The Guggenheim - 2/13/09

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is one of the foremost museums of modern art. Another rich industrialist like Henry Frick, Guggenheim began collecting modern art when he was 66 years old. In 1937 he started the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and opened the Museum of Non-Objective Painting. In 1943 Frank Lloyd Wright was commissioned to design a building that would house the large collection. It is this building that sets the Guggenheim apart from any other museum in New York. I was not allowed to take pictures in the museum and sadly have only two exterior shots of my own to share.

The building is made up of a series of spirals that gradually grow wider as it goes up. A skylight at the top of the structure allows natural light to flood the museum and the openness of the spirals floors allows one to look at multiple floors of art at the same time.

At the time that I visited the museum a special exhibition entitled The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860–1989 was on display throughout the whole museum. To get a good idea of the exhibition, take a look at this the exhibition web page which has a short clip, including footage of the Hsieh exhibit that I talk about below: http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/exhibitions/on-view-now/third-mind

One thing that strikes me funny is the trick that the exhibit curator, Alexandra Munroe, has pulled on the museum visitor. The Third Mind exhibit is all about Asian influence; Buddhism, Taoism, all of that good stuff, right? Well, the Guggenheim website explains that Wright’s intention was for the visitor to enter the museum on the first floor, take the elevator to the top floor and gradually wind their way down to the first floor again. Not so with the Third Mind exhibit. Instead of shooting right up to the seventh floor, the viewer is guided up the first floor ramp and climbs to the summit – a bit like the Buddhist ideal of enlightenment, eh? Oh those curators!

It was at the "summit" that I found my artist of choice. Tehching Hsieh, otherwise known as Sam Hsieh, has a room all to himself on Annex level 3. The walls of the large room are painted grey, like cement grey, and are line with row after row of pictures. A single time card is at the top of each row and the person in each picture is Sam Hsieh. Sam’s art is what is called performance art and this exhibition is about time and performance. Each hour, on the hour, for a year (366 days) Sam Hsieh punched a time card and took his picture wearing the same uniform. To accentuate the passage of time, Sam shaved his head on the first day and let his hair grow out naturally.

At the end of the year, Sam combined all of the pictures together and made a 6 minute time-lapse movie which plays over and over at one end of the gallery. Below the screening is the time clock that Sam used and on the floor are two painted footprints marking the spot in which Sam would have stood to take the picture. In the middle of the room is a glass case that contains Sam’s statement of exactly what his performance will be, a signed statement by a friend stating that he had signed all 366 time cards on that date and would sign no additional cards, a statement verifying a tally of the days and hours that Sam missed punching his time cards, and the folded uniform and pair of boots that Sam wore throughout the “performance”. I have to say that I loved this exhibition. The dedication that this man must have had to pull it off, never mind the sheer exhaustion he must have been suffering from after not getting any REM sleep for a year is mind-numbing. The presentation is neat and orderly as are the papers and uniform in the case. The overpowering industrial feeling that you get from the room really accentuates the rigidness in which Sam approached the performance. It was astounding!

All in all, my visit to the Guggenheim was a successful one. Although I am not a fan of modern and contemporary art, I found the museum to be a great place to learn a little about the art form. Certainly the Hsieh exhibition has gone a long way in teaching me that I have a lot more to learn about modern art before I can really make a judgment.

Works Cited:

http://one-year-performance.com

http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/about-us/frank-lloyd-wright-building/chronology-1920s

http://www.artsjournal.com/artopia/2009/02/tehching_hsieh_caged_fury.html