Art or Performance Art?
October 24, 2007 @ 10:49 pm
I saw the Christoph Buchel show at Mass MoCA a few weeks back, or as much of it as was legally permissible. Some art critics were dumping on the museum, but Buchel comes off looking pretty bad if you know the whole story. So it was gratifying to have the museum win the court case, and then do the right thing by taking the show down rather than showing it in an unfinished state.
Of course, unfinished as it was, it was great performance art. This non-show has inspired more conversations about art than any other I've seen at Mass MoCA. And the yellow tarps were a stroke of genius, lending a Christo effect to the otherwise nondescript collection of junk. I'm glad they managed to salvage something from this fiasco.
