More than whimsy - Contemporary Art

A giant beachball in a space the size of an aircraft hangar? I've long been sceptical of Contemporary Art. I have always doubted that it had true depth - its point is often too obvious - and I've considered its best quality whimsy. But I remember how Sydneysiders loved Jeff Koons' Puppy some 15 years ago as the 12-metre structure stood for months gradually flowering outside the Museum for Contemporary Art. I know that people love this whimsy. The Contemporary exhibits are often the most fun.

This quality must to some extent explain the appeal of Contemporary Art to school children. There is a terrific installation at the Eli and Edythe Broad Contemporary Art Museum at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.  Metropolis II by Chris Burden features about 1,100 specially-made Hot Wheels-sized cars zooming around at the scale equivalent of 240-miles per hour through 18 lanes of 'roadway' in a miniature Lego-like city. Ten thousand cars negotiate the system in an hour. When we were at the Museum, a couple of classes of schoolchildren were angling themselves around the structure, fascinated for minutes on end.

By the way, the Broads after whom this building is named, also endow Placido Domingo's position at the Los Angeles Opera. This is typical of the type of US arts patronage I wrote about last year (Noblesse oblige - arts philanthropy in US classical music, 26 Oct 2012); you find the same names cropping up - David Geffen, Mark Taper...

But I've started to realise that there are ways in which Contemporary Art may express something deeper than whimsy.

When I saw Christian Marclay's The Clock at the MCA in Sydney early last year, I was understandably knocked out by the skill and stamina that would have gone into making it - a 24-hour compilation of short movie sequences (gotta be around 1,440 of them), extracted from world cinema over the past 100 years and focussing on the time shown on clocks on the set (how did Marclay 'proof' it?). But I remember the emotion I experienced when I realised that every single outtake was showing the real time at that second or minute - Gary Cooper at High Noon, Patrick Macnee as John Steed from The Avengers looking at his pocket watch at 12.05, a bit of Picnic at Hanging Rock at 12.07. I was amused and awed. But also moved - because what these outtakes showed, apart from what time it was, was what we all seem to be doing at certain hours the world over: having an evening drink, unwinding for the day...It was strangely unifying. I could imagine that Metropolis II has deeper associations (and dare I say 'resonance') for the denizens of a city criss-crossed by freeways.

And yet, there is another Chris Burden installation at the County Museum that I found even more affecting and which I imagine must speak poignantly to Angelenos. Urban Light is a structure consisting of 202 old Los Angeles street lamps.

I've sometimes thought that Los Angeles must have been a very, very beautiful city in the early years of the 20th century. These street lamps are echoes of those days. What must this installation say to old Angelenos, who remember an earlier LA? Here we enter the realm of nostalgia and shared experience - Contemporary Art which is about something the viewer has experienced; not just about the artist expressing him or herself or commenting on art itself. We made our observations to one of the guides and he agreed, recalling something which must have been an old saying when he was a kid. "That's right," he said. "'Be inside before streetlamps out'."



If you liked this blog, others of mine on Los Angeles are:

A daily reminder, 1 April 2011
When you take a closer look, 21 April 2011
The frame (thoughts on the Getty Center), 24 April 2011
A light on the hill (the Reagan Library), 30 April 2011
A couple of snapshots (Malibu and the Valley), 1 May 2011
More to love about LA, 6 Jan 2012
Walking with stars, 10 Apr 2012
En plein air and a little elan, 16 Nov 2012
LA Substantial, 18 Jan 2013
City of Angels, 20 Jan 2013
City of Nets? City of Dreams, 31 Jan 2013
Rounding off - LA vignettes, 2 Feb 2013
Loving the architectural reminders of old Los Angeles, 4 Feb 2013
Cultural conjuntions, 4 Feb 2013
Cultural conjunctions II, 6 Feb 2013

Non-linear lessons, 7 Feb 2013
More than whimsy - Contemporary Art, 8 Feb 2013
Life and movies, 10 Feb 2013
But, whimsy indeed, 12 Feb 2013
Pockets of charm, 13 Feb 2013