Okay, so my title is slanted. A lot. But most of you will know what I’m talking about: more and more, art museums are including nothing but obscure postmodern garbage in their exhibits. These pieces are designed to ask “what is art?” and they answer by counterexample: they show us what absolutely is not art.
I went to the Seattle Art Museum today with a friend and was truly disappointed. While there were some beautiful paintings here and there, there was a preponderance of terrible pieces of “art” such as these:
A giant black mouse standing on top of a bed, with his feet right before the neck of the “person” sleeping in it, whose “head” was white and basically featureless.
A multi-colored ceramic toilet with honest-to-God ceramic faeces in it. Really. Ceramic faeces in the ceramic toilet.
A completely white “painting”. It was as though somebody had taken a chunk out of my wall and placed it in the Seattle Art Museum. It wasn’t one of those paintings that consists of swirls of various shades of a single color, creating something that is at least different from printer paper. This was only slightly different from a huge sheet of unblemished printer paper.
A hideous, oddly-shaped ceramic toad.
You get my point.
The point is that I’m really tired of seeing art museums that are mostly or entirely like this. I now feel as though I might even take a plane ticket to go to an art museum that features things that are (dare I say it? Dare I say it?) beautiful. They don’t have to the most un-modern paintings in the world, but I should not ask myself “is this really art?” when I see them.
I can see how your response questions the Western Imperialist Heteronormative dogma of “statements” and allows us to expand our modes of communication to include non-“statements” as well.
Last Friday I went to see an exhibit of Venetian Renaissance masterworks at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, featuring a stunning collection of the works of Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese, some of which are rarely or never displayed together. Today, I took my mother-in-law to the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum, not two blocks from the MFA, where we marveled at one woman’s remarkable collection, housed in a truly magnificent piece of architecture. The portrait of the patroness herself by John Singer Sargent is only one among many treasures shown there. Meanwhile, my husband took his father off to the Arthur M. Sackler museum at Harvard to see works collected from seven-odd thousand years of Asian, European, Middle Eastern and African art.
There are more art museums with non-conceptual art in them than I can poke a stick at. Come on over to Boston, then head down to NYC*, and I promise you won’t run out of representational art to look at.
*Where I hear they have a gallery or two. Nothing major, this and that.
I’d say most not-specifically-modernist museums with a collection of any size still have quite a bit of what you’re looking for. Most will also have quite a big of moderist, postmodernist, pop art, abstract art, etc. Because most art museums are intentionally diverse.
And I have to say that your giant mouse painting and ceramic toad sound cool. If you’re trying to paint them as awful, you failed.
This Seattle Art Museum? The current show is Target Practice: Painting Under Attack 1949–78–which may include some of the odd objects that trouble you so. But the permanent collection appears pretty wide ranging–with the requisite European Dead Guys plus a good selection of art from the rest of the world.
Did you really check out the whole place or just stroll through a couple of galleries? Most big cities & a surprising number of smaller cities have museums full of more “conventional” art. Plus a few surprises–even in the smaller places!
I’m not a fan of a lot of modern art myself. But here’s what I do when I’m in a gallery and thinking to myself “my cat could do that…”
Go find a docent. Ask that docent “why is this of interest?” I don’t always agree with the answer but I almost always learn something interesting about why others do.
I’m also surprised - did you just go to Target? The permanent collections fall into your definition of unquestionably art and are a much larger part of the museum.
But, if you insist on ignoring the majority of the work in SAM, go to the Asian Art Museum or the Frye or Henry. Or the gallery shows.
It’s not a “giant mouse painting”. It’s literally a huge black mouse.
We went through the entire museum. Our impression would have undoubtedly been better if that exhibit weren’t showing.
Do you refer to the Henry Art Gallery? I have gone there consistently for the past year and a half and it is extraordinarily rare for them to have art that is more than an attempt at novelty.
The Seattle Art Museum is truly kind of crap… and I live in Seattle and am hugely pro-Seattle. Buy you have to call it like it is.
I grew up in Chicago and went to the Art Institute numerous times. My wife grew up in Manhattan, and went to all the NYC museums. And we’ve both traveled quite alot and seen other art museums (Toronto and Amsterdam have great art museums). We went to the Seattle Art Museum a few years back and both were a bit surprised at how small it was, and how poor and disjointed the collection was.
My theory on this is:
1.) All the good stuff was already taken by the time SAM came into existence. I mean it’s only really even been around in current form for about 50 years, so by that time the stuff people think of as ‘masterpieces’ was already in collections
2.) In general, there have not been alot of rich, art-loving people in Seattle that donated heavily (either money or collections). It’s pretty hard to outbid the big Eastern and European cities.
In fact, a few years back Paul Allen (co-founder of Microsoft) put on an exhibit of his personal collection at his EMP museum, and it was much more impressive than alot of the stuff at SAM.
All that being said, SAM did just complete a huge renovation project in the last year, and I have not been there since.
I can definitely second this - but only from indirect experience. I was in Vancouver on business a couple of years ago and at the Art Gallery of Vancouver there was a traveling exhibit from the Cleveland Museum. It was stunning what was on display. I’d definitely like to make the trip to see the complete collection.
Hell, our dinky little museum here in Columbia, SC is full of representational pieces (and some modern stuff, too.) Generally speaking, unless you’re at a modern art museum the permanent collection is an “art through the ages” lesson and the temporary exhibits are a “let us teach you something about ___” sort of thing. I may be spoiled, though, as we’re one of those places with a Samuel Kress collection.
One thing I have learned about “modern” art is that yeah, some of it sucks, and some of it makes you think. Modern art is not about what’s in the piece but what you take away from it (as is all art). If what you take away from it is revulsion and horror, or disgust, well, that’s okay. That says something about you - you don’t like ceramic feces and think it’s stupid. Fair enough.
Earlier this year I went to Mass MoCa - Museum of modern art - and even they had some more traditional pieces. They had some weird, boring stuff, but, one of my favorite pieces…just a guy, on a video, playing a cello. Except, the cello had been digitally removed. So you sat in this darkened room and you listened to the music and you watched this guy just so passionately into what he was doing, but no cello…his hand movements and everything were just so stunningly beautiful. Other people may not take to that, I loved it.
There are a gazilion people who don’t like modern or postmodern art. Some of them own museums and art galleries. Look a bit more, I guarantee you will find some.
Darn, it sounds like most Texas cities have it better than Seattle. We’re definitely newer than NYC & Chicago–but we’ve benefited from quite a few art-loving rich Texans in the last century.
Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts doubled in size a few years ago but is already busting at the seams with its newish collections of Indian, Korean, Islamic & Latin American Art. Huge galleries show every European school & some American gems from all eras–but there’s no room to display everything.
Next door is the Contemporary Arts Museum, which has no permanent collection. It was founded when the MFAH avoided any “new” art & still manages to blow minds. But those minds need education in the “old” stuff first.
The exquisite Menil begins with Cro-Magnon carvings & takes a highly individual route to the modern age. (Or is it Post-Modern now? Or maybe Post-Post-Modern?) Heavy on the Surrealists…
Other Texas cities are similarly blessed. San Antonio is ahead of Austin & Fort Worth (!) got started before Dallas did. But the “slow” cities are beginning to catch up. Really–if you’re ever in Texas, check out the art. I’d advise you to avoid High Summer–but the museums are well air-conditioned.
