James Wagner

There was plenty of art – and entertainment [is that a problem?] – at the d.u.m.b.o. art under the bridge festival this past weekend even for those who didn’t make it into the many open artists’ studios. Much of it was about real estate. All of the very best outside stuff was conceptual.
One of my favorites was “Endangered Species,” the work of Michelle Handelman and Vincent Baker, located under an arch of the neighborhood’s eponymous Bridge.

Behind the heavy green-painted corrugated metal wall, and really down under manhattan bridge overpass was a wonderful sound installation of the cries of some very angry elephants. The curiosity quotient was strong, but nothing was actually visible beyond the barrier.
A small placque in the lower right of the picture identified the artists, and added:

harlem, soho, tribeca, the lower east side….we haven’t forgotten.

PLEASE DO PUT HANDS IN GATE

ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG, Autobiography, 1968
The three panels of this large offset lithograph by Robert Rauschenberg from 1968 titled Autobiography are displayed vertically and exceed 16 feet in height. They were printed with the type of press used to make commercial billboards. The three panels are layered with seemingly disparate images that, on closer examination, are probably thematically grouped. The top panel features a composite X-ray of Rauschenberg’s own body superimposed with the artist’s astrological chart, suggesting both the present and the future. The center panel deals with the artist’s past; at its center is a photosilkscreen of the artist as a two-year-old boy with his parents boating on a bayou near his home in Port Arthur, Texas. Surrounding this photosilkscreen is a labyrinthine oval of handwritten text narrating events in the artist’s life. The lower panel seems to address artistic creativity and is dominated by an enlarged photograph of Rauschenberg during his 1963 performance “Pelican,” in which he wears rollerskates and a parachute on a wooden armature harnessed to his back. Rauschenberg was one of several performers and he also choreographed this performance. This particular image suggests both movement and flight, which are themes carried through in Rauschenberg’s art and life.
Autobiography’s visual overlay of seemingly discrete and unrelated appropriated images is quintessential Rauschenberg, but the emphasis on personal or autobiographical subject matter is not. The vision underlying Rauschenberg’s aesthetic has often been interpreted to mean that meaning itself is created through accidental, improvised, intuited, and even illogical juxtapositions and associations. In that sense, what Rauschenberg offers us in Autobiography are images he had at hand but they are also images of personal significance to him. Rauschenberg once stated: “I don’t want my personality to come out through the piece . . . I want my [work] to be [a] reflection of life . . . your self-visualization is a reflection of your surroundings.”

[image and text from Philadelphia Art Alliance]

We went to a performance at BAM of Charles Mee’s “bobrauschenbergamerica” tonight. Barry and I both found that like much of this wonderful man’s work, which I’ve now been enjoying for several decades, this evening of theater, which was created and performed by SITI Company and directed by Anne Bogart, took a while to come together. Barry thinks it’s Mee’s plan, and I think I agree.
When it was finally assembled it was magnificent.
I haven’t seen a decent review in the media, so I won’t link to any tonight, and I don’t have the nerve to try one myself, but I will at least say that I was eventually overcome by the piece’ sweet sincerity and delighted with its amazing sense of place. In a dramatic account of the world which produced Robert Rauschenberg’s art that would seem to mean a mission was accomplished.
But it didn’t come easily. It was about halfway through an evening punched through with scattershot American vignettes, at once both perverse and ordinary, that I began to cry. The tears were for the sometime beauty and goodness of this people and for how much has been lost in recent decades, but they were also tears of joy.
Admittedly the play and its performance basically ignored the ugliness and the evil that was also a part of what we regard as the simpler, mid-century America, and it’s assignment was not to dwell on how much the bad stuff remains or has multiplied today. Still, when the stage was emptied tonight, only warmth and especially hope remained behind. Amazingly, there was no sugar on the floor of the theater, but there was also not a wit of jingoism in the air, no rhetoric of any stripe. Quite an accomplishment that, especially these days.
The most moving moment in the theater this evening was an oration whose conceit is that it begins by appearing to be an actor’s address to the audience about this play, but it very soon becomes clear that it is much more. Barney O’Hanlon played Carl, who speaks to the museum visitors immediately after his assassination.
What follows is the complete oration, delivered near the end of the evening, a beautiful ode to art and artists in general, and the art and the artists of this strange people in particular.

[Carl, who has been lying on the stage dead, sits up and gives a speech welcoming everyone to an art opening, while we hear cement mixers, pounding, banging, clanking, sawing.]
OK.
How we put the show together.
First, I want to welcome everyone
I’m glad you could all come tonight.
We don’t often get to do a show like this
where we can just put on whatever we like
figure OK what the hell
lets just do whatever we feel like
and hope you’ll enjoy it.
I often feel those of us who are in the museum world
are particularly blessed.
Because we get to explore our feelings
whatever they may be
that’s a sort of freedom.
You know, that’s how it is to deal with art
because art is made in the freedom of the imagination
with no rules
it’s the only human activity like that
where it can do no one any harm
so it is possible to be completely free
and see what it may be that people think and feel
when they are completely free
in a way, what it is to be human when a human being is free
and so art lets us practice freedom
and helps us know what it is to be free
and so what it is to be human.
But, still, it often seems to me almost miraculous
how we can put things here in the museum
and ordinary folks
my mom and dad and my own neighbors
and I myself
will come to see things
sometimes things that I myself find completely incomprehensible
and really offensive
people will come to our museum
and think: oh, that’s interesting
or, oh, that’s stupid
but they don’t really hold it against the show
they just move on and look at something else and think
oh that’s cool.
And I wonder:
how do we get away with that?
And I think well, we are a free people
that’s why
and we understand that
in a way maybe other people in the world don’t
we like an adventure
often we might think
well, that’s a piece of junk
but that’s how this fellow sees the world
and there’s a certain pleasure in seeing things from his point of view
we are a patient people
no matter what you hear people say
and a tolerant people
and a fearless, open people
that’s how it is for us
I think that’s how it is to be an American.
We’re all unique.
It’s a precious thing to compare ourselves to nothing else.
This is my working attitude.
I don’t feel shame in my joy.
[He looks confused.]
I started out here knowing what I meant to say
and now I have to say
I don’t know what I said.
But I’d just like to welcome you
and let you know
we’re all glad to be here with you tonight
to share this with you
and we hope you have a swell evening.

[The text can be found on Charles Mee’s own wonderful site, which amazingly and very generously makes all of his work available to the public]