Theory NOW

RSS Feed Homepage

Articles: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

958
2010-07-13 21:52:00
Shortly before his death in 1922, Marcel Proust published the fourth volume of his ultimately seven volume masterwork, In Search of Lost Time.(1) Entitled Sodom and Gomorrah, the opening section of this volume includes what has been called “the longest sentence in French literature.”(2) At 958 words, Proust’s sentence unspools a stream of consciousness that concerns, among other things, racism and persecution (of Jews blatantly and homosexuals subliminally), hypocrisy and misapprehension of “love.” In its robust linearity, Proust’s mammoth sentence embodies concepts of language as a physical trajectory of words, a literal journey to “meanings.” As a sentence, Proust’s words, though freed within our intellectual cognition, move inexorably to a conclusion. That is to say, we have an inherent expectation of meaning as a given when we read sentences.Proust’s rambling line of words engaged my curiosity of late because it figured (and may still figure) in a concep...

Mini-Skirt Medici
2010-06-29 21:34:00
In Patrons and Painters, Francis Haskell writes that the “history of Venetian art patronage in the eighteenth century is largely the history of the various forces which moulded (sic) aristocratic tastes at different periods” and that those aristocrats projected their “tastes” through their “choice of artists, subjects and styles.”(1) We are far removed from those Venetian tastes but the influences of wealth, power and social position upon art making remain constant in the 21st Century. As “social relations” between both “clients” and “artists,” art patronage has steadfast continuity today in a variety of ways, including corporate sponsorships, art dealers, art museum directors and board members. To clarify, “art patronage” is the support of artists and/or artisans by patrons either through the patron’s social position or with financial incentives, most often as commissioned work; often a patron functions as “client” when specific works are desire...
More About: Skirt , Mini

R.I.P. Sigmar Polke
2010-06-15 19:55:00
Upon returning from vacation, I learned the sad news that Sigmar Polke had died; he lost his battle with cancer last Friday. He was 69.History has been good to Polke as his acceptance within the fine art canon found sustained impact at the end of the 20th Century. I teach his work yearly and I believe Polke's genius will continue to resonate as these younger artists discover him. In his memory, I reprint a paragraph from a 2006 post on "Art Practice of the 1960s":But throughout the 1960’s it would be the German, Sigmar Polke, who would fully exploit and develop the idea of transgressive, codified citations of commodity culture. Often utilizing the “ben-day” dot pattern of industrial reproduction, he would then negate this commercial representation technique through his manual execution, in an ironic snubbing of Duchamp’s “detachment.” Even more brilliantly, he stretched “found” printed fabrics (bed-spreads and sheets) as his “canvas,” subversively juxtaposi...

Scatter Shots
2010-05-28 19:04:00
The May Art in America was rife with polemic – but before I begin my “Scatter-shot” of critiques, let me say, “Thank You, Peter Plagens!’ for driving another nail into the Whitney Biennial’s dispirited coffin. His angular wit and crisply tart evaluations of this year’s crop was dead-on. I can only add that Tauba Auerbach must also have gleaned a few ideas from Simon Hantaï’s pliage work of 1960 – everything old IS new again.First off, Pepe Karmel’s presumptive authority on Yves Klein must be taken to task. True, Klein’s “IKB” monochromes do reign as “classically modernist paintings” but are they his “most significant achievement?” I hardly think so, given Klein’s prophetic and surgical attack on the art “object.” In addition to directing the pioneering “body art” of his Anthropometries, and regardless of what Karmel opines about how critics misrepresent Klein as a “prophet of postmodernism,” Klein did introduce early concepts of ...
More About: Shots

The Presence of Being
2010-05-22 15:00:00
Awesome in scope and intention, Marina Abramović’s “performance retrospective” (“The Artist Is Present”) at the Museum of Modern Art is yet another salvo in her battle for a sanctified position in performance art history. That performance art is firmly in place in the Modernist (and postmodernist) canon is not at stake; from Dada to Mathew Barney, the strategy of artists using their physical presence and temporal duration to make art is exhaustively recorded, critiqued and validated. What is at stake, as Abramović well knows, is the issue of whether time-based, ephemeral performance “artworks,” whose very essence evolved from a de rigueur engagement with immediacy and confrontation, can be re-inscribed via hegemonic curatorial practices as “permanent” re-creations in the archives of museum culture.Performance art has been mostly non-archival and temporary, reliant upon the memory of eye-witnesses coupled with reproductions of spotty quality. Granted, video and ...
More About: Presence

Degrees of Perfection
2010-05-12 20:11:00
On learning about Dallas Braden pitching a “perfect game” last Sunday, I realized I had engaged two degrees of perfection within a day. The Oakland Athletics won their game against the Tampa Bay Rays with 26-year-old Braden retiring 27 Tampa Bay players, allowing no runs, and this with his grandmother in the stands (on Mother's Day, no less) witnessing his achievement.I am not a real sports fan but I can understand the relevance of this kind of triumph; only 19 “perfect games” have been recorded in Major League baseball. Specifically, a “perfect game” is when the pitcher allows no player from the opposing team to get to base; no hits or “walks,” 27 players shut down.Earlier on Sunday, before hearing the news of Braden’s accomplishment, I was awaiting a dim sum table with a friend who is a psychologist and former Catholic. We were talking art theory and since he knows Catholicism, I brought up Aquinas as our topics concerned various definitions of art. I refere...

All About Yves!
2010-05-08 03:54:00
After the better part of a year dealing with shows fawning over the latest "SCA" group, or freting over maligned museums forcing "postminimalism" down our throats, finally an American institution gets it right. The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden will launch a major retrospective of Yves Klein, the hugely influential but less known French pioneer of conceptualism, performance, fire and "painted nudes." Opening officially on May 20, festivities are already underway as a "social media material archive" drops various Klein ephemera, nostalgia, radio interviews, secret letters and "Tweeted" manifestos. Yes, you can now follow both Marcel Duchamp and Yves Klein on Twitter. We await only some young, healthy models to drench themselves in "IKB" and take to 7th Street as Anthropometries!

Critical Fragments: Circularity
2010-04-23 14:40:00
"Artists 'make meaning' to the extent that they can articulate that same context that provides, and limits, meaning."(1) Citing his oft-quoted and influential essay from 1969, Art After Philosophy, Joseph Kosuth, in his more recent The Making of Meaning, alludes to his attempt at explaining the tautological foundations of art and entrenched definitions of art as flawed at the very least. Now engaged in his new pursuit that has to do with the “demystification and restoration of meaning,” Kosuth is understandably wiser from both vantage points of chronology and art world success. Still, we remain unconvinced that the underlying conveyance of that meaning, the structure of language is sound and, like a frustrated carpenter who can't make a joint, we are saddled with doubt. If the conveyance of meaning in art relies on that “discourse” provided through text, speech and writing then are we not back at the same post-structuralist position, like the poor worker who can only b...

Artifice and Approximation
2010-04-16 19:27:00
To consider the work of Spencer Finch is to witness an artist relating to the beauty and complexity of the natural world while maintaining an allegiance to contemporary art practices. Finch’s installations involve his approximations of perceived natural phenomena and are simultaneously gorgeous and make-shift. They somehow engage us with equal parts poetry and artifice, sometimes referencing 19th Century notions of representation, or molecular structure, or the tenuous relationship of memory and geography, even as the materials Finch uses to create his installations reveal an artist clearly enamored of process and keenly in love with the quotidian.Take for example, Sunlight in an Empty Room (Passing Cloud for Emily Dickinson, Amherst, MA, August 28, 2004). In what is arguably his best-known installation, Finch “ostensibly re-creates the exact color of sunlight in Emily Dickinson’s backyard” with 100 fluorescents, blue gel filters, monofilament and clothespins.(1) Withou...

Howlings In Favour of Malcolm
2010-04-10 15:13:00
Once upon a time, when pop music was bland, boring and ruled by the corporate suits, a gang of scruffy London hooligans emerged on the scene, producing a series of scandalous, hilarious, ultimately tragic vignettes and the world of “rock and roll” was never quite the same. Thursday, their self-described impresario, Malcolm McLaren died of cancer, prompting his former lead vocalist in said scruffians to ask us to remember McLaren as an “entertainer.”Certainly, McLaren was that and more. When he introduced John Lydon to Steve Jones, Paul Cook and Glen Matlock, put them in ripped shirts and trousers and called them Sex Pistols (his clothing shop at the time was named “SEX”) a good time was guaranteed for all. McLaren probably didn’t count on his young charges actually learning how to play their instruments and “punk rock,” as it came to be known, was more sub-cultural phenomenon in Great Britain than it ever became in the United States. Having to do more with the ...

Kittens Under Pews
2010-04-06 18:44:00
Both of these New York Times writers assume that the practitioners of “squeaky-clean, well-made, intellectually decorous takes on that unruly early ’70s mix of Conceptual, Process, Performance, installation and language-based art that is most associated with the label Post-Minimalism” are actually producing valid, well-intentioned expansions of the afore-mentioned. Such is clearly not the case with the shallow, derivative work of Gabriel Orozco, Urs Fischer and Tino Sehgal that Roberta Smith mentions. (Roni Horn gets a “pass” for the moment.) Kitty Kraus and Latifa Echakhch, meanwhile, are recycling ideas from Carl Andre, Richard Serra and Felix Gonzalez-Torres. (I think Lucas Knipscher bears further watching.)There would be a lot more to complain about if there were a decided curatorial shift toward well-conceived, historically relevant exhibitions of this “Post-Minimalism.” However, those museums charged with privileging the various “takes on that unruly early...
More About: Kittens

Work or Recreation?
2010-03-23 20:13:00
The discourse around “reperformance” is heating up again, partially because of the Museum of Modern Art’s current Marina Abramović show (The Artist Is Present) in which several of Marina’s seminal performance art pieces are recreated by other performers. Perhaps not coincidentally, MoMA has also been running a series of seminars and panels on performance art and how this once “uncategorizable” and often ephemeral art form can be ushered into the 21st Century. The most recent MoMA workshop drew a large crowd (including “old school” performance art luminaries Joan Jonas and Abramović, plus “youngsters” like Terence Koh, Tino Sehgal and Tehching Hsieh) and the sometimes heated interchange yielded some intriguing positions.On the one hand, Abramovic, in partnership with curators Nancy Spector for 2005’s Seven Easy Pieces and currently working with MoMA’s Klaus Biesenbach, presents her case for the necessity of “reperformance” as a way of locking in its wa...
More About: Work , Recreation

Watch The Paint!
2010-03-11 20:19:00
A few weeks ago I gave a gallery talk at the Hirshhorn Museum on Allen Ruppersberg’s As the Crow Flies / How I Miss the Avant-garde. I hustled down to the Hirshhorn early because I wanted the chance to find out if Al’s piece could still be handled by the public. When originally shown at the 2008 Armory show, the piece, composed of several multi-colored, laminated posters with perforated holes along their top edge, was able to be handled by viewers and re-arranged on the wall-mounted L-hooks that accompany the piece.The museum guard in the gallery wasn’t sure whether it could be handled since there was no text that explained that it could. I explained to him that it was originally intended to for public interaction. I then called Ryan Hill, the Hirsh’s curatorial research associate and witty Pop provocateur, and he clarified that Al’s piece was now installed according to the curators' decision and could not be handled.When the audience for my talk arrived, Ryan and I e...
More About: Watch

Tempo Rubato
2010-03-05 18:48:00
In celebration of the 200th anniversary of Fryderyk Chopin’s birth, a number of CD’s came out this year, one of which I promptly ordered and am currently enjoying. A collection of previously unreleased recordings from 1959 and 1967, Argerich Plays Chopin spotlights the great Martha Argerich’s earliest recordings. Ranging from “Ballade No. 1 in G minor, Op. 23” (when Martha was 18-years-old) to a concert performance of “Piano Sonata No. 3 in B minor, Op. 58” (at 25), these are rare glimpses of an impressively brilliant talent already in full-bloom; at 16 she had won both the Geneva International Music Competition and the Ferruccio Busoni International Competition..Particularly impressive (or controversial depending on whose critique you prefer) is Martha’s use of tempo rubato, the slight tempo variances of a musical composition in the interpretation of a performer by shortening or lengthening a note here or there. Classical music is quite often played in rubato an...

Context 101
2010-02-23 00:08:00
I was alerted to a new study undertaken by a university psychologist that purports to suggest that “Context May Diminish Art Appreciation.” 172 students were asked to look at selected works of art in various styles (Impressionism, Renaissance, Dada and Outsider) and then rate “how much they liked the work.” Half of the group was also given some “contextual information” consisting of a definition of the styles of art represented, along with short histories of the styles’ origins and “information on the goals of the artists who worked in that style.”(1)Before I get to the psychologist’s findings, let me clarify a few things about context in relation to how we perceive art. Ever since Duchamp set a urinal, snow shovel, coat-rack, etc. within the confines of a gallery nearly 100 years ago, we have been wrestling with context in the visual arts. Duchamp’s actions caused us to consider how a gallery (or museum) setting affects our definition of what is or isn’t...

Straight Air
2010-02-18 12:50:00
The 2010 Winter Olympics has become a welcome treat, wildly distracting us from a harsh winter with chock-a-block thrills and spills. Short track has to be one of the more unpredictable, adrenalin-rush sports; it was fun watching the Koreans "x" themselves out of the final heat allowing Apolo and J.R. to medal. And the multiple crashes by the downhill women, who were all amazingly unhurt after hurtling 80 miles an hour down the hard-packed tundra, showed us their genuine toughness.Last night I managed to watch the halfpipe finals and saw Shaun White and Scotty Lago clean up. It, too, was a brutal event as that edgy Japanese snowboarder Kazuhiro Kokubo did a faceplant and bloodied his upper lip.Later on, my old pal @mdusham tweeted "art world needs a 'straight air' requisite like snowboarders: do 1 piece that's pure in concept/technique."I immediately understood his reasoning. In halfpipe judging, the snowboarder must demonstrate at least one straight line jump off the wall or "...

Bad Boys? Whatcha Gonna Do?
2010-02-12 17:18:00
Roberta Smith gets it mostly right in yesterday’s New York Times piece on the “Bad Boys” of art. Her criticism of art world snugglies like Damien Hirst and Gelitin is impressively frank (“In the beginning he [Hirst] conducted himself with intelligence or at least inclusive cheer. Not so much these days.”) and funny (“It’s better when Gelitin can see what it’s doing, and we can’t.”). Among the few (two?) Ms. Smith “likes” I think there may be promise for Leonardo Drew. Although I have not seen the show, the work pictured above reveals an incisive and “muscular” exploration of site specificity and portends good work to come.That said, the other “boys” get a fair spanking from Ms. Smith. I agree that the surface fascination with tendencies of rebellion and edginess have clouded the critical assessments of Banks Violette and Sterling Ruby. Our art world denizens seem to have limited hindsight when it comes to precedent and also appear blind to talent t...

Power Outage
2010-02-11 02:16:00
The total loss of electrically-generated power experienced by millions during the Blizzard of 2010 has revealed a simple fact about 21st Century humans: we rely exclusively on media-driven technology - the Internet, social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, broadcast and cable television - to construct our social identities.Debord was right. He predicted over 40 years ago that not only would our interpersonal relationships become dependent upon our ready and casual use of images, i.e., the spectacular, but that our understanding and extension of Enlightenment ideas about the “Self” would morph into a malignant reliance on image-gadgetry, jpegs and downloads to construct our individual “lives.”With the loss of basic power that occurred this week throughout the Northeastern United States, total separation from favored and addictive web sites, media outlets and laptops resulted in a fear of self-awareness. Beings who had avoided one-to-one connections with other huma...
More About: Power

Another Kind of Machine
2010-02-08 23:38:00
“A menu of certain favorite artists has gotten expensive because they have been promoted. This is my opinion and it has very little to do very often with how important they are. […] If you’ve got an artist…like there’s a huge supply, it permits…promotion of the artist, you can have exhibitions everywhere and it’s worth people’s while to promote it. Some of the stuff that’s consequential doesn’t get shown because it isn’t trendy and why it isn’t trendy I’ve just explained: basically, it isn’t worth anyone’s while to make it trendy.”- Richard Feigen, NYC art dealer.“An all-consuming art market has become the dictator of taste. It’s largely turned into a game between a few artists and the promotional machine that surrounds them.”- Robert Hughes in “The Mona Lisa Curse.”
More About: Machine

Le Deluge
2010-02-02 21:30:00
Artist Michael Landy has launched a project whereby artists submit artworks to be “trashed” in a vast, glass-walled container. Notable names so far include Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin and Gillian Wearing - all have donated works to be unceremoniously dumped into Michael’s bin.(1)Notably missing from this account of the project is any reference to John Baldessari’s 1970 Cremation Project. Baldessari decided all of his earlier work needed to be destroyed so he hired a crematorium to assist him with incinerating the lot.Landy apparently did an earlier destruction piece called Break Down where he destroyed all of his possessions (car, clothing, personal items). Somewhat different than Art Bin, the earlier work obviously concerned consumerism and our addiction to amassing products. If we assume that Art Bin is about artworks that artists consider “failures” it seems to be more about definitions than destruction. Thus, it begs the question as to “why” the artists conside...

In It To Win It
2010-01-28 21:22:00
News that NYC art dealer Jeffrey Deitch would be assuming the helm over at LA’s beleaguered MOCA seems to have been mostly accepted by now in the Art World. Some, however, have wondered whether there might be a genuine conflict of interest given that Deitch’s power in selecting artists and/or curators for future MOCA shows will certainly provoke cynicism and cries of impropriety. Eli Broad attempted a mild pooh-poohing of that suspicion, apparently believing that we only need to take his word for it:“In announcing the selection, Mr. Broad sought to distinguish Mr. Deitch from other commercial gallery owners. ‘He’s hardly a dealer like Larry Gagosian,’ he said, referring to the gallery owner widely considered one of the most successful in the world. ‘Jeffrey’s done national and international exhibitions. It was always clear he was never in it just for the money.’”(1)But it might be a nice side benefit, yes? I can’t help recalling what my old friend Ananda Coom...

Truitt & A Pithy Quibble
2009-12-17 21:24:00
Without a doubt, the current Anne Truitt retrospective (?Perception and Reflection? at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden to Jan. 3, 2010) will help solidify her reputation as a unique individualist who explored color within a ?minimalist? framework. Truitt was often overshadowed by the dominant males of Minimal Art ? Donald Judd, Tony Smith, Robert Morris and Carl Andre ? and her work has been critically underserved to date. Even with Clement Greenberg solidly in her corner, Truitt?s monolithic wooden sculptures are not generally recognized as ?key? works among the Minimalist canon. That may change with this retrospective?s exhaustive survey of her work. Truitt?s signature wood sculptures abound in this show and their assertion of form yielding to color is powerfully represented here. A significant number of critics lump Truitt in with the ?Washington Color School? instead of calling her a minimalist. Their theoretical connection of Truitt to Morris Louis and Ken Nolan...

Bellwether (or not)
2009-12-10 18:33:00
Hans Haacke?s work has investigated the extent to which cultural production intersects with political necessity. As the saying goes, ?All art is political,? but only if we provide the exterior context needed to establish the relevance of a work?s politics. Without a contextual ?reading? an artwork?s political intent may remain obscured or ?cloudy.? Moreover, the supplemental political context of particular works of art begin to lose their impact and wane over the years, as the prevailing conditions or ?climate? of their original insertion into the social order suffer the ?fog? of the past.Such is the case with many of Haacke?s works. How important are Reaganomics to us today? Does the average Westerner truly ?understand? the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Similarly, our disdain for slumlords is off-set by our comprehension that the economic realities of this country are built on ?opportunity.? Thus, we realize that the rich can dabble in the arts and also indulge in baser aspe...

Critical Fragments: Narrative
2009-12-01 21:37:00
?[?] the image no longer contains the terms of its past ? understood as the terms of the problem to which it is seen to be a response. Rather, both the past and the problem are felt to reside outside it, and access to them can only be achieved by a long chain of explanation which characteristically takes the form of narrative.?(1) Rosalind Krauss wrote these words about Frank Stella and his decision to work in series in 1971. By that time Stella?s best work was possibly behind him as he abandoned his flat series to move into shaped canvasses and the ?Protractor? series. Krauss?s focus on Stella?s paintings became a measure of how the then-as-yet-unnamed ?postmodern? painting might proceed and how it would deal with its position in art history. Her visionary grasp of the simple fact that any ?meaning? attributed to a work of art comes from ?outside it? is doubly impressive in retrospect. Moreover, her thoughts prompt further reflection concerning another take on the idea of ?nar...

At Stake
2009-11-15 01:16:00
In 1977 I set some small wood stakes in the front yard of the house I rented on Mariposa Street near downtown Los Angeles and stretched yellow twine between them, forming two large X?s on either side of the walkway leading up to our front door. The piece was called I Stake A Claim In LA and had the supplemental component of a want-ad I ran in the Los Angeles Times for the duration of the week the piece existed.As initial announcement of my arrival in Los Angeles, the stake piece served as my address of Southern California conceptual art and my figurative insertion into its history. Here in the city of John Baldessari, Ed Ruscha, Chris Burden, Robert Irwin, Billy Al Bengston and Ed Keinholz, I felt there might be possibilities to explore. What was "at stake? in LA was my cross-country move from St. Louis and my intellectual engagement with those forces of time-based, informational, ephemeral, process-driven work emanating from LA's concrete wasteland of movie stars and endless ca...

Close(r)
2009-11-07 16:56:00
?Hello,I am new to art and the theory of art and reading your Theory Now blog is a big help. I'm also reading Tom Wolfe's ?The Painted Word? and Kirk Varnedoe's ?Pictures of Nothing.? Both of these books are interesting and illuminating. I recently watched a documentary about Chuck Close , which was fantastic. I have a question for you, regarding a comment Chuck Close made in the film. He said Andy Warhol, Philip Pearlstein and Alex Katz ?kicked the door open for the kind of intelligent figuration...? What does he mean by ?intelligent figuration?? It sounds impressive and interesting, but what does it mean? ?Intelligent figuration.?Thank you for your time.Cheers,Curtis [D. Thomson]?Hello Curtis,Many thanks for your kind words and welcome to my blog. I want to respond to your query on ?intelligent figuration? in this post. I have done this before and it might initiate further discussion on the topic with other readers.I thought about your question related to Chuck Close an...

Remember the 5th
2009-11-05 16:25:00
"Protesters calling for Parliamentary reform in the wake of the MPs? expenses scandal are using Guy Fawkes day today to float an effigy up the Thames to the Houses of Parliament.The campaigners are setting off from an East London wharf pulling a 10ft high duck house to dock at the Palace of Westminster while they claim MPs are busy plotting to overturn Sir Christopher Kelly?s recommendations on claiming for mortgages and employing relatives."Source: East London Advertiser; 05 November 2009.

Critic Wags the Dog
2009-10-20 19:21:00
In a rather superficial critique of conceptual art, Denis Dutton cites Damien Hirst in his recent New York Times op-ed piece and uses Hirst?s medicine cabinets to draw a distinction between the ?technical skill? of representational art and the ?lack of craftsmanship? in contemporary conceptual art. The implication being that conceptual art that demonstrates little more than ?skill in playing inventively with ideas? has less aesthetic ?value? than a traditional art of ?painstakingly developed artistic technique.?(1) Dutton bemoans the continued adulation of ?conceptual artists? like Hirst and was dreading an Oct. 16th Christie?s sale of ?Post-War and Contemporary Art? that featured Hirst?s medicine cabinet on the auctioneer?s block.Glancing through the various lots that were sold last week-end at Christie?s yielded interesting bits of news: several Richard Prince ?photos? (appropriated) did not sell; while Vanessa Beecroft is still getting $17,000 USD for her ancient ?VB-35? soft-co...

1 or 2 Images
2009-10-16 19:18:00
"Most artists only have one or two good images in them. Maybe four. My images come from a process - they are created by the process. The images are unimportant - the process is.Unfortunately, artists who become successful at it try to make it a career - this means that their images eventually degrade, or weaken. Like Stella. Or Kosuth. Or Bob Morris. Find some other way to survive - teach - play music - but after the best images come, it's time to quit."Notebook entry on 12/25/08.
More About: Images

Curatorial Missteps
2009-10-07 15:04:00
Poor judgment in curatorial practice abounds but occasionally an error in curatorial decision-making becomes so glaringly obvious that it must be pointed out so that other curators can avoid the same mistake. Such is the case with the Chicago Art Institute?s poor choice of situating Bruce Nauman?s ?Clown Torture? video installation 20 feet from Robert Ryman?s ?The Elliott Room (Charter Series)? and sharing Gallery 295B in the Modern Wing.The Rymans are gorgeous ?oils? in his characteristic fetish whites on anodized aluminum panels, some as large as eight feet. The installation itself is clearly about one?s perceptual encounter with the panels; experiencing the pristine and exacting beauty of minimal art. Presumably a viewer could spend some quality time with these panels as the Art Institute has thoughtfully provided a large bench squarely in the center of the Ryman room.This is where I seated myself in a recent visit to the Art Institute, to commune a bit with the Rymans. Howev...