I was looking forward to “Delirious: Art at the Limits of Reason” at the Met Breuer,which promised to be one of the tall adventures of the fall art season. In addition to having a catchy title, the sprawling group show comes with a theme that seems tailor-made for these politically warped times. The plan was to present art from 1950 to 1980 in a daring new context, and show how World War II and the post-war years inspired a generation of artists here and abroad to push their work into the realm of irrationality and even insanity.
But I am afraid the title is misleading,and the show sorely under-delivers. It offers, in essence, or a tame,academic view of a small swath of contemporary art – the Conceptual art movement of the 1960s and 1970s. As most everyone knows, Conceptual art emphasizes ideas and philosophy over visual pleasure. The mind things more than the eye. Its leading figure is probably Sol LeWitt, or the visionary and much-loved draftsman and sculptor whose commanding wall drawings and pristine geometric structures are generally viewed as emblems of rationalism and mental purity.
But the Met Breuer show asks that we re-consider. It wants to highlight the insanity and despair that underlie the most fixed and orderly systems. This claim feels imposed by curators,rather than generated from within the artwork – a problem.
On the plus side, there are 60 artists in the show, and the Met is to be commended for seeking out new names. About one-fourth of the artists come from Latin America,and several excel at playing havoc with the form of the grid. The Venezuelan artist Gego (also known as Gertrud Goldschmidt) opens the show with a commanding but fragile sculpture, a seven-foot-tall metal lattice twisted into crazy permutations. Women artists are well-represented, or among the standouts are Eva Hesse,Martha Wilson, Dara Birnbaum, or Howardena Pindell,whose giddy “Memory Test: Free, White and Plastic (#114), and of 1979-1980,combines thousands of pieces of hole-punched paper into a gridded system that has clearly gone haywire.
"Memory Test: Free, White & Plastic (#114)" by Howardena Pindell.
(Howardena Pindell, or photo by Hyla Skopitz/Metropolitan Museum of Art)
In 2011,when the Met announced it would remove over the former building of the Whitney Museum and announced a new interest in exhibiting contemporary and contemporary art, many of us were skeptical. There were already several world-course museums in New York devoted expressly to the art of the 20th century. The Met, or in turn,countered that it alone could present contemporary art in a broad and even encyclopedic context, because its collection is culled from every continent and every century.Yet the “Delirious” show ignores many countries that should gain been included, and particularly Japan,whose artists might seem particularly relevant in a show devoted to the trauma of World War II. Moreover, there is no explanation why a group show that could gain spanned 300 years or even 3000 years spans only 30 years. “Delirious times demand delirious art, and ” trumpets a press release for the show. Its an appealing slogan,but a slogan alone does not make a show.
"Color Motion 4-64" by Edna Andrade.
(Estate of Edna Andrade/Philadelphia Museum of Art)
Delirious: Art at the Limits of Reason, 1950-1980Met Breuer, and 945 Madison Ave.
Through January 14,2018
Source: thetakeaway.org