See “Invisible Art” before it disappears
Anna Somers Cocks explains why this Hayward Gallery show,
closing 5 August, should not be missed
By Anna Somers Cocks. Web only
Published online: 26 July 2012
Anyone listened to the 1963 song “Twenty-Four Hours from Tulsa
How long can we understand a work of art in the terms of
its own time? Fifty years? Twenty? Probably not more than five if it is
contemporary art, which is as finely tuned to the mood of the moment as pop
music, but usually with an additional load of more or less philosophical
baggage that makes it even harder to penetrate after the theory has moved on.
Precisely because of this, I recommend catching “Invisible:
Art about the Unseen 1957-2012” at the Hayward Gallery in London
As its curator Ralph Rugoff says in the catalogue (also
printed in pale grey, and completely lacking in bullshit): “Art is about paying
attention, and invisible art asks us to pay attention in a different way.” Good
for him. This has been a gamble that has paid off and most of the critics have
loved it. The show hasn’t got a sponsor—they don’t usually do immaterial—but
Rugoff, who is also director of the Hayward Gallery, went ahead anyway. Maybe
it’s because he comes from California
That old magus Duchamp should be the patron of the whole
event, because none of the works could have been made without his influence,
direct or indirect. It aims to explain the various reasons why artists have
made invisible art, from the idea that art is in the eye of the beholder to the
idea that the market has turned art into a mere commodity so you must purify it
of substance, to the idea that you can make almost invisible art and play with
people’s sense of space, to the idea that some political issues are so serious
that you can only deal with them by absence and allusion. As you see, a lot of
ideas.
Yoko Ono, enjoying revived popularity at the moment, made
some of the “eye of the beholder” art with her instruction works, where you
were given a sheet of paper with typewritten instructions—for example, Hand
Piece of 1961, which says, “Raise your hand in the evening light/and watch it
until it becomes transparent/and you see the sky and the trees through it.”
Another work in this category is Tom Friedman’s empty
plinth, which he got an official witch to hex. The evil spell hovers just above
it, we are told, and as the piece is in the last but one room, by which time I
was well trained in perceiving invisible stuff, I felt real reluctance to put
my hand where the hocus-pocus resided.
Rather more into the anti-market category, Gianni Motti’s
picture frames around apparently blank paper, Magic Ink, 1989, were made for a
museum exhibition in Geneva Colombia
There are two rooms in this exhibition that are empty apart
from air conditioning units. Do not be fooled, however; they are quite
different. The early one, The Air-Conditioning Show of 1972 by the English duo
Art & Language (boy, can they write a lot of language!) is about the way in
which visual art is conceptually dependent on words. You are left to wonder
whether the aerated room is the work, or the pages and pages of text pinned up
on the wall.
By contrast, the air-conditioned room near the exit is
quite a material piece. The air being blown out of the machines has been cooled
with water used to wash the bodies of unidentified murder victims in the Mexico City
“Invisible” could have been an obscure and tedious show,
but it is just the right size and has enough sensory and intellectual variation
in the kinds of invisibleness it offers (at one point, you, the visitor, become
invisible as you edge around a totally dark room by James Lee Byars) for it to
be instructive and often fun. It ends with an invisible maze by the Dane Jeppe
Hein, which you walk around guided by vibrations to your temples, a completely
new sensation.
Intelligent display and excellent labels have done a lot to
overcome the cultural and temporal gap between ourselves and the works. I have
the advantage of remembering the revolutionary fervour of the 1960s, the horror
we all professed at “straight” society (which certainly included the art
market), the convoluted, boxes-within-boxes philosophising that emerged from
being stoned, all of which certainly inspired a lot of what you don’t see here.
With this art, it certainly helps to have been there. But my RCA friend, who’s
40 years removed from most of it, still found this one of the best exhibitions
she had been to for ages, so hurry along.
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