Manhattan, Mixed Use. Photographs and Other Art Practices from 1970 until Today
CINDY SHERMAN Untitled Film Still, 1980. Cortesía: the artist and Metro Pictures.
Seeing the artwork as an agent with which to lend dynamism to radical interpretation forms is a frequent temptation. It was essential to the artistic behaviours which, in the late 1960s, hosted an extensive debate on the entity of the artwork, the relationship between the idea and its realisation, the emphasis on the ephemeral and the promotion of the process, in order, ultimately, to question the traditional art system.
At that point the urban space became a laboratory where creative work and habitation established a dialogue. In the case of the United States, the American way of life was left behind, following the changing paradigms brought about by the Vietnam War, which turned New York into the focus of new practices, developed in this context. In this way, marginalised collectives and experimental artists made their voices heard from alternative spaces, such as the Soho area.
This atmosphere is conveyed by Manhattan, uso mixto, from the occupation of urban areas which had experienced temporary poverty to the activation of a range of functions which continue today. They no longer follow a strict hierarchy, although it is possible to trace former influences and trends. Precisely because of this, one of the most noteworthy characteristics of this exhibition is a discourse which enables visitors to view each work individually, without forcing them to rely on a chronological or taxonomic sequence. It is the places, the names, that determine a decentralised system, which reduces the relevance of some undoubtedly important figures, such as Gordon Matta-Clark, as it highlights others, such as Zoe Leonard and Peter Hujar, or even Sharon Hayes, whose In the New Future (2005) could function as a central point within a voyage of conceptual continuities and sensibilities between the past and the present.
Therefore, the show has opted for a poetics of action within the public space, where the ephemeral, the processual and the experimental come together. Precisely because of this, it is interesting to observe the role of photography as a means of expression and documentation of these practices. This gives rise to a fruitful debate on its role as a register, an artwork or an autonomous image. However, in this case, ethics and aesthetics express an attitude of exploration, rather than trying to seek a certain status; this is the role of the museum, which ultimately is the one to lend legitimacy to this path.
In this way, the urban landscape and the experiment acquire meaning through the journey presented by the exhibition, which also displays essentially ethical pretensions, such as the gradual presence of collectives such as the gay community, lending new nuances to the belief that the European performative scene is more committed than the North American one, although this is just another of the approaches used in Manhattan, uso mixto.
Ultimately, a situation is constructed: Manhattan, which helps keep alive a myth which includes the statements of Rudolph de Leeuw, who, in 1910, confessed: “I think about Broadway all day long, and at night I dream about Broadway”. However, beyond the legend, the show questions traditional canons, the purity of disciplines and the position of the viewer in the face of this reality. Its most attractive element lies in the deliberate (con)fusion of times and proposals.
Art is invoked, therefore, mainly as an experience, where everything comes together in the discovery of dynamic tension levels, whose sedimentation can be clearly found in the necessary relationship between new experiences and the languages which makes them visible. This exhibition configures the landscape of a large part of the most self-reflective artistic behaviours, in a continuum which goes from the 1960s to the present day, and which should encourage us to pose new questions.
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