book
“This book contains every piece of art that was visible to the public at The Museum of Modern Art from January 19 to January 31, 2005.” The flatness of this declaration, printed on the book’s inside front cover, reverberates in its stark black-and-white presentation throughout, as expressionless as a pamphlet on fire prevention. This is no scrapbook, no personal reaction to visiting a major New York museum; it’s more like a catalog that happens to be drawn by hand. Polan, in short, has made small simple sketches of all the works in MoMA, added their titles in not-especially-lovely block printing, and assembled them into a book form that completely bypasses the seductions—glossy paper, trendy fonts—that normally adorn art monographs.
There are two ways to talk about this book: as an experience and as an idea. The experience is not unlike visiting the museum itself. There’s the combination of textbook favorites one expects to see (Jackson Pollock? Check) with lesser-known artists who just happen to be showing temporarily (Yoshio Tanigushi? Who?) when one stops by. There’s the odd tension of iconic works, like Van Gogh’s “Starry Night,” being given no more space than anything else, yet still standing out by sheer familiarity. There’s the casualness of flipping or strolling by all these works—the “walk and gawk” tour—mixed with dim awareness of the labor it took to make them, or in this case, reproduce them. Polan’s no-fuss drawings translate some pieces better than others; his handwritten text turns out to be the most intimate facet of the project.
The idea? Well, with its utterly institutional look, the project acts as a neutral frame for both the contents of the MoMA and the reader’s projections of “concept.” This could be a process piece, the artifact of a performance in which Polan worked his way through the rather grueling task he’d set himself. It could be a comment on the famously pricey museum, a poor art lover’s substitute. It could be a way for a young artist to slay the beast of art history—to know he’d looked at everything once. It could be a way to refresh the tired canon, the worn parade of Picassos and Rodins and Warhols, making something personal out of what is public. Polan, having hit on a potent concept, wisely refrains from inserting a point of view about it. He just draws.
