Thoughts on Current Show at MCA Chicago
(Sympathy for the Devil: Art and Rock and Roll Since 1967 - September 29, 2007 - January 6, 2008 Museum of Contemporary Art)
While you would not waste your time in seeing this show, don't let it give you the impression that it is somehow documentary or historical in nature about a unique phenomenon that was taking place in the 70s and 80s. This could work as a film documentary, but not an exhibition. It is however worth a trip to see some of the individual pieces (which is what it's about anyway). An art exhibition doesn't necessarily need this type of narrative. We need to go to galleries for the retinal and contemplative experience, and to bring our own knowledge and curiosities in context with the work.
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This is a show that seemed to change its mind as it was being curated. Dominic Molon's mission statement for the exhibit seems contrived: "...the risks involved when cultural forms intersect" or "how artists and musicians in downtown New York...produced parallel sensibilities in art and music." While art contemporaries can have an influence on the work that they do, it is hardly dependent upon being just in downtown New York. If place does influence art contemporaries, it would be happening in lots of different places, especially when suffused in media. The influence of place might have been localized in the era before TV, but when ideas are broadcast through media, the same influences would be seen in lots of areas.
I think Molon had his hands tied in terms of the work that he could get access to, and from this standpoint alone, perhaps it was not a good theme for a show. If he had access to any art that he wanted, pieces like Chuck Close's portrait of Phil Glass would be directly on-point.
Here you have two prime examples of art informed by other domains: Close, who used the technique of orchestration--incrementally placing notes on a score-- as an analog to the pointilist process in creating a painting, and Glass doing the same thing in reverse, using meshes of patterns inspired not only by ethnic musics like gamelan and African music, but also by the time-lapse art work of Muybridge and Marey (which were visual representations of patterns and rhythms.)
Another piece I would have included would have been Strom Thorgerson's graphic for Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon". This is an example of how an artist takes abstract ideas and shapes them in to visual information, which then informs the music, and becomes an iconic representation of both art forms.
As a musician and visual artist, I am well aware of the interdisciplinary effects. But missing is the discussion of synesthesia (seeing sounds, hearing colors) and other neurobiological phenomena.
Pieces worth seeing:
I also would liked to have seem more Op Art. If anything, Op Art was a big interest of musicians in the 70s, and there's not much here.
While you would not waste your time in seeing this show, don't let it give you the impression that it is somehow documentary or historical in nature about a unique phenomenon that was taking place in the 70s and 80s. This could work as a film documentary, but not an exhibition. It is however worth a trip to see some of the individual pieces (which is what it's about anyway). An art exhibition doesn't necessarily need this type of narrative. We need to go to galleries for the retinal and contemplative experience, and to bring our own knowledge and curiosities in context with the work.
***
This is a show that seemed to change its mind as it was being curated. Dominic Molon's mission statement for the exhibit seems contrived: "...the risks involved when cultural forms intersect" or "how artists and musicians in downtown New York...produced parallel sensibilities in art and music." While art contemporaries can have an influence on the work that they do, it is hardly dependent upon being just in downtown New York. If place does influence art contemporaries, it would be happening in lots of different places, especially when suffused in media. The influence of place might have been localized in the era before TV, but when ideas are broadcast through media, the same influences would be seen in lots of areas.
I think Molon had his hands tied in terms of the work that he could get access to, and from this standpoint alone, perhaps it was not a good theme for a show. If he had access to any art that he wanted, pieces like Chuck Close's portrait of Phil Glass would be directly on-point.
Here you have two prime examples of art informed by other domains: Close, who used the technique of orchestration--incrementally placing notes on a score-- as an analog to the pointilist process in creating a painting, and Glass doing the same thing in reverse, using meshes of patterns inspired not only by ethnic musics like gamelan and African music, but also by the time-lapse art work of Muybridge and Marey (which were visual representations of patterns and rhythms.)
Another piece I would have included would have been Strom Thorgerson's graphic for Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon". This is an example of how an artist takes abstract ideas and shapes them in to visual information, which then informs the music, and becomes an iconic representation of both art forms.
As a musician and visual artist, I am well aware of the interdisciplinary effects. But missing is the discussion of synesthesia (seeing sounds, hearing colors) and other neurobiological phenomena.
Pieces worth seeing:
- Tony Oursler works
- Robert Longo triptych
- Most of the pieces by Christian Marclay
I also would liked to have seem more Op Art. If anything, Op Art was a big interest of musicians in the 70s, and there's not much here.
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