roximity aside, it’s hard to resist comparing the New Age window dressing of the Christo’s Central Park ‘Gates’ to Daniel Buren’s spectacular “The Eye of the Storm’ installation currently at the Guggenheim Museum. One has sold tons of catalogues, posters, and t-shirts, and one has not. One would have been (possibly) admired by Robert Smithson, and the other (probably) not, etc. Buren in his ‘welcome back’ return to the “Gugg’ (pronounced ‘goog’) messes with it in a way it’s never been messed with before. For me, the art exhibited in Frank Lloyd Wright’s Emerald City never really mattered; it was the building that was the star. And whether you plod your way up the ramp, or scoot your way down, the vast, spiraling rotunda would seize your attention (and heighten your anxieties) with its Hitchcockian perspectives and groin high balconies. This would always win out over the art, andcheat the museumgoer out of any experience beyond a thrilling stroll interrupted by the occasional presence of puzzling objects. Knowing this, it ishere that Buren exercises a form of revenge on this institution. Deservedly revered in Europe, Buren is re- membered in the US as the ‘Stripe Guy’,a conceptual artist who makes pictures ofpaintings (pre-printed linen stripes) that function both as a logo/brand and as a fram-ing device within the art contexts that choseto host them. I have always admired Buren’s “stick-to-your-guns” practice (ahem) and thebleak gaiety of the stripes themselves. In recent years, Buren, like many of his gen-eration (LeWitt, Graham, and to some de- gree Weiner) has moved into the lucrative sphere of commissioned public and private art. Apart from a gala opening attended by‘all of Paris’ that included a quaint, photo- genic performance; the only stripes aroundwere in the recreation of a 1966 painting installation. What really matters is the massive, two-sided, mirrored wedge that extends from the ground floor (thus shrinking it) to the dome, disrupting the Gugg’s sacred vortex of sightlines. Spectacularly cheezy in a corporate way, its measured effect upon the museum’s interior is convulsive, instantly transforming FLR’s temple into a shopping mall funhouse. By inserting this monstrosity into the ‘eye’ of the Gugg’s ‘hurricane’, Buren alters the visual experience so associated with this place. And another twist of this dagger comes in the use of the gallery spaces themselves. As we ascend/descend the rings, an ugly, bristling tangle of rods and scaffolding exposes the wedge’s construction like a ‘behind the magic’ tour of a Hollywood set. Once again, we are denied scenic vistas, and the problematic exhibition nooks with their low ceilings and curved walls are darkened and functionless, resembling modern catacombs. The initial ‘WOW” responses of the lobby dissipate, and people begin to have a drifting ‘lost backstage’ or ‘taken a wrong turn in the parking garage’ look. I cared less about the design elements employed to make several colorful, viewer-friendly spaces in the Thannhauser galleries; but instead looked forward to the possibility of other Buren interventions across our great land. Like at Enron Headquarters, for instance? TIM MAUL, New York buren is back in New York don’t look down! hybrid synthesis that easily goes beyond the editorial constraints imposed and where the contents are at the same time a color chart, basically commercial, designed for Sunday painters (and Saturday painters too) who want to add some color to their “home, and also a magisterial and quintessential résumé of the history of painting. We can contemplate the rainbow he has flfl attened in the pages of his book, as Bismuth reassures us in a certain manner of our primordial faculty of wonder, and by giving us this simple sky in black and white he contributes in developing our perceptive capacities so that in the end we reveal to ourselves at once the nature of the world and the nature of our brains. Enjoy!
Tim Maul, New York

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