Out of site

WAM looks at 20 years of installation art

by Leon Nigrosh

BLURRING THE BOUNDARIES: 25 YEARS OF INSTALLATION ART At the Worcester Art Museum, 55 Salisbury Street, through January 3, 1999.

You could say that installation art got its start in the caves of Lascaux, France, about 17,000 years ago when people attempted to create a magical environment by drawing mystical images directly on the cavern walls. Through the years, the art of architecture has produced variations that range from the gilded opulence of the Catherine Palace in Pushkin to the ticky-tack of Levittown, Pennsylvania, each prompting its appropriate emotional response.

Into the 17th century, artists worked with architects creating stained-glass windows for the great cathedrals, mosaics for government buildings, and sculptured bas-reliefs for public arenas. But there was an unaccountable estrangement during the Age of Enlightenment, and art and architecture went separate ways. New materials made easel painting more practical and profitable. Rather than having to wait for commissions, artists had the freedom to create what and when they wanted. They also had the portability to bring their works to the attention of many more potential buyers.

It was not until the early part of the 20th century that artists such as Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp began to break away from the traditionally standardized gallery-size picture frame and develop works of enormous scale. Later, Barnett Newman's, Jackson Pollock's, and Frank Stella's vast canvases captured the attention of the art world and returned painting to an architectural scale. During the 1960s and 1970s, Allan Kaprow's Happenings blended art with theater, while Claes Oldenberg, George Segal, and Edward Keinholz assembled three-dimensional tableaux that both startled and delighted gallery and museum-goers. Taking art off the wall and involving the viewer brought vitality back into a rather moribund art scene.

Of course, the major problem with site-specific art is that it is often just that -- suitable for exposure in a single place. Only a few large and wealthy galleries or museums can afford to keep such works in perpetuity. Only the occasional outdoor public work can be sustained in this manner, usually through government and private trust funds. After a suitable period of time, installations tend to be dismantled and stored in some dark place or broken up -- with photographs as the only evidence that they ever existed.

We are therefore quite lucky and privileged that 19 installations, originally assembled by 20 international, contemporary artists, have been resurrected, refurbished, and reconstructed throughout the Worcester Art Museum.

WAM director Jim Welu made arrangements with the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego to have truckloads of oddly shaped crates shipped here for the only New England showing of this exhibition. The museum's new curator of contemporary art, Jessica Morgan, has tailored the disparate group of works to fit into certain galleries with an eye toward appropriate context.

While any work of art can either benefit or suffer from the place it is seen, installations often change drastically if shown out of their origin. The room is too small, the ceiling too high or low, the shape of the walls and their color, and the lighting all affect the dramatic intent of a particular piece. With all of this in mind, Morgan has done an outstanding job of creating the proper mood for many of the works in this exhibit.

To inaugurate the museum's new contemporary gallery, she has placed Ann Hamilton's linings and Chris Burden's The Reason for the Neutron Bomb in this brilliant white space. These two large works are distinctly different from each other in several ways. Burden's piece can be seen all at once. In fact, seeing all 50,000 nickels (lent by Flagship Bank) laid in rows on the floor drives home his point about the Soviet Union's military might. Although this work was more potent when first shown in 1979 at the height of the Cold War, each coin and matchstick represents a Soviet tank in numbers that surpass anything the US or NATO could muster at the time.

Hamilton's offering is directed inward, a padded cell turned inside out. For the full effect you must venture inside the glass-lined room. The walls are covered with quotations from naturalist John Muir's 19th-century notebook and there is grass underfoot. A video, played in slow motion, of a woman's mouth filling with water completes the eerie effect. This was Hamilton's 1990 response to the national debate on censorship in the arts, but today it could engender feelings of isolation in anyone who enters.

Anish Kapoor's small work The Healing of St. Thomas greatly benefits from Morgan's choice of contextual venue. If shown in a contemporary gallery, this tiny piece, no more than a 12-inch red gash, would be lost or would need a large, well-written wall panel to explain the artist's intent. Morgan has it mounted alone on a white wall in the 13th and 14th Century Early Italian gallery. Even if you are only vaguely familiar with the Biblical story of "Doubting Thomas," this piece needs no explanation because it resides in this small room, redolent with religious content, set at eye level next to a bleeding Jesus on the cross and across from a bleeding St. Francis. In this setting, the simple installation is palpably transformed into a physical manifestation of the New Testament tale.

Step into the small Modern Art gallery annex and you will see Louise Lawler's 1986 Well Being hanging comfortably with Gauguin, Matisse, Braque, and Rouault -- all contemporaries of Fernand Léger, whom Lawler's work is ostensibly about. On closer examination, however, we discover that the typical identifying label is not about the photograph but is concerned with the disparity between financing for health research and military research. Lawler illustrates this illogical inconsistency by the relative sizes of the pink and blue areas painted on the wall.

In the early 1980s, Tony Cragg liked to stroll the beaches and gather the non-biodegradable detritus cast off by thoughtless people and then reassemble this junk, by color, into a series of "mosaic sculptures." His entry in the current exhibition can be found stuck to one wall with bits of Velcro in the new Egyptian gallery. Cragg's Dying Slave is purportedly assembled in the silhouette of Michaelangelo's famous 16th-century marble sculpture from the tomb of Julius II. While it is a difficult to get much beyond the fascinating process of trying to identify each plastic piece, if you stand back and look at the outline, it is possible to imagine the slave's bent knee and crooked arm. The added touch of irony is Morgan's placement of the work. Here we are in the midst of beautiful objects left by the Egyptians. Is this plastic scrap the legacy we are leaving for future generations?

Dan Flavin provides the sole illumination in one of the hallways, as does Sarah Seager in the Chapter House. Both of these artists, along with James Turell and his Stuck Red, are less concerned with the mechanical means employed to create their light patterns but want us to concentrate on the effects of the light upon our senses and our psyches.

The remaining installations are displayed in the Hiatt Gallery. Some are amusing, others irritating, but all are thoughtful endeavors by knowledgeable artists who each have a message to tell us and have successfully found the means to deliver it. n

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