Hirshhorn Museum

Page curated by George Shi and JaneAnne Stockton

BARBARA KRUGER: BELIEF+DOUBT

Overview

Hirshhorn Museum is a national institution of modern and contemporary art which focuses on the art and ideas of our time. It is named after the famous entrepreneur and art collector----Joseph Hirshhorn, and it was established in 1974. The museum features several art exhibitions. Our team explored the major exhibition: The Weather.

SCULPTURE GARDEN

LAURIE ANDERSON: THE WEATHER

Overview

Laurie Anderson, a Grammy Award-winning musician, performer, writer, and artist, gaineded her reputation through the brave attem tohe combeoforms of f multi-media expression togeth,er especialy, music and visual exploration. According tthe o Hirshhorn Museum, curators view her as "the avant-garde with popular culture". Through the exhibition, the audience experiences her major works feating the media of performance, music, poetry, sculpture, opera, anthropological investigations, and linguistic games. Her ingenious ways of combining media together enlightesn and shocsk audiencse. Moreover, she uses these art forms to express her political concerns, personal experience, and story. Anderson has also been shown at the Guggenheim Museum, SoHo, and extensively in Europe.Mmulti-talened, shet also releasde seven albums for Warner Brothers, which include Big Science, featuring the song that shown in the exhibition "O Superman". (George Shi)

John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer, music theorist, artist, and philosopher. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde. Critics have lauded him as one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was also instrumental in the development of modern dance, mostly through his association with choreographer Merce Cunningham, who was also Cage's romantic partner for most of their lives. (From John Cage Wikipedia)

The immediate inclusion of John Cage quotes as one ascends the escalator to Anderson's exhibit primes the informed viewer to the kind of artistic experience about to be had. Ever the experimentalist, Cage's work constantly reimagined how we define "art" based on our overall experience of the world around us. Seeing these quotes (left), I automatically thought of other works inspired by Cage, particularly Piano Piece for David Tudor #1 by La Monte Young, in which a piano is fed hay and water like a farm animal. With such an abstract mental introduction, I expected similar mind-opening oddities from Anderson.

Starting the whole exhibition with the video, this is a whole new experience to introduce the audience to her world. With the totally dark environment, the audience is forced to focus on a video that delivers tension and power. Dancing with the strong drum hits, Anderson delivers the female power through her work. Through this video, the audience can have a first impression and get a general sense of the Philosophy of her work. (George Shi)

Opening Video

Anderson's work presents the viewer with immersive, three-dimensional artistic experiences, as seen above. On the left is her piece From the Air, which is seen first from the side as one enters the room. From this perspective (bottom), the work appears as a hilly landscape, dotted with city lights across its topography, yet as we rotate to view the piece head-on (top), it becomes clear that these contours and clusters are not a landscape but rather a lit tapestry of human and animal forms. The shifted experience of the work based on one's position seems to convey the importance of perspective in perceiving the world around us. (JaneAnne Stockton)

immersive! YES! Massive!

Following the exhibition, the curators curated "THE WEATHER" based on the project order. After the first opening video, there is a large timeline presenting the development and the life journey that Anderson has been through. It is exciting to see Anderson's life journey and how she explores different disciplines and art forms. Through the show, the audience is generally immersed in the environment of carefully combined lights, images, words, and interactive equipment. Some of the music goes with the poems such as "O Superman". It is love song to mother with the sentimental touch.

Moreover, the exhibition is not only immersive but massive. The size indicates the message and ideology that Anderson wants to tell. As I mentioned before, her work is very sentimental and full of emotion. From a female perspective, she provides the audience with her life work. The messages behind these works are rich and dense. It takes us quite a while to digest the information. (George Shi)

Fluidity

Through the exhibition, one keyword that has frequently shown up in my notebook is the concept of fluidity. Through the different works, the idea of fluidity is always there. For example, at the beginning of the show, the fluidity shows up at the moving lines on the wall (I believe it is her poem). There are also works about moving birds and animals (another form of fluidity). Moreover, the brush strokes in her paintings present a fluent and liquid feeling. Her style reminds me of impressionism, but not totally. Her strokes are longer and more arbitrary. In her later work, she intensively uses different sounds to create the vibe of fluidity. (George Shi)

The image above represents a departure from the immersive spaces Anderson's other works occupy in the exhibit. Where surrounding rooms were cloaked in darkness and steeped in abstract instrumental soundscapes, this room stood as a pristine, quiet, white-walled space reminiscent of a "classic", expected art gallery exhibition. Anderson's stark contrast between her own curatorial world-building and the preconceived expectation of art displays, particularly when her audience has now become acclimated to her shadowed rooms and multidimensional performances, encouraged me to pause and reflect on the accepted kinds of space we often create for art within museum institutions like the Smithsonian. Displayed like monoliths against a sterile backdrop, we may be lulled into experiencing art as something separate from life and worldly context. This contrasting room emphasizes the attitude carried through Anderson's work that art should be lived more than idly consumed. (JaneAnne Stockton)

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