Seattle Art Museum's "Target Practice" gets art in the crosshairs
Published: Jul 11, 2009
It can be difficult to get children interested in fine art, unless you promise them that they'll be able to hammer nails into it. Seattle Art Museum's newest exhibition, "Target Practice: Art Under Attack 1949-78," will fulfill that promise. Every piece in this fascinating collection of modern art has one thing in common with the others: it's been in a fight with the artist that made it, and in most cases, the art lost.
Take for an example Nikki de Saint-Phalle's paintings, with the artist worked over with pub darts and blasts from a shotgun filled with paint pellets. Or Robert Rauschenberg's "Erased de Kooning Drawing," in which the artist purchased another artist's work only to strip it down to the bare canvas. And Yoko Ono's "Painting to Hammer a Nail" is as good as its name — many have already "contributed" to the work, and you can, too. Fresh nails are provided.
Of course, there are bigger ideas at play in "Target Practice" than mere destruction, and through some clever staging of the works and an entertaining and informative audio tour by musician Laurie Anderson, all this disregard for the rules of art is made readily understandable. Nearly every artist in "Target Practice" was fed up with the established rules for one reason or another; some felt that there was no point to art after the death and destruction of World War II, while others were simply bored with the status quo. "Target Practice" puts you inside their heads without being pretentious about it. Art isn't always about how it's made; sometimes the reasons why it's made are more significant.
It's also entirely possible to view "Target Practice" without thinking about any of this stuff. It's one of the most colorful, most dynamic exhibitions that Seattle Art Museum has ever hosted, featuring paintings, sculpture, video and even slide presentations. Even as you walk through the exhibition, it is visibly changing. And thanks to that hammer and box of nails, it's never the same exhibition twice.
- by Geoff Carter, Seattle Reporter for HelloMetro
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