NICK CAVE AT MASS MOCA

Enter "Until" installation, Nick Cave

Nick Cave’s new exhibit at MassMoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts, has marched around inside my head for nearly a week.  It’s time for me to get it down on paper.

  I like the IDEA of Nick Cave.  I like that he graduated from Cranbrook Academy of Art, a place that I associate with beauty, scholastic rigor and high achievement in fields associated with hand-crafted arts.  I like that he was once a dancer with Alvin Ailey, a dance troop that co-incidentally just performed in Rochester, New York.  They are extraordinary in every way - bodies, movement, expressed emotion. 

And I especially like descriptions of his work that include such phrases as “blurred lines,” “performance, dance, moving sculpture.” I’ve never seen his Sound Suits in person - only on YouTube clips -  but I can imagine the delight of his audience - particularly students! - and the chosen ones lucky enough to perform in these masterful total immersion art creations. 

So I am sorry to admit that I was underwhelmed with the MassMoCA installation.  “Until” is the title of the show; I avoided reading about it in advance. I read after seeing the show that Cave designed this exhibit as a racial discussion started by the term “guilty until proven innocent.”  Stretching the experience as far as possible - onto my very tippy toes! - I still don’t get it.

Viewers enter Space #5, the largest installation space at MassMoCA, and find themselves immediately submerged into glittering movement -  ceiling strung  colored aluminum “lawn ornaments” - thousands of them! Spinning and shining and twisting the light in every direction - pure joy! And these things fill maybe half the football field space, hanging from the 24 ft.ceiling to nearly touch the floor.  A narrow path is cleared to walk through the maize.  So far, total enchantment!

This is "Heaven"

Then you find yourself in the half-court standing under a cloud the size of most smallish bedrooms of hanging crystal.  Cave says the inspiration was a thought: “I wonder if there’s racism in heaven?” which leads me to obviously assume that the cloud and all the junk piled high on top are “heaven.”  But to get to “heaven” to see what’s on the other side of that huge cloud requires climbing one of four really scary bright yellow scaffold ladders - not heavenly! And once on the top of the ladder, if you are average height, all you see is a wall of junk.  Perhaps if you had a bird’s eye view and looked DOWN on this mess, you’d have a different take.  But not this time…and as an observer, I can’t re-design the installation.  So I’m forced to give it a grade of C-; it missed the mark.  

At the far end of the space draped again from the ceiling are long “nets” of various colors.  The nets are made from strung beads on heavy black thread; the beads are the same solid plastic as some hair scrunchies.  So what goes on here? Is there a reference to (literal) racial hair dos? metaphorical “fishers of men?” hair adornment? I didn’t get it…again. 

And finally, at the very back of the space is a partitioned off room with a video playing on endless loop of images that transform from abstraction, flowers, dancing “Bo Jangles” and back again.  A sign outside the room cautions: viewers may experience dizziness.  I suffer from vertigo; I assume the signs were truthful and spent no time pondering this video.

Then we left.

Now…after a week…here’s what I think:  not every artist no matter how gifted can pull off installations.  And in fact, most that I’ve seen fall flat on their good intentions!  And this space - a FOOTBALL FIELD!  REALLY? - is ridiculous! 

Videos are an entire other breed of cat.  I need a lot more education before I can comment one way or another on their artistic and relevant success but as a non-authority, I see way too many that are way too self-involved and I leave way too often thinking “who cares?”

But I still love the idea of Nick Cave and those Sound Suits are transformative!   Good enough for me.