Reviews - Art

NY Art Book Fair: An Informal Survey
by Alexios Moore

Entering the PS One courtyard always makes me a feel a bit like a mouse entering a maze. The exterior walls are formidable, and there is a moment where you find yourself wondering "am I going the right way?" before you passing safely into the courtyard and climbing the stairs which is, in itself, a bit of a happening.

It was clear from the group gathered on the stairs, sipping coffee and noshing on muffins, that the New York Art Book Fair brings in a crowd. Organized by Printed Matter, the fair brings in over two hundred international presses, booksellers, antiquarians, artists and publishers from twenty countries. The sheer volume of ephemera is overwhelming, and my criteria for pausing at a table long enough to actually read any of the material involved a constellation of factors: utility of display, eye contact, and a genuine interest in discussing the work. Banged and bespectacled art school interns did not fare well in this formula.

I decided to work my way from the first floor to the third (I never made it that far). On my way down the hallway I passed one of the leftover installations from the Greater New York Show. Preserved Forest, by David Brooks, is a section of decaying rainforest set in concrete. It is a startlingly literal statement, but in the context of the fair, it also functioned as a reminder of both the living source of paper and its inevitable decay. We tend to think of books as fixed, sculptural objects, but the pages and the ideas within eventually end up as grist for the mill (you name the mill).

The first space I entered featured an exhibit celebrating the tenth anniversary of PPP editions, a Fluxus inspired publisher of books that explore "the intersection of photography, book-as-art, and their shared history." Proofs and original photographic prints lay in neat, glass display cases while their reproduced offspring were stacked in orderly columns, awaiting purchase at the far end of the gallery.

I gave the cases a polite scan and moved to the back table where I picked up a copy of Killed: Rejected Images of the Farm Security Administration, 2010 by Wiliam E. Jones. As an object, the book is very compelling. The word killed, set in the pixilated font of an early dot-matrix printer, is set in the corner of a pleasingly textured, clothbound cover. The book reproduces a suite of images rejected or "killed" by the Director of the Farm Security Administration, including images by Walker Evans, Theodore Jung and Carl Mydans. Inexplicably, the images were marked for rejection by a random hole-punch. Baldessarian circles interrupt the chest of a smiling farm boy, and mar the wooden siding of a corn shed. Knowing that their placement was unintentional does little to mitigate their generative power. The hole in the wall is a portal. The boy's chest marks an absence. I found myself less concerned with the FSA's criteria for the images' rejection than the relationship of the puncture to the images, which all seemed compelling enough to deserve archiving in the Library of Congress.

Booksellers dominated the next space. Framed Warhol and Haring prints lured in potential customers, drawn in by the dazzling colors and comforting familiarity. I picked up a copy of a Great Bear Pamphlet from 1966: Injun and Other Histories: Two Scenarios for an Incomplete Pageant of America by Claes Oldenburg. Dick Higgins, a composer who studied with John Cage, published the series of twenty staplebound pamphlets through Something Else Press. The irony is that despite the intentionally cheap production, and the intent behind the work--to disseminate ideas outside of art institutions— the thin, paper pamphlet sits on a shelf accruing value. The text is loosely structured after the script for an elementary school play, and filled with post-modern antics:

CRUSOE

The Injun sinks his tommy into Crusoe's head. It turns into a bird and they kiss.   The boy grows up to be Teddy Roosevelt, the President of the United States.

The narrative mixes fictional and historic characters with stereotypes, mocking the intent, form and legitimacy of historic accounts. The flashes of vivid and comical images made me wish that they had been painted, or perhaps I am alone in wanting to see a tomahawk planted in Robinson Crusoe's head.

The adjacent bookseller and publisher, Division Leap, had wallpapered their space with old punk flyers with the sort of abrupt, almost-jarring titles you might expect: Kill Your Pet Puppy or Razorcake. Some of the early zines can cost upwards of two or three-hundred dollars. It seems to me the value of these cheaply produced, DIY projects are predominately as cultural record. They resonate as primary texts from a sub-culture whose current appeal rests on a perception of resistance and authenticity, and the symmetry of aesthetic and ideology. Or maybe we want to be able to just not give a fuck, and make things just because we want to. Subcultures are no longer tied to geography or to any significant cultural resistance, and there is plenty of nostalgia for the late seventies/early eighties, just as there was plenty of nostalgia for the 50's in the early eighties.

I picked up a copy of Adam Davis, published by Division Leap in an edition of fifty. The artist compiled and printed the results of an image Google search of "Adam Davis" with some minor image alterations. The results (a mug shot of a nose-ringed drunk, a soldier in tactical gear, a boy laying on a bed—fist hovering in the foreground) highlights our postmodern lovers: identity and technology and their myriad offspring: privacy, reproducibility, and virtual geography. It is a simple exercise, but one that might help to develop a meta-consciousness around our Internet habits and how they are beginning to alter our perception of ourselves.

Also on sale at Division Leap's table was Public Phenomenon: Informal modifications of public spaces by a Chicago based group of artists known as Temporary Services. The team has released a number of short compilations from their "large archive of compelling phenomenon." The phenomenon ranges from parking place savers to roadside memorials to block club signs and homemade basketball hoops. The cover features a traffic cone, with "I Will Tow Your Ass" scrawled on its safety orange surface in black magic marker. The project is loosely organized anthropological research without commentary or analysis. Presumably this archive, like the Library of Congress has its own set of criteria, not based on the quality of the image itself but on the level of invention involved in the design of the "informal modification." There are some compelling juxtapositions in the book: the bright primary colors of children' furniture in the street and the potential for impact is particularly compelling. I was surprised that sneaker on telephone lines was not included, but then I remembered that there aren't telephone lines anymore. The book could have easily been titled Things Bourgeois Art Students Find Fascinating about Inner City Culture, although I enjoyed it and I made good use of my block's milk crate basketball hoop.

I moved on to 38^th Street Publishers' table where I picked up a copy of Seth Price's essay "WAS IST LOST", which is German for "what's the matter?" The book is a cheaply reproduced pamphlet, about reproduction, specifically in music but he makes a number of expansive and dramatic arguments including: "...there's no longer such a thing as a copy." Using sampling as an illustration he ties the concept of originality with institutional and aristocratic cultural power, and makes a number of compelling arguments around temporality and the democratization of production via technology like the personal computer, the sampling machine and the spray can. Price has a gift for analogy which he employs generously in an antiquarian style:

The gesture of graffiti must preserve that which it seeks to destroy. Were it to entirely efface its object, its particular critique would vanish. None, after all, is worse shod than the shoemaker's wife.

I pocketed my find, climbed the stairs and passed The Classroom where I heard Price being referenced by Bosko Blagoyojevitch during an "informal conversation" with Michael Capio organized by Onomatapee, a foundation that "aims to question the parameters of our (designed) culture through research and conversations". There is something oddly theatrical about these kinds of events; it's difficult to have an informal conversation in front of an expectant audience. I managed to follow about 80% of their condensed dialogue which ranged from the utopian potential of artistic communities to the question of whether new technology was democratizing production or fostering conformity. I was tempted to take notes, but it's probably better that I didn't; it probably would have ended up looking something like the Unabomber Manifesto.

I left the classroom. The hallway was crowded with folks waiting for the next event, billed as "RANDY Magazine: In your pants", and as intriguing as that sounded I decided it was time to head home. One mind can only process so much text and so many images in a day. I walked over the Pulaski Bridge as the last spurt of marathoners, straggled across the bridge, many of them walking. Next year I would train properly; the art book fair is a marathon, not a sprint.

Life, Death, and Much, Much More!
A Miami Getaway with The Bruce High Quality Foundation
by Matthew Alie


Ruin of Bruce High Quality Plaster, enamel paint, cigarette butts Photo by Nick Gaetano

For some artists, death marks a transformation from celebrity to mythology. In the quote above, eccentric art duo Gilbert & George touch upon the familiar notion that-for the true genius- art is the source of immortality. Death can fall like a period at the end of a profound statement; it can enshrine a career in prophetic vision and cement the artist's place in cultural history. And particularly for those already famous in life, viewing their work through the lens of death can add value to a piece like museum glass. Bruce High Quality, the late-great social sculptor from Jersey City who you've never heard of, got a head start on all this by dying before he did anything else.

The Bruce High Quality Foundation, the official arbiter of the artist's estate, is an anonymous collective of New York based artists known for their unique brand of criticism. Choosing to tackle major paradoxes at the heart of the contemporary art world (literally in the case of their ongoing performance Public Sculpture Tackle), they fight fire with fire. The sculptures, videos, and performances for which they are known frame an intimate knowledge of art history and the art market with intriguing contradiction and satisfyingly immature satire. Their star in the art world is rapidly rising as they look ahead towards their debut at the esteemed Whitney Biennial and P.S.1's "Greater New York" exhibition.

The long and fascinating relationship between the art market and art history is continually explored and exploited by the Bruces, as the members of the Foundation are known. Over the last century, the assessment of monetary versus cultural values in art has changed from an inseparable process to a virtually indistinguishable one. If I sell something you think is entirely worthless for millions, you certainly won't have the luxury of ignoring it. Inversely, if a work gains cultural clout (sometimes via the death of the artist) it will in turn command greater capital weight. For example, some remark that dying was the best career move Jean-Michel Basquiat ever made; even in this time of economic strife, his legend continues to hold fast in the upper echelons of collections and sales. It is an ugly thought given his youth but still relevant.

Well aware that "death is for losers" and "afterlife is for geniuses," The Bruce High Quality Foundation turned this triedand- true relationship on its head by starting with the death of its founder and cultivating his mythology as a premise for new art. In a culture driven by celebrity, the anonymous collective thrusts Bruce High Quality forth to seize the cultural (and therefore financial) value art history reserves for its mythical figures. They say get busy living or get busy dying-but why not do both?

~

For three days at the beginning of each December, Art Basel Miami descends upon the sunny shores of Florida like a hurricane. In its sixth incarnation this year, the international art festival drew the richest of collectors, the sexiest of stars, and the baddest of the it-kids. An overwhelming quantity of art sprawled across the central trade show and the many satellite fairs that have sprung up over the years, satisfying every niche market. Amidst a sea of pulsing techno and beach hotels, the spectacle of artistry pivoted around a slavish will to party. Guest lists and the VVVIP's from last night's events were the constant topic of conversation, along with who showed, sold, and for how much. For the many New Yorkers in town, it all blended together into a glamour-puss never-never land. And it was the perfect, if unlikely, stage for art by The Bruce High Quality Foundation.

For the art-goers, that punch-drunk, getaway feel of Miami Beach was not just the mojitos and palm trees. In the past two years nearly every conversation in the arts has been framed by or focused on economic struggle. Many institutions, unable to meet their overhead costs, have folded. Artists have been forced out of practice to meet the costs of living. Influential collectors have seen their fortunes disappear. Because so many are struggling, some say the bubble burst. Others, searching for that silver lining, say it's a shakedown, a trimming of the fat. But the top of the market has held firm at auction and at festivals like Art Basel Miami, with blue-chip artists fetching impressive prices. Perhaps satirical artist William Powhida is right when he suggests the bubble just shrank rather than burst. For those attending the festival, these distressing issues were hardly forgotten-but Art Basel had an amazing way of muffling them.

At the main fair in Miami this year, large price tags hung from cloying and anachronistic portraits of Michael Jackson. One was an oversized oil painting of the King of Pop as the equestrian King Philip II by artist Kehinde Wiley, who has made his name painting portraits of contemporary young black men framed by traditional elements of European decorative painting. The other was a series of large-format photographs by artist David LaChappelle, featuring a stunning resemblance of Jackson in a number of Romantic European imaginings (lush, sun dappled woods, etc). It was a given even at conception that these faux-masterpieces were going to be worth serious money. They have all the elements of being valuable: famous visual artists- portraying the specter of Jackson's celebrity-front and center in Art Basel Miami. Unfortunately for our cultural icons, the best franchise often comes after death.



Meanwhile, just down the road from the convention center, unusual things were happening to Death in the hands of The Bruce High Quality Foundation. In the executive ballroom of the art-chic W Hotel, they presented an exhibition of new works entitled Happy Endings with the support of the independent curator Vito Schnabel. The show was a series of works at the intersection between sculpture, video, and sound that read the pulse of the insular art world. The worry and struggle of today's economic turmoil is touched with nostalgia for better times. There is a desire for things to be the way they were. Continuing to draw on the language and mythology they have cultivated since their inception, the Bruces mercilessly hit on this theme in a manner that is at once mocking and indulgent. Andrea Bocelli's "Time to Say Goodbye" blares somewhere from within a series of frothing mop-buckets at the entrance to the show. An old T.V. monitor set into a silver briefcase plays back images of artworks and intelligentsia from the good times in recent decades, while across the room the voices of art-world zombies groan along to a special rendition of Bryan Adam's "Summer of '69." Packaged with the faded glory of an old high school photo album, the exhibition was an unglamorous, cacophonous, and bitterly funny portrayal of what the art community has become. The sense of real and metaphorical death in the art world became inescapable-but whatever tenderness that invoked was coupled with a healthy dose of good-riddance.

~

Leading up to the opening, the glamorous task of hauling their sculptures down to Miami fell to me. On Tuesday before Thanksgiving, I pulled away from their studio space in Brooklyn in a packed 24-foot Budget rental truck. Later, staying at a highway motel in Georgia, I worried that someone might break into the truck in search of furniture or objects of obvious material value. Dwelling on that thought for a moment, I imagined that treasure hunters would be sorely disappointed to discover the heap of societal waste someone felt the need to drive 1,300 miles down the coast. What expressions would fall on their faces when the cut lock revealed some spliced silver mannequins, an 8-foot-tall sagging Styrofoam Earth (complete with loudspeakers sticking out at odd angles), industrial mopbuckets covered in red or blue pigment, T.V.s that may have once been the pride of a low-budget living room in the early 1980s, and much, much more? I quickly felt assured that the real value of the works, ranging from $1,000 to $60,000, was a very safe secret. So the precious cargo and I arrived on Thanksgiving day without incident, the Bruces flew in, and on Black Friday we began installation. As it happens, we had more than enough time to set up before the opening nearly a week after our arrival, with some minor hiccups (the 1,500-gallon plastic backyard pool with the floating T.V. proved difficult to fill with a leaky gardening hose). Surprised by the unusual amount of spare time, the Bruces decided they'd just make another piece. After disappearing in their rental car for several hours, they returned with bags upon bags full of plastic, porcelain, and wood tchotchkes. We spent the rest of the day sitting on the beach painting signature "Bruce" masks on each figurine-a white mask with red lips, blue eyes, and a couple moles to be placed at one's artistic discretion. And, somehow in that process, a bunch of junk came to be worth lots of money.


Art History with Benefits (briefcase), aluminum briefcase, 24K gold plated handcuffs, industrial kitchen table, Celebrity TV, Photo by Nick Gaetano


Here is a funny phenomenon: the artists, curators, and dealers that are in the position to channel money into the art world are given a sort of unmonitored, shamanistic power to establish value. In a sense, what the Bruces had just done was magic: literally making something out of nothing by the touch of their hands. Of course, the piece they created that afternoon entered into a wide array of long-standing art historical dialogues: the unique versus mass-produced art object, the use of the mask, kitsch-as-high-art, and so on. But what's unusual about their process is that it doesn't build on these pre-existing dialogues so much as it comments on the dialogues themselves, and it isn't flattering. I enjoy the piece for this satire and suddenly, before I even know it, I'm guilty. I'm appreciating a bunch of cruddy figurines, an idea I thought I was laughing at. This is the type of compelling paradox the Foundation's work illicits.

In their 2008 publication The Bruce High Quality Foundation & Other Ideas, the Foundation describes itself as "a collective necromancer, constantly in contact with Bruce, its founder, and art history, its numerous ancestors." In the case of the painted figurines and all their found objects, the Bruces resurrect elements of societal and cultural waste. The space between extreme value and absolute worthlessness has collapsed: if someone buys those figurines, they might live forever in a collection or museum. If not, we could just throw them out... again.

Using art to criticize the art world is hardly a novel concept, and there was plenty of opportunity for it at this year's fair. The aforementioned William Powhida (who, upon seeing Deitch Project's booth at Miami, compared founder Jeffrey Deitch to a drug dealer in an ice-cream truck) caught critical attention with his work. But upon hearing Powhida's remarks, Mr. Deitch observed that "The irony is that by exposing art celebrity culture, he's becoming a celebrity himself. So hats off to him." For many, this shifting of the spotlight threatens or appears to undermine the integrity of their message. You know the word: Sellout!

Reporting from the star-studded opening, private dinner, and after-party for the Happy Endings exhibition, New York Times writer Julia Chaplin seems to suggest that the Bruces, an unlikely thrift-shop gaggle surrounded by high-rollers, are struggling with this trope. But more recently in the New York Times Magazine's "Nifty Fifty," a string of fifty zeitgeist profiles introducing creative talent in 2009 and beyond, David Colman takes a better perspective. He introduces the Bruce's legacy as a "curious mash-up of sober scholarship and juvenile pranksterism that is . . . not only novel, it's also intriguingly hard to nail down. Just start with the collective's claim that its halfdozen or twentysomething members wish to remain anonymous to declaim the art-world star system. But their anonymity seems just as cannily calibrated to fast-track their burgeoning celebrity status - which has landed them in both the Whitney Biennial and P.S.1's 'Greater New York' show this spring." He acknowledges their outsider-status appears to be at odds with their royal stages, but the Bruces' path to commercial and critical acclaim is an intentional one: It is "cannily calibrated," as opposed to a confounding byproduct.

The reality is that the Foundation sidesteps the doubleedged sword of "outsider-art" in two crucial respects. Firstly, they're an Estate built on the premise of Bruce High Quality's divine genius, so what could be better than his posthumous celebrity ascent? It means their absurdist prophecy is becoming reality, and that the broader art community is playing its part. Secondly, having their work seen and collected is not the entirety of their experiment. This past fall marked the inauguration of The Bruce High Quality Foundation University (BHQFU), an autonomous forum for free education. It is a sincere attempt to couple their critique of established institutions and methods with practical alternatives. They have stayed true to their official slogan: "Professional Problems, Amateur Solutions." Somewhere, Bruce High Quality is smiling down on them.

Earth Room, The Broken Kilometer, untitled, 7000 Oaks, & Times Square
Five Works Maintained by the Dia Art Foundation
by Alexxa Gotthardt


Drawing: Max Neuhaus, Times Square, 1992, Colored pencil on paper. Sound Location: Pedestrian island, intersection of Broadway and Seventh Ave, between 45th & 46th Streets, New York City, Dia Art Foundation.

In recent years, pop-up spaces and public installations have expanded and happily scattered notions of the traditional museum and gallery. Diversified, spontaneous art projects constellate with ivory tower, white-box monuments, a change recognized (with next to no affront) by countless journalists, critics, students, and bloggers. New York seems especially fervent in its newfangled blurts of tiny, smart exhibitions; big, gamey murals; and encompassing, site-specific installations. The fact that this expansion beyond the bounds of rote white spaces feels new, however, tempts a reassessment of our conception of the term "contemporary." This proves especially true in a consideration of the storied, shape-shifting Dia Art Foundation, which recently announced plans to reestablish a presence in Chelsea. The announcement comes six years after Dia closed its Manhattan exhibition spaces, formerly bastions of unorthodox art world practice.

In 1974, curator-cum-patrons Heiner Friedrich and Philippa de Menil established Dia with the inspiration to create art spaces "available to the public" where works "are not new or old, they are alive," according to Friedrich in a conversation with former Dia director Michael Govan. Though Friedrich's statement may ring ambiguously optimistic, it charged some of the most progressive works of the 1970s and 80s, and still manages to hold up in today's "what's next"-obsessed art world. Dia's return to Manhattan brings to light five mature but fresh public installations that the foundation has cultivated over the years.

It hasn't been easy maintaining the founders' visionary spunk. Financial instability has riled the organization since the late 1980s, when acquisitions and commissions slowed substantially. The 2002 opening of Dia:Beacon, the fantastic home of major works from Dia's permanent collection, seemed a hopeful step-until, a year later, Dia's Chelsea home shut its doors.

Despite sticky finances and sense-of-place confusion, the foundation has remained uniquely innovative and mobile outside traditional exhibition models. Dia transmutes from and-at its best-acts as a conglomeration of public arts foundation, specialized museum, and pop-up space. This rare mix is born in part from Dia's commitment to collecting, displaying, and supporting Minimalist and Land Art of the 1960s and 1970s, most of which requires site-specificity and major space. An ambitious mission to realize artists' wildest visions also fuels the diverse repertoire.

My recent reintroduction to Dia came by way of the New York Times. A November 6 article stated that Dia would move back to Chelsea, an announcement that felt surprisingly bizarre. At the time, I was familiar with Dia's history, but my only physical experience was a visit to the foundation's permanent collection, housed in a now-arcadian former factory bordering the Hudson River. Light filtered through massive industrial panes to create smooth, beautiful, yet generally plain environments perfect for the Minimalist, Earth, and other massive works that sprawled thoughtfully through the concrete square footage. Created by Donald Judd, Walter De Maria, Dan Flavin, Richard Serra, Sol LeWitt, Joseph Beuys, Louise Bourgeois, and more, these pieces required plenty of room and intense interaction with their surroundings, and I couldn't imagine any space in New York City that could house them so aptly or serenely.

I was premature in my assessment. I soon learned of Dia's plans to return to Chelsea (construction of the new exhibition space at 545 West Twenty-second Street is set for early 2012) and was also reminded that the foundation has facilitated and maintained some of the strongest public installations in New York City since the 1970s, five of which still exist. While these works might not wield the comehither charm of brand newness, they are here, punctuating the space of the city. In anticipation of Dia's revived presence on the contemporary art world's main drag, I set off on a five-pronged pilgrimage to see if these works, like Dia's mission, still feel contemporary despite their older age.

I started in SoHo, home to Dia's first space and the 1970s hotbed of avantgarde, interdisciplinary art. The neighborhood has changed dramatically since then, especially in consideration of the role of contemporary art. Several excellent galleries and corners of graffiti activity still spatter the neighborhood, controlled afterthoughts of artistic rebellion. Despite the shift, Dia has maintained its SoHo presence, though in subtle, almost covert articulations. Situated just blocks from each other, Walter De Maria's Earth Room (1977) and The Broken Kilometer (1979) are rare hybrids of permanent installation and isolated interior space.

Earth Room consumes an upper floor of a spacious SoHo building. No bold projectile signage or looming glass windows advertise the installation-yet there is no stumbling onto this work. Though De Maria didn't plan it, the nestled entrance aptly introduces the product ahead. Even before glimpsing the work, I felt a difference in the air. New York air-its weight and smell-changes so constantly I thought no atmospheric shift could surprise me. But although the title clearly indicates the gist of the work-a big room filled with dirt-the effect is titillating and personal. Black earth-stuff spreads knee-deep over 3,600 feet of would-be loft. The plastic cross-section that separates viewer from work reveals a dense mass, product of a more than 30-year settle. The lumpy surface, on the other hand, fills the white room with buoyant, connotative physicality. I wanted to dive in and muddy up as much as I wanted to revere the dark, isolated spread as some ancient (or maybe future) totem. Though the dirt and white walls that make up the work were familiar, the charged, fertile-and-fresh quality was new, especially coupled with the surreal environment. Each wide view or honed peek inspired the same effect on me. I had discovered a secret, altered, yet neutral place. A visitor might compare Earth Room to the streetscape or subway they had just retreated from, or sever it completely from their everyday experience. Regardless of the personal effect, De Maria physically changes a common space, affecting the visitor's relationship to the world outside.

When De Maria first installed Earth Room in Munich, Germany in 1968, he helped pioneer Earthworks, a revolutionary art movement rooted in the transformation of environment through site-specific, non-saleable works. While anti-commodity notions still seem relevant, the theme is visually tired-it is not the enduringly powerful aspect of this piece. It is De Maria's politicallysubtle yet physically and emotionally seizing transformation of a space, one just slightly removed from our chronic everyday, which still feels active.

The Broken Kilometer, like Earth Room, hides from the SoHo passersby's view. The title of the work is visible from the street, but only barely. Up a few stairs, through the door and around the bend, the work materializes from the shock of a long, tall, cathedral-like room. Five paths of 100 sleek but goldenwarm brass rods extend from the bright front of the space clear to the shadowy back. While in reality the metal dowels consume just a small fraction of the room, their glow and sheer accumulation amps the space with weight and light. Dia's description of the work revealed the complex geometries behind the measured rows-each of the 500 rods measures 2 meters in length; thus, if strung together, they would run a kilometer long. The idea was coolly interesting, but its Conceptual-Minimalist asperity not durably engaging. Explanations aside, however, the visual solution prompted me to stay for almost an hour, and return several times since. In the windowless, quiet area of the work, concrete associations and art historical musings cropped up during one visit, and Emerson-meets-Euclid sublimity the next. Similar to Earth Room, The Broken Kilometer created an environment distinct from my everyday experience. It also allowed comparison to, and insertion into, the cityscape and workaday life.

Both Earth Room and The Broken Kilometer, while physically isolated from the city streets and immediate public view, find power in their cached, transformative nature. To find them, knowledge of their existence is required. The ensuing pilgrimage and enveloping experience launches the lasting visceral influence of the work.



Walter De Maria, The New York Earth Room, 1977. Long-term installation at 141 Wooster Street, New York City. Photo: John Cliett. Copyright Dia Art Foundation.


Walter De Maria, The Broken Kilometer, 1979. Long-term installation at 393 West Broadway, New York City, Dia Art Foundation.

Dan Flavin's untitled (1996) and Joseph Beuys' 7000 Oaks (1982-1996), situated on Twenty-second Street in Chelsea, act as exposed opposites to the De Maria's isolated installations. I first saw Flavin's untitled in the form of an esoteric, greeny glow. While on the street outside the exhibition opening, the light crept up onto my consciousness and then drifted off quickly. I remember coming to ambiguous conclusions about the glow's origin and nature-it's a dreamy sculpture; a industrial-scale exit sign; or the light residue from a goo-filled monster movie-but didn't explore it further. A few months later, I returned to the glow knowing that it came from Flavin's last florescent-tubed work. Untitled traces the four-tiered stairwell of Dia's former exhibition space at 548 West Twenty-second Street. Lined vertically atop each other, fifteen blue lamps and sixteen green lamps actualize a shaft of divided color. Undoubtedly, the work's effect is strongest in the space of the stairwell. The segmented light-line and two-toned color-fuzz render a stodgy architectural element active, elegant, and ultimately self-reflexive. Flavin's bulbs, too, are utilitarian and mass-produced, thus untitled wields a twofold transformation of raw materials and existing architecture. It is a strong work, and it achieves the effect Flavin aimed for-a straightforward, in-and-out rearrangement of space through the use of light. The pared-down nature of untitled is refreshing on a block so inundated with exhibitions of new art, some of which take themselves much too seriously. On the flipside, however, Flavin's site-specific work has a difficult time holding its ground in this busy atmosphere, especially now that Dia no longer inhabits the building in which it is installed.

Beuys' 7000 Oaks manages to set itself apart from the slew of exhibitions by entering the space of the street. Twenty-three rough-hewn basalt columns, each paired with a tree, line both sides of Twenty-second street between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues. The subtly dynamic work, an important example of Beuys' post-war, post-Fluxus "social sculpture," conveys meaning through organic, everyday materials and spatial consumption. Ever the zealous optimist, Beuys envisioned art as a reflection of, and ultimate solution to, political, social, and environmental issues. Every material matched some human quality or social tendency, and had the power to effectuate change if placed in human space. Today, it is not the metaphysical bigness that resonates in 7000 Oaks, but its meditation on essential humanity. The stone-and-tree pairs spur relevant thoughts about shifting social dynamics and, most powerfully, human involvement in cultural and environmental endgames. They also act as attempts at urban renewal. The immortal basalt and dewy plants will outlast, and ideally wield an effect on, generations of Twenty-second Street inhabitants.

7000 Oaks is one of the best public installations in the city. At once spatially bold, visually pleasurable, and compositionally familiar, the work offers roomy conceptual space where a wide range of human responses and experiences can play. And, perhaps most refreshingly, the work doesn't require knowledge of art history to understand. In an age when people are petrified of the death of creativity, this work continues to provide an affecting solution-the exploration of human space and social experience. 7000 Oaks doesn't have to conceptually or chronologically beat other art to resonate in a potent way. Max Neuhaus' Times Square (1977-1992 and 2002-present) melds the bold physical accessibility of 7000 Oaks with the keen spatial transformation of Earth Room. It is the most daring installation of the bunch, but also the least noticeable as a work of art. Like the other New York City-based installations that Dia cares for, Times Square works by entering and adjusting a human environment. Neuhaus' version, however, cannot be viewed, smelled, or bumped into. At the triangle where Seventh Avenue and Broadway intersect in Times Square, a long subway grate emits a bizarre, pseudo-beautiful sound texture. At times it blends with train rumbles, street music, and cab squelches. Most often it fends for itself, marking twenty square feet of the busiest, most overstimulating block in the city. Many of the thousands of passersby don't hear the work at all. Those who do, however, find the tones fabulously unexpected. The hum of what sounds like smushed, synthesized bells from an ancient cathedral is immediately eerie, but quickly turns exciting. It is also satisfying and consuming, like some spontaneous discovery. Even if you wanted to understand its origin or purpose, you wouldn't find your answers-no plaque or sign indicates title or explanation. This mystery highlights the playful, democratic, and essentially avant-garde nerve of the piece. Few artists today work this adeptly with sound, or this modestly with reputation. These five works, though distinct in impact and scope, all support Dia's mission to facilitate and maintain art that is intrinsically contemporary-art that functions beyond thematic, art historical categorization, that enters public space, and that is tough but ultimately pleasurable. If Dia:Chelsea carries on this tradition as it says it will under the direction of the bold, canny Philippe Vergne (it was he who finally secured a new Manhattan home for the foundation), it will mean fresh and brawny projects by artists of all ages and inspirations. As long as Dia doesn't fall into its pattern of financial and bureaucratic struggle again, the foundation might be on its way to becoming one of the most progressive, wide-ranging art organizations in the country, and definitely in New York.


Joseph Beuys, 7000 Eichen (7000 Oaks), 1982-ongoing. West 22nd Street, New York City, between and including 10th and 11th avenues. Photo: Ken Goebel. Courtesy Dia Art Foundation.

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