Viewing page 14 of 63

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

ist’s eye level, is a bar of wood approximately four inches in width.  The lighting is such that the center of the bar shades into darkness while the right and left ends butting into the wall are almost white.  The bar is an enigma until one realizes that the left side is higher than the right.  The bar parallels the earth and the viewer is tilted by the floor underneath his feet.  Interested in “information that has to do with how we perceive rather than what,” Nauman’s piece, in addition to whatever other puns and meanings he might have in mind, is an elegant delineation of the rigorously controlled perceptual conditions that retail in Guggenheim.
   Andre’s floor piece, like Serra’s upright sculpture, has no clasping devices.  Each unit is a twelve-inch piece of wire, about one-eighth of an inch in thickness.  The pieces of wire are placed on the floor of the museum to form a hexagon with sides four feet in length.  The whole configuration is extremely delicate and must have taxed the patience of whoever installed it.  Just as Serra’s piece threatens dispersal by a terrifying collapse, Andre’s work threatens fragmentation by an injudiciously placed vacuum cleaner.  
   Long’s work, like much of the art in the exhibition, celebrates Wright’s architecture.  Eight paths, comprised of a pinkish brown substance called “Brooklyn Clay,” conform to the curve of the viewing ramp and each path ends in the eight exhibition niches at a point in the deep right hand corner of each niche.  Because of the downward progression of the paths plus varies in length and distance from neighboring paths.
    Robert Morris’s current piece is designed to catch the viewer seeing himself on three television monitors.  There is a time lag factor which is accomplished by the use of video tapes recording the viewer’s activity and then replaying the activity after a short period.
   And so, what if any considerations aside from site or location, come into play in the selection of artists for this particular exhibition?  A basic task for the curator is the attempt on his or her part to be inclusive within an area of activity.  What has been left out, or what is in and should not be, causes curators to have nightmares.  If one considers for a moment the dilemma of a will toward inclusiveness, combined with an equally strong desire to mount an “open” exhibition where each work has breathing space, plus the stated desire to be international in scope, one realizes that something must be forfeited.  Diane Waldman, who,along with Edward Fry, assembled the exhibition, has said quite frankly that she had no desire to make hierarchical judgement within the context of this exhibition, and reasoned that such judgments would be beside the point anyhow since, at this time, there is not enough information upon which one could base such judgments.
   In this case, then, how do curators choose exhibitions of contemporary art?  Badly put, by guesses made on the basis of necessarily fragmentary information.  If this is so, then does it follow that many of the artists included in the Sixth Guggenheim International could be exchanged for other artists of equal quality?  With some reservations, yes.  At the expense of sounding like a member in good standing of the Anglo-American Alliance, all the European and Asian artist could be exchanged easily for other of equal merit. But one must remember that the exhibition is avowedly international in its scope, and so it must be what it says, or forgo it’s title.
   Since scolding curators about who is or who isn’t included in exhibitions is one of the easiest (and therefore most popular) activities around, I’ll state the following without being “shocked,” “dismayed” or any of the things that customarily accompany the discovery that some artist is or isn’t in a show.  I think Anthony Caro has a lot more to do with the best work in the show that Richard Long and think he would have proven a better choice from England.  An argument for the inclusion of Keith Sonnier is built right into Robert Morris’s piece, which comes out of Neumann, who is in the show, and Sonnier, who is not.  Lastly, with so much of the show directly concerned with site problems, where is Robert Smithsonian?  There is no doubt in my mind that his work of the last three years-surely the non-sites alone-has influenced some of the artists included in the exhibition.

{{picture of moveable panels}} Richard Serra, Moe, steel, 1971.

All photos from the Sixth Guggenheim International, an exhibition organized by Diane Walkman and Edward Fry for the Guggenheim Museum and shown from February 11 through April 11, 1971.