Modern art is often quite contentious, drawing both great acclaim and criticism. I was raised on a strict diet of traditional art only: Degas, Monet, and the occasional Gentileschi. It was chiaroscuro, not drip technique; pointillism, not silkscreen printing. My teachers justified their parochial mindset with haughty elitism, calling modern art nothing more than a con.
A common theme in my blog posts is my love of the underdog. I find value and significance in that which is usually overlooked or even intentionally ignored. Modern art, too, falls in this category, a perhaps controversial take. After all, it’s difficult to view an industry worth enough that a single painting, “Black Square” by Kazimir Malevich, could cost $60 million as anything resembling the sentiments we associate with an underdog (Floyd). But, although I wish to avoid humanizing an inanimate concept, modern art truly embodies an underdog. It came from humble beginnings that it still struggles against to this day. People have always ridiculed daring art and novel techniques. The name for pointillism was originally coined from the derisive comments of art critics in the 1800s, although now it is a respected technique bolstered by the legacy of legendary artists like Georges Seurat and Camille Pissarro. Modern art, one of the latest in a long line of expanding creative freedoms, still faces that challenge. 83% of the public do not see modern art as valid (Floyd).
Although I now chafe at these preconceived prejudices, I understand. As a young art student, I shared many of these same sentiments. I turned my nose up at Picasso (which I still do now, for other reasons concerning his moral character), Warhol, and Haring. Art should have a soul, carry a piece of the artist within. It should be beautiful, and I did not consider screen prints of cans of Campbell soup beautiful. Of course, that was only my own self-important sensibilities talking. I was a 10-year-old. What did I know of beauty? My dull senses could only recognize the simplest of the beauties: colorful flowers, sweet perfume, glazed pastries. I had not developed the taste or the abilities to appreciate that which was harder to grasp immediately.
My favorite pieces now would baffle the self I was then, though I’m fonder of contemporary art than modern. One of the works I enjoy the most, Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) by Felix Gonzalez Torres, is nothing more than a pile of the candy in the corner of the museum floor. Nothing more - that gives too little credit to the immense symbolism and interpretation this piece requires. It comprises 175 lbs of candy, representing the healthy weight of Felix’s partner, Ross Laycock, who died from AIDS at the height of the crisis in America. Viewers are invited to take a piece of candy, a metaphorical communion that alludes both to Ross’ physical deterioration due to his illness and to the public’s complacency towards the epidemic, condemning hundreds of queer victims to painful, quiet deaths. Most of all, unlike art that is trapped behind glass frames and dimmed lights to prevent fading, Portrait of Ross in L.A. is as alive as its namesake. It asks us to engage with it. This heartbreaking piece is intended to enlighten people as to the true political undertones present in LGBT artwork.
However, though Felix’s work is a passionate condemnation of the world’s treatment of queer people, righteously so, it is also a tender testament to the enduring nature of love. Felix asked that museum curators replenish the candy at points, allowing Ross to metaphorically live forever in his memories. Personally, Portrait of Ross helped me recover from my grandmother’s death. Like Ross, she lost an extreme amount of weight in the last days of her life, although her chronic illness was cancer. While I appreciate Torres’ work for all of the deeper meaning that can be analyzed in a historical or personal context, I also appreciate it most simply for what it is: a monument to the life of someone who was dearly beloved. It is a reminder for me that mourning my grandmother is also an act of love, not just grief.
Another of my favorites, Can’t Help Myself by Sun Yuan and Peng Yu, devastates me. It has little of that which naturally shakes the human heart. It’s not cute or charming, and lacks all the lighthearted joy or sublime darkness of the works that normally have a deep impact on their viewers. The most beautiful thing about it is its robotic shape, its sleek lines, clean and sterile as a machine should be. This sort of thing repulses the human senses. We naturally find our own creations unnerving. Yet Can’t Help Myself, an installation composed of a industrial robot that uses sensors to detect when a deep-red fluid similar in appearance to blood has escaped a predetermined area and works to contain it within the walls of it’s clear acrylic enclosure, draws my pity, as if I was looking at a puppy in the rain, and not a massive, hulking pile of metal. It desperately attempts to clean up a growing mess that will never be truly clean, only dirtying itself and its home further in the process. As it attempts to corral the fluid, ‘blood’ splashes up the walls and onto the machine. Its mechanical movements and the grind of its gears are reminiscent of screaming, as if the machine is panicking. Sometimes, it stops attempting to contain the blood altogether and simply swings around helplessly, as if frustrated and throwing a fit.
It’s programmed to do all these things as a commentary on borders. The software that went into it symbolizes the surveillance of border zones and the bloodstains around it, unable to be cleaned off and only worsening with continued action is representative of the violence that environment fosters. It is the consequences of authoritarianism, and the audience that watches on, protected behind clear walls, are the public, voyeurs to a tragedy. Returning to the name - this robot simply can’t help itself but continue on, even when it knows it’s task is hopeless, similar to the sisyphean concepts we considered in Grendel and World War Z. It’s just a robot, a pile of metal and pistons and motor, but it’s struggling through life, trapped in a monotonous cycle that it can’t break free of, finding no satisfaction in its daily existence, and yet unable to ever choose to do something else. How human for a pre-programmed machine, to be as absurd as its creators.
Still, when I consider art, I also find it impossible to ignore the glaring and obvious darkness that accompanies it. Pablo Picasso casts a large shadow on the art world. His contribution is uncontested, and yet, it is this contribution that allows his legacy to supersede that of his victims. His art is built on sacrifice, not of his own, but of women. He was an abusive man who tormented his female muses. Fernande Olivier was the inspiration for Picasso’s “Tête de Femme”, yet, when she attempted to create her own self portrait as well as publish memoirs which included their time together , Picasso, now both famous and wealthy from the artwork she contributed to, silenced her with lawyers (Millington). These memoirs would eventually reveal the truth behind their relationship. They were not equals by any means: Picasso saw her as neither artist nor human, neither of these identities held value to him. He would place her on house arrest, locked behind when he went out, and believed that women had no place in men’s areas.
After Olivier came a long line of women: used and then traded for a newer, younger toy. Picasso said, “Every time I change wives I should burn the last one…You kill the woman and you wipe out the past she represents.” Then was Olga Khokhlova, a ballerina who gave up her career for his and bore him a child, only to be cheated on for Marie-Thérèse Walter, just 17, beautiful in her submission and innocence, then Dora Maar, who he pitted against young Walter. Once, when Walter confronted Maar in his studio, demanding Picasso choose between them, he made them wrestle because he himself was too weak to decide which would stay and which would go. Each one of these women were his muses, each one of them, his victims. Behind great men are often the discarded bodies of the women they exploited.
Beauty is something that humanity seeks, often at any cost - and yet that cost is rarely something that those who desire it, must pay, resulting in collateral damage, fall out that falls upon others to shoulder the burden of. The Most Beautiful Suicide is iconic in pop culture. It’s appeared in Warhol’s works, Bowie’s single “Jump They Say”, and the movie Stranger Than Fiction. Most recently, kpop girl group sensation Le Sserafim have utilized it in their music video, continuing a long tradition of sensationalizing and glamorizing tragedy, at the expense of the victim, although just as tragic, it would be difficult to understand the inappropriateness of referencing this image, as McHale’s story has been lost to time in the eyes of the general public.
Evelyn McHale died when she was just 23 from leaping off the Empire State Building and falling onto a car parked below. Somehow her body survived the fall, as if it were cushioned by the steel, creating “The Most Beautiful Suicide”, artistically pleasing in composition - if you ignore the fact that the subject has no say in her depiction. Her autonomy has been completely stripped from her in death, and like vultures to a carcass, people swarmed to take advantage of this. LIFE magazine devoted a full page spread to this picture taken by Robert Wiles, a photography student. After this, McHale’s image was romanticized. Attempts were made to dig up the lurid details of her life. Her resting body was described as peaceful, her face as calm as if she were daydreaming of her beau. McHale herself had only one wish - that her family not see her dead body. In her suicide note, she begged to cremated. Instead, the desires of one photography student were more important than her last wishes.
There’s no beauty in the exploitation of a young woman’s body after death. Art comes from the beauty of connection, not the abuse of those with little ability to defend themselves, like Picasso’s muses, or McHale.
Sources:
Floyd, C. Why is Modern Art So Expensive? 11, December 2019.
https://www.businessinsider.com/what-makes-modern-art-is-so-expensive-2019-12
