If you haven’t yet made it out to MOCA‘s Art in the Streets, think twice before going based off of its advertisement as a “street art retrospective.” As a whole, the exhibition lacks a clear exhibition catalog or map, exists without any sort of coherent spatial organization, and places faulty emphasis on its composition of “street art.” Its ability to impact visitors is based upon enormity and celebrity alone, capitalizing upon the recent urban art trend with little else to offer. We’ll say it up front- if you’re looking for a glowing recommendation, Shelley Leopold’s version in this week’s LA Weekly should do the trick.
Roa's work in progress
While Art in the Streets does deserve recognition as perhaps the largest institutionalized display of graffiti and urban art to date and Jeffrey Deitch certainly deserves acknowledgement for the prominent names brought together under one roof, the exhibition fails to submit any sort of insightful or reflective dialogue, with the exception of a microscopic timeline and vacuous wall text. The show offers no historical context and imparts nothing at face value. Colossal names and expansive art groupings provide considerable examples of the urban movement’s visual language, but their significance goes unexplained, leaving novice viewers an assortment of historical imagery alone, and even intermediate attendees the unaided task of piecing it all together. Taken as a whole, the show embodies the “Tumblr” of museum exhibitions- a collection of pretty pictures, a vague assertion of their significance, and minimal content. Bottom line, don’t expect to leave this exhibit more knowledgeable than when you came in.
Swoon's Delicacy
Deitch’s dedication to the craft and devotion to its artists have successfully brought an intrinsically impermanent and external art form into the curated space of a museum, but bewilderment ensues. The sheer size and amount of artwork presented overwhelms, arranged in labyrinth formation, often flashing, sounding, and moving to a garishly Disneyland-esque effect, the worst of which is a live impersonation of a popov-induced homeless man. The lack of coherent spacial flow begs for chronological, cultural, regional, or perhaps even categorical arrangement- at the very least, a map and a compass.
Yes.
Luckily, many artists’ pieces demonstrate perceptible virtuosity, in conjunction with pieces of memorabilia and elaborate installations. The most meritorious on view are Swoon’s glowing pyramid of her intricate papercuttings (in a wedding-cake formation of ornate lacework), and a Ramellzee-filled neon room (glowing, futuristic rocket creatures are always a yes). Similarly brilliant was the Brazilian twin-duo Os Gêmeos’ pop surrealist landscape, and Roa’s aerosol critters which allow for an illustrious entrance, not to mention the pure joy of viewing Haring and Basquiat pieces in person. Such artistic contributions redeem whatever conceptual structure is lacking, and rightfully so- A disoriented hodgepodge of aesthetically pleasing and historically significant works is still good art.
5 comments
John says:
Apr 19, 2011
What do you mean by – lacking conceptual structure? Do you mean the exhibition or do you mean the works them selves do not have the conceptual rigur? It’s seem an unworthy if not divisive note. I guess you mean both.
It also seem you thought you where going to a Fine Art exhibition. Knowledge is a wider experience than just what we have read about it. If art is to give us its knowledge we must start to allow the art to use it’s voice and not an intellectual surrogate. You see this stuff on the street there’s no historical briefing.
You seem to of spent most of your time moaning the lack of a map. Really? Was it to much to get losed in the discovery. Did you go to see some amazing artists who’s work is based in the street and creating a stir or go on a history based orienteering day?
Caro says:
Apr 21, 2011
@John (I haven’t seen this exposition in person yet, but I’m talking from a museologist point of view):
There’s nothing wrong with an exhibition being more educational (in the good sense of the word) for everyone, including the outsiders, instead of a bragging off only fully understood for those already in the know.
In order to discover anything you need some amount of previous information that gives you enough referential parameters in your mind to place the new bits. If you can “sniff” things that way, that means you do have that referential frame in your brains somewhere somehow, even if you don’t realize you got it. But don’t forget that other people come from different backgrounds (cultures, social groups, generations,…)
It happens too often that a curator uses the exhibition and texts more to show his/her knowledge than to let the message come across in really informative / participative ways. And that’s bad enough when it happens in the academic contemporary art world. But this is street art: it really really shouldn’t fall on that trap.
Kit Steinkellner says:
Apr 22, 2011
The tumblr of museum exhibitions=Killer line, dude.
Art in the Streets: What You Missed at MOCA | Treasure LA says:
Aug 10, 2011
[...] thoughts closely mirror those of Lauren Licata at The Constrvct, ”The show offers no historical context and imparts nothing at face value. Colossal names [...]
TreasureLA says:
Aug 10, 2011
Great article. I ended up quoting you in my review as well, since you already expressed what I was aiming to. http://treasurela.com/2011/08/artinthestreets/