Robert Wilson’s Living Rooms: A walk from art to arty at Le Louvre Paris

8/13/2019 Robert Wilsons Living Rooms: A walk from art to arty at Le Louvre Paris

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Robert Wilsons Living Rooms:

A walk from art to arty

(November 14, 2013 to February 17, 2014)

Le Louvre Paris

http://www.louvre.fr/en/expositions/living-rooms

Published as:Robert Wilson Agog Over Gaga in Louvre Show

http://hyperallergic.com/98736/blowing-smoke-robert-wilson-agog-over-gaga-in-louvre-

show/

I was lucky enough, and I am old enough, to have been in the audience of Philip Glass

and Robert WilsonsEinstein on the Beachin 1976 at the Metropolitan Opera House in

New York - and then again at The Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1984. What was - and

is - magnificent about the avant-garde formalist minimalism of Einstein on the Beach

(and almost all of Robert Wilsons following theater work) is the radical transcendent

affect that is experienced through his divulging the precise fundamental essenceof things

by eliminating all non-essential forms and features - and coupling them with very slow

movement and a tremendously rendered scale of time and/or space. Thus with Wilson wecan be transported out of time.

Indeed, I am a great admirer of Wilsons lucid style (even as I do not imitate it). I have

seen Wilson speak on his work as director and designer in 2010 at the Centre Pompidou,

where he explained and demonstrated the power of his austere style.

Accordingly, I sensibly started to experience Wilsons multiple installationLiving Rooms

at the Louvre with the Salle de la Chapelle. It contained his essential core; what he

transported to the museum from his living and working space at the Watermill Center,

where he also stores his remarkable personal art collection and archive.

There I encounter the simple good taste and direct ease and charm of Wilson himself. The

vast salle was stocked full of small pleasures and tender moments. Wilson clearly has had

very good taste, mixed with an adventuresome eye.

The work collected here is very heterogeneous (albeit reminiscent of the fantastic


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Surrealist collection of Andr Breton), containing statuettes, ethnic masks, art by Paul

Thek, many fascinating portrait photographs including those of Gertrude Stein and Albert

Einstein, musical scores, drawings, artwork from Oceania, ancient Chinese ceramics, a

pair of Rudolf Nureyevs slippers, a George Balanchine slipper, a pair of shoes belonging

to Marlene Dietrich, handsome chairs from all periods, and other things he has found

all mostly beautifully displayed. I say mostly, because it unnerved me some that he chose

to install most of the small works on paper - obviously in need of eye-level intimate

contact - way, way up high; just under the ceiling. Such cavalier disregard for the content

of that material did indeed trouble and frustrate me some, and I wondered about this in

connection to his reputation as a perfectionist.


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From Robert WilsonLiving Rooms aChaise Shaker , Enfield (New Hampshire), XIXesicle The Watermills Center Collection


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Robert Wilson, installation views ofLiving Rooms, Louvre Paris 2013


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Robert Wilson, Video Portrait of Lady Gaga, Flying, (Making off) 2013 video 50 min,

photo courtesy of Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris


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Wilson had designed the exhibition layout to reflect his daily surroundings and the way

they constantly inspire him. The bed was huge and inviting (set off by a touching row of

minute Eskimo statuettes at the head and at the foot by a non-functioning video screen for

Video Portrait of Lady Gaga: Flying, (Making off) where Stefani Germanotta (a.k.a.

Lady Gaga) usually twirls suspended in bondage). But I let that glitch also slide and dove

into the rest of this fascinating kitty, seamlessly installed against a soothing gray

background. It was very enjoyable to see, recall, and think about afterwards.

I cannot say the same for what followed: the Video Portraits of Lady Gaga that are

presented in two other locations in the Louvre (also on view/sale at Galerie Thaddaeus

Ropac in the Marais). As he states in the press release for his Ropac show, Bob took

inspiration for this video work from the Renaissance painting of Andrea Solario

(14601524) The Head of John the Baptist on a Charger (1507), from the Neoclassic

painting by Jacques-Louis David (17481825) The Death of Marat(1793), and that of

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867), Mademoiselle Caroline Rivire (1793 -

1807).

The slow motion looped videos present Ms. Germanotta standing in for the figures in the

paintings. The videos are ever so slightly animated by tiny blinks and other small

movements, such as a bird flying through the scene. They are not bad as works typical ofRobert Wilson (if a bit overly evocative of Bill Violas video-paintings such as The

Quintet of the Astonished (2000) http://vimeo.com/15130088), yet we are very strongly

presented with these works as Portraits of Lady Gaga. They are not that. Such non-

essential fumiste incoherence is not to be expected of the lucid Bob Wilson. His

uncompromising rigorous minimalism here has apparently, and most sadly, yielded to the

BS/PR management typical of big money culture. It pains me to have to say it. But I

must, as if anything, these are portraits of the figures in the paintings, of Mademoiselle

Rivire principally, as her video projection was the most dominant, ringed with 14

smaller John the Baptist works.


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Installation view of Robert Wilson, Video Portrait of Lady Gaga as Mademoiselle

Caroline Rivire by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres/Mademoiselle Caroline Rivire

d 'a pr s J ea n-A u s g u s t - D o m i n i q u e I n g r e s 2013 video, loop


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Robert Wilson, Video Portrait of Lady Gaga as Mademoiselle Caroline Rivire by Jean-

Auguste-Dominique Ingres /Mademoiselle Caroline Rivire d'aprs Jean-Ausgust-


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Dominique Ingres2013 video, loop

Mademoiselle Caroline Rivireby Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres


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Robert Wilson, Video Portrait of Lady Gaga as The Head of John the Baptist on a

Chargerby Andrea Solario/ Variation d'aprs La tte de Saint Jean Baptiste de Solario,

2013 video, loop


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The Head of John the Baptist on a Chargerby Andrea Solario

For this gallery, Wilson used of the sounds of sustained droning organ tones (a track

scored by Michael Galasso for Wilson's Dream Play reminiscent of the music of

Charlemagne PalestinesMusic for Carillon). Those sustained tones set the emotional

tone of deep solemnity suggestive of the eternal(even if only of the Theatre of Eternal

Musicof La Monte Young). This posed a problem, as the solemn tone established a mood

of classical seriousness that in no way matches the intentionally timely, and thus


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Anonymity would have opened the work up to a greater freedom of thought.

Here the cult of the celebrity has soured the work and drastically limited it in scope as a

vehicle of self-transcendence. Thus with Video Portraits of Lady Gaga, Wilsons work

has become less powerful, less concentrated on the essentials of art, less intimate - whilenot being particularly amusing. The annoying celebrity add-on is dreadful for the desired

emptiness of Wilsons attractive and intelligent art, and his work does not bode well for

art in the classical tradition of high minimalism. Adieu la glorie de lAmerique.

The most winning video for me was his Video Portrait of Lady Gaga as Maratfrom The

Death of Maratby Jacques-Louis David, but it had problems too. I liked that it was

installed in the same gallery where the Neoclassical paintings are hung, even though

Ingress fabulous La Grande Odalisque(1814) quickly distracted me from it. But the

subtle shifting of the light in the video created a lovely effect, slowly revealing the pert

left breast of Ms. Germanotta, thus shifting the dead revolutionary hero into a heroine.


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Robert Wilson, Video Portrait of Lady Gaga as Marat fromThe Death of Maratby

Jacques-Louis David /La Mort de Marat d'aprs Jacques-Louis David, 2013 video, loop


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The Death of Maratby Jacques-Louis David

The problem here was I could only faintly make out a soundtrack. The sound was all but

inaudible, even in only a moderately filled gallery on a Wednesday afternoon. Only by

sticking my head next to the back of the monitor, thus no longer seeing the image, was I


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faintly able to hear what sounded like Ms. Germanotta chanting, just what I could not

make out (subsequently I was told it was Gaga reciting a text by the Marque De Sade

with a track scored by Michael Galasso). Anyway, it did not seem the best presentation of

the most engaging piece by the famed perfectionist.

As I have come to know: success usually spoils the artist - and sometimes the art. This is

conveniently demonstrated at the neighboring Mona Lisa, a wonderful painting now

obscured behind thick glass and crowded out from view by throngs of bystanders. The

experience of relishing its delicately painted surface has been removed, and thus the art

itself, one could say, has been vandalized by fame. Instead we are caught up in a

profitable (for them) web of methodical manipulation that exploits our attention based on

vulgar mythologizing fame.

Beforehand, with Wilson we were transported out of time. But with a central pop star

(built up through savvy corporate marketing via publicity gimmicks) here we are pushed

into the now timeand his work suffers as a result. It felt like the killing off of anything

magical in his art, the end of his radical transcendent affect.

Of course, the not-so-tongue-in-cheek Fame Monster pop star is an imposteur of the

singular artist, bolstered by both the named 17 member Haus of Gaga gang [source: liner

notes for the album ARTPOP] and untold unnamed numbers of invisible corporate

promotional people and sales teams. In this sense Germanotta, and all pop personalities,

arefumisterie(someone who blows pretentious smoke). This French term is precise when

applied to celebrity personalities - and celebrities must not be confused with singular,

lucidly defined, individual artists such as Wilson. Wilson chose the titleLiving Roomsfor

his exhibition at the Louvre, because it is a transposition to the museum of personal

things that mark his individuality as a minimalist theatre director. Here he presents

himself in first person singular. A corporate-based celebrity, as noted above, is an easily

recognized person of theatricality, one who has a prominent profile and commands some

degree of public fascination and influence in the popular media, but is not a first person

singular creative being. The blurred union of the two here has never before been

associated with Wilson. Yet it cannot but call to mind Michael Frieds critique of the

theatricality of minimalist art inArt and Objecthood, where Fried argues that whenever a


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self-consciousness of viewing exists, absorption is compromised, and theatricality results

- and that the survival of art lies precisely in its ability to defeat theater because art

degenerates when it approaches theater. That is the situation I found here, one

suggesting that celeb-theatricality is threatening art-as-art while blatantly trying to use it

to bolster its credibility and stature. So Video Portraits of Lady Gagais unhelpful in

developing a shift towards an anti-pop/no-logo effort indicative of social relationships

outside of passive pop consumption.

Happily, Wilson will be staging another production of Einstein on the Beachthis January

(2014) at the Thtre du Chtelet, which I intend to attend.

Joseph Nechvatal

http://www.eyewithwings.net/nechvatal/

http://josephnechvatal.wordpress.com/

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Documents

Robert Wilson’s Living Rooms: A walk from art to arty at Le Louvre Paris