I was in Pittsburgh, PA last week. Five days of having nothing
to do but explore a new town was unexpectedly refreshing. What made it all the
more refreshing was that it was Pittsburgh. Unlike Paris, or New York, or even
Philadelphia, there's nothing a person simply HAS to see in Pittsburgh. No one
grabs your arm when they hear you've gone and gasps "did you see?? did you
eat?? did you try??" Rather there is a step backward and only have one
question, "Pittsburgh?" And they are not quivering with anticipation
for your answer.
I went to the places that sounded good to me with no higher, authoritative voice of
culture pressuring me to specific sites. One place that sounded good was the Mattress Factory. It is an art museum
with "room-sized
environments, created by in-residence artists". Whether you find the
installation good, bad, indifferent, there you are right in the middle of it.
In the middle of polka dots and mirrors. In the middle of complete darkness
with only the creaking of people walking on the floors above you as company
(what is sight? what is seeing? asks the artist). Perched on a bench in the dank basement
watching a huge movie screen of an old man lying on the floor, unexpectedly
dead in the quiet of his apartment, nothing moving but the long green frond of
a plant wavering from time to time behind him. You had to sit a while to
notice that.
A room on the third floor had a folding screen across it saying it was closed for installation repairs. There was a pile of rubbish in front of it. Arty rubbish. Was it rubbish? Was it an installation about rubbish? Was it art that I shouldn't think of as rubbish? Was I being duped by someone calling rubbish "art"? I peered between the gap of the folding screen and surmised that this pile really truly was unwanted pieces from the eerie, odd room on the other side...giant meat hooks with mechanical gears hanging from them, encrusted with salt stalactites, lined up in rows in a clean white room bathed in warm light.
Contorting myself around around the garbage to look
at the art – art that wasn't what every person would call art, many might
call a waste of time – I felt my brain jump its track...What is art? Such a
hackneyed question! But it leaped in my head before I could refine it. What creates visual poetry? And
what does that poetry have to say? Isn't EVERYTHING an
installation? Every little thing. It felt like scales had fallen from my eyes (yes, I'm just
rolling with the hackneyed phrase today). Garbage dumps, tract housing,
forests, tidy homes, a well-executed meal. A t.v. dinner. Don't they all have an
intention, a purpose, a vision, a plan? Each is a composition. Each came from a mind of a maker.
Prior to my visit to MF, I'd wandered into
the Frick's free gallery. Some of the Vic Muniz garbage collages were on display. I
had't seen the documentary and reading about the pieces did not inspire
excitement. I entered the room in a "meh" state of mind. But I was
shocked at the impact. From a distance, you immediately see the grace of form
and composition. Pulled closer, the tires, abandoned toys, old shoes,
innumerable discarded plastics make their appearance. I could step back and
recover my classical beauty. But I couldn't unsee the components of the
creation.
The everyday, the mundane or
distorted/thwarted beauty of our surroundings, as well as the soaring, magnificent or minute delicacies of nature, of art, of moments – it all is message. You feel a certain way on encountering, if you are paying attention. If you are not
paying attention. "Content-rich" as they say in the watery
marketing world. These never-ending installations that we are in the middle of, or coming up to, or running away from – they aren't always accessible. They aren't always nice. But, oh!, they can be breathtaking. And every bit of all the pieces is breathing story.
