The easiest way to “What is the object?” to describe. in the Bard Graduate Center would be to call it a single work of occasional art by the American post-minimalist Richard Tuttle. In addition to his nearly 60 years of experience creating delicate sculptures and wall works, Tuttle has been a collector of diverse objects that appeal to him, from an 11th-century brass candlestick made in the Bavarian city of Augsburg to a 19th-century Shaker stop knob with a attractive, ovoid shape. And now that he’s donating more than 70 of these curiosities to the Bard Graduate Center — whose material cultural history students will know how to care for — Tuttle, in collaboration with his dean, Peter N. Miller, has designed a display, complete with whimsical multi-colored wooden tables and some of his own recent collages, to share the collection with the public.
Viewed in this way, the whole is simply an extension of Tuttle’s time-honored practice of juxtaposing incongruent elements in a way that emphasizes the uncertainty of beauty and meaning. In one of this show’s collages, strips of raw canvas painted in turquoise and purple are pinned together in a frame; in another, bright yellow and red painted feathers stick out what looks like a pinch of salt.
The trick, however, is that visitors are allowed to handle the curiosities, as well as the accompanying index cards on which Tuttle has made notes about their provenance and form qualities. And whether you react to this opportunity with eagerness or trepidation – hurry to hoist the black wooden duck decoy or nervously dabbing one fingertip against the hat of beaver fur – you may be overlooking what a serious challenge it is for ordinary exhibitions.
Most museums establish the line between artworks and visitors with glass panels, velvet ropes, guards and alarm systems, making it very clear where the power lies. Tuttle’s screen, on the other hand, feels almost painfully weak and fragile. It relies entirely on the good faith of its visitors, not primarily because they could move or damage things, although they could, but because without the ordinary velvet rope cues, they have to make such an imaginative jump to see what they are looking for as an exhibition is not at all.
But what struck me even more than that was to feel the unexpected richness of my fingers along a notched “tramp art” cigar box, or the smooth surface of a Quran script tablet from Somalia. I had become so used to seeing art only through my eyes that I had forgotten what an impoverished way that is to experience the world.
What is the object?
Until July 10, Bard Graduate Center Gallery, 18 West 86th Street, Manhattan. 212-501-3023, bgc.bard.edu.
