Hands-On Art at the MoMA Please Touch the Replicas of Lygia Clarks Work Expand/Collapse Please touch is an uncommon phrase in art museums, especially at a tourist magnet like the Museum of Modern Art. But starting Saturday, visitors will be invited to do just that with replicas of Lygia Clarks work. “Please touch” is an uncommon phrase in art museums, especially at a tourist magnet like the Museum of Modern Art, where gesturing too close to “The Starry Night” will provoke a stern warning from a uniformed guard. But starting Saturday, when MoMA opens “Lygia Clark: The Abandonment of Art, 1948–1988,” visitors will be invited—encouraged, even—to engage in tactile interaction with replicas of objects by the late Brazilian artist, whose life’s work was tempting the masses to touch the goods. “We spend all this time telling people not to touch objects, and here we’re telling people to touch the object,” said Connie Butler, chief curator at Los Angeles’s Hammer Museum and co-curator, with MoMA’s Luis Pérez-Oramas, of the Clark retrospective. Though Ms. Clark, who died in 1988 at age 67, remains well known in her native Brazil, she hasn’t been the subject of a major North American retrospective until now. Her early work is standard wall-hung fare. After a brief flirtation with representational painting—a staircase here, an interior there—she moved toward abstract works on paper and canvas. Then, more radically, she began painting on wood, which she cut into and then separated into geometric puzzle pieces, with the final painting made up of these many parts. A few dozen examples adorn the walls at MoMA. Just over a decade into her career, around 1960, Ms. Clark translated those multipart paintings into three-dimensional objects whose forms would be dictated by the viewer. In her final years, she made masks, goggles and elastic bands that encouraged viewers to relate physically to each other. At MoMA, replicas of her first participatory objects—called “bichos,” the Portuguese slang for “critters”—await visitors on jute-covered tables installed around the galleries. Most are made of flat, triangular metal sections attached by hinges. Clunky and awkward, they refuse to lie flat but don’t really stand up, either. The smallest fit in the palm of your hand, while one of the largest features round-edged sheets the size of dinner plates. Gallery visitors are given free rein to fold and twist these bichos along their multiple hinges, which isn’t easy. “They sort of fight back,” Ms. Butler said. Nearby, the curators have installed a plywood display showcasing several dozen vintage bichos sitting side-by-side. Want to play? Not so fast. “We tried to avoid sending confusing messages,” Mr. Pérez-Oramas said. “The bichos on display in the central room can’t be touched because they are subject to conservation rules. On the other hand, those that can be touched are in galleries where you have very fragile paintings.” This don’t touch-please touch paradox creates a special tension for MoMA guards accustomed to preventing strangers from groping the Picassos. All the guards in the Clark show, according to Mr. Pérez-Oramas, underwent multiple training sessions on Ms. Clark’s life, work and touch-me ethos. Still, wholesale cultural shifts don’t happen overnight. “It’s a challenge for these guards,” Ms. Butler said. “They’re really great and they’re really willing, but it’s a bit of a work-in-progress getting them to understand what the parameters are.” stream.wsj/story/latest-headlines/SS-2-63399/SS-2-527679/
Posted on: Tue, 13 May 2014 18:00:01 +0000
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