Michael Heizer's Levitated Mass

by Stephen Cummings

It seemed the great majority of opinions formed around Michael Heizer's instantly famous sculpture, installed last year at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, had been decided well in advance of it's actual creation. In the extreme cases, it was either the greatest thing to happen in four thousand years, or the worst possible thing anyone could ever do with a boulder. Mostly though it was just a novelty of engineering, of the effort involved in moving an object so heavy through a cityscape so sprawling — and how expensive that was. Christopher Knight, writing for the LA Times, produced an interesting analysis of the phenomenon, and was, as far as I have found, the only person to note in print that all of the judgements, whatever else they were, were coming in a little bit prematurely. "I can't tell you how many people have asked whether I like a sculpture that doesn't yet exist," he wrote last March, three months before the piece was finally unveiled.

For those who did reserve their judgements for a finished product, the reaction was middling. Many, as is usual, preferred to make no judgement, and again report on the process of bringing the piece to fruition, or the ceremony of the opening, but for those who chose to write about the earthwork itself, Knight once again provides an appropriately representative sample: "Huge advance publicity set up a love-it-or-hate-it anticipation for either a masterpiece or a fiasco. But this work is neither." Having now seen the work myself, I am inclined to agree, but the question then is why.

First it should be reiterated that the boulder itself is not the artwork. In other words, don't just go glance at the rock and proclaim dissatisfaction — or, for that matter, not go and still proclaim dissatisfaction. Rather, this piece seems to be about the experience of approaching and walking under the boulder through the concrete trench — just about being everywhere called a "slot" — that forms the lower portion of this large earthwork sculpture, along with the hardware holding the rock in place, namely a pair of heavy steel shelves bolted to the trench walls and the boulder. The surrounding field of decomposed granite serves mostly as a framing device, directing the focus to what is inside the trench, not out.

Much criticism has sprung from the title of the piece, Levitated Mass, which, if for some reason you're inclined to take the title of an artwork literally, promises that the famously massive boulder will float in midair, or at least present the illusion of floating. And then there was LACMA Director Michael Govan promising repeatedly ahead of time that the title was indeed to be taken literally. "The piece is actually called Levitated Mass, because, as you walk down the ramp, it will appear that the rock is levitating," he states in a YouTube video released by the museum before the rock moved from its quarry. Govan has not been one to hold back, either in his advance proclamations or subsequent praise for the piece, so it may not be surprising that it doesn't quite live up to his promises. My favorite analysis on this point comes from a deadpan Wikipedia contributor, taking a little bit more liberty than Wikipedians are generally afforded, writing, "Initial plans for the work described the boulder as being affixed to the trench walls themselves, giving the boulder the appearance of 'floating' when viewed from within the trench via optical illusion, hence the work's title. With the addition of the support shelves, this illusion does not occur." Another way of looking at it could be that the boulder does not appear to levitate any more than the ceiling in your home does when you walk down the stairs, but the writer is on to something in citing the shelves.

Ignoring the the title of Levitated Mass, we should evaluate the piece, as we would any other, based upon the reality it proposes. And what seems to be proposed, standing under the two story boulder, is that a feeling of uneasiness should set in. No, we shouldn't suspend our disbelief to think the rock is levitating, but its purchase should feel uncertain, sort of the way Richard Serra's best sculptures bend the space around themselves, disorienting viewers and seeming on the point of toppling. As it stands now, Wikipedia is on the mark. The great steel brackets lend too much stability, relegating the megalith oddly to the status of a giant knick knack, placed carefully on the mantle.

Curiously, only architectural publications have seen fit to delve into the compromises made in constructing this piece. Architectural Record notes, "The design and engineering team had to balance Heizer’s vision with the safety of the public," and goes on to describe some of the earthquake safety measures implemented in the construction. And in The Architect's Newspaper, a more exhaustive list:

Many of the design details of Levitated Mass prioritized technical requirements above aesthetics. The cement trench rises above the decomposed granite of the surrounding grounds to waist height—otherwise the building code would have required a glass railing. ADA-mandated handrails make an unavoidable contribution to the interior of the trench. And two of the concrete trench’s more noticeable characteristics have more to do with nuisance abatement than artistic panache: the skimcoat cover on the concrete will make graffiti easy to wash away and recoat, and triangle notches on both ends of the trench are meant to keep skateboarders off the concrete.

All of these elements have an effect on the experience of the piece, and one wonders if these compromises could have been mitigated? Why, for example, didn't the ADA mandated handrails simply continue to the top of the trench? They would then have appeared more as a conscious design element than regulatory accommodation. And indeed, why aren't the trench walls closer together so as to support the boulder directly? One imagines that the bolts holding the rock in place could have been disguised somehow.

As with any artwork, such speculation is just a critical exercise, since the piece is already made and not going anywhere — this one more than most. I wouldn't go quite so far as Christopher Knight in calling this piece "good". The word that comes to my mind instead is 'fine'. It's just a shame that in a piece designed to dominate a landscape for hundreds, or, it's been suggested, thousands of years, the compromise stands out just a little bit more than the vision.

Art 2011: The Best of Further Wanderings

by Stephen Cummings

In a year that felt abundant with looks back at great artists my biggest regret in terms of seeing art is not having made it to New York for MoMA’s first ever retrospective of Willem de Kooning. Of course no one can be everywhere, and while I was fortunate enough to be in a lot of places this year, the trouble with being all over is that you’re bound to miss a lot from any one place in particular. So again I offer a selection of the best new works and exhibitions I managed to see over the past year. My route was at times directed by art, and at others by the whims of my life, but having bounced up and down both coasts and through several cities in between, I hope the list presented here can provide some kind of useful sample of the best the country had to offer in 2011.

A Small Self-Portrait

The year got off to a strong start with three exceptional pieces on display simultaneously at UCLA’s Armand Hammer Museum. Roberto Cuoghi's untitled self-portrait is a rare achievement in the practice of drawing. Far from feeling academic, this small piece is a staggering turn of realism with a figure as viscerally present as any painted by Manet or even Rembrandt. Coughi's portrait is unpretentious and uncanny, and reinforces realism's place in contemporary discourse — though given the rest of the portraits in this body of work, Cuoghi certainly doesn't subscribe to the school of though that prizes it above all else.

The Cutters

In adjacent galleries could be found the Hammer's All Of This And Nothing, featuring, among other works, Gedi Sibony’s The Cutters. The language of this piece was so concise, and its feeling of completion so thorough, it was clear from the beginning this would likely be one of the best things I’d see. Sibony is truly one to traffic in arrangements. As reported in W magazine a few years back, “He avoids altering his finds from their original state [...]. Before an opening he’ll spend days arranging his works so that the light will energize them, creating rich ‘situations’ for viewers.” The richness of The Cutters was, as mentioned, a quiet and powerful thing to behold.

Anticultural Positions

Also part of All Of This And Nothing was Paul Sietsema’s Anticultural Positions, a thirty-minute, looped film featuring black and white stills of the artist’s working surfaces interspersed with text from a lecture he reportedly presented in 2008. The effect was disjointed and abstract, a gorgeous visual experience complimented by the mesmerizing rattle of the projector. Literally readable in parts, but overall quite bewildering, Anticultural Positions nevertheless created an atmosphere to be savored.

The End

In Pittsburgh, another video piece proved even more enthralling. Ragnar Kjartansson’s The End, on view at the Carnegie Museum, enveloped its audience in a visual and and auditory landscape like nothing I’ve ever encountered. The weird, warped music and vast, white wilderness combined to create an environment both serene and exhilarating, and Kjartansson’s odd mix of exuberance and flippancy make him a joy to watch.

Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, Paris

Another collection of greatly varied styles came from an in-depth look at a single artist in the de Young Museum’s Picasso. It was the same traveling show that left Seattle earlier in the year, drawn from the currently renovating Musée National Picasso in Paris. Now, I’ve visited that museum, but something about the way this show was laid out made the work absolutely thrilling. While it felt a little thin in the early years — a number of Picasso’s best early works having been snagged by the Steins, interestingly — man, did Picasso take off as he got older. Still lifes, portraits, busts, bathers, and even some lesser known landscapes from the artist’s early days to his last made Picasso an unforgettable look at the master.

B. Wurtz: Works, 1970 - 2011

And maybe equally unforgettable was Metro Pictures Gallery’s retrospective of B. Wurtz. Little known outside the confines of artistic circles, Wurtz has been steadily producing smart, playful sculptures since the 1970s. Some of these are freestanding, some hang on the wall, but all incorporate surprisingly common objects to produce compositions of uncommon originality and wit. So light are Wurtz’s creations that they made even Richard Tuttle’s work, concurrent at the nearby Pace Gallery, feel leaden. Reviewing the show in June, Roberta Smith was quite right in her sentiment that, “Mr. Wurtz’s show may be, in its own quiet and eccentric way, one of the high points of the summer, if not the entire year.”

This Unassuming Drawing

by Stephen Cummings

How often do you come across a really good drawing? I mean a really good drawing. Something that grabs hold of you and won't let go. For me it's not that often. I think of Leonardo's portrait of The Virgin and Saint Anne, or Seurat's portrait of his mother. Maybe some of those spare, celebrated arrangements by Schiele? Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of great drawings out there, but some take it to another level. Fortunately you can see what I'm talking about, provided you get yourself over to the Hammer to have a look at one small piece by Italian artist Roberto Cuoghi.

It's a self portrait, like every piece in this particular body of work (unless that Pazuzu sculpture can be said to be included), and untitled like the rest of them as well. What makes it stand out is its solidity, its straightforwardness, and the absolutely exquisite handling of the materials.

Looking out from the page is the head of a heavyset man, with no pretense to anything else. And I should go further and say, a drawing of the head of a heavyset man, with no pretense to anything else. Lines unravel toward the edges of this paper like those of the old masters. This thing does not seek to be a window onto a world; it's a drawing. Marks bold and delicate make up the concentrated but serene figure. It's a confident draftsman who can allow the tiniest lower eyelashes to coexist on the page with a flattened haze of hair and fat lines around a fat neck. Moving across the face a near sculptural right eye composed of clear, concise marks gives way to the soft, sfumato whisper of the left side of the head, a rich, receding space cut out by the bold, dark lines that define the form's left edge. Because the crudeness of these lines brings us firmly to the surface of the paper, it's as if the face is sunk into the space beyond. Elsewhere can be found a stubble made not of stippled pigment, but of depressions poked into the page, possibly with the staples mentioned in the list of media. These same holes form pores in other areas, and in still others mere stippled value. In an otherwise graphite palette, the ear and cheek on the right side betray subtle hints of color, and the whole fleshy guise sits atop a collar pushed forward by its whiteness, whiteness achieved with help of that white-out tape you can find at office suppliers as well as some coarse scraping away of the paper. This drawing, in short, is a tour de force.

There are artists who take great pains to insist that virtuosic draftsmanship is superior to other forms of art. Their work is boastful and self-conscious and stale. And Cuoghi, with this matter-of-fact, fat beauty, displays a level of virtuosity that they can only dream of.

Amidst All This Nothing

by Stephen Cummings

So word is that the staff at the Armand Hammer Museum in Los Angeles is all aflutter because a hummingbird built its nest in their courtyard. And while that in itself might have elicited a certain amount of excitement on any normal day, this little construction project happened to coincide with the installation of the Hammer's latest show, and in that show there is a piece which, in a one hour video, on a little Toshiba flat-screen, features — are you ready? — a hummingbird, asleep on a twig.

It's pretty magical.

All Of This And Nothing, which opened last week and runs through April 24th, features works by fourteen contemporary artists from LA and without. According to the museum, "these artists conceptually and emotionally invest simple [...] materials with a newfound poetic meaning while offering a thoughtful meditation on the fragility of our lives and the objects that make up the world around us." It's kind of a nebulous notion that, thought about from different angles, could describe a huge swath of the artwork from now or the past. But the show hangs together pretty well, though it does rely heavily on the assumption that certain things just are amazing.

For example, do you think it would be amazing to watch a hummingbird sleep? Well then you probably are going to find Fernando Ortega's video to be pretty amazing. (Though now of course you can watch in real life just outside the galleries. Undercut?) What about the idea of a spider weaving a web in place of a harp's strings? Then get ready for three dull photographs of just that, none more interesting than the next, and possibly less interesting as a series. With curatorial complicity, Ortega is absolutely the worst offender in this, staking his work almost entirely on our wholesale acceptance of his profundity. But it's not just him; from room to room too much is being made of things all over the place.

Evan Holloway took some real bad photos, but there they are on prominent display. Paul Sietsema's drawings are not bad by any objective test, but being told about the "obsessive" process of their making does not catapult these papers into the hyperbolic realm the curators see them occupying. Frances Stark makes good work, but the collages in this show are rather clunky. Yet it seems we are asked to regard them more highly simply because they depict the artist at work in her studio. And then there's Charles Gaines' Manifestos, in which he used historical texts as the basis for musical compositions through an arbitrarily applied system of assigning notes to letters. As Gaines himself admits, "I could do any text in the world [...] apply it to the system, and it would sound the same." So why this grand treatment? Is it necessary that these huge drawings of the specific texts and corresponding scores accompany the music? And four thirty-some inch flat screens perched oddly on hardboard podiums? Really? And why hardboard? I guess the artists is at fault here too though, having made those silly drawings in the first place. It's all just so . . . overblown. Perhaps one of the docents put it best when she said of the Ian Kiaer installation that opens the show, "You're supposed to kind of go back to when you were five in this room. I don't know why, but."

That said though, this show is very worth seeing. Gaines' piece is worth hearing, Sietsema's drawings are kind of interesting, and Ortega has a kinetic sculpture/installation on the ground level that makes you go, Huh. But more than that, amongst the smattering of glorified whatnot, a handful of pieces stand out as whole, and not overdone, and you are encouraged not to miss them.

In the third gallery sits the show's most commanding piece, a high, broad section of wall and doorway from the studio of Gedi Sibony. The Cutters exists in that tradition of assemblage begun by Robert Rauschenberg, but is a much more minimal, quiet, solitary thing, something akin to Agnes Martin or the drawings of Georges Seurat. Revealing little more than drywall, metal framing, primer, and some hanging canvas, the economy of language in this piece is striking. [1] Passing around and through it gives such a clear sense of its completeness that it's no wonder Sibony felt the need to physically cut it out of his work space. However he managed that, it was worth it; with a couple of other pieces offering an even greater economy of materials and arrangement, Sibony's presence in the museum has a singular authority.

Midway through the exhibition, Sergej Jensen offers up one of those minimal compositions that strikes an iconic position in your mind almost before you've become aware of it. One of his three contributions to the show, this particular untitled arrangement of various sewn fabrics reposes in a muted palette of grays. It's a constructed fitting together of rectangles that you almost feel like you've seen before. But this familiarity, while it may allow you to pass by without too much consideration at first, keeps the piece with you, and you may find a nagging urge to keep returning to it, if for nothing else than to figure out what you must have missed.

Toward the end of the show you will find Paul Sietsema's Anticultural Positions, a gorgeous black and white film featuring close-up stills of the surfaces of the artist's work tables intercut with text modified from a 1951 lecture of the same title by Jean Dubuffet. The pairing has the sort of arbitrariness that went into collaborations between John Cage and Merce Cunningham, and it has that sort of success too. These two inputs compliment one another. An exceedingly close examination that can be likened in some ways to Chuck Close is kept from being tedious by the addition of Dubuffet's words, and those words in turn seem to make an effort relate to the changing images that precede and follow. Despite the separation of half a century, these two languages hold together quite well.

And before you escape the circuit of galleries you will encounter at last the great white expanse of Karla Black's Once Cut, a broad field of plaster powder sprinkled evenly across the gallery floor and interrupted by the addition of a few colorful bath soaps and liquids. It's a thing that makes you stop and wonder about it, whether you're new to art and questioning whether any of this is art at all, or if you're more experienced and trying to decide whether this composition and its materials hold together the way you expect. In either case, one thing is sure, you won't be able to see it at all if you don't make it out to this show.

1. The museum gets a little carried away again, stating, "Sibony conjures the magical from the mundane." But hasn't that been the nature of art since, you know, forever? Paint being essentially mud and all that. Silly museum.
2. The original version of this post featured a paragraph about the work of Jorge Macchi. It has been removed after further viewing caused me to rethink such high praise.

A New Face in Los Angeles

by Forrest Jones

Classical music is a tough sell these days. To meet someone who regularly buys and listens to classical music is a rare event, and it is even stranger if that person is under 50. In today’s world of instant information and entertainment on demand, people just don’t have the patience to sit and listen to a beautiful 45-minute piece of music. If we all just set aside a few hours to really listen to some classical music, it might bring a little peace and focus into our overloaded, fast-paced lives.

Right now, classical music needs someone to bring the younger generation back, and that person could be the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s new conductor, Gustavo Dudamel. Dudamel is a young (29 years old), energetic, charismatic conductor from Venezuela. In his concerts conducting the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra in his home country, he has led the orchestra in exciting performances of varied literature, from Mozart to Mahler to West Side Story. Any good orchestra can play music well, but he knows how to make an orchestra sound exciting and fresh. Hopefully, this new sense of creativity and energy will lure in some new fans who didn’t consider classical music before.

Dudamel is a product of the excellent music education system that is in place in Venezuela, which provides music classes to poor children throughout the country. This system has been so effective, that Dudamel might merely be the first spark in an explosion of Venezuelan talent that could potentially land on the international classical music scene.

Since a conductor is also an ambassador to the public, this background could play an important role in his philosophy. As a music educator myself, I hope that Dudamel spreads a renewed sense of the importance of music in public schools. The popularity of standardized testing combined with the budget problems of many school districts has led to reductions and elimination of music programs, and the hardest hit places are the low socio-economic areas. With his experience in the Venezuelan system, hopefully he can be a catalyst for a renaissance in music education.

Of course, he also has to be a good conductor. If he can’t lead a major orchestra, then it doesn’t matter what he says. To find out, I listened to his recording of Gustav Mahler’s First Symphony with the L.A. Phil (Deutsche Grammaphon). The first great thing about this recording is that it is taken from several live concerts spliced together. It is edited, for sure, but it is still a more accurate representation of an orchestra’s prowess than a studio session, in my opinion. In listening to this recording, you get a sense of this live feeling with applause at the end and coughing in between movements. It adds to the feeling a little bit, and reminds you that this is a living, breathing orchestra that you are listening to.

As for the music, the orchestra not only plays beautifully, but with some style. Some sections are a little slower than I expected, but I really like the casual pace. It allows you to soak in the melodies a little more, and I found myself listening to them more closely than before because you really can hear every note.

This symphony is so dense and thick, that it is difficult for orchestras to play with great balance. Under Dudamel’s leadership, however, every background detail is very clear without overpowering the melody. It isn’t just a muddy wall of sound, like many recordings before this one. This means that I have heard things in this work that I never really noticed before, and I am quite familiar with the First Symphony.

What really stands out to me, though, is how the conductor does a wonderful job of portraying the elements of Mahler’s young, somewhat sarcastic personality in this work. For example, the second movement almost sounds like an 1890s dance party, and as a result, Dudamel has some fun with it. It starts with a simple but heavy bass line, moving at an absurdly slow tempo. When the rest of the “band” comes in, they try to get things back up to speed, but the basses, of course, slow it back down every chance they get. The horns, then, want to take it ever faster, so the entire movement seems like a battle between sections. At one point, the movement seemingly ends with a big bang, but the horns start to play again, as if to say “We aren’t done yet!” You can almost imagine a drunk and incompetent chamber orchestra playing for a crowded tavern, in which they can barely keep the music going. It is a fun movement.

The third movement, though, is a strange play on the song “Frere Jacques”. The melody is familiar, but it is actually in a minor key, and quite slow. The first instrument playing the tune is a rare solo string bass. This gives it the feeling of a funeral march, but why such a familiar tune? It is weird, but still intriguing.

The finale is a bombastic one with lots of fast notes in the violins and flutes, and brass and percussion playing loudly. It is exciting music, and the orchestra doesn’t disappoint. The beauty, drama, and humor of Gustav Mahler’s work is outstanding, and Gustavo Dudamel really takes advantage of it. This is a very good beginning for this young conductor. Remember the name and keep an eye out for him. Hopefully he can put classical music back on the map.