be with me, until my eyes got tired & i'd reached the point where i couldn't ingest anything else. i had maybe two hours to meet new paintings & to learn them.
now when i walk through i think about what kurt vonnegut said about his sister alice: that she could roller skate through the louvre & as she passed by each painting she could nod & say "got it," "got it," "got it," at breakneck rollerskating speed. now when i walk through to meet new paintings i go quickly through the room & just take what little i really need from each one.
:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:if you take in the art at rollerskating speed, you put a lot of distance between yourself & your parents fairly quickly.
i just felt so out-of-control. i wanted very much to sit on the floor next to some installation: curl up & cry. i didn't like the way the guards were looking at me.
i dug out my rosary & clutched it, all scrunched-up, in my fist. i could feel the smooth of the beads & the tangle of the chain & it absolutely filled my fist.
:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:as i walked up the incline of the hall, i kept my eyes on the grain of the wood. i watched my feet step within the confines of only two narrow boards, one foot in front of the other. it was even better than the feeling of not stepping on the cracks in the sidewalk. i just followed that path, those two boards.
when i got to the top of the incline there were three security guards staring at me.
if i am walking with very small steps, very slowly, & if i am watching my feet while i do it, & if i am doing all of this in a space dedicated to exhibition, then: is it art?
(i hate that question. i don't care what is art. just like i don't care what happens in the afterlife. there are more important things.)
:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:when i worked at the speed: it was closed to the public that summer for renovations. i would walk in through the back door & walk through a couple of the galleries to get to my office. (my office was a table outside of my boss's office.) on my way i would pass my very very favorite john de andrea sculpture & by the end of the summer i felt i knew the people in it. i felt that i would kiss them if i saw them on the street.
i also walked past a giant sam gilliam great cloth thing that hung from ceiling to floor. i fell in love with it, too.
:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:claudia told me the story once, how she took her father, who maybe didn't understand her being an artist, to a museum. & how he stopped in front of some minimalist sculpture (smith? serra? judd?) & said, "well. i could have made that."
& how claudia said, "yes, you could have. but you didn't."
there were absolutely wonderful donald judd boxes. donald judd used to have boxes that played with white & with light & with the space between the boxes & with shadow. these boxes i saw today had stained wood, & the negative space was within the boxes, & there was panelling, & some of the panelling was red.
:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:it occurred to me that i should look at a new painting from the side, & not just walk up to it face-to-face. that i should sidle around it, walk past it, look at it sidelong, to see what it had to say.
so that is how i came up to these gerhard richter paintings: from the side.
they are paintings not photographs.
you stand & you look at them, two views of probably the same person, seen from behind. they behave like only-slightly out-of-focus color photographs. the paintings are flat as photographs, too.
i stood back & stared at them a long time. my father came up to look at the paintings. he crossed in front of them & stood out from them: in clear focus.
i also like to take gerhard richter's very heavy giant book atlas & sit with it in my lap & just look at one page for a very long time. but it is too hot, now, to sit with that sort of weight in my lap.
the museum of course was air-conditioned. i could feel the freon in my nose. but i felt stifled, & warm. because so out of control.
:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:for a long time i wanted to be a museum security guard. i still think i would like to stand there for a lot of hours. i would stand in one room & get to know the paintings that lived there. really actually know them.
i think i would like to stand in the gallery with the christian bonnefoi pieces. not paintings. not collages. not installations. stunning, the kind of things i could look at for a long time & keep falling in love.
:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:there was also a series of sherri levine photographs of rouen cathedral. they are black & white, & they are very grainy & out of focus. the didactic labels & the catalogue left this out, but it was quite obvious that the photographs were after monet's series of paintings of the south face of rouen.
my mother came into the gallery & said, "oh these remind me of monet."
i wanted to say, "that is the point" & then i remembered that on principle i don't like for art to have a point. so you see i betray even myself with my own ridiculous elitism.
i should just be happy my parents like to look at pretty things, & that they helped to pay for my education.
my education that does nothing. my education that sits in my head & sits there & sits there & comes back up every now & then to say, "that is rouens cathedral" so that i can tell it apart from every other bit of french architecture i also had to learn, somewhere along the line.
:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:we looked at all the Gorgeous Little Things in the bookshop, which is overstimulatingly lovely. i wanted books i have no room for. books in languages i can't even read. overpriced chopsticks sets, the same ones sold in the asian food markets for $2.50.
we walked back out into the heat.
