Posted by Steve Dietz on December 19, 2004 7:32 PM
Is it all Robert Morris's fault?
One of the persistent questions around new media art and its institutional neglect is why? There is plenty of other contemporary art that is ephemeral, variable, and hard to collect, among other epithets. A recent installation at Tate Modern may shed some light on this.
"Visitors Play Role in Funfair Art"
The Daily Telegraph, 28 April 1971
"Assault Course at Tate Gallery"
Evening Standard, 30 April 1971
"The have-a-go show"
The Observer, May 1971
I am joking, of course, that the 1971 exhibition of artist Robert Morris'sNeo Classic installation was the causal reason for new media art's current predicament. Nevertheless, the exhibition was terminated after only 5 days amidst headlines like the above, and Tate Modern's archival installation about the event, accompanying the display of the Morris-produced Neo Classic film "about" it, provides fascinating and perhaps even prescient parallels that are worth reading about in some detail.
The Neo Classics
There are three elements I would like to discuss:
Neo Classic the exhibition installation (1971)
Neo Classic the film (1971) accessioned by the Tate in 2002
The Neo Classic installation (2004), which is described more fully below.
The Neo Classic installation (2004) is ambiguous about whether Morris or the Tate called the 1971 exhibition installation Neo Classic, but that is how it is currently cataloged (as an installation), so that is how I will refer to it.
The Neo Classic installation (2004)
There are no pictures of this current installation at Tate Modern, but it is a long rectangular room, which the normal visitor flow would have you entering from the east. What is visible as you enter is an installation of Untitled (1965/71), four mirrored cubes, which according to the display caption "produce complex and shifting interactions between gallery and spectator." It is also one of the pieces that replaced Neo Classic: the installation (1971), when the exhibition was abruptly closed. In the second half of the room is a large monitor on a floor plinth, playing Neo Classic the film (1971). Along the south wall are a series of vitrines displaying letters and other artefacts related the 1971 exhibition of Neo Classic the installation, which was taken down after only 5 days. Most of the quotes are from the texts displayed in the vitrines. Above them is a timeline and a number of 1971 installation photographs. On the north wall is a sketch or storyboard by Morris with notations for the exhibition.
Neo Classic: the Timeline
To set the scene, here are some verbatim excerpts from the Tate's timeline of events:
1970 Tate curator Michael Compton and curator David Sylvester begin planning a Morris solo exhibition.
April 1971 Morris employs British artist Tim Head to help with the exhibition's installation
26 April Two days before the opening of the exhibition, Morris decides to make the film Neo Classic, showing a model interacting with the works.
28 April The Robert Morris exhibition opens to the public
29 April The public interact with the works with unexpected enthusiasm. Accidents are reported and the work starts to fall apart.
2 May Tate director Sir Norman Reid and the curators decide to close the exhibition after a girl injures her leg while climbing on a low horizontal bar.
3 May A notice at the entrance to the Tate advises that the diretor has closed the exhibition because "the somehwat overzealous participation by some of our more exubertant visitors has resulted in excessive wear and tear on some of the exhibits which have become dangerous."
May A subsittute exhibition is put together featuring earlier works by Morris.
June The second exhibition closes.
1997 David Sylvester reflects on his experience of curating the Morris show, saying "The exhibition did in fact produce a wonderful artefact, which is this film . . . a very beautiful residue"
2002 The film Neo Classic is accessioned into Tate Collection as a gift from the artist.
What was Neo Classic, the exhibition installation (1971)?
There is no formal checklist of the exhibition installation, but in a letter from curator Compton to Morris, he lists the following:
1. Stone roller
2. Steel valley with weights
3. Apical ramps
4. Bell
5. Roller
6. Platform on roller
7. Platform on ball
8. Horizontal bar
9. Tight rope
10. Steel plate on edge
11. Log
12. and 13. Wall ledges
14. and 15. Ramps
16. Tunnel
17. and 18. Ramped slots
19. Chimneys
Letter from Michael Compton to Robert Morris, 13 May 1971
As the room's introductory wall label states, in part:
This display revisits Robert Morris's extraordinary 1971 exhibition at the Tate, which he documented [emphasis added] in the film Neo Classic. Morris wanted visitors to interact with his specially-created sculptures. Their over-enthusiastic participation became legendary.
What Made Neo Classic the installation (1971), Art?
Nowhere in the 2004 installation is there an attempt re-evaluate either the original exhibition or its resulting film in terms of their art. Even one of the original co-curators, David Sylvester, in 1997 refers to the film as a "beautiful residue."
At the time of the exhibition, however, Morris had some clearly stated artistic goals - many of which could be applied directly to current, so-called new media art.
Personally, I'd rather break my arm by falling off a platform than spend an hour in detached contemplation of a Matisse. We've become blind from so much seeing. Time to press up against things, squeeze around, crawl over - not so much out of a childish naivte to return to the playground, but more to acknowledge that the world begins to exist at the limits of our skin and what goes on at that interface [emphasis added] between the physical self and external conditions doesn't detach us like the detached glance.
Letter from Robert Morris to Michael Compton, January 19, 1971
Ironically, the exhibition was indeed closed when Compton witnessed a girl fall and apparently break her leg,* but what's also remarkable is how this language could equally apply to contemporary telematic work by Paul Sermon on immersive work by Char Davies, albeit with the McLuhanite extension of the nervous system through media. A couple of months later, Morris writes again to Compton about how he imagines people experiencing the installation.
The progression is from the manipulation of objects, to constructions which adjust to the body's presence, to situations where the body itself is manipulated. I want to provide a situation [emphasis added] where people can become more aware of themeselves and their own experience rather than more aware of some version of my experience.
Letter from Robert Morris to Michael Compton, March 5, 1971
A press release from the Tate (no date), provides some further context for the installation, which, again, mirrors decades of assertions about new media often being more about process, even intangible ones, than object.
In 1967 he [Morris] turned to soft forms, taking the view that sculpture could be made out of any material; felt, earth, steam or even out of a process - riding a horse, changing the temperature of an environment.
In his explanation to the Tate trustees about the exhibition's closure, director Reid tackles the A word more explicitly, if equally ambiguously ultimately:
The possibility of leaving the show open with the surviving exhibits was considered but what made the exhibition a work of art rather than a collection of apparatus was the whole series of sensations experienced.
Memorandum from Norman Reid to Tate Trustees, 7 May 1971
Finally, in his post-event letter to the aritst, curator Compton made what I would argue are some very perceptive and provocative comments about the installation - none of which are expressed in Morris's film, however. He wrote:
I would like to make some points in retrospect.
1) I am sure the noise, particularly of the steel pieces, caused people to lose inhibitions and behave badly.
2) The "museum" location evidently did nothing to influence people to a more meditative approach to the objects . . .
3) I entirely understand the effects of social interaction [emphasis added]. I think people responded a great deal to each other, rather than to the objects, to their relationship to the latter or to the awareness of their own physical processes. That is, they made up group games, competed, acted out their aggressions, showed off, etc.** and this was more likely to happen as the numbers increased [emphasis added].
Compton then reverts to the same kind of wishy-washiness that Reid used with the trustees:
May I say, finally, that in spite of all this I do not regard the show as having been a failure. I am convinced that, as well as providing the ground for a very special experience and being full of genuine invention, it posed in a particularly succinct and explicit manner some of the important issues of art. For example, the relationship of the way that groups or individuals use art to the way that it is conceived and made; the social role of the museum; the notions of freedom and responsibility in art; etc.
In the end, however, he does suggest that this interactive installation has been uniquely transformative.
I do regard the experience of working with you on the show and of being in it when completed as one of the very few events which have altered my consciousness.
Letter from Michael Compton to Robert Morris, 13 May 1971
What Makes Neo Classic, the film (1971), Art?
I don't know. It was made by the artist is perhaps the most that can be said for it. And there is no question that Morris is one of the seminal artists of the 20th century. The film itself, however, is a sequence of formally framed, often closely cropped shots, mostly of the tunnel and the stone roller, mostly being moved back and forth by themselves or by a naked female model. There is hardly ever any sense of Morris's stated ambitions for the installation to explore the "interface between the physical self and external conditions" and certainly nothing of the "social interaction" that Compton refers to. As the display text suggests:
In the film, the calm, meditative behaviour of the model suggests that Morris had no idea that the public would respond to the sculptures so exuberantly.
Neo Classic the film merely poorly memorializes the originary installation.
Which brings me back to restating my orignial quandry. Why is something so ephemeral (the installation), banal (the film) and weakly contextualized - if richly documented - in the Tate's collection, while dozens if not hundreds of new media art works that address many of the exact same stated issues are not even exhibited, let alone collected?***
* Tate memorandum, "Brief note about casualties," 5 May 1971 [signature unreadable]:
There were 1917 paying visitors. There appears to have been no exact record of the number of people injured at the exhibition but as far as I can ascertain 16 members of the public required first aid or hospital treatment.
** This is what game theorist Katie Salen might refer to as "transgressive play." See for instance,
Players do things in games they are not supposed to do. They are transgressive. They break rules, cause grief, and often behave very, very badly. But they also are wonderfully inventive and surprisingly generous. http://didi.parsons.edu/~streams/release/blog/95
***It is perhaps not unrelated and worth noting that the special exhibition Time Zones, also on view at the Tate, prominently touts that it is "the first major exhibition at Tate Modern devoted exclusively to film and video."
