Today we paid a call on the New Museum of Contemporary Art. It’s an uncompromising, vibrant building, all the more grand for being plunked down in the rusty old Bowery. The space is wonderful. But the stuff on exhibition is, in my less than humble opinion, ludicrous. A mattress covered with buttons. A cage made of chain link fencing. Fluorescent light bulbs arranged in a series of "Y" shapes. Aluminum foil hanging from sticks. Broken glass on a bench. Cardboard boxes, some open, some closed. Plastic pipe threaded through a deck chair.
Three substantial floors littered with such artlessness. What a dreadful, terrible squandering of space and opportunity.
The unifying principle: a conspicuous antagonism to craftsmanship. Every single piece of work left with rough edges and bad joins and unpainted surfaces, as though not to complete the task is fundamental to the aesthetic. If there is an aesthetic other than fakery.
I don’t get it. I don’t want to get it. To me, it looked like the detritus of a civilization in utter, hopeless implosive decline. A decadence beyond ordinary decadence. In-your-face ugliness.
What is attractive or interesting or even repulsive about old clothes tied into a tight bundle with an orange electrical extension cord? It’s still a bundle of old clothes. It’s not art because it’s in a museum, and if it’s supposed to be a critique of art, it’s not not even remotely clever. It’s stupid.
There were lots of museum-goers who milled unexpressively around the various objects. Were we all pretending that we were looking at Vermeers?
One of the sculptures, so-called, consisted of a pile of chairs, randomly arranged. A four-year-old boy looked at the "sculpture" and announced, in a very loud and clear voice, "It’s a pile of chairs. Very funny." And he laughed. It was a great clothesless emperor moment.
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