Far Out!

On Sunday, I decided to cruise new art exhibits in town. Memorial Art Gallery just opened “Psychedelic: Optical and Visionary Art Since the 1960s.” Rochester Contemporary Art Center is in mid-run of “Geometries: Recent works by Christopher McNulty and Andy Gilmore.” Both shows are masterfully installed and (coincidentally) speak to each other.

I walked into the main gallery at MAG and was immediately drowned in vibrating color, pattern and light and thought "I really need to bring my grandkids to see this." Then I thought "they see this stuff all the time - t.v. shows, games, teen clubs, Strong Museum". And that's my biggest problem with this show - the art hasn't aged well. Psychedelic imagery sold t-shirts, Grateful Dead record albums and "Hair" playbills. It was "sock it to me" backdrop. It may be nostalgic fun but I'm not sure it deserves much reverence.

Now for the BIG STATEMENT: Any time anybody frames "art", hangs it on a big museum wall and trains a spotlight on it...then has guards walking around to insure a hushed semi-religious environment!...poor Mr. and Mrs. Everybody assumes this stuff must be important. The older I get the more determined I am to say "hogwash!" Does that mean our art museum must be more careful about exhibit choices? Yes! Can they still have a review of art from the 60's? Yes again.
But perhaps a sprinkle of silly dust might bring the whole thing into perspective. At least, that what the artists of those times wanted viewers to believe.

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RoCo has become a really class act. Show installations are first rate - a hard-fought professionalism is evident everywhere in this uptown space. I applaud the work they do even if I don't always like the artwork they present. The current show ("Geometries") LOOKS good

but the optical color patterns by Andy Gilmore are hyped up images that fit easily into the MAG show. After the first OH! comes the hum.

Christopher McNulty's drawings are of the obsessive school and really, are we all getting a tiny bit weary of the whole multiple deal? He uses little pencil marks to create big circles...the number of dots significant (to him) of his life expectancy. The large wall piece pictured above was created from patterns left on 6 x 6 pieces of paper, taped over his car tail pipe.

Ego-centric artwork - galleries and museums are full of it! Art students want their work to tell their story/their experience. Teenaged super-stars publish their memoirs with revisions written in their mid-twenties. We've taught this generation that their every thought is profound. It is individualism run amok.

I agree that all art is autobiographical but historically, artists channel larger issues - universal puzzles, life and death questions - through their particular eye. I'm looking for that transcendence.

Or am I just getting old and crotchety? (Chip answers "yes.")