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JUST ANOTHER FRIDAY ADVENTURE



It can often be difficult, if not impossible, to explain or describe just why art is so important to me.

In the end, of course, it can't be done. It either works for you, or doesn't. It either speaks to you or it doesn't. Art education can help, and I support it wholeheartedly. But the risk is the loss of direct communication: if I have an art education, and this piece of art I'm looking at right now is saying nothing to me, and if it's a piece of art by someone who is well respected, then something must be wrong with me.

Art shouldn't be like that.

So everyone should have a Sam with them, because Sam makes art always new.

Why's that? you ask...

As my loved ones have heard me decry, ad nauseum, I find the practice of reading the wall-label before looking at a work of art particularly sad. It's as though the viewer needs to be told whether s/he should appreciate whatever s/he is looking at. Oh, this is Van Gogh, the viewer says, so I guess I better be impressed. Contemporary art really flummoxes wall-label readers: Oh my, what is this crap, it's nothing like in my schoolbooks, quick, look at the label, see what it's supposed to be about, see how I should be responding to this work....

But Sam doesn't give a spit.

Something either speaks to him, or doesn't.

My art-education-goal for Sam is that he never lose the sense of awe he has for new sights and sounds and smells and tastes. That he continue to explore wherever these new sensuous wonders take him.

With age, and experience, will come an increasing sophistication, and discrimination. But for now, Sam finds the entire world a wondrous invention, completely created for his own discovery.

Whether he has come across stones from what must be New York City's smallest rock garden, (a 2' by 1' plot stuck in a weird corner between two slabs of skyscraper glass),

or has a first look at the view of Columbus Circle and Central Park from the new Time Warner Center,

or encounters the work of a sculptor of light,

or begins to comprehend the beauty of great ship design,

Sam is a damned good teacher for potentially art-jaded folks like me. Put quite simply, he reinforces the value of looking. And great art rewards looking.

He's also a damned good excuse for a once-a-week retiree like myself to indulge in pleasure....



Our most recent Friday adventure took in two stunningly good exhibitions.

The first was a William DeKooning show at the Gagosian. Now, what little I'd seen of this guy left me singularly unimpressed and a bit creeped-out. Lots of pictures of grotesque figures, mostly
women. So that made the luscious paintings on view in this show all the more revelatory.

And then it was off to see the works of Michal Rovner, an Israeli artist who works with stone. These were something. The New York Times called her work "shimmering archeology." Hard to describe. Big pieces of stone, as from an ancient dig, with hieroglyphics on them. Except that when you look closely at them, the hieroglyphics move. You realize that they have video images of tiny moving people projected onto them.

Sam's Uncle John joined him on this outing:


The room Sam is beckoning you into, in this photo, was both dark and mysterious. Sam initially had no interest. But curiousity got the better of him and he went in, and up a long ramp (which he ended up running up and down) to a viewing area overlooking a big dirt pit, with huge stone tablets, Ten Commandments' size, lying open on the ground. And small dancing figures in even lines covering the surface. You gotta see these things...

One of my personal truisms regarding a good art visit is that, afterwards, the world looks different. More interesting somehow. Sam definitely agrees: here is is fascinated with who knows what? I had no idea what had so grabbed his attention. Neither did John. Whatever it was, Sam knew how to deflect questions about his sanity: look cool, and don't mess with me.

Finally, Sam brought John to the Whitney for a final look before the biennial ends. Here they are both examining the layout of an imaginary town carved in marble. Don't ask.

John passes on some wisdom:


Then it was jump in a cab to meet Sonja and head home.

Bye!




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