There's a good reason in-the-know Bostonians stray from the tourist attraction of John Harvard's statue: Harvard University shelters an impressive array of art museums just outside the university's walls. In particular, the Fogg Art Museum houses a great range of works, and now on view is a show of contemporary art from the Harvard University Art Museums Collections. The exhibit presents viewers with a challenging visual dialogue of race, gender, utopia, culture and urban futurism.
The exhibit has included great works of art ranging from the 1970s to today, and in such a small space, this broad time span requires a certain amount of juxtaposition. Upon entering the show, such a juxtaposition between David Smith's intensely red and mangled sculpture "Fish" and Sol LeWitt's immense "Wall Drawing #128 (Ten Thousand Random Not Straight Lines)" sets the stage for the rest of the works. Both highly abstract pieces toy with perceptions of order, chaos and randomness.
There is no easy transition, however, between these antechamber pieces and those within the first gallery. The paintings, prints and sculpture differ substantially in media and content. They are wholly pop art explorations of society and culture, but fail to render a direct dialogue between one another.
Perhaps the most striking aspect of the first gallery is a quartet of paintings and prints which present themselves as a cohesive unit. Their arrangement is one of the exhibit's strongest features.
Having recently acquired two Glenn Ligon works, the Harvard Art Museums showcase both in this exhibit. The first, "Untitled (negro sunshine)" (2005) appears to be floating on the wall as if it were itself the embodiment of the sun. The evocative term was taken from "Melanctha," a play written by Gertrude Stein in 1909.
Disconnecting this term from its context reflects the disjointed interaction of the pieces in the show, forcing the viewer to draw connections between works related by their recentness and goals, but not by style or inspiration. The light radiating from Ligon's piece reflects upon Rudolf Stingel's untitled enamel and acrylic Byzantine-like gold painting. In the exhibit's context, the painting becomes a manifestation of high-culture aesthetics.
Across the way, the second Glenn Ligon piece, "Self-Portrait at Eleven Years Old" (2004) stippled print on a blue base sheet displays a 1970s popular image of a black man begging the question of racial stereotypes. Next to it, Ellen Gallagher's unsettling mixed-media collage entitled "Abu Simbel" (2005-6) explores notions of race in history.
Highly out of place, "I'm With Stupid" by Rachel Harrison interrupts the flow between these four pieces. The sculpture is a puzzling, brazen amalgamation of pop culture artifacts. A spray-painted plywood base supports a masked child doll embracing a caped skull figure. By itself, this piece is highly engaging and humorous, yet its power is removed by the exhibit's poor organization.
The second gallery differs substantially from the first. While the first gallery's pieces would make Warhol proud, those in the second tend towards Kazimir Malevich-like forms.
Dominating this second gallery, Leonard Daw's "Number 122" is a wooden three-dimensional installation. The branches and the columns of wooden nubs evoke a natural, tree form, yet the jutting horizontal plane of the individual pieces suggests urban sprawl. Whimsical and unsettling, the installation is complimented by highly geometric pieces on the opposite walls.
Notably, Agnes Martin's "Untitled #4" is a simplistic painted canvas with alternating graphite and grey lines. The deceiving lateral planes hide the texture of the painted canvas, thereby complimenting Daw's piece.
In the same vein, another Sol LeWitt, "Corner Wall #6," evokes a sense of geometry in space and nature. The cube forms attach themselves gracefully to the corner as if they are a common part of the space. The soft shadows further compliment the general theme of natural and material within the second gallery.
Taken as a whole, the two galleries fail to mesh. Albeit both display contemporary art from the same period, the rooms clash in their loud avant-gardism. Thematically and aesthetically, each room is mutually exclusive.
Despite this glaring flaw, the exhibit is a thought-provoking criticism of pop culture and urban aesthetics. Well worth the T-ticket (and getting lost in Harvard), the exhibit does not disappoint.
