Burning questions about nature of art
Oakland Museum struggles to capture ideals of annual desert festival
It would be easy to diminish, out of hand, the objects on view in the Oakland Museum of California exhibition “No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man.” Beyond secondhand reports of the annual festival in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, conveyed in photos and video of the sort found abundantly online, the show consists of mildly interesting stage props, bedazzled getups and sundry tchotchkes and souvenirs.
Tawdry mashups of latehippie custom and steampunk retrofuturism aside, however, the exhibition prompts nagging questions.
Some are of the sort that readers might expect from an old critic whose recreational drug of choice is the martini: Why is art made collectively and in public better, per se, than that conceived by an individual in private contemplation? Why are tightfitting fashions assumed to be inherently artier than comfortable garb?
But the big issues concern the nature, and the future, of art.
I have never been to Black Rock City, the temporary megalopolis erected for Burning Man every year. Any event, however, that must be contained by fiat
to 70,000 people is by definition a social phenomenon. Into that mix, add Burning Man’s 10 Principles, articulated by cofounder Larry Harvey in 2004, which read like an art school curriculum for a strain of art often called “relational aesthetics” or, more broadly, “social practice.”
Radical selfexpression, which sounds like art to modern ears, is but one of the 10. Also included are ideals of inclusion, participation and generosity; selfreliance balanced by communal effort and civic responsibility; ecological awareness, immediacy and what is called “decommodification.”
These are lofty goals, indeed, and the optimism they represent is admirable. One would surely be willing to trade their achievement for even the loveliest of mere paintdaubed canvases, the most skillfully carved figure. But, of course, a lone painter or sculptor might equally promote such ideals, whether in their art, their lives or both.
The 10 Principles are posted on the first wall of the exhibition, as if to announce that it is the principles that are the art. And that is the point we might keep in mind when viewing “The Art of Burning Man.” Though we use the word too loosely in casual conversation, art is not an object.
The Oakland Museum, of all institutions, has this knowledge in its
DNA. Next year will mark the 50th anniversary of its presentation of “The Act of Drinking
Beer With Friends Is the Highest Form of Art,” a seminal work by San Francisco artist Tom
Marioni.
That action had historic roots in the Fluxus art of the 1960s, the
Dada of the World War I era — in the Holy Communion of the Catholic Church, one might say, or in the Last Supper that the sacrament commemorates. Its influence echoed from gallery walls in 1990 when the artist Rirkrit Tiravanija served pad thai to an audience expecting a more conventional exhibition, as a strategy to recover for art the human and communal experience of which aesthetic pleasure is only one element.
The current exhibition tries valiantly to suggest that ineffable aspect of the Burning Man experience. Some of the works require audience interaction (step here and the sculpture moves or the lights change color). Others are immersive environments (a traveling movie house for newly made silent films).
A fullscale “Temple of Reunion,” designed by Sonoma County artist David Best and erected in an outdoor plaza, comes closest. A marvel of intricate detail, it is endlessly engaging visually; as a space, it is a calming site of respite.
But the task of recreating Burning Man, inevitably, was beyond the show’s organizers. Overall, it is about as engaging as listening to someone describe a dream — which is to say, you had to be there.
Burning Man’s 10 Principles are posted on the first wall of the exhibition, as if to announce that it is the principles that are the art.