Art in Action
An article in this month's Museums Journal, 'Event Horizons', deals with the growing vogue for performance art in museums and galleries. It discusses the practical and interpretive demands of staging performances, and the concerns of curators over drawing in audiences to such works which often make the viewer feel more vulnerable and uncomfortable than a static piece. It reminded me of a post that I meant to write over the summer on two exhibitions that were concurrently running in London, at the National Gallery and British Museum, in collaboration with national performing arts organisations.
The British Museum showed Shakespeare: Staging the World with the Royal Shakespeare Company, in a highly successful blend of objects and performance. Each section used the plays as a jumping off point to discuss aspects of the early modern world: the unstable British monarchy, Venetian multi-cultural commerce, discovering the new world. High-profile actors from the RSC performed famous Shakespearian speeches in audio recordings or simply staged films in each room. Considering Native American artefacts while hearing Ian McKellen's Prospero take leave of his island put the strangeness of these early encounters in a whole new light for me.
The National Gallery worked with the Royal Ballet to stage Metamorphosis: Titian 2012: responses to three paintings by Titian - Diana and Actaeon, The Death of Actaeon, and Diana and Callisto - by contemporary artists Chris Ofili, Mark Wallinger and Conrad Shawcross. The exhibition opened with the three paintings glowing in a central room, undeniably beautiful. Surrounding this, other rooms showed work by each artist, the costumes and maquettes of the stage sets designed for each ballet, and a film of the dancers developing the choreography. I was excited at the prospect of this show, which seemed quite a departure for the National Gallery, but was sadly disappointed. The displays felt flat with lifeless costumes and sets divorced from the dancers, who were shown in a separate room. I would have liked to see dance alongside the art, like in the Shakespeare. Ironically, even the Wallinger piece, which featured a naked model in a bathroom at whom you peered through holes in the wall, was empty when I visited.
I spent less than half an hour in Metamorphosis, I spent nearly three in Shakespeare. The problem was that I felt the contemporary pieces and static accessories of the performances added nothing to the Titians for me. Having been unable to see the three one-off ballets, which I have no doubt were spectacular, I couldn't get a sense of the physical response of the dancers, and how this worked with the artist's costumes and sets. The warm and poignant voices of the RSC actors, however, brought both the artefacts and Shakespeare's words vividly to life. This contrast encapsulates the perils of performance art in the relatively static space of the museum. It is a vivid moment in time, hard to capture and display over a longer period. But, I hope that both the BM and NGL will continue such collaborations and build them into the permanent galleries.
For now, my resolution is to visit the new Tanks at Tate Modern before Christmas, and consider how a space works that is solely devoted to 'art in action.'