Reconstructing the Past: Robert Whitman Projections
John Perreault
The problem with
art that involves time is also its glory. It is not frozen in time. I am thinking
of technology-based art when the technology is superceded. I am thinking of Happenings,
Events Performances. Site-specific installations that have time limits might
also fit into this sink-hole of the ephemeral. But then aren’t we ourselves
also ephemeral? Why should our art outlast us? Well, because for some odd reason
we do indeed want to outlast ourselves. The model for time-based visual art has
to come from those twins of the ephemeral: theater (which includes dance) and
music. Opera, of course, unites both. Scripts and scores are the vehicles of
re-creation. A re-creation, I need to add, is not the same as a reproduction.
In terms of artists
theater — Happenings, Events, Performances (which have been defined and
distinguished elsewhere) – one might think that photographs, film, video,
and now DVD would be enough to insure perpetuity. But pictures are not the same
as actually being there, even when what’s being documented may partially
be pictures, even moving pictures. But there may be scripts and scores and, in
some cases, detailed written accounts. Written accounts, it should be noted,
are often better than photographs.
Some people may
be happy just reading scripts and scores. I’m not. Nor do I like to experience
buildings by reading blueprints or prose descriptions. Therefore, it is with
great interest that I look forward to performances of Robert Whitman’s “Prune
Flat” (1965) and “Light Touch” (1976) at the DIA in New York next
September.
In the meantime, we can look at a selection of Whitman’s works called “Playback”
at DIA — from the 1963 (“Window”) through “Spyglass”
(1960-1976). “Playback” will be on view through June 15, then available
again in September. All seven artworks involve time but are not Happenings, Events
or Performances since they do not involve live persons. Four reconstructions
– “Garbage Bag,” “Bathroom Sink”, “Shower,”
and “Window – also involve switching from 16mm film to DVD, as does
the projected moving image environment “Spyglass”.
The beautiful “Solid
Red Line” (1967) is a red laser beam that circles a darkened room from wall
to wall and then reverses itself. But are the “Dante Drawings” (1974-1975),
in some way the most surprising work, also about time? I think so, for it takes
time to look at both sides of the 27 suspended drawings. Some of the rather banal
images match back to back, some don’t. This wouldn’t work if the images
of spheres, lightning, crosses, etc. were more flamboyant or obviously symbolic.
Since it is necessary to move around the drawings, you yourself are the instrument
of time.
“Spyglass”
uses more startling images. The multi-screen projections show melting fruit,
prestidigitation, birds. These vignettes are multiplied by four mirrors, which
along with the four movie screens make up an octagonal viewing space.
How fresh this
work looks! But my point here has to be: look at the dates. This is not some
young artist; most of this work was done long ago and younger artists who are
combining structures and projected moving images may or may not have known Whitman’s
seminal work. The art world forgets. And there are now no adequate art history
books surveying the wide range of art from 1960 to the present. Recent history
now takes the form of legend or myth.
Some might say
that it is lucky indeed that the art world forgets, because otherwise paralysis
would set in. I beg to differ. I do not want to admit, as was once fashionable,
that there is nothing new and we need only replicate the past. That king of replication
(called appropriation) was once new. Otherwise why re-invent the wheel? Try making
a better wheel or better yet another way of getting around. Of course, if the
artist is not particularly involved in churning out products for the collectors’
market, re-creation and reproduction is the only way some art survives. We could
also add that it survives through influence, often unacknowledged.
And through language.
Unfortunately as of this writing the promised big book on Whitman was not available,
so, taking my cue from the bibliography at the end of Lynne Cook’s excellent
essay in the convenient DIA hand-out, I foraged through my library. Although
I did not find Richard Kostelanetz’s “The Theater of Mixed Means”
(1968), I did find Michael Kirby’s “Happenings” (1965) which includes
his descriptions of four of Whitman’s Happenings and the following quote:
“The thing about theater that most interests me is that it takes time. Time
for me is something material. I like to use it that way. It can be used in the
same way as paint or plaster or another material. It can describe other natural
events.”
Also in Kirby’s
“Art of Time” (1969) there’s a description of “Prune Flat.”
Kirby highlights Whitman’s fondness for joining filmed and live imagery.
During “Prune Flat,” …when the ‘disrobing’ girl threw
her (filmed) coat into the wings, for example, one of the other two girls appeared
wearing the real coat.”
Then on my own
I found that Jill Johnston in “Marmalade Me,” compiled in 1971, has
vivid descriptions of Whitman’s “The American Moon” and “The
Mouth.” But didn’t Whitman, along with Robert Rauschenberg, have something
to do with E. A. T. (Experiments in Art and Technology)? Yes, indeed. “9
Evenings,” was presented in 1966, but so far I can’t find any description
of Whitman’s offering, although in his “The Scene: Reports on Post-Modern
Art” Calvin Tomkins reports that Whitman’s piece was on of the few
that were well-received and that, later, it was his idea to make the Pepsi Pavilion
at the EXPO ’70 in Japan “an ‘environment’ in which visitors
could create their own experience.”
Finally, I found
an old catalog at the Dia Bookstore: “Palisade, A Work by Robert Whitman
at the Hudson River Museum” (1979). The most distinguishing aspect of the
piece seemed to be a telescope aimed at a film projection across the Hudson from
the museum. In an interview with critic Barbara Rose, Whitman says:
“My choice is to use recognizable images. The unrecognizable part is the
part that speaks to me, that I think speaks to people the most. This is the relationship
between all of these elements – images, light color, sound. You play several
instruments instead of just one.”
Am I imagining
things or is there something elusive and fugitive about Whitman’s sensibility?
I say “sensibility” because his take on things seems to be anti-content.
But perhaps sensibility is content. Reading Whitman is like reading the spaces
between words rather than the words.
Could this rather
than the theatrical/ephemeral forms of his work be the reason it has taken this
long for a Whitman retrospective and a small one at that? Whitman’s “Shower”
(1964) was in the Whitney survey called “Into the Light” and for some
this was an eye-opener. But eyes haven’t yet opened wide enough.
Ah, yes, recent art history, meaning before 1980, has become unwritten and needs
to be written again. But wouldn’t it reveal too much? Spoil the game?
