“Gasp”, we gasped the other day while paging through the culture pages. “What is this?” we mumbled as we mimed confusion and shook our head from side to side. We even clucked a few times – this let the other people on the subway know that we were truly confused, not just pretending for blog-sake.
The New Museum?
The high-art literati are clearly not as well-informed as they lead their woeful interns to believe. Sophomore undergrads beware! Your time with Sven may get you some college credits for your art history major, but he is leading you down an illusory creative path. It is Barfly who decides what is “new” and what is, how you say, “old”. We also happen to know that being forced to disrobe and read the Ikea catalog out-loud in a sexy voice isn’t performance art and doesn’t get you extra credit – but we’ll let you take that up with your career services office.
How dare they name a museum without including us on the adjective committee! We consider ourselves the toast of the New York art world – they serve wine at all of the gallery openings, don’t they? Recently premiered in a newly built location on the Bowery, the museum houses a grand collection of conceptual art. Conceptually peeved, we decided to go check it out
What passes for new these days? Well, we found out as soon as we rode the gigantic elevator to the fourth floor and started our way through the gallery. Two humble examples:
A bicycle on a pile of rocks with a print out of Mel Gibson hanging from a rod. We had to ponder for a moment, then we realized. It was Braveheart Mel, not Air America Mel. Truly profound.
A mannequin head with a wig on. The piece so coyly titled “This is Not an Art Piece”. When we naturally tried to stroke the mannequin’s hair, a security guard said to us “sir, step back from the art piece.” Pure brilliance.
We overheard a docent explaining the concept of the show to a passerby – “The show is in four parts, and this is the first wave. The fourth will only contain sound art. By then, you’ll have gouged your eyes out from looking at these pieces. Only then you can truly appreciate an audio-cassette of Yoko Ono mewing. It’s all very Oedipal.”
As we descended through the galleries and gawked at the chairs stacked in the corner, the twin mattress covered in bottle caps, and the cardboard strewed about the floor we were a bit overwhelmed. We commenced clucking. While the people in the subway moved to then next car, the patrons in the museum started lightly applauding.
“Excellent! A perfect elocution of what this piece is trying to express!” Uhhh, yes, we suppose the bundle of clothes wrapped in twine was indeed making a cluck like noise. . .
We finally reached the lobby, the end of the exhibit. We reflected on the monuments that we just encountered. The thing that stood out the most? The security guards, standing and watching over the sculptures. Many of them stared into space. The walked back and forth between the artwork with seemingly straight faces. They all looked to be of a different ethnic variety. We imagined what they said when they called their loved ones outside the country (say in Columbia):
”Honey, you won’t believe it, these putas come in and stare at a pile of belts for an hour like they’re golden! They call this stuff “new”. Ha. It’s not new. I saw it the other day in the firkin dumpster next to Dunkin’ Doughnuts!”
Our decision of the day: we would begrudgingly recuse ourselves from the adjective committee in cases like this. Maybe Sven does have his place – we’ll let him handle jobs like this. We were glad, as the museum did leave us with one very important concept: a drink – and Sweet and Vicious was only a block away. Brilliance!
P/S – Sven’s interns who are left without a gig for the semester, go ahead and send Barfly an email. We’d never make you do such a thing. The IKEA catalog, how chintzy, we much prefer more glamorous Barn de la Pottery.
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