http://artsfuse.org/363/short-fuse-commentary-art-and-911/
Originally appeared on the artsfuse.org
10/1/07
Short fuse: 9/11
The New York Historical Society is currently hosting a show
marking the sixth anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center
("Here Is New York: Remembering 9/11," The York Historical Society,
170 Central Park West, Manhattan).
Consisting mostly of emotionally wrenching photographs taken
during or immediately after the attacks, the show also includes several objects
worth pondering. Two that held my attention were "World Trade Center
I-Beam Fragment," and "World Trade Center Aluminum Facade
Fragment."
The latter, especially, was beautiful. With its tortured
grace, as if caught in a contorted dance step, it was the sort of thing any
number of contemporary sculptors would be proud to have made. Though it was
forged in the 9/11 nightmare, it's impossible to deny its aesthetic likelihood.
That, of course, ushers in the next question, should you choose to entertain
it: But is it art?
As a friend pointed out, "World Trade Center Aluminum
Facade Fragment" had been vertically mounted on a steel pedestal, with
both edges of the salvaged piece finely shaved off. The pedestal made it
viewable, gave it art object sparkle. It turns out the sculptor Richard Webber,
in his Brooklyn studio, had come up with the steel mount "after communing"
at length with it and other artifacts from Ground Zero. Webber told The NY
Times that by contemplating these artifacts, "you could almost hear what
happened that day."
However, Louise Mirrer, the president of the New York
Historical Society, insisted on placing obstacles in the way of viewers
thinking about these objects as art. She stressed that "they are the
product of impacts, and of heat -- the remains of a massively tragic
event."
Of course, that's true, massively. But is there really any
danger of visitors to this exhibit forgetting that? There are tissue dispensers
placed strategically for those who, as it's hard to resist doing, succumb to
too much emotion.
Product of impact and heat, "World Trade Center
Aluminum Facade Fragment" is also, in the way it's been reclaimed and
presented, the product of artistic inspiration. Bluntly, it is the product of
Al Qaeda and a pedestal.
What percentage art?
What percentage terrorist attack?
Somewhat the same thought process applies to "World
Trade Center I-Beam Fragment" a rusty piece of ruined steel, rebar
literally shot through with history, I-beam with holes in it.
Looking at it made me rethink Richard Serra, whose new
installation of massive, gorgeously curved, impossibly positioned, ruinously
expensive steel was lately at the MoMA. Serra is the Brancusi of our day and
age, the maker of somewhat (repetitively) perfect things.
I like wandering through Serra's steel mazes. I like
stroking their surfaces, though for god knows what reason doing so is forbidden.
I like seriously whacking the hollow constructions when neither guards nor
other visitors are looking. They are drums. They are fantastic gongs.
I don't think Richard Serra's work would suffer from being,
occasionally, shot through with holes.
However inadvertently, "Here Is New York: Remembering
9/11" is aesthetically suggestive.
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