Uppers and Downers

Could anything be nerdier than procrastinating (my Met entry) by posting about something that was never assigned? Or maybe it's just a case of inspiration (what I am about to post) versus flatlining (the Met). Whatever the case, I need to tell you guys about my totally awesome art encounter. And then a little bit of a letdown.

Good stuff first.

On Saturday, I got to join a small tour of the unfinished portion of the Highline, between 30th and 34th Streets, where Carol Bove has installed five or six surprisingly smallish sculptures (all are new except one, which appeared in Documenta). Madame Bo-vay was present, and she is so cool, so smart, so articulate -- she blew me away. Besides the fact of the sculptures, which work with the same vocabulary as the MoMA installation we saw together last class, I dig how she takes her work seriously but not so much herself. She can laugh at the randomness of decision-making in art-making ("We put this piece here because it was the only place we could crane it up hahaha") while employing, without pause or irony, serious art words ("I wanted to work in this particular syntax"). I have never heard "syntax" used in this context but I am going to take CB's word for it, despite the Merriam-Webster sitting next to me. (Nor have I ever heard "crane" used as a verb but again, I am feeling lots of love and trust for CB's brains at the moment.)

I was also surprised to learn that an artist of CB's stature doesn't necessarily always get what she wants in terms of her art. To back up, CB's sculptures will remain on the Highline for the next 12 months, and then they will be returned to her. She really wants to see them all installed afterward in a white cube, just to see. "But it's just not gonna happen. I wish but probably not."

Why?

Shoulder shrug. Smile.

Lacking the chutzpah to brownnose by telling her how much I loooooved her MoMA installation, I instead got in her face with a million pictures. Here are a few.

After all that awesomeness, I got ready for more. I rode my bike up the Hudson to Columbia for an event with Eleanor Antin, the artist I chose as my contemporary. While I don't regret aligning myself with her, I was bummed about the afternoon. I imagined a panel discussion but when I arrived, there was a screening of one of her long, live-action movies that don't speak to me. Reader, I dozed. Not surprisingly, I overheard the curator, Emily Liebert, admitting that she had never seen this particular film. No wonder. The good stuff is up at the Wallach.

When Antin got up to speak, I was saddened by her appearance. Ghoulish. The questions sucked, I wished EL had taken the lead. The PBS show on EA was so much better. Wah wah wah.

But hooray -- Carol Bove is sustaining me.

And I get to further delay my Met entry because it is time for French class woo woo woo.