The Guggenheim Museum |
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| by Yew Leong Lee, '03 |
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I. I first visited the Guggenheim Museum two weeks ago with Claus, my friend from Germany. We had the MOMA in mind but I guess talking, talking we must have passed it by. Half an hour from the MOMA we found ourselves in front of the Guggenheim, the astonishing white building that was Frank Lloyd Wright's last project. Why not? We said to ourselves. And so we walked right in. According to the pamphlet: "The Guggenheim Museum is an embodiment of Wright's attempts to render the inherent plasticity of organic forms in architecture. His inverted ziggurat (a stepped or winding pyramidal temple of Babylonian origin) dispenses with the conventional approach to museum design, leading visitors through a series of interconnected rooms and forcing them to retrace their steps when exiting. The galleries are divided like the membranes in citrus fruit, with self-contained yet interdependent sections. The open rotunda affords viewers the unique possibility of seeing several bays of work on different levels simultaneously. The spiral design recalls a nautilus shell, with continuous spaces flowing freely one into another." At the coat check, I suddenly remembered my pen. (Afterwards, Claus because old school would jump ship, for the Guggenheim mostly contained non-objective, therefore abstract art. This thing called art, this thing called art. Is this thing called art because it resists apprehension? Only what is at stake, Claus? If art forsakes literal representation, it is merely to get at the subconscious, at things that cannot otherwise be expressed - surely there is something to be said for that! Still, he said and we let it go.) Shoulder rub, ticket stub: we were in! Avant-Garde Art is Borne If Art arrived at an airport today, would there be hordes of screaming fans? I think not; I think Art, wearing dark sunglasses, would pass unnoticed. I make art. Mostly avant-garde art. Let me show you how I make art. I am usually in my studio with my easels and my brushes and then: "Oh my god! Oh my god!" If anyone is responsible for the dire state of art today it is not I with my transcendent approaches to art, it is Clement Greenberg. Yes, I am talking about you, Clement Greenberg! I was just reading about Clement Greenberg the other day. As a child, Clement Greenberg was very exigent. Once his mother asked him "Why do you, Clement Greenberg, ask so much of life?" So Clement Greenberg the exigent child became Clement Greenberg the most influential art critic of our time. Maureen Dies If Art and your girlfriend were drowning in the water and you could only save one or the other, who would you save? I let my girlfriend drown, once. Maureen said to paint her, it wasn't my fault. I didn't know she couldn't swim! It was a Gauguin of Maureen did a Scooby-doo went in like a fool posing in the pool schooled like a nincompooh-pooh until woo-woo all a-glurg! Maureen's tragic flaw was that she could not stay still. I cried for Maureen and I cried for Maureen. I could no longer make art. I was too wrought inside. Distressed, I turned to Zen. Epiphany When a man realizes that "there is", but does not know how to express "it", what is he like? Zen had been around me all this while, only I had not noticed it. Zen was in the supermarket interred in the pyramids of apples, Zen was in the laundromat, careening with my laundry. Zen, like the stillness of a swimming pool, was Munehiro Nakamura's "Japanese Tree." When I first saw Munehiro Nakamura's "Japanese Tree", I was blown away. Here in front of me, was "it"! Clement Greenberg, caring little, would have dismissed Munehiro Nakamura's "Japanese Tree", just as he had dismissed kitsch. But even Clement Greenberg, the most influential art critic of our time, would have been wrong. Zen, far from being a naïve codification of life, is in fact one-step avant the avant-garde! The Russian Peasant Speaks
- Why do you always ask so much of life? II. We've come to that point. At the bar, Claus turns away, won't speak. I tell myself that's how it is when people run out of things to say. I tell myself he's had a hard day; we've both had a hard day, going to the museums and all. But all the same I take it personally. (You're leaving tonight, is this the best you can do? Or: what do you want me to say?) All of a sudden I want to leave, and leaving I want my stool to crash to the ground, make a terrible sound. But instead I stay. And write rubbish on the napkin. Des yeux qui gardent la mémoire des étoiles. You follow a person, knowing full well that each step you take takes you further from where you first made that impulsive decision. Only why do you ask so much of your friends? Claus asks. To which I shrug, say I don't know. This is the day before, before our visit to the Guggenheim. We are walking, talking, somewhere south of SOHO. We are always somewhere south of, south of, never there. All of a sudden he blurts out: you're very German, you know that? I don't mean to invoke stereotypes, but maybe you'll know what I mean when I say you don't seem like a typical Chinese? N. used to say that too. When I was young I invented my own weltanschauung. I imagined that all of history was myth, I imagined that all the world had come about recently, I imagined that everything prior to that was just make-believe, backward extrapolation. Perhaps it had all begun with my grandparents. Perhaps it had begun with their grandparents. But surely it had started then and not before, and it had started somehow, with all of mankind suddenly finding themselves in position like actors in a movie shoot. And just as abruptly as it had begun, this world, this movie would spool off 100, 200 years down the road. (And the museums: the art museums, the cultural museums, the history museums - they all conspired to lend credibility, to reassure us that the continuum extended beyond. So-and-so did this, so-and-so existed before such time - proof, if you ever needed!) On this ridiculous stage, we were players all, and we would take turns playing each other. It was a stage we would take to, countless of times, each time dressed for different roles, until we had played out every single human fate, all of us. Reincarnation meets musical chairs. Like playing Monopoly: one time you're the hat, the next you're the shoe, it never matters. The idea that you could be someone else was what fascinated me. But it was kitsch. It had nothing to do with Zen, despite the outer appearance. III. Five years ago, Claus had a brief fling with Zen. In Hanover, Zen masters don robes in order to meditate. He had come to see it as just that - a religion in which people don robes, fashion for housewives with ennui. Five years later, he denies ever having thrown the baby out with the bathwater. We cross words over this. The moon, Claus, the moon! Not the finger pointing at the moon. IV. Zen stresses that we are interconnected, that we are all one and the same. This is because our differences as human beings are superficial. I keep telling Claus that. It doesn't matter that I'm Chinese. That's not the point. On this last day, at the bar, Claus talks about Yoshi, a Japanese we both met the day before. "I asked him how he liked Washington D.C. He said there was nothing to do there, the shops were closed. I asked him 3 times! How do you like Washington D.C.? He said why do you keep asking, I told you, the shops were closed!" "He was telling me, 'You should never ever call your child Jack. It is the worst name! People will say, Hijack! Hijack! to him every time they see him. The poor child!' And he's shaking his head and saying 'Poor child!' like he really means it!" I am indeed starting to feel sorry for Yoshi. "I want to bring him back to Hanover. Just to show my friends what a Japanese is like!" Claus is rowdy, really rowdy now. I can't stand it anymore. "But don't you see? If you keep fixating on the differences, how can you ever get at what is underneath? Surely ..." "But I never said I wanted to identify with him." "Right. You're happy to stand at a distance so that you can make fun of him." "I'm not making fun of him!" But you are, you are! You're insisting that he is different from you... It's my turn to look away. All this is familiar, too familiar. Maureen, Maureen! Everything I ever invented. (O you write! He exclaims. What do you write about?) She who slipped away. She who sang the ballad of the kept woman and then slipped away so invisibly that even her name must become abbreviation. Because I asked too much and then too little. Ce soir je veux pas le juger, I write on the napkin. This time I want a goodbye. At least a goodbye. I am thinking back to the day before. I am thinking back to a conversation both of us had right after our visit to the Guggenheim. In this conversation, we are parting ways because I am meeting someone for an appointment I am too civil to turn down. In this conversation Claus is saying he'll go back and rest, maybe talk to Yoshi. He's like me, I'm thinking, so goddamn civil. Everyone's going to end up doing things he doesn't want to do. Everyone's going to have his hands full of social acquaintances he doesn't care for. So I say, "You don't have to talk to Yoshi if you don't want to, you know?" I don't remember how or where we are standing anymore. The only thing I remember: his gaze towards me is oblique. "I'm just making conversation." He is saying. V. I first visited the Guggenheim Museum two weeks ago with Claus, my friend from Germany. We had the MOMA in mind but I guess talking, talking we must have passed it by. |