Storm King Wavefield at Storm King Art Center

When you visit Maya Lin's Wavefield at the Storm King Art Center, do not climb on the wave hills.

The waves, by the way, look at their best from the crest, with a sea of people on them like a flotilla of human jetsam lifted by the rising seas. Only you must walk in the troughs of the waves, not surf on the tops.

Maybe we could just have fun with our art and let future generations decide if they want to keep em' or let them rot. Why keep the fingerprints off something no one's going to want fifty years from now anyway?

Dia Beacon

Robert Ryman painting @ Dia Beacon with some random dude.

When I tell people about my visit to Dia Beacon, I am sure to include an amusing anecdote about how I was not sure I was looking at the art or the wall. Because it was so minimalistic.

This I can add to my list of anecdotes I can rely on to fall flat. It is also a totally dishonest about how I feel about art and it plays to the preconceptions I have about other people's ideas about art. I naturally assume people don't like that crap because who does?

But really, you have to say something, right? When you are talking to people? You can't just say, "we went to the museum." And if you enthuse you sound like an idiot too. "We went to the museum and saw the Flavins and it was fantastic!" Nobody wants to talk to that guy.

Well, it turns out tons of people like minimalism. The museum was packed on a beautiful autumn Saturday morning. And I like it too.

Rockhill Trolley Museum, PA

Rio #1875 built by CTC (Companhia de Transportes Coletivos), Rio De Janeiro, Brazil in situ Rockhill, PA

Is it exotic to be ferried through the center of rural Rockhill, Pennsylvania in a lovingly restored 1912 Brazilian open sided trolley car running along a track previously only serving a pig iron factory? Is it displacing to ride said trolley from an old railway station, through backyards, past a factory floor plan, along side a creek, ending at a state highway, a route no trolley would ever take. On a trolley that would never have run there.

Because no one here seems to blink an eye. For all the cultural noise about placing treasures from foreign lands in context, nothing seems to better than good old stupidifyingly unexplained contrast. When someone says historically accurate or local materials, yawn and scratch at the ground with your foot. What would be worse than riding a trolley on its actual route? Where is the charm of the unfamiliar? Where is the electric jolt of the unfamiliar intruding on the tedious realities of the familiar?
So why all the words on the walls, museums? Why all the "didactics" as my professor used to say? Isn't everything a little out of context anyway? The only art in museums that is "in context" would be the art made for museums. If we are looking at the plundered treasure of an ancient civilization from strong off lands, why not just label it "pirate booty" and leave it at that. Those who care will figure out what it once was and the rest will not be puzzled by what it is.


Robert Smithson cunningly pointed out the displacing effect of museums with his mirror and displaced object works in the late 1960's. This is a piece made for a museum, that incorparates the museum, shows the obects in the museum, includes the viewer in the reflection.

Robert Smithson. (American, 1938-1973). Corner Mirror with Coral. 1969. Mirrors and coral

Olaf Eliasson Waterfalls of NYC Tour

Olaf Eliasson's Waterfalls on the East river of New York is most similar to an industrial waterfall. Like the one in Paterson, New Jersey. Not overwhelming, in the way a natural waterfall can be. Not really overwhelming the way an art installation can be, either.

Best seen from a tour boat. Proximity, a key to waterfall viewing, is not allowed. They were no Gullfoss. You can't get your feet wet.

Ginger Strand's Inventing Niagara covers all the major components of waterfall management: building tourist traps, altering the landscape to accommodate throngs of people, sending weird things over the falls, and polluting.

Chris Burden "What My Dad Gave Me"

Chris Burden may be well known for:

1. Having someone shoot him for a performance piece called "Shoot".

2. Creating the single greatest ever work of art, a dangling ton of rock and model train track called "Medusa's Head". This fact was confirmed by the independent critical analysis by myself and my brother Tim. Both analyses included the exclamation "Dude!"


Chris Burden pays homage to his engineer father with the title of his six story high erector set skyscraper. It stands near and echoes the shape of Rockefeller Center. I took young Irving way out of the way to see it, carrying him on my back across Midtown like a Silverback Ape. I got a little choked up telling him what the sculpture was called. We thought it was really cool and he asked if he could get build a smaller version of it with his own Erector set.



Thank you again, Chris Burden.

David Byrne "Playing The Building"

Dropped in on David Byrne's Playing The Building installation in the old Battery Maritime Building in NYC on Saturday. There was plenty of stroller parking. It was free and we slogged over despite 100 degree heat that kept no one away. What this David Byrne fellow up to? Something ironic yet genuine? Arty but not alienating?

Intriguing concept- rigging up a building to an old organ to make it "play". Pipes become FLUTES. Radiators become CLANKY THINGS. Columns become metal things. Something somewhere becomes a LOUD ENGINE SOUND.

Listened to a endless line of hipsters play the same song on the building. All sounds from homemade instruments fall into three catagories: "tweet!", "thud!" and "crash!" also "ping!"