Occasionally, one discovers an artwork for which there are no words to
immediately explain the experience. This is the case with “Hearsay
of the Soul”—filmmaker’s Werner Herzog’s video installation at the
2012 Whitney Biennal. So much of the touted Biennal felt unclear-- somewhat
muddy curation that, at the very least, exists as a confusing representation of
art’s current state of affairs, in terms, for example, of the Biennal's overall aesthetic cohesion. However, there are exceptions to this complaint. Entering
Herzog’s space is an arresting experience. The elements are simple:
a series of five projectors acting in concert, showing magnified
slides of landscape etchings by 17th century Dutch artist
Hercules Segers—for Herzog, the father of modern art. Accompanying this display
is an unearthly stream of music—first merely heard, then, with a great degree of
reward, finally seen: performed in its own series of projections. The performance by
Dutch cellist and composer Ernst Reijseger is visually spare in its minimal display, and allows the
viewer to focus on the music itself, and its relevance and place in Segers’ abstracted landscapes. This resonant
soundscape is deeply moving, in a manner that quiets thought and fills the
body.
Herzog’s
film installation warrants an entire afternoon of attention, though its running time is only about fifteen minutes. The viewer encounters a blackened recessed space, visually and physically separate from what's immediately outside its door, allowing the viewer to become enveloped by the piece. Segers' landscapes portray seasonal and atmospheric changes to his native European countryside, and with the shifting of night to day, summer to winter, Herzog elicits an awareness of transformation. On the part of an engaged viewer, there is an initial
effort to try to make measured sense of “Hearsay of the Soul”—to draw connections
between the scrolling landscape projections and the sonorous musical accompaniment,
for instance. However, it is not long before one gives into the experience of
the piece, and the art becomes encompassing. Perhaps herein
lies the embodiment of that elusive concept of the sublime—when body and mind stand in unspeaking,
awestruck experience in the face of some great, unexplainable thing.
“Hearsay
of the Soul” communicates a great longing and sorrow in the purity of
its enigmatic delivery. The space in which the installation is housed feels sanctified
and upon leaving I felt stirred. It ranks for me as an art
experience that cannot be fully articulated, an artwork that has changed me in some small way.
I like that you are commenting on one artist within the Biennial, and clearly state your view of the whole show. In your first paragraph you say "...there are exceptions". I think this either has to say "... there IS AN exception", or you should include one or two other artists whose work you thought seemed clear and worthy of comment.
ReplyDeleteI think you need a different opening sentence because your whole essay is you explaining the experience. I'm not sure of your wording with the phrase "felt bodily". Maybe say "the art becomes a bodily experience".
Your final sentence needs an 'a', "...changed me in ___ small way" .