The Crystal Bridges Wonder World, part II

The small offshoot gallery presents a theme of sound with works by John Baldessari and Nick Cave. The enormous wall sculpture, Beethoven’s Trumpet (With Ear) is about Beethoven and how he wrote his most radical pieces when he was deaf, according to Crystal Bridges Director of Curatorial David Houston Houston.

And Nick Cave’s fascinating quilted soundsuits of toys and musical instruments and also countless buttons are spectacularly contemporary and part of the artist’s performance art.

Houston says, “The irony here is that the soundsuits that reference sound are largely silent unless worn and the piece about deafness makes noise. It’s kind of an inversion of what is.”

The largest gallery presents themes of figure, nature and illusion – and increasing obsessiveness. Korean American artist, Nam June Paik, “John Cage Robot II” pleases the old and young alike. It is homage to Los Angeles composer and cultural Buddhist guru, John Cage. This mixed media work provides a continual loop of well known Cage performance art pieces. The robot is decorated in piano references, relating to his famous piece, “4’33.” Like Cage, there is a developed order based upon chance. A basket of reference materials, chessmen, and carved wooden mushrooms complete the homage.

According to Houston, Cage was about taking away the foreground and making the ambient just as important. He was also a specialist on mushroom varieties, and hence the wooden mushrooms in the basket.

Stepping into the room and playing skillfully against each other are two works. The amazing watercolor triptych, “The Island,” by Walton Ford is a complex work of nasty and obviously over bred jackals who have slaughtered all the island lambs. If you notice, they now turn on each other. Look away and be majestically swept away by an oil on linen work by Tom Uttech. Nature takes flight and the transcendental light of orange and blue and yellow that Houston spoke about so bravely in the Flavin piece is readily apparent here.

A puzzling piece is presented mid gallery by Roxy Paine — the artist whose dendroid tree sculpture greeted your arrival. Houston says it is a rather simple piece that demonstrates Paine’s environmental concerns and depicts what nature can do on its own.

“But it’s as much an illusion as a painting,” he explains.

The mushrooms from the robot’s basket appear to have taken root in the resin soil.

Vik Muniz takes inspiration from the “Gems of Brazil” from the first gallery.  His collage homage is digitally photographed and enlarged in “White Brazilian Orchid after Martin Johnson Heade.” You see Heade’s flowers and birds.

“And like Flavin, classic form in a deliberate remake,” says Houston.

Jim Hodges presents yet another obsessive work that borders craft with art in his silk flower cutout that stands 240 inches long and must drape onto the floor. As another nature reference in the room, the piece is presented at an angle to present wonderful wall shadows, which only add credence.

The far wall presents the first runner up to winning the Most Obsessive Award, Devorah Sperber’s “After the Last Supper.” It’s a life-scaled image of an artwork almost everyone knows, recreated upside down on three angled walls, using 20,736 spools of thread.  Something else familiar to almost everyone is the computer pixilated image, and this is precisely what this work looks like until it is viewed through a gazing ball.

The piece only works when the wall angles are precisely set at 37 degrees. As a note of trivia, when first installed, the contractor got the angle on one wall wrong and the entire installation had to be disassembled and reconfigured.  Another trivia point — A second Sperber piece, a depiction of the classic American Gothic will be brought on display when this fiber work is placed in archive.

The winner of the Most Obsessive Award goes to Alison Elizabeth Taylor and her work, “Room.” It confounds and delights as 280 varieties of wood, none of which are painted or stained are used to basically turn sculpture inside out. Western landscapes, hung pictures and mementos, various World War II references, furnishings and appliances, and craft and woodworking tools are all inlaid without so much as a nail.

Illusions take you into other rooms or out a window into nature. Like so many pieces in Wonder World, it’s another open text. You are invited to project your own interpretations into the symbols and objects. You will see something with each visit. In fact, there is even an inlaid silhouette of Jesus on the wall. See if you can find it.

Houston says art takes different forms at different times and people need not be intimidated by the art of their own time. He relates that art is a human-chosen activity that has served as a constant throughout history. It is one of the ways we try to make sense out of our lives and our world.

And after all, it’s a wonder world.

Wave goodbye to the robot.