They say that life imitates art. And sometimes the other way around. This one is hard to untangle. The story is old but ongoing and a little off my usual well-beaten path. And it involves a pissing contest between an institution that I'm quite fond of and an artist whose ego appears to have raged out of control. Yes, I guess I'm taking sides.
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Take the current imbroglio involving Christoph Büchel, a Swiss installation artist, and that capacious reclamation of derelict industrial space, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (a.k.a. MASS MoCA) in North Adams, in the western part of the state. MASS MoCA invited him to do a large installation piece called “Training Ground for Democracy.†The artist accepted, apparently on a handshake, and promptly asked the museum to fetch him, among a long list of things, a police car, a voting booth and a two-story house that could be disassembled. He also wanted various items wrecked, burned and painted, and he wanted everything dragged or hoisted into MAAS MoCA's most cavernous (the size of a football field) gallery. The museum complied, as much as it could. The artist then asked for a second mobile home and portions of a reassembled old movie theater. The museum gave it a shot. But then, having been suckered into the role of the shockable bourgeois, MASS MoCA hollered, “Enough!â€
Way over budget for Büchel’s troubled and uncompleted work of art ($160,000, then doubled, with no final limit in sight) the museum had spent more that $300,000 to install the exhibit), MASS MoCA figured it could salvage something from the project by exhibiting the unfinished piece in as-is condition. Büchel threatened legal action, saying a museum can’t show something it says is a work by a certain artist when the artist hasn’t come close to finishing it. The issue is currently before a federal district court. No matter what is decided, though, the artist wins.
But does he? This guy doesn't think so and puts a pox on both their houses. The Boston Globe doesn't think so either, but (naturally) for the opposite reason (i.e., that Büchel's work is being unfairly demeaned by Mass MoCA's workaround, which has veiled the incomplete exhibit in burlap). At this point, I think I'd go out of my way to avoid any other Christophe Büchel exhibition, not only because of this story but also because of some of the other stuff I confirmed he's up to while I was doing some background checking. I say "confirmed" because from the title of this exhibit and the description of its contents, you can sort of see pretty clearly the political statement emerging (you see, that well-beaten path was right here all along).
They say there's no such thing as bad publicity and maybe that's what Büchel was counting on. Some people have speculated that this impasse was his intention all along. But there are exceptions to every rule. I hope Mass MoCA wins this one, but I doubt it will be in time for me to see the incomplete exhibit un-veiled when I'm up there next week.
Shabbat Shalom.
