White, as far as galleries are concerned, is not a
racial index. Ironically, it stands for neutrality. It reflects all lights, all
thoughts and all visual engagements. It separates the work of art displayed against
it from the surroundings and the possible attributes that enhance or affect the
meaning of the work during focused and dispassionate contemplation by the
viewer. Perhaps, viewer is exempted from this discourse for he or she is just
another attribute to the art galleries and events. The contemplation of art these
days, is mostly done by art buyers, dealers, collectors and auction house
personalities. That justifies the scheduling of events during an art do; previews
before views and VIP previews before the open doors for art ‘people’.
The color white and the conventional rectangular
spaces have been the reasons for calling the galleries white cubes, though cube
is just a euphemism for squares with varying angles. Such designated gallery
spaces replicate the idea of modernist grand narratives. The space almost determines
the viewers’ attitudes and their kinetic orientations within it. Unlike in the
large scale museums where people audibly express their surprise before masterly
works, exchange art historical anecdotes, the overlapping narratives of the
live guides who conduct the flock of visitors through halls and the gleeful
noises that the children make, the white cube galleries hush the people up with
their sanitized interiors. Galleries, more than museums become stringent
civilizing agents in this way and visiting a gallery becomes a civilizing
ritual, if I rephrase Carol Duncan’s argument a bit.
Breaking away from the white cubes was a way of the
artists who rebelled against the grand narratives of modernism and they thought
that these sanitized grand structures were commodifying interfaces. Those
artists who went into the making of conceptual art using poor materials, emerging
technologies and their own corporeal bodies discarded organized white cube
spaces and propped up their interventionist practices in impromptu spaces or in
the spaces that were ready to create ruptures in the conventional art making
and viewing. Immateriality and temporality became the defining status of the works
of art that broke down materiality and object experiences and converted them
into conceptual experimentations. Art being an expression through a medium,
materiality couldn’t have been wished away completely. Hence, artists went for
abject materials that evoked aesthetical revulsion initially followed by
intellectual deliberations.
However, white cubes are structures that never say die.
They are determined spaces with assumed fluidity with the arrival of a vigorous
art market. Had it been once a place for dispassionate contemplation without external
influences or distractions, later it became a space that could replicate interiors
of elite habitats virtually, interestingly, by adding certain distractions to
the very viewing space. It was done through certain minimal touches of change
and major tweaking of the viewers’ consciousness and conscience. Galleries changed
the ambience of their interiors by changing the nature of light, darkening the
interiors to create light spots that highlighted the works, drowning the
surroundings in utter darkness. It came as an offshoot of video art but became
a fad in general display even. The white cubes came masquerading as dark
caverns, making the viewing or art an exploration or expedition through an unchartered
land.
The determined spaces with certain square feet of
display area with a familiar layout to the regular visitors suddenly became
confusing labyrinths where navigation turned out to be an experience in itself
rather than the works of art exhibited on walls or floors or screens. The
breaking down of grand narratives became another set of obscure narratives that
needed physical and mental unpacking at once. If the white cubes were an offshoot
of a colonial discourse, the navigational challenges now posed by the galleries
by changing lights, layouts and wall colors became an imperialist offensive
that demanded subservience, unquestioned acceptance and never ending awe from
the viewers. The white cubes, once the temples of civilizing rituals and grand
narratives are now the theme parks with mindboggling roller-coaster rides. The
attention of the viewers is taken away from the machine that took them to
gut-wrenching movements, instead they are meant to focus on the exhilaration
that that the movements impart. Often it turns out to be a para-jumping with a
malfunctioning parachute.
Colored walls of a gallery, taken positively, are a pleasant
distraction from, as one of the artists would put it, ‘the usual drab of ‘the’ white’.
They do accentuate the presence of the works on display so long as they remain
subdued. But the screaming colors, indiscreet daubing of all what are available
in the color chart of a paint-maker, absorb the works the way a cunning croc
would do to unsuspecting thirsty lambs. The Poppins candy like walls in a
gallery may be a fun thing for the first timers but for the seasoned ones,
besides the visual titillation, it offers nothing but a terrible sense of
discomfort. Someone wearing gaudy suits may be interesting to look at for once
but a pack of such buddies processioning through a narrow street would make one
think of a harlequins’ carnival.
White cube is old fashioned now, many think so. Adding
hues to the walls does make some impact of on the viewing experience. However,
thinking of it, a work of art, if it is done in a conventional medium, has to
be seen in a neutral space, devoid of particular physical contexts. The neutral
spaces function as crucibles for the contexts to flow in virtually. It doesn’t
mean that the museums and galleries have to stick to white surfaces. There
could be colored walls, heavily decked up frames exuding the glories of royalty.
But a gallery space is a space where royalty is an aspiration but not a given
reality. It is meant to be a class-less, caste-less and color-less space.
Treating adjacent walls in jarring colors doesn’t really enhance the quality of
the works.
-JohnyML
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