Damien Hirst, End Game, 2000-2004 Museum of Fine Arts Houston
It always surprises me how enthused kids under 10 are with abstraction and contemporary art. They are usually more excited about it than my family or some friends. It’s all about the creativity they see, the visual or physical experience they have. And engaging, finding pleasure, maybe even feeling awe certainly seem like qualifiers of whether something is art or not. This always happens when we walk through the Turrell tunnel. Students are mesmerized, feel dizzy, love the changing colors, wonder how it’s made. The same is true for Calder’s mobile gliding above and the calm that it procures.
Installation view with Alexander Calder, International Mobile, 1938 Museum of Fine Arts Houston
Yet sometimes, students will take me to an uncomfortable area. Skepticism. Rejection. They might say “I could do this” or “this is ugly,” and such comments are tough to deal with. So recently I helped put together a training session at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston with fellow docent, Eric Timmreck. He tackled this thought-provoking, even brain-racking subject .
One takeaway from our training is that there just isn’t a magical answer. Simple dialogue can go a long way. Being non-judgmental, acknowledging differing points of view, offering the artist’s intent, and giving historical context can be positive. But that might not always be enough. People can continue to scratch their heads.
Think of how Du Champ teased us with his ready-mades, his urinal titled “Fountain”. Or how Warhol provoked us with his Brillo Box that is literally the product packaging itself. Rauschenberg with his found objects. Hirst with his cadavers and skulls.
What makes all this art? You can’t always grab onto conventional notions like beauty, harmonious color, composition, and shapes. So what else is there? Eric talked about lenses like experience, process, narrative, dialectic, meaning, and truth that can help to understand them. And maybe appreciate them.
Hirst’s “End Game” is an example of this. I have always swooshed my student tours past because of its morbidity. I’d like the conversation to be about livelier subjects, life not death. Yet the children are reluctant to march on. They are drawn like magnets to this piece, making me think their connections may not be the same as mine. So perhaps I could engage with them on different levels after all. What surprises them, what materials are used, what is going on, the different objects they see. We know that Hirst is speaking to mortality, vanitas, and medecine. Maybe those meanings can be discussed, but maybe we’ll already have discussed enough!
This blurb hardly gives justice to what we learnt with Eric, which has allowed me to see a piece of art in a whole new light.
All photos my own
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