On a last minute whim I stopped by my favorite museum on The Mall in Washington, D.C., The Hirshhorn Museum. Lucky I did because the current exhibit, The Panza Collection, is stunning. As usual, the exhibit is free, and it runs through January 11, 2009.
In The Panza Collection exhibit the Hirshhorn displays thrity-nine examples of Conceptual, Minimal, Light and Space, and Environmental art which the museum recently acquired from Count Giuseppe Panza di Biumo. The Hirshhorn has put together a PDF checklist of all the works. The pieces that most moved me were the Conceptual works which favored ideas over the creation of unique objects. In other words, pieces that really push the viewer to question the very idea of art.
For example, Hamish Fulton makes treks through rural spaces. These walks are the art. The photographs with printed texts are artifacts of the walks. I got into a conversation with a super-awesome interpretive guide about this. If I went on a walk with Hamish Fulton, would I be observing art? Arguably the art is his subjective perception of the walk, so I could observe him subjectively perceiving, but is that any closer than viewing a picture he takes on the same walk and labels? Another Fulton piece in the collection is Moonrise Kent England 30 September 1985. Basically, he drew a little circle on a piece of paper and the "art" is Fulton's permission to reproduce that however the owner chooses. The Hirshhorn decided to use paint and vinyl lettering on an entire wall.
Fulton's Moonrise Kent England 30 September 1985 is in the same conceptual vein as Lawrence Weiner's works. According to the brochure,
Lawrence Weiner's artwork has consisted solely of what he calls "statements": words, clauses, and phrases that may be realized in any format (written or spoken), in any context, by anyone--or not at all.When it acquired A rubber ball thrown on the sea, Cat. No. 146, 1969, from Count Giuseppe Panza di Biumo The Hirshhorn received a card on which Lawrence Weiner granted the bearer permission to reproduce the words, "A rubber ball thrown on the sea" however they chose. Again, my super-awesome Interpretive Guide and I discussed the intellectual property rights issues surrounding works like this.
A rubber ball thrown on the sea
Did I just steal a piece of art from The Hirshhorn? You can ask Lawrence Weiner December 11th at 7 p.m. in the Hirshhorn's Ring Auditorium.
Douglas Huebler typed letters explaining the process and that the letter was part of "the form of the art." In the letter accompanying Duration Piece #12 Venice, California--Plum Island (Newbury Port), Massachusetts, 1969, Huebler claimed to have transferred sand from a beach in Venice, California, to a beach in Plum Island, Massachusetts, and vice versa. Moreover, he would do so every ten years, though the purchaser of the artwork is financially responsible for all future sand transfers. The letter goes with a picture of darker sand on lighter sand and a picture of lighter sand on darker sand. This in and of itself is amusing. And when I read the letter, I fully believed that Huebler had been to both of those places and transferred the sand just as his letter explained. Then I read the brochure,
Already well-regarded as a sculptor by 1968, Douglas Huebler rejected three-dimensional object-making and began to create pieces comprising snapshots that "picture" the commonplace, often absurd, actions described in the accompanying captions. His work suggests how language can override photography's supposed ability to capture reality and thus ultimately determine our understanding of both events and the images that represent them.So is transferring sand from a beach in California to a beach in Massachusetts "absurd"? Was I totally gullible to believe the letter? Was the sand in the picture even at a beach? Were Dario Robleto's collections of macabre ephemera, such as charred tape recordings of rare birds, in Human/Nature: Artists Respond to a Changing Planet at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego which I talked about previously, real? Is anything depicted in art "real"? Does it matter? Does realness make art any more or less genuine?
I plan to recreate Jan Dibbets' Flood Tide, 1969, a series of photographs of the tide washing away a mark in sand, at Hilton Head on Thanksgiving.
Continuing my obsession with museum signage, the signage in The Panza Collection was rather large, yellow vinyl letters on the wall. The first few pieces in the exhibit consist of vinyl letters on the wall. This confuses the art and the signage. This was at the request of Count Giuseppe Panza di Biumo. In fact, he actually requested that the letters be even bigger. Curator Evelyn Hankins wanted to use traditional signage: black lettering on white cards attached to the wall and eventually compromised by reducing the size of the vinyl lettering.
If someone could do me a huge favor and go to the Gallery Talk on Friday, January 9th at 12:30 p.m. when Curator Evelyn Hankins will discuss the idea of collecting the uncollectible with Curatorial Research Associate Ryan Hill, I would greatly appreciate a full transcription. Just head to the Hirshhorn Museum Information Desk at 12:30 p.m., January 9th. Thank you!
P.S. The picture at the top of this post is one I took of the brochure cover which depicts Robert Barry's Steel Disc Suspended 1/8 in. Above Floor, 1967.
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