September 26, 2005

Robert Smithson's Floating Island

Update: Kara blogged this too.

Because I was out too late at TNO* the night before, I overslept a little and had to rush to meet my friend Kara at her office on Broadway. We hurried east on Houston all the way to the river, but we made it just in time to see, as Kara called it, "the ass of the boat," heading downriver. There was construction at the river's edge, and a chain-link fence keeping us about 30 feet from the river, so we scampered south to get a better view. Of course, by the time we got there the boat had turned around, so we scampered back again, and again caught the ass of the boat, with island in tow.

(This is the official link for the island at the Whitney Museum)

The elusiveness of the island gave it a bit of a mystical feel for me, as though it were always just out of reach. Similarly, I feel like any sort of complete understanding of its significance as art lay just a little out of reach the whole time.

The island is, in a sense, a gigantic, floating flowerpot: There is a great mass of dirt in a flat, wooden frame, with around a half-dozen trees planted in it, and grass covering all the dirt. All of this is pulled along the water by a tugboat, at about 5 miles per hour. When the exhibition is finished (on Saturday, Sep 24), the trees will be planted in Central Park.

I knew of Smithson because of his "Spiral Jetty" sculpture, which was built in the 70s in the Great Salt Lake. I grew up in Utah, and the idea of a contemporary artist choosing someplace as conservative and unfriendly to contemporary art as Utah for (what became) his masterpiece, seemed odd somehow. As a result, the jetty has always stuck in my mind as Utah's one piece of modern art. I wouldn't be surprised if it has a higher profile outside of Utah—no one I knew growing up had any idea that the sculpture existed, virtually in their backyard.

Sometimes the point of art is simply to provoke a reaction, any reaction, in the viewer. There were a lot of things going through my mind when I saw the island, but the overwhelming response was to laugh. The incongruity, the paltriness of just a few skinny, almost plaintive trees, against the backdrop of the most industrial river I have ever seen, was hilarious. I struggled to make sense of it, and then, failing, couldn't help myself but to laugh.

Posted September 26, 2005 07:16 PM. Categories: New Experiences , Week 3 | Permalink