Backbone > Lucid Dreaming
Sight Specifics


photo by David Graham

One of the main objections to “postmodernism” is its erosion of the concept of the foundation—the primary contention of philosophers like Derrida or Lyotard is that there is no longer any point in fooling ourselves that there is anything like a “final” meaning, that texts and ideas have a habit of morphing over time, shifting categories, remaining unsettled, restless. Of course this idea scares the bejeezus out of the powers-that-be, and all those who really have invested themselves in the apparent solidity of objective reality. The charges frequently leveled at these postmodern troublemakers include “cultural relativism,” the idea that everything ultimately can mean anything, and its ancillary, “political quietism,” or the spin that, given the lack of fixed meaning, it’s really difficult to take a position on much of anything politically.

What is overlooked in this criticism is the fact that while the meaning of things changes over time, at any particular point there is a specific context for any given manifestation—a belief, an action, an artwork. For art, socio-cultural context is everything, and even more so when you get to the question of “site-specific” work; that is, a piece that is conceived of and executed with relationship to a particular location. For this kind of art, moving it from its designated location would interrupt it, break it off from the spatial and/or cultural context that gives it meaning. In a sense, it’s the most precise kind of work that an artist can do, and a great way of resisting the relativist temptation to read everything into everything.
Which is exactly what makes so much of this year’s “Byrdcliffe Outdoor Exhibition” so frustrating. In the initial go of this invitational two years ago, Catherine Callahan pulled off what I have now come to expect in her tenure as gallery director of the Woodstock Guild: an interesting curatorial exploration of the work of local artists. (I skipped last year’s show, while on a critical hiatus for the summer.) The basic premise of the show is promising—the curator puts out a call for proposals by artists far and wide, to create site-specific installations in and around the Byrdcliffe Arts Colony, the best of which are then selected to execute their plans on the site. The resulting exhibition in 2000 showed innovative approaches to contemporary understandings of both “nature” and “culture”, and thematically held together well as an intelligible whole. I’m afraid this cannot be said for the 2002 edition, which disappointed my admittedly high expectations.

There seems to be little or no connecting thread between the works this year, and worse yet, most of the sculpture has only the most tentative link to the concept of site specificity. One source of this problem seems to lie in the reliance, in a significant number of the works, on a primitivist/pagan/back-to-the-land religiosity, in which the mythic mind of Joseph Campbell’s Jungian symbolic universe meets the Goddess, raising the question whether the artwork at hand is actually art, or just a sort of New Age evangelical tool.

Don’t get me wrong—there is much to be learned from these earnest practices, and when one is engaged mentally, spiritually, and physically in them as part of a spiritual community, they can be very fulfilling and meaningful. But when you take two parts spiritual knowledge and add it to one part aesthetic creativity, shake, and pour the contents out in a sacred circle for the artistic/theological uplifting of the general public, it muddies the difference between the practice of religion (with its emphasis on spiritual community) and the judgment of taste (where the individual can come to his/her own aesthetic conclusion about the work). Yes, there are lots of religious paintings in Western art, but since the advent of our “modern” era, roughly from the High Renaissance on, these paintings and sculptures have been valued as works of art primarily for their aesthetic qualities, not their usefulness as spiritual guides. To obscure this critical difference precisely commits that postmodern sin of cultural relativism. But what if I don’t share your Goddess beliefs? Am I supposed to “tune in” to the deep spiritual/symbolic meaning of the work anyway? (Even if it’s ugly?)
At a certain point, working my way through the show, I started asking myself if people would so easily accept it if someone erected a Catholic altar in the woods, complete with a tabernacle full of Eucharistic crackers and wine, instead of a hodge-podge of Native American earth wisdom (with optional Theosophical overtones)—when I found myself confronted with yet another sacred circle, this time with a construction dangling in the middle of it composed of wine corks and little Styrofoam-like hosts!

There are a few bright spots in the show, however. David Troy returns with another witty take on the relationship between nature and culture, crafting a “natural” Bridge composed of reassembled sections of debarked tree trunk crossing a little gully strewn with the electronic guts of a number of televisions (or are they computer monitors?). And Marilu Swett’s Murmur places some odd bio-industrial looking artifacts (one of which looks a bit like a discarded auto muffler) on the forest floor, which would be relatively uninteresting were it not for the fact that they were formed with accordion-like striations that directly mimic a rock outcropping nearby. Both of these works draw their strength from their respective responses to the natural features of the land—which is what “site specificity” is really all about.

Another rumination on the significance of site (and sight) can be found in a small but intriguing exhibition of photographs now on view at the Samuel Dorsky Museum at SUNY New Paltz. David Graham was commissioned by Congress in 1988 to take photographs to illustrate a report on the relative safety of contemporary nuclear weapons testing at several locations in Nevada. The large color prints in this exhibition reveal Graham’s interest in the textures and patterns of the desert floor, the various effects of the “hand of man” on it as roads were bulldozed through the rough stubble of the sagebrush, underground nuclear tests caused it to collapse into “subsidence craters,” and as miscellaneous mock structures constructed by the military to gauge the power of their blasts poetically decay in the landscape. The wittiest moment of the show is a photo entitled Whole Body Counter, Las Vegas, showing the interior of a room fitted with a large sort of dentist chair and what seems to be an industrial strength Geiger counter hanging overhead. On the wall to the left is a floor-to-ceiling photographic panorama, a soothing view of trees and water rapids bubbling into a broad stream. The incongruous and utterly false impact of this feel-good deployment of “Nature” is here seen and understood for what it is, with a knowing, bemused chuckle on the part of the photographer.

Given the choice between earnestness and a good belly-laugh, I’ll opt for a sense of humor any day.

“Byrdcliffe Outdoor Exhibition 2002,” through September 8 at Byrdcliffe Arts Colony, Upper Byrdcliffe Road, Woodstock. 679-2079. (Self-guided walking tour maps are available on site.)

“David Graham—In Defense of America,” through September 20 at Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, SUNY New Paltz. 257-3844, or www.newpaltz.edu/museum/.