Smithsonian.com

Vincent van Gogh struggled with so many things—mental illness, addiction, (ahem) lady problems—but at least he may have enjoyed his work. I saw The Starry Night in person at the Yale University Art Gallery last weekend. I stood there staring at the thick swirls of paint that make up the sky above Saint-Remy with the shadowy green cypress tree in the foreground, and all I could think was how much fun that it must have been to paint that scene. A little bit soothing, a little bit hypnotic, but mostly just fun to do, dragging a brush through the slick paint and seeing it ooze and furl.

Sometimes the struggle to create art overshadows the sensory pleasure that goes along with sculpting, painting, performing or installing a work. We never really talk or ask about the enjoyable side of it. Probably because it makes a serious work seem not-so-serious, but imagining van Gogh getting just a tiny bit of pure pleasure or fun out of painting certainly makes his sad run of luck in life seem a little less so.

Vincent van Gogh, The Starry Night, Saint-Rémy, June 1889. Oil on canvas. The Museum of Modern Art, Aquired through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest, 1941

The installation of five totem poles by artist Tatiana Echeverri Fernandez. One of the totems was recently destroyed by a visitor at the Royal Academy.

The line between exhibition space and viewer space is sometimes clear and sometimes not. It is clear when there are security guards at the ready, telling you to move back if you step too near a sculpture. I’ve had many a motion sensor beep me away when I’ve leaned in too far while looking at a painting. Works can be behind plexi; on podiums; or cordoned off. These are all clear ways for them, the show makers, to let us, the visitors, know where we stand, literally. But some curators reject putting up barriers between artwork and visitor. And I can respect that, even applaud it, because I’m down with the whole “art should be experienced without filters or physical barriers” thing. But sometimes that can totally backfire, and I would not want to be the one holding the bag when things go terribly wrong.

Last week at the Royal Academy in London, a visitor at the Summer Exhibition stumbled into a group of sculptures by Costa Rican artist Tatiana Echeverri Fernandez and sent one of them—a piece that exhibition organizer and artist Tracey Emin called one of the stars of the show—tumbling to the floor, where it shattered into hundreds of pieces. So as much as I appreciate the opportunity to get close to works, I really think that next time, Tracey, you should save us clumsy viewers the nightmarishly awful guilt of being responsible for wrecking a really expensive sculpture by just putting it in a case.

Isidre Nonell, La Paloma, 1904

When you think about Spanish modernism, a few superstars come to mind (Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali, maybe Joan Miro) and tend to blot out all the rest. So during a recent trip to Spain I was completely floored and delighted to find so many other 20th-century Spanish artists that I knew nothing about.

Isidre Nonell was a Catalonian artist with a distinctive style. He used muted yet colorful tones, and applied paint almost as if he were working with chisel and stone, leaving regular, textured lines of pigment on the canvas. His portraits of destitute, weary women and children, often gypsies, alienated the conservative Barcelonan society that he worked and lived in, but provide a harrowing view of the so-called untouchables at the turn of the twentieth century.

Another artist I couldn’t get enough of was Joaquim Mir. His landscapes were really exceptional due to his use of searing colors and unusual vantage points. Pau Gargallo, a sculptor, was a standout too. His use of iron was innovative, uniting a strong sense of movement and energy with heightened detail within a piece.

Artist Thomas Schuette’s Fourth Plinth project “Model for Hotel 2007″

I’ve never seen any of the works in person while they were up, but I have a soft spot for the Fourth Plinth of Trafalgar Square all the way over in London. Some critics grouse that the works that adorn the column always fall short in someway, but it gets contemporary art out in public in a very well known venue, so quit the whining.

There have been several sculptures put up since it started in 1999. Mark Wallinger produced a life-size sculpture of a man that ended up looking miniscule in comparison to the height of the plinth. Rachel Whitehead made a cast of the plinth and inverted it on top of the column. Marc Quinn carved a marble bust of the torso of Alison Lapper, an artist born without arms who was pregnant at the time.

The latest evolution comes from Antony Gormley, and is set to take the stage in November. The artist will put a giant soapbox on top of the plinth and allow people to climb up (actually, they’ll get carried up by crane) and chat, rant or rave about whatever they like to the visitors of the square for one uninterrupted hour. The performers chosen must first apply online; so far I haven’t found where, but my hope is that the applications and the project itself will stream live so that those of us on the other side of the pond can finally get a front row viewing.

I was just reading through an article on Chinese contemporary artist Zhang Huan and I couldn’t even finish it, I was so annoyed.

Zhang is quoted about halfway through the piece as saying, “I like very much having so many people around. I am very open-minded to all the ideas from all different people—either a graduate student or a carpenter in the street or even my doorman; everybody can scribble down an idea, a drawing, or whatever, and I can see if I’ll take this or that or if I don’t like that idea at all.”

When did art become creation by committee? When did the artist turn into an arbiter, picking and choosing from other peoples’ ideas like a finicky eater at the buffet table?

Who talks like that? As if everyone else’s ideas are fodder for your appropriation. Someone get this man a publicist.