Smithsonian.com

Gregor Schneider works in peculiar ways. A German sculptor and installation artist, he came on the scene in the mid-1980s for spending almost a decade dismantling, recreating and exhibiting, down to the slightest detail, the rooms in his home. The mere reconstruction is a fairly prosaic exercise, but the attentive focus on recapturing every last cracked ceiling tile, stained carpet or water stain, comes off as a perverse compulsion and taints the viewer’s visit with unease; very likely the artist’s intention.

In a similar response to architecture, Schneider used white or “clean” torture (interrogation tactics that leave no physical mark on victims) and images of the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay as inspiration for building interrogation rooms or holding cells, and inserting these environments into a museum context.

The artist is also known for “Cube Venice,” his contribution to the 2005 Venice Biennale in the form of a 50-ft.-sq. scaffolding, draped in black and erected in the middle of touristy San Marco square—a play on the Ka’aba in Mecca.

Schneider’s sculptures also evoke psychological anxiety. “Mann mit Schwanz” (Man with Cock) (2004) is a prime example. The top half of a plaster cast of a man’s body is swathed in a black trash bag, obscuring identity or expression. The lower half of the body is dressed in sweat pants and fitted with an erection. Perversion and death are inextricably intertwined, as the viewer is not sure if this is a disturbing murder scene or sexual tableau.

All that being said, it is still startling to hear that most recently Schneider announced his plans for a performance piece that includes a person dying or the body of someone who is recently deceased. He aims “to show the beauty of death” as quoted in The Art Newspaper. Schneider has teamed up with a physician who is apparently willing to help him find volunteers who think art is worth dying for.

A number of zoos in the U.S. have realized that artistry is not limited to those who walk upright on two legs. Parrots, cougars, raccoons, apes and elephants at various venues have been given the opportunity to dabble in painting.

The Houston Zoo gives visitors the opportunity to sit and watch a resident orangutan make a painting just for them. You pick the colors and the animal does the rest. It is also possible to skip seeing the “artist” working and go straight to purchasing a canvas from the zoo’s website. They go for $250-$500.

Gram, an Indian rhinoceros from the San Diego Zoo (now he’s in Kansas’s Tanganyika Wildlife Park), paints with his prehensile top lip. His works were raffled or auctioned to raise money for the zoo’s programs.

Apparently, though, painting doesn’t always come easy to the animals. It is a matter of extensive training between keepers and their charges. The purpose behind it involves honing the animals’ motor skills, but the reward is that the critters find it stimulating and the sale of the artworks raise public awareness about the animals.

(Photo courtesy of the San Diego Zoo.)

Last week I visited The Ann Loeb Bronfman Gallery, a delightful space in the Washington DC Jewish Community Center. Their current show “L(A)TTITUDES” attempts to mediate a discussion surrounding the borders and boundaries of Israel and Palestine.

On the surface, I expected a historical survey of the area’s cartography, giving perhaps a sterile, graphical representation of the boundaries and as they moved to and fro with the political winds. Happily, this was not the case. The works show more personal views of the effects and repercussions of drawing these lines, whether figuratively with a “security fence” or physically through a look at where a virtual map line falls on the ground. These lines show the inclusions and exclusions, the trusts and distrusts, the hopes and realities, and the “us vs. them.”

In the photographic series “The Green(er) Side of the Line,” Alban Biaussat documents places and spaces along the Green Line of the 1949 Rhodes armistice agreement, and thereby shows the improbability of separating the physical space of a family’s back patio or a local butcher’s shop that happens to be on the line. Yoav Galai’s “East Jerusalem Outside the Slogans” is a photojournalistic essay that documents the physical wall/fence that runs through East Jerusalem and the neighborhoods it bisects.

Karey Kessler’s “Desert” maps her personal journeys and memories of traveling through and living in Israel. Joyce Kozloff’s love of traditional technique is displayed in a series of small frescos that display how a culture’s societies and biases become evident in the way they draw their maps.

Anna Fine Foer and Doug Beube examine the alternate scenarios. Foer’s collaged “Vayikra” looks at what an absence of Israel could mean to its neighbors. Beube’s “Amendment,” an altered atlas, takes the idea a step further by physically zipping other countries onto Israel’s borders.

Wendy Fergusson, the gallery’s director, navigated heated discussions, tensions, and withdrawals of both works and donor support to curate a show that reaches across the line to embrace many difficult and divergent points of view. Such courage in the time of political correctness is both refreshing and commendable.

(Photo Credit: Sam Hunter. Joyce Kozloff’s “#31. Knowledge: The Holy Land, 1584.” Permission for use granted by The Ann Loeb Bronfman Gallery at the Washington DCJCC.)

A couple of days ago I wrote about the MAD embroidery exhibition and mentioned Laura Splan’s work. The artist had a cosmetic skin peel and then made a nightgown from the leavings. Peculiar to be sure, but in her defense, it does leave a lasting impression. And Splan is not alone. There are many artists who incorporate extremely unsettling processes or objects into their work.

Australian performance artist Stelios Arcadiou had an ear grafted onto his forearm. The ear was grown in a science lab and it took Arcadiou a decade or so to find a surgeon willing to sew it on. After the ear is fully functional, the artist plans to implant a microphone into it, then record and transmit the sounds heard by his third ear.

In New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the show Design and the Elastic Mind is ongoing until the May 12 and viewers do indeed need an elastic mind to appreciate many of the prototypes displayed. SymbioticA, an artist-scientist collective, is known for discovering a way to grow synthetic meat from tissue cultures. They succeeded in this in 2000. For this exhibition, they developed victimless leather jackets made of connective tissue, and human and mouse skin.

As art intersects more with technology it is inevitable that the definition of art will expand in unusual but fascinating directions. The lasting power of this kind of exploration, however, will not lie in the ability to titillate but to establish a worthwhile dialogue, something that these artists, to varying degrees, have done.

It doesn’t matter why we receive it—free stuff makes us happy. But sometimes, most of the time actually, it turns out to be junk. Or really not free at all.

But my belief in free-is-crap has been shaken. In January, the cultural ministry of France announced that entrance to all its national museums would be free for the next six months. In a place where the prime minister has attested that the country is in a state of bankruptcy, this is quite the grand gesture.

And what a boon. There are 18 amazing national museums in France including the Louvre, the Centre Pompidou and Quai Branly. Now no one will waste precious art-gawking time steeped in bitterness because they had to pay just for the mere opportunity to look.

The motive for such beneficence is to draw young people and locals into the museums. There are strings attached. Some of the museums are free all the time, others only one day a week. Still others are putting an age limit—26—on the free ride.

Half way through the experiment, which will be revisited by the French government in June, some have criticized the plan saying that only tourists benefit. However, since England dissolved their museum admission fees five years ago, almost 30 million additional visits have been made to that country’s museums. If France wants to see similar increases, then keeping its national institutions fee-free may be the lure citizens need to get off the couch and into the museum.

Photo credit: Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (Wikipedia)