Things could get ugly at National Gallery’s Hyper Real exhibition
At the National Gallery’s Hyper Real exhibition the most striking thing is the initial confusion between the art and the viewer.
When Oscar Wilde saw William Powell Frith’s The Derby Day (1858), a vast and garrulously anecdotal panorama of mid-Victorian life, he asked in mock seriousness whether it had all been done by hand. It is the same sort of question that always comes to mind before hyper-realist work, and its implicit corollary is why, to what end, all this effort has been expended.
There is a principle of economy in art of all kinds, from ink painting to cinema: some forms of art, and some particular works, take longer to execute, require more resources or more elaborate processes, but all of these must be in proportion to the aesthetic result: a film, for example, may be low or high budget but in either case the resources must be in proportion to the quality and significance. A simple melody may be charming when played on a solo instrument but ridiculous if arranged for a symphony orchestra.
The question, therefore, when approaching this exhibition and passing a giant figure emerging from the floor of the gallery is whether this object actually has any interest or a significance proportionate to the immense amount of trouble that has been taken in producing it.
Of course it is extremely technically accomplished and the effect is surprising. But are we inclined to stop and look at it more closely or has its effect been entirely consumed in that first moment of surprise? And that is a very important question because one of the universal qualities of good art is that it demands our attention and strikes us as simultaneously meaningful and elusive.
That sense that an object or an image is pregnant with a meaning that cannot be disclosed except in this concrete form, and that we are invited to engage with it with all the resources of mind and imagination, is what helps us distinguish the works of substance in collective exhibitions from those that are merely the product of a formula or the expression of an ideological message.
It is worth noting, too, that the giant figure is not actually as surprising or effective as it might have been with a different staging. Imagine, for example, coming upon it in a separate room, suddenly appearing at the turn of a corner, instead of being visible from far off; and imagine it being dramatically lit instead of standing in the bland universal light of the gallery hall. But what all this really tells us is that the object belongs to theatre, cinema or even to the world of theme parks or waxwork museums, where all that illusionism would be appropriate.
Inside the exhibition, the most striking thing is the initial confusion between the hyper-real figures and members of the audience. You hesitate before staring too hard at what may turn out to be a person, and you are surprised when a figure standing in the periphery of your field of vision suddenly moves and walks away.
After a few moments you adjust and the artificial figures sink back into a surprisingly inert and static lifelessness that belies their superficial naturalism. This room contains several early works in the hyper-real mode, including Duane Hanson’s dowdy Woman with a Laundry Basket (1974) as well as his later figures of two builders.
The most entertaining room in the exhibition is filled with moving figures: a crowd of old men with long beards, asleep in wheelchairs that glide around the room like dodgem cars but are seemingly programmed not to bump into the visitors or each other. Perhaps the work doubles as a trial of how driverless vehicle technology could be introduced into nursing homes.
And just as one of the problems of driverless cars in the future will be how they interact with those cars that are still driven by people — at least until human driving is banned — here, in a bizarre piece of fortuitous black humour, two real visitors in wheelchairs had to negotiate their way through the mechanical ones. Fortunately the individuals involved could laugh at the incongruity of their predicament.
The point of the work is that all these old men are or were powerful individuals — generals, dictators, oil sheiks, even an Orthodox bishop — a kind of senile gerontocracy still clinging to power and wealth, and yet asleep at the wheel. One looks much like Fidel Castro, and it would have been highly topical if Robert Mugabe had been included as an example of thuggish Third World dictators who destroy their countries through unbridled corruption.
The most thought-provoking work in the show is by John De Andrea and Paul McCarthy, both of whom are concerned with the female nude and work with body casts from real models. Despite similarities in their process, however, and of the constraints imposed by direct casting from living bodies, the sensibilities of the two artists are nonetheless quite distinct when we look at them closely.
Of the two, De Andrea’s work is the more humanly touching because he is concerned with the intimate quality of the body’s surface: the vulnerable softness of the flesh, the subtle material non-perfection of a body, even when young and slim — almost more poignant than if it had been old, worn or overweight, obvious signs of deliquescence.
In both of De Andrea’s pieces, the model assumes attitudes that are not, as the wall label suggests, those of classical statuary but rather those of the life drawing class. One is standing with arms held above her head and the other is reclining in an attitude very like the one painted by Alexandre Cabanel in his rather kitsch Birth of Venus (1863) bought by Napoleon III and now in the Musee d’Orsay, although readers will probably be familiar with it from the label of Santa Vittoria mineral water.
The model lies with her eyes closed, and the face is treated with such tenderness that we almost feel intrusive in looking at it too fixedly. The kind of awkwardness we experience comes from the moral reticence we feel at looking at a human body as an object. In a life drawing class we do not feel the same self-consciousness because we are working hard to render the figure and almost engaging in a collaborative process with the model.
The other three figures, by McCarthy, raise slightly different concerns. Here, although the skin and other surface features are rendered with a similar level of detail, they do not have quite the same human feeling or one might almost say empathy. The emphasis is rather on the degree of exposure of the body because the three figures are not only naked but seated on the ground with legs wide apart to expose the vulva to detailed inspection.
It is this opening into the body, particularly into the womb and the source of woman’s deepest power of generation, that is more thoroughly hidden than any other part of the body. The last thing a girl at the beach would remove, no matter how far the rest of her bikini had shrunk in size, would be the tiny patch of fabric covering what is almost a portal into another reality, beyond the self and identity and individuality.
There is nothing erotic about this work, much less pornographic, because it is so clinical. But it makes us reflect on bodies and nakedness in general, and on the circumstances under which bodies are or are not charged with erotic associations. For in the first place, most bodies are not particularly attractive, and many are extremely unattractive. Look around you at any given moment when you are out in public and you would probably not wish to see many of those around you undressed.
Even more interesting is the fact we normally have no wish to see the so-called private parts of other men or women, no matter what our sexual inclinations may be.
Yet our response can be very different under the mysterious influence of attraction and desire. Under these circumstances, a body does not have to be flawless; the sexual organs themselves cease to be objects and dissolve into a sort of idea, mirages of desire in the melting of the ego and its amalgamation with another that is sexual passion.
Many other works deal with sexuality in one way or another, and almost all of them represent bodies, since this is the only real subject of hyper-real work. Ron Mueck’s figures appeal to many people, although whether for properly aesthetic reasons or merely for the freak-show effect of illusionism on a colossal scale is unclear.
It’s hard to see more than this freak-show element in his enormous seated man with an oddly surprised look. This is a work in which nakedness and exposed genitals are as prominent as in the work discussed above but without evoking the same quality of reflection. His giant pregnant woman is much more successful and evocative because of the care he has taken with the features and the expression, and the tiny withered figure of an old woman lying cocooned in her bedsheets is touching in its frailty.
Patricia Piccinini’s work combines the sentimental and the grotesque in a formula that is endlessly varied yet ultimately the same. Many people find these images of children with monsters, or monsters with children, or some other permutation, appealing; others find them distasteful and mawkish.
Above all, perhaps, like much other work here, they are clearly made by expert craftspeople and special effects technicians, but one wonders why they are presented as art when they look more like objects that should belong in a science fiction film.
But the deeper question is why choose to make images of bodies, whether human or quasi-human, that are ugly? One answer is no doubt that they force themselves on our attention because they assault our senses in the same way that jarring noises or foul smells do. In a world of universal overproduction, capturing the attention of an audience is vital.
And no doubt one can concoct a sort of moral justification for this on the grounds that our instincts are too narrow and deserve to be tested or amended. But is this true? Our instinct for what is harmonious or beautiful in the forms of bodies is ultimately based on the recognition of soundness and health. The contrary may be pathetic and pitiable but it is not good.
A better potential vindication may be found in Aristotle’s observation that humans love imitation so much that they take pleasure even in images of things ugly in themselves. But that requires a certain degree of abstraction and distance; the best art, the kind that invites a deeper and longer engagement, never pretends to be reality itself but is always poised between imitation and conscious artifice.
Hyper Real, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Until February 18.
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