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The Arts Today: A Refuge for Political Propaganda?
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13391 |
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THE ARTS
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9 / 1987 |
2,307 Words |
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Herbert London
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Robert Rauschenberg's ten thousand square feet worth of ongoing visual autobiography on exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's wing is a positive paradigm for the idea that modern art is a junkyard of the artist's memory. The work has a beginning but no end. Put together from undigested scraps and objects from Rauschenberg's life, the composite on exhibit features a sound track, as it were - recordings from sundry sounds that appealed to him. This is unbridled solipsism at play, all the while disturbing because it is so innocent of guile.
Rauschenberg admits this is the personal collection of bits and pieces he has accumulated since the 1950s. A shirt here, a cardboard box there. There is certainly nothing in this collection that sets him apart from the rest of us. If there is an artistic vision - a matter I find most dubious - it may be found in his varnishing old cartons. Most of us simply throw them away.
In the center of the exhibit are three towers of books. These aren't the collected works of Robert Rauschenberg; they are works that hadn't been checked out of the Captive Library in 10 years. "I gave them enough money to reinvest in the same number of brand new books," Rauschenberg noted. Why these books are a reflection of Rauschenberg's "visual autobiography" is a mystery. After all, by his own admission, these are not books he has read.
The rest of the exhibit purports to follow biographical events. But for those of us "unequipped" to evaluate Rauschenberg's aesthetic sensibility, it looks like a lot of junk attached to the wall. Of course, it is a lot of junk attached to the wall, but as Rauschenberg said, "Somebody's got to do it."
Flotsam and Jetsam
There are oil drums found on the highway, bricks taken from building sites, red tablecloths taken from bars, stolen napkins, dirty laundry. Here is the flotsam and jetsam of thirty-five years of his life masquerading as an art form. If there is a talent on display, it is Mr. Rauschenberg's chutzpah; his immodest belief that his junk is art.
In order to justify this posing, Rauschenberg notes in the public description of his exhibit that it is devoted to "peaceful coexistence." How it is devoted to the promotion of "peaceful coexistence" isn't explained. It may well be that enemies of this nation will use this display of trash as yet another illustration of America's fall from cultural supremacy. However, the very reliance on "peaceful coexistence" as Rauschenberg's artistic vision is itself rather instructive.
When an artist has nothing to say, when he is bankrupt of ideas, when his "work" is little more than collecting the detritus of civilization, there is always that old standby to count on: "peaceful coexistence." One wonders where Rauschenberg and many of his contemporaries would be without this bromide. It is certainly convenient to have this handy cliché as a substitute for a well-developed artistic vision, or even as a substitute for real artistic work.
It was particularly revealing that when Oliver Stone received an Oscar for directing Platoon, he said his film was meant to prevent another tragedy like the war in Vietnam. Here was yet
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