Keeping Up With HGTV

 
I can’t not watch HGTV: House Hunters, Property Virgins, My First Place, Income Property, Property Brothers, et al. I do realize, of course, that these shows are all approximately the same, and offer approximately the same small pleasures. Carina Chocano summed it up nicely in her essay on “curated” personal websites like Pinterest and Tumblr in the Times magazine this week:

There’s a German word for it, of course: Sehnsucht, which translates as “addictive yearning.” This is, I think, what these sites evoke: the feeling of being addicted to longing for something; specifically being addicted to the feeling that something is missing or incomplete. The point is not the thing that is being longed for, but the feeling of longing for the thing. And that feeling is necessarily ambivalent, combining both positive and negative emotions.

Yes, I thought, as I read this: this is why I watch HGTV.

What is most surprising to me about these shows is the incredible homogeneity of homeowners’ desires all across the United States and Canada (many of these programs—especially the ones that don’t specify locations—film in Canada). Each prospective buyer’s must-have list goes something like this:

• Open floor plan

• Hardwood floors

• Granite countertops

• Stainless steel appliances

• Master bathroom with double vanity

This wish list transcends budget, race, and class, at least insofar as these are represented on HGTV. What does this mean? Not much, perhaps, especially since the house hunters who appear on the shows are almost certainly also the shows’ viewers. In other words, these desires are caught in a feedback loop: viewers learn what to want by watching HGTV; they then go on HGTV and tell other viewers what to want, and so on.

Corporations routinely cultivate our desires for things we don’t need, but there is something rather more insidious about the lifestyle branding occurring on HGTV. Rather than presenting viewers with an array of competing products as advertisers do (albeit a limited array), HGTV’s salespeople—ordinary folks like you and me—present a monolithic standard of living that challenges every viewer simply to keep up.

There is one HGTV show that threatens to break the cycle, however: the rarely aired My First Sale, which, according to the HGTV website, “takes the proven and successful docudrama format of My First Place and turns it upside down — telling the story from the seller's point of view.” Buyers, especially in this economy, hold all the cards. It is standard procedure for prospective buyers on HGTV to request, and receive, thousands of dollar in seller assist, and as viewers, we typically cheer them on. By contrast, My First Sale educates viewers about the hardships of prolonged time on the market and multiple price reductions. In one recent episode a Dallas family desperate to sell the large, well-maintained home in which they had lived for less than two years finally did so, at a loss of ten thousand dollars. Why so desperate? Their even larger, more upgraded developer-built home would not be constructed until they sold their house. Sehnsucht, indeed.

(Do Not) Touch!

Félix González-Torres, Untitled (Portrait of Ross in LA), 1991

As a museum- and gallerygoer, I qualify as timid, which is to say that I typically err on the side of caution and assume that I may not touch or step over the line. For this reason, I revel in opportunities to touch, or, as is the case with Félix González-Torres’s lyrical (and delicious!) candy spills, to take. The spill at right was included in the recently closed Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture at the Brooklyn Museum. When I approached the spill it was surrounded by a group of onlookers. They were alternately reading the caption and examining the work, from a couple of feet away, of course. I felt a little dangerous as I walked up and took one—not because I was doing something illicit; I wasn’t—but because others may have thought that I was. Those who read all the way through the caption quickly realized that the depletion of the pile is integral to its meaning.

The question of interactivity came up for me at the New Museum’s triennial, The Ungovernables. The most audaciously user-friendly work in the show is undoubtedly the Slavs and Tatars’ PrayWay (2012). When I was there the carpet/bookstand was draped with teenagers. I confess not to have gotten much out of this work, but people seemed to enjoy it; perhaps the take-away here is that the New Museum should invest in some gallery benches.

More intriguing is Abigail DeVille’s Dark Day (2012), which occupies the awkward little space halfway between the third and fourth floors. The niche is reimagined as an irregular black and white grid and crammed with all manner of detritus that seems to have been sucked toward the back wall and up. Wary of stepping over the threshold, I craned my neck from my perch on the stairwell, hoping to catch a glimpse of where all of this junk was headed. Then I noticed a sad little green scrawl beside the wall caption instructing me to walk into the space and look up. And so I did, and it was pretty cool. Perhaps I should have known—and didn’t I on some level?—that this work demanded to be entered. Museum regulations have so thoroughly conditioned me not to trust my instincts—after all, how many deliciously tactile works deny the viewer’s touch—that I hate even to think about the opportunities for interaction that I may have missed over the years.

A final note: The transgression of traditional museum regulations invited by many works of art sometimes becomes the experience of the art, to such a degree that the work itself all but disappears. This is not the case with Dark Day, which, in retrospect, seems very clearly to require that the viewer step inside (even in the absence of handwritten instructions). This has, however, been my experience of other works; even, regrettably, González-Torres’s delicious spills.

Doug Wheeler Ate my Afternoon, But Was It Worth It?

Last Friday I strolled casually into Chelsea with a list of shows I intended to see. First up was Doug Wheeler’s installation at David Zwirner Gallery, SA MI 75 DZ NY 12 (2012). A short line of gallery-goers—maybe six or seven people—were standing outside the entrance. This was expected. What was not expected, however, were the twenty or so people inside, not to mention the three hours I would ultimately spend waiting to see Wheeler’s “infinity environment.” A well-meaning gallery assistant repeatedly attempted to placate visitors with the assurance that it would be “worth it.” I still puzzle over what, exactly, that means in this context. How can you measure the worth of an experience against time, after all? (The time was pleasantly passed, I should add, thanks to my interesting line-neighbor/interlocutor.)

Spoiler Alert: If you have not yet seen this installation, you may want to stop reading now.

The first encounter with the installation is the most surprising, and the most exciting. You and five cohorts wearing surgical booties step up onto a shallow white platform in front of what appears to be a white screen of some kind. Even though I knew on an intellectual level that this was not the case—I had read Randy Kennedy’s article in the Times—my senses overrode my prior knowledge of the work, and I hesitated. Another visitor was the first to pierce this perceptual wall, which of course, is not a wall at all. As I stepped into the space which is SA MI 75 DZ NY 12, I felt almost giddy; it was like walking through a cloud. The space has no corners and so is impossible—or so it seems at first—to navigate. Not knowing how deep the space was, I kept walking, very slowly, until I began to feel the floor slope upwards. This was the place where we had been instructed to stop before entering the work. I spent the next half-hour staring at the wall, I think. My eyes played tricks on me—curlicues, almost like smoke, seemed to hover around me at points. Turning around and seeing the entrance and the lights shatters the illusion, so I tried to maintain a position deep inside the work. The light changes color over the course of 32 minutes, giving it a temporal dimension that I learned about only while waiting in line to get in.

As I left the gallery, hurrying to make up for lost time, I actually felt a little nostalgic for that first moment of encountering the work and being so unsure about what I was seeing. It was exhilarating in a way I couldn’t have imagined to have my senses tested in that way. It was worth it.

PST, At Last

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Detail of Chris Burden's Urban Light (2008) at LACMA

Having finally fulfilled my most ardent art wish of the season—to sample some of the fruits of the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time initiative, wherein dozens of exhibitions across Southern California have been organized to explore various aspects of the Los Angeles art scene between the years 1945 and 1980—I thought I would share some of my impressions. First, a disclaimer: my experience of PST was hardly exhaustive, limited as it was by time (five days) and reach (I was on foot, meaning that more far-flung exhibitions in Pomona and Orange County had to be missed).

My first stop was the Los Angeles County Museum of Art where Edward Kienholz’s Five Car Stud (1969-1972) was on view in the U.S. for the first time since its inception. The work is highly controversial, and wall texts detailing the convergence of Kienholz’s practice with the Civil Rights movement felt strained. But no matter, the work is spectacular. In contrast to the roped-off presentation of Kienholz’s Roxys (1961-62) at the David Zwirner gallery in 2010, Five Car Stud was entirely open for viewers to explore, which is as it should be. I was startled initially at the almost seamless incorporation of viewers into the work; from a short distance it was sometimes difficult to tell who was a visitor and who (or what) one of Kienholz’s cast figures; we are implicated. I left the installation with sand in my shoes, an apt metaphor for the way the work sticks with you.

Next stop was LACMA’s California Design, 1930-1965: “Living in a Modern Way.” The highlight there was a recreation of the living room from Charles and Ray Eames’ iconic 1949 Case Study House #8. Not yet having had the opportunity to see the living room in situ (the house is currently undergoing restoration, which is how the objects came to be on display at LACMA), this was a real treat.

The Getty’s anchor exhibition, Pacific Standard Time: Crosscurrents in L.A. Painting and Sculpture, 1950-1970, is, as some have complained, canonical, which is to say that it rehearses all of the accepted categories of postwar LA art—hard-edge painting, ceramics, assemblage, finish-fetish—in more-or-less predictable ways. Nevertheless, it was a pleasure to see some of the very good examples on view there. I was surprised by how fresh some of the hard-edge painting looked, especially canvases by Helen Lundeberg. Assemblage was well-represented by Berman, Kienholz, Conner, Herms, Saar, et al. I had heard great things about Ron Davis’s resin paintings, two of which were included in the exhibition, but was disappointed to discover that their optical tricks are more impressive in reproduction than they are in person. A related exhibition organized by the conservation research arm of the Getty about the production of De Wain Valentine’s Gray Column (1975-76) drew attention to the ways in which so-called finish fetish works sometimes fail to live up to their artists’ (and viewers’) expectations. These works rarely look as finished in person (especially some forty to fifty years after they were made) as they do in reproduction.

Other highlights: 18^th Street Arts Center’s Collaboration Labs: Southern California Artists and the Artist Space Movement, a small exhibition about alternative art spaces (organized, fittingly enough, by just such an alternative art space); the Pasadena Armory Center for the Arts’ exhibition of work by Robert Heinecken and Wallace Berman (works by these artists can currently be seen elsewhere in LA, but for sheer quantity, not to mention the brilliance of the juxtaposition, this show is a winner); and MOCA’s Under the Big Black Sun, California Art 1974-1981, an exhilarating survey which is long on video art, and perhaps too short on wall texts (there was some cell phone audio available for select works). At UCLA's Fowler Museum, serendipitous timing brought me to Mapping Another LA: The Chicano Art Movement at the same time that artist Don Juan (Johnny D. Gonzalez) was discussing the inspiration for his mural, The Birth of Our Art (1971).

The MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House organized an exhibition about architectural historian and activist Esther McCoy, which wisely let McCoy do most of the talking. Of course, the Schindler House’s attractions are not contingent on the exhibitions it shows. In fact, it might be at its best when it is between shows, as it was on my two previous visits. The house was built by Rudolph Schindler in 1921-22 as a home for two couples (of which he and his wife were one). One of the most amazing things about visiting the house, which, despite its humble materials—concrete, wood, glass, and canvas—is somehow magical, is that visitors are permitted to wander freely through its rooms, both indoor and out. The interior rooms were conceived as artists’ studios, the outdoor patios as living rooms (complete with fireplaces), and ‘sleeping baskets’ on the roof as bedrooms. Always surprising is that even the bathrooms at this historic house are available for visitors’ use, but this laissez-faire approach seems totally compatible with the bohemian spirit of the place. The Schindler House is emblematic of the richness of Los Angeles as a destination for art and architecture enthusiasts even after Pacific Standard Time wraps up.

Slide!

I tried to see Carsten Höller: Experience at the New Museum one weekend shortly after it opened. This is the show that includes a slide that transports you from the fourth floor to the second without the hassle of stairs or those freakishly large elevators. It also includes a sensory deprivation tank and a carousel.

 

It is no exaggeration to say that I had never before encountered anything even approaching a line at the New Museum during paying hours (Thursday evenings are free). This is one of the great pleasures of the New Museum—despite uneven exhibitions and awkward architectural proportions, it is delightfully jostle-free. Given the carnival-like amenities proffered by Höller, however, I should not have been as surprised as I was to see a line stretching down the Bowery. On that particular day, I simply shrugged my shoulders and walked away, not wanting to deal with the line and the crowds that it augured. There would be plenty of time to see the show.

Ten weeks later and out of town, I am on the verge of missing "Experience," which closes on January 22 (part of the show will close on the 15^th, the exhibition’s original closing date). I will have a brief window in which to see it when I return; the question is, do I want to? (Of course, the question of whether I want to attend the exhibition is different from the question of whether I ought to.)

A colleague related that when she attended, she was told upon entry that she would not be able to ride the slide on account of the crowds. The slide is more or less the only element of the exhibition that really appeals to me. This seems like awfully skimpy motivation when one considers that a slide can be found at pretty much every playground in town. The lines of people waiting to pay $16 to ride this particular slide affirm that the Duchampian gesture—a urinal in an art exhibition becomes art by virtue of its recontextualization—is alive and well, but it has been stripped—dramatically so—of its ability to shock. What is left when the subversive thrill is gone? I’ll be sure to let you know … if I decide to brave the end-of-exhibition lines, that is.

Postscript, 1/13:
A like-minded perspective.

Vertigo at the Guggenheim

A few days ago I stopped into Maurizio Cattelan’s … er, retrospective … at the Guggenheim. Roberta Smith described the effect of the exhibition, in which all of the artist’s works are strung up in the rotunda of the museum, as “initially startling, but ultimately disrespectful and perverse.” With Smith’s review in mind, and having already seen numerous images of the exhibition, I wasn’t particularly startled. I also wasn’t offended by this most unconventional career retrospective (Cattelan has said that this exhibition marks his retirement, a pronouncement which nobody seems to be taking seriously). More than anything, I was scared—not of the taxidermied animals, nor of the creepy wax effigies—but of the vertigo which this exhibition, more than any other I’ve seen at the Guggenheim, threatens with every turn.

When you first step onto the rotunda floor and look up, as you always must at the Guggenheim, you see the works dangling above you in several tiers. This is somewhat threatening, especially when you consider the heft of certain of Cattelan’s better-known works, like All (2007), a group of life-size marble sculptures which read as shrouded corpses. The current exhibition shares its name with this work, and as the wall text notes, the exhibition's installation, which is evocative of gallows, underscores “the undertone of death that pervades the artist’s work.”

I have always been struck by the low railings that line the Guggenheim’s spiral walkways. They just seem so … low, for a building so vertiginous. Never have they seemed lower than they do at Cattelan’s exhibition. Ordinarily, visitors to the Guggenheim hug the walls, which is, after all, where most of the art is found. Here, however, the walls are bare; all of the art is in the rotunda, driving the museumgoers toward the railings, where they gaze upwards and downwards, paying scant attention to the other museumgoers who are engaged in the same risky (am I the only one who sees this?!) behavior. I confess to having been very nervous at times, so much so that I backed away from the railings, sacrificing optimal views for a feeling of safety.

I doubt that Cattelan considered this effect when he proposed this peculiar installation, but it seems appropriate to his morbidly absurdist ethos to draw attention to the scarier side of this high church of art. Or maybe he’s trying a bit too hard to conjure the kind of vertigo that wonderful works of art can sometimes induce in a susceptible viewer.

Some Musings on the Market

Paul McCarthy, Tomato Head (Green), 1994

One of the many pleasures of living in New York City is the presence of major auction houses like Christie’s and Sotheby’s, whose previews provide free and relatively unconstrained access to impressive artworks. This week I spent some time at Christie’s, where Paul McCarthy’s larger than life take on Mr. Potato Head, Tomato Head (1994), one of an edition of three, was on view before being auctioned off with other works from the Peter Norton collection.

Viewers are permitted to get close—sometimes perilously so—to the works. I had to maneuver awkwardly around the scattered pieces of Tomato Head—including parts never imagined by the makers (or consumers) of Mr. Potato Head—to get a good look at Christian Marclay’s Guitar Neck (1992), an assemblage of seven record album covers hung one above the other to form an elongated … you guessed it … guitar neck. Guitar Neck is the kind of art a fourteen year old would think was cool, and would probably make, if fourteen year olds still owned records. Estimated at $60-80,000, it took in a whopping $266,500, further evidence, in case anyone needed it, that the art market is doing just fine. In fact, Tomato Head, which was estimated at $1-1.5 million, sold for just over $4.5 million (gulp). Installed on the wall beside Tomato Head was a concave, stainless steel disk by Anish Kapoor. These are strange bedfellows, these two works, and Kapoor’s austere minimalist mirror turned Tomato Head on its head, as if to rebuke McCarthy for his intransigence.

The atmosphere at a preview is charged in a way that a museum visit never is—these things are for sale! Overhearing snippets of conversations and filling in the blanks imaginatively is part of the fun. A collector suggests the mantle as a good location for a sumptuous wall-mounted sculpture by Josiah McElheny; her art advisor (perhaps?) suggests the work would be better hung at eye level, as it was at Christie’s. One smartly dressed woman gives another a lesson on Glenn Ligon—potential buyers or art tourists, like me? A small group of people gathered in the center of a gallery—investors discussing an opportunity, or tourist-tourists? (The latter, as it turned out; next stop, Times Square!)

This is a place of commerce, which can scarcely be forgotten amid the price tags and frenetic staff; but the outrageousness of the prices neutralizes the atmosphere somewhat, at least for me. I’ve sometimes wondered how the experience might differ if I were acquisitive and capable of satisfying that impulse. Just this week while in Savannah, I was put to the test, albeit under rather different circumstances. The Savannah School of Art and Design has a wonderful gift shop, filled with interesting objects designed by its students and faculty. I found myself drawn to a beautiful little print; its price—under $100. And just like that, appreciation turned into acquisitiveness. Maybe it would look good above my desk.