The museums of Washington, DC are renowned for their exhibitions of eminent artists. Only infrequently however–in that city of policy and politics–do three exhibits appear in tandem, showcasing the work of artists who contributed to altering the definition of art in the twentieth century. This spring and summer, viewers are offered an opportunity to observe the National Gallery’s, Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg; Yves Klein: With the Void, Full Powers, at the Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden and Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s: Remembering the Running Fence, at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Fine Arts Magazine

The latter is not only the jewel in the crown of the shows, but also perhaps one of the premium exhibitions a Washington, D.C. museum has mounted in years. This exhibition, organized by George Gurney, Deputy Chief Curator, is a memorable documentary display of this decisive project. It offers in-depth content, exquisite production and the daily showing of three enlightening films—The “Running Fence” Revisited, (2010) a new film co-produced by the museum and Wolfram Hissenby; Running Fence, (1978) by Albert and David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin and Running Fence with Commentary, (2004), by the artists and Albert Maysles. The majority of the exhibit is based on the Christo/Jeanne-Claude archives and it contains many of the 400 “Running Fence” items the museum purchased in 2008. Smithsonian American Art Museum’s director, Elizabeth Broun, had the foresight to purchase this collection stating, “This was the seminal project in their careers and the most inspiring of all their projects.”

Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s signature style became the wrapping or marking of a structure or area with fabrics, resulting in impressive and oft-controversial art, because of its scale and location. Their wrapping of Berlin’s Reichstag in white fabric and aluminum and, more recently, Gates, (2005), with thousands of saffron vinyl panels stretching across Central Park in New York, remain memorable, despite the controversy and debates surrounding each. Although, as a rule, their art is about aesthetic impact rather then political critique—beauty, joy and experiences—as well as inviting viewers to see the familiar unsullied are at its core. However, Running Fence was not only spectacular in scale and complexity, but also functioned as an ironic metaphor about freedom and bringing people together. Christo, born in communist Bulgaria, experienced first-hand the restraints of the Iron Curtain. As a result, he perceived Fence not as a barrier, but as a means to creative collaboration. Moreover, he realized that the landscape of the American West has as much to do with fences as with wide-open spaces and the myth of endless opportunity.

In our current post-9/11 age, filled with fear of terrorism, one begins to wonder if Running Fence could be built today. Imagine two New York artists who are naturalized American citizens, with foreign accents, getting the cooperation and permission of 59 sheep and dairy farmers to construct an enormous fabric fence under the rubric of art, in California’s Sonoma and Marin Counties. The voracity among some opponents is dramatically captured in an early scene in the Maysles film, when a man shouts, “That’s art? Some lousy curtain coming through here…Hell with it. I’m against it. I think it’s stupid.”

Running Fence still remains one of the most notable land-based works of art, despite being removed in September, 1976, after standing for only fourteen days. It is one of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s most ambitious constructions, at 18-feet-high, it was fabricated from 2,222,222 square feet of heavily-woven, white nylon fabric and hung from a steel cable strung between 2,050 steel poles, each 21 feet long. It spanned 24½ miles, as it snaked across the grasslands and through the hills of central California, finally terminating in the Pacific Ocean.

The photographic documentation of Running Fence, manages to capture the enormity and complexity of the project in only a handful of images. The strength of the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s show is that it captures the complexity and perseverance needed to take this project from concept to execution, through drawings, media projection, photographs, and models. The detailed drawings, some eight feet wide, disclose the artists’ awareness about the landscape’s natural topography. On view is a 58-foot-long scale model of “Fence,” adorned with tiny paper flags, in lieu of the nylon cloth, as it coursed along highways, through a small town and ultimately, to the ocean. The 240 photographs by Wolfgang Volz, Gianfranco Gorgoni and Harry Shunk tell a captivating story about endless town meetings and difficult encounters with the 59 rancher-families, as well as much-needed cooperation by county, state and federal agencies, engineers, surveyors, fabricators, politicians, and citizens. The cost for this temporary work was estimated at three million dollars. As a measure of their commitment to the project, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, themselves, paid the expenses through the sale of studies, preparatory drawings and collages, scale models and original lithographs.

The exhibition Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg, contains 80 photographs taken with his simple Kodak camera. The show is based largely on a gift of images to the National Gallery, by Gary S. Davis, as well as some private lenders. The first gallery contains youthful portrayals of Beat Generation writers, like Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. The second displays photographs from the early 1980s, until Ginsberg’s death in 1997. In spite of the prestigious National Gallery venue, the photographs do not rank high on artistic merit. Ginsberg saw these pictures only as mementos of shared moments with friends. In fact, until 1983, they were filed away and forgotten. Only when Ginsberg donated his papers to Columbia University, did an archivist bring this assortment of old pictures to the poet’s attention. Ginsberg saw little that was poetic about them; but recognized that the power of celebrity and fame lent them historic and cultural value.

In an interview with Thomas Gladysz, Ginsberg said of this collection: “If you’re famous you can get away with anything…I know a lot of great photographers who are a lot better than me, who don’t have a big pretty coffee table book like I have.” [1]  Robert Frank is to be credited for encouraging Ginsberg to reprint his snap-shots, even guiding him to experts who would be capable of transforming his visual reminiscences into museum-quality imagery. The combination of the by-gone Beat Era, along with Ginsberg’s later handwritten captions at the bottom of each famed subject, further manages to elevate these humble snapshots to the level of art.

This two-part exhibition reveals an odd divide between the early and later Ginsberg photographs–the youthful pictures from the 1950’s and 1960’s reveal exuberance, creativity and camaraderie between fellow writers. The portrayals from the 1980s and 90’s perhaps unwittingly expose how drugs, alcohol and hard living took a toll on the lives of this creative group of friends. More than a collection of photographs, the exhibit documents the harsh underbelly of a countercultural generation, affording viewers an uninhibited glimpse into the lives of a close group of writers, who pushed the boundaries of acceptability in an age of conformity. Sarah Greenough, Senior Curator, Department of Photographs, organized the exhibition and assembled a noteworthy 137-page catalogue.

The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden’s exhibition, Yves Klein: With the Void, Full Powers, co-organized with the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis [the show travels to the Walker in October], is the first major retrospective of Klein’s work in the United States in nearly 30 years. It is as much an exhibition about showmanship as art. At the time of Klein’s aesthetic explorations and quixotic artistic theories, his work was viewed as radical. However, it effectively inspired artists and major artistic movements, including minimalism, conceptual art and performance art. Today’s generation of emerging artists revere Klein and his output. Nuances of his ideas are evident in much contemporary art.

Klein’s artistic career lasted only seven years. He died young, (at age 34 of a heart attack in 1962) leaving a star-like persona and an aura which veils his legacy. With the passing of time however, retrospectives exhibits such as the one at the Hirshhorn can be helpful in sorting out art from adulation. In that regard, this show has both strengths and weaknesses.

This exhibit, co-curated by Kerry Brougher, Deputy Director and Chief Curator of the Hirschhorn, and Philippe Vergne, Director of Dia Art Foundation, includes an assortment of work, along with documentary films that are especially informative. Despite the fact that the show contains work from lackluster periods in his career, Klein was resourceful in generating work that defied classification. He redefined both painting and sculpture, just when formalist mid-century tenets of Modernism were restricting artistic growth. The work on exhibit discloses Klein’s quest for combining visual/ experimental fabrication, with concerns about the spiritual. There are a range of examples from Klein’s major series including his distinguished: iconic blue monochromes; Anthropometries; sponge reliefs; Fire Paints; ‘air architecture’ projects and planetary reliefs. A gem in this show is a small intriguing piece, Ex-Voto St. Rita, (1961) (Klein traveled to Cascia in Italy, to place an ex-voto in the Saint Rita Monastery), his offering for receiving the commission for the Gelsenkirchen Opera House, Germany. This infrequently loaned piece, only rediscovered in 1980, is a see-through Plexiglas box containing three compartments; one filled with his signature International Klein Blue (IKB) pigment, one with pink, and one with gold leaf. It is both compellingly beautiful and intriguing.

Klein painted monochromes as early as 1949. In the show’s entrance, an assortment of diminutive and badly executed pieces in green, bright pink and innumerable other colors are not stupendous. However, Klein’s early experimentation with color becomes evident here, since portions around the canvas edges are unmarked, resulting in fragmentation and accentuation of pure color. His acclaimed color, IKB, reminiscent of ancient lapis lazuli and used frequently in Christian medieval paintings, was inspired by Klein’s revulsion with spectators who perceived his early monochromes as stylized interior decoration. Dazzling power pervades the blue monochrome, panels begun in 1955, as well as a representation of his intense blue sculptural forms. Especially impressive are the Monogolds from 1960 and 1961. Some works bring together a series of rectangles, assembled into grids; others consist of mobile gold leaves affixed to a panel covered in burnished gold, which quiver at the slightest breath.

Throughout his brief career, Klein was an artist who eagerly pursued painting to produce a conspicuous body of work. Conversely, he staged a series of events in which he cunningly criticized conservative ideas of painting and sculpture. In his 1958, The Void, he removed everything in the gallery space except a large cabinet, painted every surface white, and then staged an elaborate entrance performance for opening night. He was known to exhibit an empty space at the Iris Clert Gallery. In 1960, he published a faux newspaper and, in 1962 he sold certificates for non-existent works of art. Klein is known for his photomontage and perhaps his most noted piece is Saut dans le vide (Leap into the Void). Examples of all these non-representational works can be seen at the exhibit. Some critics and art historians classify Klein as a Neo-Dadaist/Conceptualist. On one hand, this is conceivable, since in 1948 at the age of 20, he fashioned his renowned emblematic gesture of signing the sky and laying claim to that kingdom. On the other hand, I concur with Thomas McEvilley, who in his 1982 Artforum essay, deemed Klein a forerunner of Post-Modernism [2].

What connects the artists in these three shows (Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Ginsberg and Klein) is their quizzical attitude and a hunger to push the predictable. By pushing the creative envelope, they hurdled conformist barriers long before the post-modern era made those kinds of risks commonplace. Their remarkably varied works reflect the care and complexity with which they responded to the shifting standards of their time.

by Elaine A. King, Contributing Writer

Freelance Critic & Curator

Professor, History of Art, Theory & Museum Studies, Carnegie Mellon University

Pittsbugh, PA

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[1] Allen Ginsberg, Edmund White, Spontaneous Mind: Selected Interviews 1958-1996, an interview with Thomas Gladysz, New York, Harper Collins, 2001

[2] McEvilley, T. Yves Klein: Messenger of the Age of Space. Artforum 20, no.5. January, 1982. pp. 38-51.