art
It’s never a good sign when a person enters an art exhibit and feels dismissive. Usually the problem is with the viewer, not the work. Perhaps it’s a lack of education; then again, perhaps it’s a disappointed urge to get lost in something, or open something in the mind. A small sculpture show at the UVA Art Museum, while conforming to well-vetted ideas about what belongs in the art history books, lays a gauntlet for its visitors: half a dozen rather unlovable sculptures.
All are post-World War II pieces, meaning they’re products of a culture at once falling apart and moving at warp speed. It shows, in the way these pieces turn their backs on the heroics of ornamentation: Instead of sculpting materials, really, they are sculpting ideas. Take Sol LeWitt’s 1974 "Incomplete Open Cube," a minimalist white aluminum structure (originally part of a series of 24), like a section of a steel-frame building or a diagram of a computer chip. Notwithstanding a slight physical urge to climb on or under the thing (it does recall playground equipment), the strongest reaction is mental and geometrical. This silent white cube, on display in a silent white room, plants itself in the Art World, as distinguished from the plain world.
It’s hip to be square, right? After a trip to the UVA Art Museum’s sculpture show (and checking out Sol LeWitt’s "Incomplete Open Cube"), we’re still not certain.
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Then again, minimalism has made its mark on our lives. Rafael Ferrer’s 1971 "Neon Corner" is nothing more than a 7′ length of metal pipe (a bit taller, that is, than your average melancholy genius) that leans against the wall with its bottom end inside a small ring of neon. That this piece now feels superfluous, even juvenile, shows how thoroughly minimalism has become part of the culture in the 36 years since it was made—when, perhaps, it really did open a door.
What saves the show from its sense of grimness, and its over-reliance on wall text, are the hand-formed, organic shapes of Isamu Noguchi’s "Lunar Landscape," a wall piece. Limblike, breastlike forms inhabit a curvy and dynamic interplay; a light bulb hidden within adds dark and light to the visual dance. Shadows wrap around a cone, intricately stroke flatter surfaces, and fade into the circular hollows. It’s as though a body has been rearranged and encapsulated within a 2D rectangular frame, its soul leaking through the openings.
Noguchi, significantly if you take a biographical view of his work, spent a year in an internment camp for Japanese-Americans during World War II. Even without that information, the piece is a relief: at last, ideas in contact with experience.
