The Art World Embraces the Wow Factor

Recently, on a windy, early August afternoon, under an active sky that threatened autumn cool and summer storm, I saw Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson’s site-specific work “The New York City Waterfalls.” I took a Circle Line tour that lasts half an hour and gets you, if the wind is right, within spritzing distance.The East River loop takes you as far north as the waterfall at Manhattan’s Pier 35, just above the Manhattan Bridge; past the Brooklyn Bridge’s waterfall, as well as the waterfall nestled between piers 4 and 5 near the Brooklyn Heights Promenade; to as far south as the waterfall on the north shore of Governors Island. The waterfall at the Brooklyn Bridge is the only one of the four anchored by architecture. The other three, all of varying widths and heights and landlocked to their scaffolding on the shoreline, at times feel suspended, surreal, even mirage-like, as if water were pouring out of the sky.But the waterfall at the Brooklyn Bridge is by far the most arresting of Mr. Eliasson’s four fountains. Viewed from the shores and from the Manhattan Bridge, the Brooklyn Bridge’s waterfall offers associative pleasures: Its scaffolding relates to the bridge’s taut, crisscrossing cables; its rush of whitewater mirrors that of East River whitecaps, and, just behind the waterfall, the vertical slice of sky, seen between the scaffolding and rough-water downpour, echoes the vertical ascent of sky seen through Roebling’s Gothic arches.A boat trip, however, offers what is probably the best vantage point — an up-close, head-on view, a full-frontal assault, of the wall of water cascading seemingly from the eastern foot of the Brooklyn Bridge. Meeting the falls face-to-face — where its wide-mouth expanse of water appears to be rushing down from the bridge’s roadway like energetic urban runoff — is to experience Mr. Eliasson’s waterfalls at their most enthralling.But as much as I love natural waterfalls, as well as New York’s waterways, beaches, shores, and coastlines, and as much as I appreciate the combined Herculean effort (the cooperation of numerous city, state, and federal agencies, as well as the support of hundreds of private and corporate donors required to get this project under way), ultimately the artifice of “The New York City Waterfalls” leaves me rather cold.Mr. Eliasson (b. 1967) knows how to get our attention. (This was evident at his recent two-venue retrospective at P.S.1 and MoMA.) The sticking point of his art, however, is that it fails to hold our attention. The “Waterfalls” are public events — public attractions — not artworks. They are art-as-spectacle — if not mere spectacle-as-art. The “Waterfalls,” like so many art spectaculars we have been offered recently (and in increasing number), are driven primarily by the “wow” factor: Bigger, glitzier, more shocking, and overly hyped are almost always preferable to their opposites.In 2005, we were “wowed” in Central Park, courtesy of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, by a mindless series of orange “Gates.” Last fall, at Gavin Brown Gallery, Swiss artist Urs Fischer wowed Chelsea by digging a nearly wall-to-wall 38-foot-by-30-foot crater, 8 feet deep, in the gallery’s floor. Last spring, at the Guggenheim Museum, Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang wowed us with exploding cars, racing tigers, and a water ride. And this summer, at the Brooklyn Museum, Japanese artist Takashi Murakami wowed us with potty-mouthed cartoons, plastic ejaculate, and Louis Vuitton handbags. Currently, thanks to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the crown jewel on the rooftop of America’s greatest museum is Jeff Koons’s 10-foot-tall, high-chromium stainless steel “Balloon Dog (Yellow)” (1994-2000).Artists, curators, and gallery and museum directors (like network executives, who realized long ago that a TV “event” trumps a mere TV “show” any night of the week) know that they can amass more ticket sales with an art spectacle than with a mere art exhibit. You can bet that the organizers of “The Aesthetics of Terror,” an exhibition opening in November at the Chelsea Art Museum thatincludes photographs from Abu Ghraib, know the power of shock-and-awe art when they see it. Here is an excerpt from the show’s press release:Terror is, in and of itself, an image making machine. The very point of terror is a spectacle that plays endlessly in the media. In 9/11, thousands may have died, but billions of people watched the attack and the falling towers endlessly until those images were etched into the global psyche. … “The Aesthetics of Terror” … investigates certain visual characteristics of the spectacle of Terror and its echoes in contemporary art.Shock-and-awe has always had its place in art. Where would Goya’s “Disasters of War” be without it? And big and public art does not equal bad art. Art and spectacle have also for a long time gone hand in hand. The pyramids, as well as Chartres Cathedral, would not work if they could not “wow” us. The difference is that increasingly the driving force in artworks is all-spectacle-all-the-time. Rather than art coming first and spectacle second, in many cases now art is left out of the equation. Spectacle is the new aesthetics.Of course much of this started 30 years ago with the first official traveling blockbuster — the King Tut tour. And the blockbuster mentality is still going strong. People don’t usually ask me each season what good shows are out there; they ask me: “What are the really big and important — the ‘must-see’ — shows out there?” This fall, I’d say the “Morandi” and “Calder Jewelry” shows at the Met, or the Trevor Winkfield and Louisa Matthiasdottir shows at Tibor de Nagy, the Mari Lyons show at First Street Gallery, and the Deborah Rosenthal show at Bowery Gallery. Or the Frick Collection or the Met to spend time with a Vermeer or two, or the Morgan Library & Museum to spend time with the spectacular collection of Mesopotamian cylinder seals.Maybe the larger problem here is that people have been conditioned — they like, or, rather, need, to be wooed, sold, shocked, and awed. And how can a Contemporary artist compete with enormous and extensive exhibitions such as the upcoming “Beyond Babylon: Art, Trade, and Diplomacy in the Second Millennium B.C.,” a show that boasts more than 350 objects? Is it any wonder they resort to waterfalls and fireworks?Vermeer was mobbed at the Met’s 2001 show “Vermeer and the Delft School.” But when you go to the Met or the Frick or the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., you can almost always see Vermeer for long periods of time unhindered and alone. It was only when the artist was hyped — when he headlined a blockbuster — that you could not have a minute alone with the master.And it is often only when you return to an artwork again and again, alone, that the magic happens. That is when art — without the hype — is able really to “wow,” to make a lasting impression. I imagine that “Beyond Babylon” will have a strong collection of tiny Mesopotamian cylinder seals; good luck, however, attempting to see them in the Met’s upcoming blockbuster. Better to get to the Morgan Library now — before the world gets wind of their “wow” factor.

The Art World Embraces the Wow Factor

The Art World Embraces the Wow Factor

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