April 22, 2006

I used to write about the Seattle art scene for the Seattle Weekly and ARTnews magazine, but stopped because I didn't have much good to say. I got tired of pissing on everything.
     Most critics have about three things to say, and have to find new ways of saying those same three things over and over. The really good critics might have five things to say. (Pauline Kael had seven or eight, which made her a genius.) Two of the three things I had to say were negative. One of them was, "Contemporary art is mostly a big fraud. But it can be an interesting fraud sometimes. But mostly people just pretend to like it." That's too many buts, and I ran out of new ways to say it. One time I wrote, "If there's an actual idea anywhere in this show, I'll cut off my dick."
      I was thinking about all this today when I took my daughter to see the Maya Lin show at the Henry Art Gallery, which was a big fucking snooze.
      There was a larger than average number of people shuffling in and out of the Henry, probably because of all the publicity. So little happens in Seattle that when we get a marquee name like Maya Lin, we fall over ourselves kissing her ass. Her visit was marked by lengthy, respectful pontification in the pages of the Seattle Times, the Weekly, and the Stranger. As usual, Regina Hackett in the P-I was the most readable of the bunch. But mostly they all stuck to the official story dictated to them in the press release: poetic forms, seeing nature in new ways, something, something, etc., etc.
      The actual show turned out to be a curvy mountain thing made out of upright two-by-fours, plus assorted other landscape-shaped doodads in wire and plaster. It all goes down smooth as silk because it's rendered in the art world's default language of tasteful minimalism, instantly recognizable to any regular museum goer. You walk in and, sure enough, it all looks like art is supposed to look. The look that, with pristine white walls and expert lighting, creates an atmosphere of hushed reverence. And, like all the publicity says, it conveys, um ... respect for nature and ... stuff.
      If going to an art museum is like a test (it's a bunch of colored dots—get it?), this was one we had all the answers to. All you gotta do is stand there for a second in front of the wooden mountain thing. Has your perception of nature been deepened? Did you feel the essence a little bit? How about .... now? Okay, good! You got it. Class dismissed. Go get some post cards in the gift shop.
      My daughter was disappointed that you can't, as some of the press reported, actually climb the mountain thing. You can walk through a grid of other, smaller mountain things made of particle board in the next room. Though we were instantly scolded by the hipster security guard when my daughter tentatively reached out to touch the precious, precious Maya Lin particle board.
      Don't touch. Shut up. Revere nature. Revere May Lin. That will be ten dollars, please.
      It's perfect for the narcotized soul of Seattle. Vague, warm fuzzies for liberals wrapped in Gore-Tex. Delivered in a package that implies intellectual rigor without actually demanding any.
      And if there is an actual idea anywhere in this show I will stick my cock in a wood chipper.