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Is it art?*
(Roman Signer's "Fahrrad mit Farbe") |
After I got my bike assembled and ready, I needed to deliver my bike suitcase to one of the organizers--my no-frills backpackers' hotel refusing for lack of room to store it for the eight days I would be on the road. Fortunately, Gavin, one of the Hobart-based rider/volunteer staff for TdT, works at a firm that had just acquired a small office building only a few blocks away with plenty of storage in the former Hobart branch of the Australia Cancer Council--the very sign still on the building a reminder to wear sunscreen while riding under the sunny clear, deep blue high UV skies of Tasmania! Hobart is a city of a few hundred thousand population, and the downtown is relatively compact and walkable so it was easy to drop off the suitcase.
When we met, I mentioned to Gavin that my plan was to go to
The Museum of Old and New Art (MONA). A friend in Tokyo had told me about visiting MONA last year--open since 2012, the museum immediately became a leading tourist destination in Hobart, indeed, all of Tasmania.
Gavin said, "so you'll head out the bike path along the shore to the museum?" "Sure", I replied, not having known that there WAS a bike path. It looked as if the museum was about 12-13kms from the central business district. There was a boat/ferry option, but I had just missed one, and I really wanted a "shake down" spin before starting the 200k the following morning.
I had some trouble finding the path downtown, and ended up on a major route that went up steeply nearly 100 meters over a little bump, then down again the other side. Finally I intersected the bike path, a paved "rails-to-trails" route alongside remaining train tracks that has the benefit of climbing and descending at only 1-2% grade.
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| My mistake -- missed the bike path and instead climbed this little bump en route to MONA |
MONA is a major institution that is owned by and houses the contemporary art collection of Hobart-born David Walsh. The collection includes many major artists of the past quarter century and more. This is not a museum designed or run by a committee, but implements the vision of a single person. It is what David Walsh thinks a museum should be. When it first opened, it was said to focus on the themes of "sex and death", but more recently seems to have diversified.
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| If you enter by land ... |
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| If you enter by sea ... |
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| Or, looking from the boat's perspective based upon a photo from the MONA website |
I entered the museum grounds through the Moorvilla vineyard along a beautiful tree-lined road through vineyards, climbed another short steep hill to the parking area, and looked around for the entrance. There were people eating outside, some others sitting in a large meadow waiting for musicians to appear on a bandstand (or maybe just enjoying the beautiful day), there was even a group dining who were all dressed in beige and brown earth tones, as if they were extras from the birthday party in "Breaking Bad" at Gretchen and Elliott Schwartz' house where Walter and Skyler White show up and are the only ones at the party who did not "get the message" to dress in earth tones.
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| The actual museum entrance is somewhere down there on the left side ... |
Eventually I found my way toward the museum entrance, down the sea-side of the hill. First I needed to cross the "tennis court". Why is the entrance so confusing? Apparently it is far less so if one arrives "by sea" instead of "by land", but still, was this intentional, to stir confusion and a bit of tension before the visit? The very act of walking ACROSS a tennis court instead of going AROUND it, breaking through the lines near the net, seems to invite tension and rule-breaking. The queue that one often sees form on the other side of the court is ... not for entrance to the museum, but for the boat ride back to town.
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Amarna, James Turrell
Sky on display within the frame |
Finally I found the unmarked entrance (through which people were exiting), the ticket desk, then as instructed walked down a spiral stair to the very bottom floor (B3), and emerged to the "void bar" where I had the opportunity to purchase an alcoholic beverage. I opted for one of the many varieties of "Moo Brew", the beer that formerly brewed on-site, now nearby, and also is owned by Walsh. As I wandered around and sat in a comfy chair to finish the beer, the woman next to me told me she was sitting to get her seat for the 1PM concert. The group performing, Zahatorte, was from Kyoto. I saw most of the exhibits on the lowest floor, then came back for the concert and watched the entire first set -- the music was fun, and the musicians looked as if they were enjoying playing it.
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"Kitten trophy rug", Julia deVille
Maybe Don Jr. and Eric Trump can bring one back from their next hunting trip? |
I guess the entrance confusion, followed by the very relaxed environment of the interior, is intentional. Did I mention how David Walsh made his money? Apparently he did so as a professional gambler, using his background in mathematics. He teamed with a partner named Kaiser Soze and they somehow figured out how to systematically make hundreds of millions of dollars (or more) from gambling. (Actually, Walsh's business associate was named Zeliko Ranogajec, not Kaiser Soze.) But it is like something straight out of a movie, maybe Ocean's Eleven?
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| Selling beer, somewhat randomly |
The bar at the B3 entrance, and concerts both inside and out on weekends, plus the entrance confusion, all tell you "this is not a normal museum, even for contemporary art". I guess a few other things do so as well. But by and large, once you get inside, it is a well-done museum of contemporary art.
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| "Cloaca Professional" by Wim Delvoye -- a poop making and emitting machine |
A few of the memorable works are mentioned with photos ... but you should go. I am not going to post photos of the 152 porcelain casts of women's genitalia, ("Cunts and other conversations", by Greg Taylor and friends), for you. There was some other X-rated art as well. This is not contemporary art designed to hang in law firm conference rooms. It does address sex, death, and more. Nor can you get the impact of Turrell's "Beside Myself" or Yves Klein's "Pigment Pur" unless you walk through them.
Hobart is a nice, manageable town and Tasmania has plenty of beauty, some good food and drink, hoppy things, and history. You may not see any Tasmanian tigers (no one has in over 100 years), but you can still see Tasmanian devils, and wombats, echidna (Australian porcupines) and Australian possums (furry tailed criters, much cuter than American possums), and wallabies, lots of wallabies. And if you cannot go, you should
check out MONA's website, which has lots of information available. If you do go, you should check out the website even more thoroughly, so you can prepare (unlike me).
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| Accumulation of Brass wheels, by Arman |
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Rotorelief, Marcel Duchamp
(his most famous work, a bicycle wheel and fork embedded in a stool, is not at MONA) |
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Untitled (White Library), Wilfred Prieto
Invites you to ... fill the pages? |
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Tim
Tim is on display six months each year.
When he dies, the tattoed skin will be removed and delivered to the work's owner, the art reaching its final stage. |
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| Beside Myself, James Turrell |
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| From the exhibition Your Shadow Rising, Toby Ziegler |
Link to video:
https://youtu.be/ykjg9PG1XQg
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| Zahatorte concert! |
Link to video:
https://youtu.be/wGK9ImVbnnc
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| An entire wall! |
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of plastic bags full of water ... from the exhibition "Zero"
Reaction: "I could do this!" |
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| Untitled -- ropes hanging from hooks. Reaction "I've done that one!" |
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| Goldfish in bowl of water with knife, on chair. I could do that! (but gotta feed the fish!) |
Link to video (proof of life):
https://youtu.be/puBPMhMZiNQ
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Bounty, (Hobart-based artist) Patrick Hall
Wooden cabinet with ship sailing on a sea of bones ... |
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| From the bike path on my way back to city center. |
I wish I could have spent more time at MONA, and I regretted not having prepared more in advance. But I needed to head back to town so I would not be too rushed at getting to the pre-ride dinner, where I met the other participants for the first time. A few -- Mark Thomas aand Rick Blacker from Seattle, Warren Page from NSW, and Peter Heal from ACT, who was volunteering to staff the ride -- I knew. Everyone else was new to me. In any event, it was a pleasant evening and we were all off to bed early, ready for the next day's ride.
... more about the actual rides later (which were great, thanks to careful planning, generous volunteers and a great natural setting), but first I must do some more urgent tasks in the real world.
*As for the bicycle with rope displayed at the top of this post, MONA has a nice feature by which you get information about the works via a smartphone-like device. You can save your visit and the works you saw, and read more about them later. MONA's explanation of the work follows:
Signer’s title Fahrrad mit Farbe, in English, is ‘Bicycle with paint’. That’s it. He’s the master of understatement.
He makes everyday objects do unexpected things. He explores cause and effect. His materials are simple. His processes are simple. ‘Since art is a game’, Signer says, ‘I have no use for assistants’. But his work is ‘inexplicable’—by which, he means, it is difficult to prove that what he makes is art.
Aesthetic theorists have pointed out that any attempt to define art requires a ‘family resemblance’ approach: with art as a wide-ranging ‘family’ in which there are many overlapping similarities and yet no rigid definition that includes everything we consider art to be while excluding everything we don’t. Perhaps Roman Signer knows that the Austrian-British philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, famously used games to explain this family resemblance concept. So, to take just a few examples: poker, football, Monopoly, mahjong, Grand Theft Auto, billiards, blind man’s buff or this little piggy are all recognisably games, even though there’s no single element common to all—some are solo pursuits, some team sports using sticks or balls, some use words and numbers, some are played by adults, others by children, some have only been played recently, others are ancient; yet overall there are many overlapping similarities that make them all games.
This was Wittgenstein’s ultimate proof of the complexity of language. In the same way there are countless kinds of art, including, in the case of Roman Signer, bicycles with paint: a painting, a sculpture, and an action or ‘happening’ all at once.1 But for Signer himself, any looking for art’s ‘definition’ is pointless.
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