I’m glad I caught Sturtevant: Double Trouble at MOCA before it closed. I dragged my feet about going because I assumed—in my ignorance—that Sturtevant’s work-mostly copies of iconic artworks by male contemporaries—would be merely clever, and offer no pleasure or heart. I was gravely mistaken. I left the exhibit shaken.
A retrospective is probably the ideal context for experiencing Sturtevant. A single work in isolation risks "passing," and getting lost in the crowd.
On the other hand, I suppose museum-goers who don’t read signage probably thought her retrospective was a selection of signature Pop-related icons from the Sixties to now: a Johns target; some Stella stripes; a Lichtenstein comic; Warhol Marilyns, flowers, and cows; some Beuys props; some Duchamps for historical depth; and—bringing us up to the recent past—a Felix Gonzalez-Torres go-go boy, a Paul McCarthy video, and some Robert Gober wallpaper. An interior that’s replicated in hundreds of museums around the world, not to mention art history textbooks.
In lesser hands this could have been merely a prank, but Sturtevant generated something more serious. It struck home.
I detected tremendous exasperation and rage. But also wonder and curiosity. Her “reproductions”—as she called them—aren’t copies; each is a Portrait of the Artwork as Yet Another Damn Thing Crowding the Room.
Note that she never bothered with earnest expressions by people like Rothko or Diebenkorn or Ellsworth Kelly. Her targets were works of art that were already ironic appropriations of found images. Again, this could have led to a boring hall-of-mirrors of “criticality,” but Sturtevant’s skepticism and wit went deeper. She actually seems to enjoy the irony. “Some devastating critique of contemporary life,” you hear Sturtevant sniff, “Selling at auction for millions.”
Of course she was playing with fire, and Sturtevants have become hot commodities themselves. Christie’s sold her 1966 Lichtenstein, Frighten Girl last year for over $3 million.
Because her work plays an ambiguous game, I appreciated the inclusion of some of her later, slightly more direct and expansive video works. Besides, they're terrific. Dillinger Running Series (2000) ran continuously along the walls of a room over her “repetition” of Stella’s Arbeit Macht Frei in a way that was simultaneously lighthearted fun, breathtakingly mean, and thought-provoking.
An incessant refrain of “Where’s … my … money!” provided the thunderous soundtrack to a mash-up of Paul McCartney and scary clips of arena spectacle fans (“The Dark Threat of Absence/Fragmented and Sliced,” 2002)
“Elastic Tango” (2010) provided the perfect finale: an inverted triangle of nine monitors presented highlights of Sturtevant’s other videos plus pirated nature program clips that displayed their corporate watermarks proudly.
After taking this in, I was unable to look at the permanent collection—a thing I usually enjoy doing—because Sturtevant had made MOCA's paintings and sculptures seem a bit spurious. I doubt the effect will last, but I’m going to relish it while it does.
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