Fashism and Belief

A couple weeks ago we did two museum special events in the same day, starting with the preview of the Superheroes and Fashion at the Met, which to me felt minor, pumped up, and an ill-advised effort to MOMA-ize the Met. The superhero stuff was OK, especially those costumes, like Robert Downey Jr.'s Iron Man gear and Michelle Pfeiffer's Cat Woman, that had been used in movies, but the fashion clothes were ludicrous and mostly unwearable except on October 31. That night the new members reception at the Guggenheim highlighted Cai Guo Qiang: I Want to Believe. Visually stunning, at the very least, but in fact considerably more. He understands, and utilizes, violence and randomness in art, life and the planet. He understands too that they are the forces driving constant creation. He uses gunpowder in his works, large canvases that in fact are the residue of burnt gunpowder. Like Cristo he also utilizes outdoor locations for one time artistic events. The Guggenheim had a loop tape of a moving fireworks float that Cai had, apparently, driven through Times Square. He's also big on installations here, hanging tigers shot full of arrows; a hundred running wolves suspended in pack chase and finally crashing against a thick pane of plastic. The spectacular show centerpiece is eight compact Chevrolets, suspended floor to the 60 ft or so rotunda ceiling, with spears of flashing neon coming from each of them but the first one at floor level. All of this was exhilarating but exhausting. Where Cai, born in China, goes wrong, I think, is his embrace of revolutionary violence and particularly Mao's Cultural Revolution. Because far from the violent natural, the violence employed in the Cultural Revolution, or in any revolution or even that in the name of anarchy, seeks only to overthrow one system and implant an equally regimented other. No planned violence made by man can ever be nature. These are the sorts of conclusions reached when you get too involved with the American Museum of Natural History, when a million years seems an eyeblink and Cosmic Collisions the motif.