Always be branding! (photo by moi)
“Before you go in,” a tired-eyed older security guard stopped me at the entrance of the black tortoise-shaped screening room for Nan Goldin’s new slideshow Stendhal Syndrome, part of her current exhibition, You never did anything wrong, at Gagosian, “you have to put one of these on your phone camera.” These being, as the guard shuffled with a sheet of paper, a sticker comically branded with the blue-chip gallery’s elegantly minimalist logo in white font on a black background in case anyone forgot where they were or who this black-bar censor stickie came from. “I don’t even have my phone out,” I replied. Blank stare. Nothing. Giving up on an argument about Gagosian’s authoritarian tendencies as this guard was clearly not the audience, I slowly dug through my bag, casting aside crumpled tissues and folded press releases from other shows while maintaining eye contact. Finding my phone in the tote bag mess, I snatched the sticker from his pointed finger, plopped it on my crappy iPhone SE, and entered the tunnel.
Inside, Stendhal Syndrome projects Goldin, in chain-smoking raspy voiceover, narrating the Orpheus myth and explaining Stendhal getting the vapors after rapturously gazing upward at Firenze’s frescos, a malady otherwise known as Stendhal Syndrome. Goldin pairs these lofty tales with a slideshow of primarily her photographs of others’ artworks: classical Greco-Roman sculpture, Medieval and Renaissance paintings, Victor Hugo’s floating monstrous disembodied head in Justicia. It’s akin to being forced to politely sit through your artsy aunt’s vacation photos after visiting the Louvre or the most dramatic art history 101 lecture imaginable. With its evocation of timeless beauty, loss and grief, and the ascendant ability of art, coupled with the over-the-top score by Soundwalk Collective, Stendhal Syndrome clearly means to trigger the syndrome in the viewers, hoping our hearts will go thumpity-thump just like ole Stends with art-induced reverence. Did I feel my heart palpitating (more so than normal)? Did I feel woozy and shaky like my legs were going to give out from under me? Did I feel overcome with awe?
No. I felt annoyed. I felt irritated at this exercise in pretension. And when I really consider why, the sticker is at fault.
This is what Goldin/Gagosian are afraid of
I can pinpoint the sticker as the source of my ire because I saw the rest of the show before the invasive Stendhal Syndrome stickering. While I wouldn’t say that prior experience of the show made me weak in the knees, it was FINE. The exhibition consists of a range of Goldin’s photographs lining the perimeter of the gallery, most of which slam together her images of art historical masters with her own snapshots of her community in a grid-like format. Goldin has been at this series for awhile. I recall seeing—and not particularly liking—these comparison photos way back in her 2011 exhibition Scopophilia at Matthew Marks. Like then, I fail to understand what these combos say of any interest other than my friends are as important and hot as the masters, and look how talented I am. Both of which are readily apparent in her photographs of her community alone without trying to provide some sort of gravitas thanks to art history’s greatest hits.
Perhaps this is why the photos I was most drawn to were singular pics that aimed—and succeeded—at capturing moments of near-religious, or maybe just religious transcendence like the glorious floral suffering, replacing the blood of Christ with a floral bouquet, in Lilacs between Jesus’s legs, Aubazine church, France or the heavenly sunlit lamb in the Garden in Holy Sheep, Rathmullen, Ireland, which reminds me of the cover of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’ Ghosteen. Of course, there’s no arguing about the utter gorgeousness of Goldin’s prints, which make even quite obvious shots seem weighted with intimacy and meaning like the entwined sculptural hands in Two graces.
With the focus on photographing centuries-old artworks, You never did anything wrong reminds me of Catherine Opie’s awful exhibition, Walls, Windows and Blood, at Lehmann Maupin from earlier this year, which also presented grids of rephotographed Italian paintings. Yet Opie zeroed in on bloody wounds in Catholic iconography, pairing them with other photos of CCTV cameras and high walls in order to make some sort of facile MFA student-level critique about the Vatican’s overbearing control and creepiness. We get it, Cathy. At least Goldin’s show is better than that; I’ll take being momentarily moved by beauty. And sometimes Goldin does pull it off like in her other moving-image inclusion that shares the show’s title. You never did anything wrong, Part 1 sits in another oddly shaped viewing room, this time like a winding Richard Serra sculpture (both video rooms were constructed in collaboration with architect Hala Wardé). The video itself is a melodramatic recreation of my animal-and-pet cemetery-dominated Instagram feed, beginning in a graveyard with close-ups of graves etched with the likeness of dearly departed wall-eyed Boston terriers and judge-y black-and-white kitties. This is equal parts silly and sweet—and at times thoroughly profound. I was moved to almost tears by the contextual revelation that the gravestone emblazoned with “You never did anything wrong” belonged to a beloved pet. Sniff. After a rainstorm in the graveyard, the video juxtaposes an eclipse with clips of animals: cats and horses looking into Goldin’s lens, giraffes gracefully parading, dogs zipping playfully, a pig tucking itself into bed. Even though I’m not entirely sure I “got” what the press release refers to as a myth about animals stealing the sun, I could have watched it all day.
If I walked out of Gagosian after You never did anything wrong, Part 1, I would have left with a completely different opinion of the show—not falling to my knees, but satisfied. After the sticker, though, everything shifted. I fucking hated it.
Now, I should note I have no clue whose bright idea this sticker was. Who created a photo policy so weirdly restrictive they felt they had to inflict themselves on viewers’ personal property? It could have been Goldin, Gagosian, or both. I was scolded in Gagosian years ago for snapping an ironic selfie in a Koons balloon dog so the responsibility may rest with the gallery. Yet, in recent years, the gallery seems to have loosened up a bit. Ultimately, I’m not sure pinpointing who is responsible matters as it is an integral part of the experience of the show regardless, which makes it strange (but not that strange given the quality of art criticism these days) that I can’t find a review that mentions it. Really?! I’m not supposed to talk about THIS?!
While I’m asking questions, why was the sticker only required for Stendhal Syndrome? Did Goldin want us to put our phones down for once and experience the sublime? That didn’t work as I still saw people illuminated by blue light, scrolling aimlessly in the screening room darkness. Or was the gallery scared that a trashily entrepreneurial viewer would tape the whole thing and sell it on the dark web or burn it onto a bootleg DVD to hock on Canal Street?
The latter just about says it. With the sticker, Goldin and Gagosian make an elitist snoot separation: the Grande Artiste from the masses of mouth-breathing slobs that would clearly muck up the transcendent possibility of art with our fumbling hands, wretched phone cameras, and tasteless eye. I mean, why can YOU take photos in the Louvre, but I can’t take photos of your photos? Good thing those museums didn’t have the same restrictions—at least for an artist as prominent as Goldin!
This would all be simply absurd and amusingly controlling if the exhibition wasn’t mainly about reproduction. Taken in this context, the show becomes about something else entirely: power, privilege, and exactly who has the ability to reproduce and make art out of art. Who is able to capture images of art that moves us? Who is allowed to preserve it in our camera rolls? Who can, then, sell these reproductions in a fancy-pants art gallery? What is the right way to respond to beauty? Who has the freedom to respond to the sublime in ways they want? And who just has to sit, do what they’re told, and be force-fed the correct response to art?