Constellation at Park Avenue Armory, (runs through August 17th)
This amateur admirer of Diane Arbus’s photography recommends you catch Constellation, the largest exhibition of her work ever mounted, but she humbly warns that being lost in this particular space may make you feel alienated from the art.
MOMA presented the first major solo retrospective of Diane Arbus’s photography in 1972-73, a year after she committed suicide. With 113 prints on exhibit, the show broke MOMA’s attendance records, resulted in a heated debate among intellectuals on moral boundaries, exploitation and voyeurism in art and also cemented photography in the canon of serious art. That’s some show.
I learned all this because in college in the 1980’s I was assigned to read Susan Sontag’s essay Freak Show, a stinging condemnation of Arbus’s art. It was published in the New York Review of Books, a temple for the public intellectual. Since it’s from 1973 and available for subscribers only, I’ll summarize by saying that Sontag argued that Arbus turned the subjects of her photography, often marginalized or "deviant" individuals (the disabled, erotic dancers) into spectacles who she presented without empathy and out of context. I wasn’t stupid enough then to take the other side on anything Sontag argued (she is considered one of the best essayists ever), but I wasn’t fully convinced, either. Arbus wasn’t the first to turn an eye on the marginalized — think Degas and his prostitutes, dancers and bathers. More to the point, it was not clear that Arbus lacked empathy for her subjects.
I raise the kerfuffle now as context because this summer the Park Avenue Armory entered the conversation with its Arbus show, Constellation. It includes a whopping 451 silver gelatin prints and is the largest Arbus exhibition ever mounted. Given my earlier engagement on the topic, I rushed over while on my brief trip to New York. Evidently, the Armory didn’t think Arbus’s art was provocative enough because the thing that shocked the most was the installation itself, which sucks up an undue amount of focus away from the art.
I will say this about Arbus‘s art: I am a lay person, certainly, when it comes to appreciating and understanding photography, but my reaction to Arbus’s work was that it was brilliantly immediate and piercing.
Admittedly, I wasn’t coming to it fresh, but some of the pictures made me uncomfortable. That’s not a criticism; it’s just an honest report, which no doubt says more about me than the art. Even though I knew going in what I would be encountering, I flinched looking at Arbus’s pictures of her subjects in mental institutions, in particular. They were so vulnerable, exposed. Could they even understand that they were subjects of photography that could be on display publicly? I felt invasive, like I was seeing something I wasn’t sure I was truly invited to see.
But is that all on Arbus? I’m not sure. Some of my discomfort stems from issues that are mine to own: Arbus is depicting the full panoply of life, and the pictures of those who I wouldn’t encounter in real life (because they are institutionalized) are full of humanity and dignity. Perhaps being seen so appreciatively by Arbus — having a starring role for a moment - was a highlight of their day, month, life. I can’t say, but what I know for sure is about me and that I have the character weakness of preferring fantasy over realism, in life and art
Most of the pictures are nothing short of mesmerizing, which makes looking closely at all 451 exhausting.
At least, that would be the case if you could actually see all 451 pictures. But you can’t. That’s why we have to discuss the installation. The show’s curator, Matthieu Humery, installed the pictures on a sprawling, non-linear matrix that he says was inspired by a New York City subway map. There were mirrors on the back of each picture and one long mirrored wall (like, I have to say, you might find in a circus hall). The pictures weren’t hung in consecutive order and were not labeled — you had to track each down by ‘mapping’ the number next to the picture with a listing that you also had to locate, sometimes by walking around the installation to the other side.
On the wall as you entered Humery shared his reasoning for the annoying way he and the Armory chose to display Arbus’s work: ”The concept of a constellation occurred to us as a structure capable of presenting both the images and the imperceptible architecture underlying all creations: chance, chaos, and exploration … ”
That just made me think “Huh?” But again, I’m just somebody curious about Arbus. I’m not an expert. After reading the Armory’s explanation of the installation, I was game to give it a try, to give the curators the benefit of the doubt. I ended up wandering through what I’ll refer to in my own mundane language as a baffling maze of discovery alongside the other perplexed and lost wanderers on our shared journey.
That’s just life, I guess. Or the New York City subway. Or something, anyway.
At one point, I bumped into a ‘fellow traveler’ whose head was also aimed at the ground, looking for titles. At another point, another middle-aged wanderer and I were seeking the title to the same picture and he pleasantly pulled out his printed listing to help me. (Just like being on the green line and asking somebody how far the Lexington Avenue stop is.)
It was then that another lost traveler realized that some of the pictures were purposely hung too high or too low for us to see. “Can you see that?” one woman, who appeared to be no more than 5’4,” asked me. “No,” I said, reaching my arms straight up, directing my iPhone camera at, as it turned out, Mr. And Mrs. Howard Oxenberg, NYC, 1965. Then, brining it down to take a look, I offered, “Here, do you want to see the picture I took of the Arbus’ picture?”
To be clear, I don’t mean to say that you couldn’t see them with ease. I mean to say that some patrons who took the time to come over to the Park Avenue Armory with the hope of seeing the full 451 silver gelatin prints on display, including some that had never before been shown, were too short or two tall or too old or physically compromised to see some of the art. Tantalizingly, as if it was a candy lying just beyond your reach, you could see a piece hanging there, but you couldn’t see beyond the contours of the photographed subject.
All of this turned an already provocative and exhausting experience into a frustrating one.
That’s where I draw the line on giving Humery and the Armory the benefit of the doubt.
Have you ever frequented a wildly popular neighborhood diner that makes straight-up comfort food that all of its patrons love? Then its chef/owner retires (or hands it over to his son) and the new guy decides that a cheeseburger made with prime beef, high quality cheddar and topped with fresh sautéed mushrooms and onions, crisp lettuce and ripe tomatoes isn’t a good enough cheeseburger? He’s going to make a gourmet burger loaded with globally sourced spices, etc.
In other words, he has to be cleverer than all the many great cheeseburger-makers that ever came before him. But it backfires. If the point was to feed his patrons, anyway. Because they‘re not partaking.
I’m no expert, but every museum I’ve ever been to hangs the art at a level where the highest number of viewers can best see the art, aiming for eye level.
It was the largest collection of Arbus’s work ever exhibited, many of the works being shown for the first time. I just wish I could have seen them all.
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