The Jacobs building, named after Irwin Jacobs (the founder and chairman of Qualcomm) and his wife Joan, I suspect after a generous donation, is nothing less than perfect for exhibiting contemporary art.

What was less than perfect was the greeting I received after paying the $10 admission fee and ventured into the main salle to see the current expo by Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto. As I entered a museum guard with hands clasped together in some benevolent gesture of sincerity and authority came to my side and uttered the following, “Hi, I would like to inform you that there’s no touching allowed.” I assumed it wasn’t him he was talking about and that it was the installation he was referring to. I was right of course, but just minutes later I read in big black 3 inch vinyl letters on the wall the following curatorial statement put there to aid the viewer’s comprehension, “Neto describes his works as both an exploration and representation of the body’s landscape from within. Fascinated by skin, the largest and most sensitive organ of the human body, Neto creates works that both evoke references to skin and engage the viewer’s tactile senses. It is important to Neto that the viewer should actively interact with and physically experience his work through touch, smell, and immersion. Suggesting polyps and bodily organs, Neto’s Lycra forms, filled with the intoxicating scents of spices, envelop the viewer and become a labyrinth for the senses.” Wait a minute, did the curator Stephanie Hanor, just describe the artist’s intent and most importantly his wishes in a statement in black & white on the wall for a viewer like me to read, understand and then interact “through touch, smell, and immersion”?

I guess not.

You know, what’s annoying in all of this is when contemporary art ceases to be contemporary. What is it about contemporary artwork once it’s installed or hung on the wall that it becomes ancient and sacred, untouchable, distant, and sterile? Often times I find that contemporary art that no one recognizes or sees as such is often mistaken for something else. Meaning utilized like any other ordinary object as in the case of the Richard Serra installed just outside the museum walls as a shady seat from the blazing sun and in the case of Ernesto Neto, his work is labelled as such but the viewer is confused as to what it does and/or it’s meaning – hence the explanation on the wall and Neto’s explicit desire for people to touch his sculptures. Does either perception of contemporary art help its enlightenment? Difficult to say. Neto obviously understands that people use all of their five senses in life to make sense of their environment; touch is just one way of relating, examining, and obtaining information from something they don’t quite recognize or that is foreign to them. The irony in all of this is that there were already plenty of fingerprints and graffiti on the surface of these Lycra polyps when I arrived, in fact it was one of the first things I noticed, so how did they get there, when did they get there and how? Were these unwanted caresses illicitly applied when the museum guard’s back was turned? Shameful.

While I believe it is necessary to protect all works of art from harm and I’m certainly not minimizing this in saying that it is a concern that most museums have on occasion experienced worldwide, they are - the acts of vandalism and theft - the exception to the rule for the most part. Does it make it right, of course not but I wonder about the disconnect between a lot of contemporary art and its audience. I wonder if contemporary art is for everyone and especially those who may be visiting it for the first time in an institution that society has deemed necessary for personal, intellectual and cultural enrichment. I wonder if we're not missing some very basic elementary steps in the “education” and understanding of contemporary art, assuming that since it is art the message will prevail and the viewer will simply “get it.” I wonder if instead of telling people not to touch, we could tell people why not to touch and if in the case of Neto, what we could learn if we did. Explaining contemporary art does not take away one’s personal and unique experience or interpretation of it. Even a seasoned veteran such as myself who has the habit of looking up, down and all around an exhibition space, looking for any incongruities or circumspect objects, found for example, the Richard Wright exhibit in the space next to Neto’s difficult at best. Part of that was placement, part of that was lighting, part of that is art shouldn’t look better in a catalog than on the wall.

That reading and appreciation of art can only occur when the viewer has the full effect of what is being presented and if that presentation works. Yes art still needs a helping hand or at least some insightful planning. In the case of Neto’s installation, air conditioning and climate controlled spaces while good for the comfort of both the viewer and the art, shouldn’t have played a role. Smell obviously plays an important part of the “immersion” process in Neto’s work when he is using tumeric, clove, cumin, ginger, and pepper to fill his hanging pods. Keeping with his fascination of skin, (Neto) “in his commission for MCASD, the scent of the spices conjures visceral connotations. Exotic and enveloping, the discovery of new scents as one navigates through the veils of fabric, is akin to the intoxicating experience of smelling perfume on the surface of warm skin.” Key word warm, not cool and filtered. Smell is a powerful memory trigger and an essential component in any amorous relationship perfume like spices gets you salivating. Erotic, sensual, dirty, sweaty, (not I just ran the Boston marathon sort of sweatiness) all the crevasses of the skin, all orifices of the body become major stimulants as well as the cement that bonds any physical and emotional contact between lovers or gourmands. I may not have the best sense of smell but I had to be right up on Neto’s sculpture to get any whiff at all generated by an air current or two created in my passing. When I spent some time in Conakry, Guinea a few years back I remember going to an extremely crowded open air market shaded loosely with undulated tin sheets of metal offering relief from the sun, but it was the incredible odors emanating from the center of this market that was the most inebriating – spices, salted fish, dried beef, vegetables, fruits, handmade soaps, grease, perspiration, freshly dyed fabrics, dust, heat, flies, life. I’m almost sure Neto amongst other hopes and desires he had, wanted this same amount of intensity and sensorial experience from his installation. But the museum wouldn’t let it happen. Isn’t this just another form of vandalism in the name of protecting the interest of the piece, its aesthetic appeal, its monetary value, its collectiveness, its sacredness? Wouldn’t you want to sacrifice just a little bit of the work’s uh.. “integrity” (couldn’t and wouldn’t the artist just want to make another one) in exchange for a much richer viewer/public experience and understanding of the art before them? I would think so. I would hope so.

Imagine for just a second the impact Neto’s work would have had had the climate control been turned off in that huge space as the day heated up, the San Diego sun beating down on the red mission tiles, the air still, a bit musty, particles of cumin dust floating lazily in the filtered light, the spices cool to the touch bundled up in their taut bosoms filled with an aromatic history thousands of years old: sensual, no. That, Ms. Hanor, is total immersion.





SO what is it about boys and their toys or should I say their Choo Choo trains. You may have heard the latest art news, but LACMA is wishing on a star both figuratively and literally in the hopes of erecting a operational replica of 1943 Baldwin 2900 class steam locomotive and Liebherr LR 1750 lattice boom crane 160' tall x 140' wide by the artist Jeff Koons, as a permanent installation after the museum’s current renovation is finished and designed by the architect Renzo Piano. According to LA Times staff writer Diane Haithman, “the yet-to-be-created work, which would be visible for miles, would turn its wheels, whistle and belch steam three times a day.” She goes on to say, “Director Michael Govan said LACMA had received a grant from the Annenberg Foundation to explore placing the work, to be called Train, on its grounds.” Apparently the grant to study the feasibility of placing Koon’s Train was in excess of 1 million dollars. Haithman quotes Koons as saying “that placing the artwork at the center of the LACMA campus would create a sort of town square for L.A., with the train essentially serving the purpose of a small-town clock tower. He envisions the train going through its performance at noon, 3 p.m. and 6 p.m.”

If you want to know what I think, I think it’s pretty cool – why not. It seems to fit perfectly with Koon’s iconoclastic and eccentric personality and “mirabolant” career and is certainly in line with other major outdoor installations he’s produced and goes nicely it seems with LACMA’s current ambitions. So what does the MCASD have to show for its ambitions? A Richard Serra sculpture. Not bad you say and normally I would agree with you if it was any number of other extraordinary works by Serra, I would of even settled for a Torqued Ellipses or Tilted Arc, anything other than the “plop plop fizz fizz” entitled Santa Fe Depot recently installed under the arcade at the Santa Fe Depot station, just outside the doors of the newly renovated MCASD annex. Listen, can we just this once all agree that not everything that comes out of an artist’s mind or studio is the stuff of pure genie – even for Richard Serra. Can we all agree that even sometimes the great ones, and certainly Serra is one, “make an error in judgement” if you will? The goal here is not to criticize the artist or his career but the artwork.

Santa Fe Depot is for this viewer, let’s just say, extremely boring, complacent, stagnant, and unimaginable taking up a whole lot of dynamic space that any number of artists –even local San Diego artists- could have transformed into a thing of beauty. Man, what was everyone thinking? Go see for yourself, you’ll find six blocks of forged weatherproof steel each having the exact dimensions of 52” x 58” x 64” and each weighing 25 tons. Not that it matters or that you could tell unless you were that concerned as to what these blocks were doing here in the first place. Curiosity is not one of the reactions the sculpture incites within oneself when experiencing this installation as its mere presence seems almost apologetic, almost embarrassed for taking up too much space, over compensating in a very non-clever way, the concept has been drained out of the conceptualization, it is merely ballast for a very unsteady mission and journey. Unfortunately that journey ended here in San Diego no matter how much the artist wants us to “think” about these blocks. Robert Pincus the art critic for the San Diego Union Tribune writes in his article, “welding and carving aren't part of Serra's sculptural vocabulary. The block arrives straight from the foundry. The reality of their making matters. What you see matches what you get. This is part of the conceptual integrity of his art. As massive as Serra's sculptures are, they're ignited by concept. But they're just as concerned with how you experience them. He relishes the way these blocks, placed as they are, provoke a potential viewer to wonder: What are they doing here? How do I look at them? How do they relate to this site?” Trust me, people aren’t going to ponder these blocks in this way because it is exactly the reason why they don’t relate is that they don’t relate to people’s very complicated, ambitious, multi-tasking, internet connected, cell phone ringing, Hummer driving, Wal Mart shopping, American Idol lives that need constant stimulation and entertainment. Santa Fe Depot does not entertain, it is not necessarily the fault of the work but there is nothing the least bit poetic or melodic in this work to sooth the savage beast in all of us. It does nothing to slow us down or intrigue us and no amount of “arrangement in two axes, mirroring the idea that there are train tracks running both directions” or that “each block is aligned and turned differently, so looking down the row creates a rising and falling set of rectangles and planes” is going to make it better. There is simply no room under this arcade with matching inlaid bricks of the same color underneath, that do nothing more than absorb these forms into the ground instead of projecting them upward, levitating them in some magical act of weightlessness, defying gravity and floating effortlessly like two barges passing in the night. Please don’t be fooled, these pieces cannot support the artistic weight or local history they must bear. There is simply no room in this setting for minimalist, post-minimalist or post post minimalist work as there is no room in our lives for something that is not treacherous, deadly, chaotic, and foreseeable.

It is the small things in life that count so they say, trouver du bonheur as the French would say and I believe the Surrealists understood that better than anyone. There are plenty of Surrealistic moments in everyday life that give us pause and a huge grin on our faces – you just have to be open to them and realize some are more personalized than others. Case in point, writing this article. One of these moments occurred when I was in the process of scouring the net for what other people had to say about Richard Serra’s sculpture and the tiny little typo that made its way into an article. I’ve already referenced the article above and you can find it here. Look closely though, under the heading On View, you’ll find written Santa “De” Depot instead of Santa “Fe” Depot. It’s no big deal right and I concur, except I was able to find my bonheur in that little mis-type. In French, the word dés or les dés means dice. And since I’m a strong believer that everything happens for a reason – even Santa Fe Depot – and since grammatically speaking you normally do not pronounce the "s" in dés, it made me realize what an apt ending this was to a crap shoot the museum took in installing this piece.

Kevin Freitas