Does Beauty Merit a Show?

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Reviewing "Chihuly at the de Young" David Littlejohn asked "Does It Merit This Show?"

No! was his answer. His explanation offers insight into contemporary art. It deals with the issue of High Art vs. Low Art, with Art vs. Craft. Beauty is suspect.

He suggests that High art should make you uncomfortable; it needs to be confrontational.

...these objects strike me as ill-suited for an art museum with top-tier pretensions. ...While throngs of fans clicked away on their little cameras, I found myself nauseated by the grotesque, gleaming, pointless excess.

The word most commonly used by Chihuly-fanciers to describe the works is "beautiful," a concept of little value in defining serious art after the Impressionists. Although some Chihuly objects appear snakelike or surreal, there is never anything troubling or challenging about them. It all looks strangely safe and escapist, even Disney-like, for art of our time.

The article: "Decorative, Yes, but Why Does It Merit This Show?" was in the August 6th Wall Street Journal on page D7.

Comments

[John Storjohann]

Chihuly's work seems to bring a bit of controversy with it no matter where it is shown. Two years ago, when his work was exhibited at the St. Louis Botanical Garden, I was somewhat taken back by how out of place the outdoor pieces seemed; colorful, yes...not without pleasant form and elegance...but clashing with the natural beauty of the very settings they were intended to enhance (at least in my opinion). I am disappointed that the Gardens chose to put on permanent display several of the glass "onions" in the pools in front of the Climatron, competing/clashing with the beautiful display of water lilies each August, as well as the stunning reflections of the fall leaves in the October. His is a talent to be admired, and his work can be beautiful in the right setting...yet, although not for the same reasons Littlejohn names in his response regarding the museum, I didn't feel his work merited the dominance outdoors at the St. Louis Botanical it received either.

[Steve]

John - did you notice the glass plant figures inside the Climatron? (I don't know if they are still there.) What did you think of them? Did they fit better?
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This is one reason I like "Health Care Fine Art." You never know what subject will pop up. Now I will have to go see the Chihuly exhibit at the de Young. It must really be something special to have rated such a scathing review!

[John Storjohann]

Hi Steve. The glass plant figures inside the Climatron "fit better" only in the sense that the Climatron is so densely and thickly populated with plant life that the installations were not as starkly intrusive...to be honest, they still did nothing (at least for me!) to enhance the beauty of the tropical environment of the Climatron. The only outdoor installation of art at the St. Louis Botanical Garden that I DID think blended in and actually enhanced my experience was the Chapungu exhibit, and I must not be alone; it's been exhibited twice in the last seven years. It's not that I could not find beauty in the Chihuly glass work...I just didn't find that it did anything to enhance (and in many ways distracted from) the natural beauty of the garden.

[Kevin Sink]

Some of the most intense snobs I have EVER met were at the extremes of high society and in the art world. I find it frustrating that artists have to be ugly or political to be taken seriously.

I do think great art makes you think well beyond the veneer of any aesthetic, and perhaps focusing only on the beauty in all of one's work leads to a certain staleness, but beauty is still one of the most enduring, accessible, and effective "portals" into the human psyche.

Blatant ugliness, confrontation, or high horsed political machinations just serve to shut that door, or turn people into ugly, confrontational, snobish viewers that turn people away from art.

I hope to still restore my soul from a harsh, violent world in the beauty and harmony of nature, while vying to somehow include the tension of loss and poisoning of habitat into my work. Still trying to figure out how to do that successfully.