Guggenheim Rotunda. Photo by Robert C, c-monster.net

I have often found myself in front of a museum canvas – a Titian, an Ingres, a Pollock, what have you – deadly thumbing the vibrant band of beads around my neck, which only moments before had given pure delight.  All senses vanquished. Just numb.

Or dumb?

Why can’t I be moved?  Why doesn’t this priceless work captivate me? Where has the damn luster in my necklace escaped?

This art is better than I am.  It knows more than I.  Other people feel it, get it. I know it’s worth more than I could ever amount.  The auction records say so! It’s in a museum.

And here I say this, hailing from an educational and professional background that would assume otherwise.

Today, at the Guggenheim Museum, I learned just why I don’t get it.  Why sometimes others may not get it, though don’t propose to confess.

On participation (not view) is a conceptual work by Tino Sehgal.  The entire Frank Lloyd Wright-designed rotunda has been stripped bare of all material works.  In its place, Sehgal has hired and trained area youth and adults to interact with museum visitors on a purely verbal plain.  There is nothing concrete to have, nothing one can buy.

You become the work.  You create.  You matter.  You become the matter.

This is how art moved – moved me ~

Mise en scene: I enter museum rotunda and begin the slow, spiral journey upward.  Enter Eric, an 8-year old boy. He is abrupt and stuns me.

Eric: What is progress?

Me: What? Ummmm. Hmmm. Well, okay, to me our view of progress is troubled.  Is progress always moving away from something, assuming that the next thing is better? What’s the proof?  What if it were progress to go back in history and live like farmers?  But that’s not how I’ve been trained to think of progress.

Eric: (He’s been listening intently).  Let me see if I understand?  (He repeats what I said, seeming to process its meaning).

(Eric is approached by a young girl named Fatima.  She’s in middle school.  Eric tells Fatima what I said.  Eric leaves and Fatima continues to walk with me around the rotunda.)

Fatima:  I’ve not heard that view of progress before.  I get it! I really do! Is progress what Government is doing today by bringing back Roosevelt’s New Deal tactics?  Is it good to reissue methods used during the Great Depression today?

(Fatima is met by Mark.  Mark is tall and skinny, probably in his early-30s).

Mark:  Is it bad when preferences become rules?

Me: Oh my God, that’s a great question.  I guess preferences quickly become defense mechanisms, shutting you down?

The dialogue continued onward to the rotunda dome.  I was exhilarated, moved, scared, alive!  As I made my way slowly down the rotunda ramp, I shouted to Mark, “This is progress!”

I didn’t feel art-alienated anymore.  I mattered.  I made “matter.”  I feel the same way when I craft.

I’m ready to go back to the museum canvas.

Similar art ailment? I could be alone.