Alefa Desenata

 

 

 

There’s Dax.

Dax’s mom, actually.

I’m telling this story to a group visiting from Europe, in front of Andy’s Soup Cans.

We’ve already gone over how Andy really thought about, or rather, maybe didn’t ‘think about’ but… brought forth the very problematic of the status of the image to bear on the idea of what constitutes art. We’ve touched on multiplication and dissemination, how artists after the 50’s and for sure in the 60’s could not ignore the acceleration of the dissemination of the images, not to mention the systems and supports where these images are disseminated. Television, advertising, posters, brochures. All this stuff, I have babbled on (ehem, lectured) brought forth an extended reflection, a reflective practice on the very nature of the image, and thus artwork, and thus the artist. We’ve alo already touched on the notion of the factory, the artist as a machine, the expectations of the audience, the proliferation of museums and the changing landscape of the consumption of art. I’ve even told my European group how Andy, at some point, among many other things he’s said that have fortunately or unfortunately seeped into popular culture and our linguo, at some point intimated that the museums of tomorrow, that is, for us, today, were going to be like supermarkets. Everyone had even kind of giggled and I’d added: although you might not see it at this point (it was late afternoon), it’s not really untrue. It gets much worse than in museums sometimes in here. That, had gotten a real good and loud laugh…

I’d set them up the whole time though, for the story of Dax. And so I started on Dax.

Dax’s mom, that is.

I tell them that I’d like to share a really funny anecdote that is quite revealing, not only about what we’re talking about, but in terms of everything that has happened in culture, art, museums, and more… And a perfect ending not only to the talk about Andy and the Soup Cans, but our overall lecture, our world, our culture, our, clear the throat, selves…

And I tell them the story, the anecdote, with Dax’s mom, starring Dax himself…

So: it was several months back when on the sixth floor galleries, as I was walking back from another lecture, I heard this woman calling me from behind, and I’m not sure who it is even after she says her name and then says, I came to your family program a couple of weeks ago, here, a few weeks ago… She notices I’m still smiling and pleasant but also with that look of a person not recognizing the person who is speaking to them.

Dax’s mom, she says finally, Dax, you remember Dax?

Dax, yes, I holler, Dax, sure, four year-old Dax! Dax’s mom, how are you?

Fine fine, she says, a little more comforted that I remember her son and by extension, herself. I’m glad I saw you. I want to tell you something really funny. You’ll be real proud of Dax.

I’m thinking, wow, what could this be, even though I don’t really want to stay or listen or, maybe, it’ll be true, and besides, I don’t have a choice, I’ll listen, let’s…

And so she tells of how the other day, “we were in the supermarket, and we’re minding our business, kind of going through the aisles, nothing weird or special, and then I notice Dax transfixed by some woman picking up items from the shelves. I see him all looking at her and I’m wondering why he’s so fixated,” she says, “and then I see him run to her.”

“You know what was happening,” she asks.

“No,” I say, “what.”

Well, she says, it turns out that Dax ran to this woman who was taking Campbell’s soup cans from the shelf and he started screaming, yelling at her insistently, he said to her, “No, you can’t touch those, you can’t touch those. Those are the Soup Cans, those are Andy’s soup cans, you can’t touch those!”

She pauses. Isn’t that funny, she asks.

That’s too much, I say, really, that’s great.

I thought you’d enjoy it, she says.

So then I pause and then tell my group that I told Dax’s mom it was good seeing her and that we then parted but then I pause again and say, this is what I wanted to leave you with. That the story Dax’s mom told me that day wasn’t just so cute and funny, which it was, but it was much more, much much more. That in fact, linking it to all that we’ve talked about up to now, and thinking back to what I just told you about Andy and his comment on museums becoming supermarkets… Andy, I say, was wrong (once again), Andy was wrong: it wasn’t that museums were going to be like supermarkets, or that museums are like supermarkets, it’s more that supermarkets were going to be the art museums! It’s that the supermarket has turned into the art museum! Today, the tomorrow of yesterday!

So… Imagine, I carry on while everyone has a wide smile and is truly getting, I think, my very, ehem subtle point, about the place of art and culture and the erasure of borders between the various ailes and spaces: think, I’m almost preaching to them now, of the meaning of art, the meaning of exhibitions. Think, I go on preaching-wise, of the nature and meaning of art, of our experiences. It’s a hilarious story yes, but also a great and revealing one. A revealing one and a troubling one and a despairing one and a… well, I finish, I’ll let you ponder it all, and let you mull over and imagine – all that it reveals… It’s the supermarket, that has turned into the museum, and not the other way around…

A big applause from the crowd and one of the men even offered to take me out buy me ‘ein Bier!’

But I have to refuse. Thanks, I say, but I can’t accept that. I have things to do after all, chores and work ahead. Thank you I say again, it was a pleasure, but I have to get going. I have places to go, things to do. I wave and smile and walk away. Work and things to do, I whisper to myself, in the museum… and then some shopping, grocery shopping to do, in the other… the other museum…

 That’s an easy one to figure out.

The programs in the galleries and the schools and the afterschool joints around the city all give them different names. Even I myself did that: gave the various programs different names, that is. Meet the Met, Closer Look, Gallery Chat. Those were the existing ones. Stuff I came up with: Wider Angles, Double Exposures, MoMA Outdoors. Whatever. Point is: design, create, implement, lead and perform: you do it under the existing aegis – or else there would be no way to actually do anything – unless you actually invented and installed the whole thing. In truth, to me, each is a questival, and together, they form the Questivals: a grand compendium of involvement in various forms of art, engagement at various levels, to various degrees, with changing levels of interest and intensity: where a transdisciplinary approach, through discussion and creations, across the world geographically and temporally, allows the acquisition of knowledge and skills, both general, and in focused arenas (literacy, say, or drawing).

Components:

Kids are a necessity. Adults can be there too. Their presence is, or can be, plenty fruitful – even though sometimes it’s hard to reign them in. (As in: during a program, a question is posed; parent subsequently leans over to three year-old and whispers: cubism, tell him cubism.) But the kids – age-range: 1-18 – are a necessity.

Questivals aren’t about having the answers. It’s about exploration and the discovery of the process of creation, the process of perception, the meaning and relevance of activities, and ultimately, yep, life.

So, component: you got the kids, you got the parents, and you got stuff you explore: in the galleries of the museums, it’s works, labeled generously, art. In the afterschool settings of my earlier days in the hood, it might be walking out and checking out the folks and interviewing them and then getting back in and watching a film and then something else.

Questivals are about a tone:

Good morning everyone! How’s everyone doing? Glad to hear it! – that’s for the kids.

Yo yo everybody, watta watta – teens then. (No cliché, true)

It’s about setting up the program and bringing in connections between works, mediums, endeavors, fields.

It’s about conceptual illustration, thinking, illumination, insight, through various memorable and personable modalities.

 

An example: the sculptural collage: I would, before a program, assemble a bunch of different things, anything, straws, cups, images, newspapers, mags, whatever, put them up on a table, and then organize several groups looking at this non-sensical object from multiple vantage points – wherever they were sitting. Exercise would have them describe the actual objects – a great practice for their literacy skills – and then we have fun talking about how everyone actually saw different things based on a number of different factors: the scale of the objects, how something was hiding something else etc… Point was: literacy skills, fun, and some forays into perspective and even Cubism.

Then… then, on one of these occasions, a five year old got up and said: what you see depends on where you sit.

What you see, he said, depends on where you sit!

O truest of maxims O O. O enlightened child of five O. Bravo, O O! Amazing. His parents were agog. Everyone was, like, oooo. And then, of course, we talked about perspective, angles, tradition and innovation in painting, but also: the media, news, life and knowledge. We then got up and for fun, we did the freeze frame: a person freezes, and people examine that person from multiple angles, distances, and try to think about the decisions they would have to undertake if they were to make a portrait of that person. Concept illustration to the maxz…

Yo yo, someone said, that was whack. And he meant it well!

The questivals, are without end…