Jasper Johns, Target with Four Faces, 1955. Image: ruf.rice.edu

VoCA was in Basel this week, the week before the famous art fair, Art Basel 38, which runs from 13 - 17 June, 2007. We were glad to see the museum exhibitions in relative quiet, allowing us to make some intriguing discoveries including:

1. Why American painter Jasper Johns is considered such a great artist
2. The Situationists: Who were they and what they were all about
3. Glimpses of sheer brilliance with Robert Gober

1. Admittedly, VoCA has always wondered, ‘What’s with all the targets?’ We thought they were neat, but what made Johns so famous? He is the artist to whom Leo Castelli famously offered a show in 1958, while visiting the New York studio of Johns’ friend Robert Rauschenberg. And we can certainly see the brilliance of Rauschenberg’s Combines.

The Johns retrospective at the Kunstmuseum Basel was all we needed. Several wonderful studies for targets evoked an eye. The all-seeing eye. The artist’s eye. Art’s eye.

Not only do the primary colours (red, yellow and blue) ricochet off one another – Johns works wonders with the colours, spelling them out and painting them black with the tiniest bit of the corresponding colour peeking through, or sometimes denying us colour altogether, making such works an experiment in language.

Jasper Johns, Hart Crane (Periscope) Image: usc.edu

The targets themselves are a symphony of brushstrokes within a rigorous template. It is as if the paint, added overtop barely visible newsprint, has been held hostage to the paintings’ structure.

Jasper Johns, Souvenir, 1970. Image: americanart.si

In other works he swipes a ruler from a single point into a perfect circle, or half-circle. This brings to mind Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. The idea of the eye (and the target) as being made of mathematical measurements also evokes the idea that humankind is limited by our knowledge - Descartes’ cogito ergo sum.

Leonardo da Vinci, Vetruvian Man, c. 1492. Image: lclark.edu

2. Over at the Jean Tinguely museum, a comprehensive survey of the Situationist movement was on view. The Situationists began as a rebellious group in 1950s Paris with Guy Debord, Asger Jorn and others and expanded across the world, eventually splitting into various factions like the Lettrists.

Guy Debord and the Situationist International. Image: mitpress.mit.edu

Most noteworthy in this exhibition were Constant’s architectural models, and Guiseppe Pinot Gallizio, whose rolls of paintings meant to be cut off at the behest of the buyer (presumably to fit above his or her sofa) were spectacularly suspended from the ceiling.

Constant Nieuwenhuys, New Babylon 1956-1972, maquette. Image: 8weekly.nl

3. Robert Gober. We had only seen an occasional piece of Gober’s here and there in group exhibitions – a pair of hairy wax legs protruding from a wall, for instance.

Robert Gober, Untitled, 1991. Image: acrstudio.com

What a discovery awaited at Basel’s Schaulager (an architectural masterwork by Swiss architects Herzog and de Meuron – and one of VoCA’s favorite museums.)

An interior view of Herzog and de Meuron’s Schaulager. Image: aml.si

The best piece in the exhibition was an untitled permanent installation with a large concrete Virgin Mary, her welcoming arms open, a huge drainpipe bisecting her torso. On either side were two large suitcases lying on the ground, and at the back was a life-sized lit staircase set into the wall. The sound of rushing water filled the space. Upon close inspection we noticed that each of the three central pieces sat on what appeared to be an everyday city street sewer, under which ran a brightly-lit burbling brook complete with (fake) algae, oysters and mussels. Under the Virgin, oversized coins had been added to the water. The staircase was beautifully lit from above, with droplets of water sparkling as they struck each step. It was a stunning evocation of heaven, the descent, our earthly moment (the viewer – that’s you) and the underworld. The passage of time seemed to fill in for the lack of running water in the present moment.

Robert Gober, Untitled, 1995 – 1997. Image: schaulager.org

MoCCA director David Liss, who had already seen the piece, told VoCA that “it was the best installation I had ever seen” and VoCA can see why. Certainly worth the trip to Basel.

Gober’s sculptures were displayed thoughout the space, some more effectively than others. In one room, an installation selected from a show that he had curated in collaboration with Matthew Drutt from Houston’s de Menil Collection in 2005 was another revelation that brought together Abe Lincoln’s head, a woman’s black satin coat with a cut of blood-red lining and a fireplace of severed limbs.

Robert Gober, Untitled, 1994-5. Image: menil.org

According to the literature, the show-within-a-show sought to demonstrate the artist’s interest in life and death.

Head of Abe Lincoln, 19th-20th century. Image: menil.org