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Published: December 29th 2011
Above the Hudson
The Hudson River passes through the Mid-Atlantic highlands near Storm King MountainDia Beacon
Today I visited
Dia Beacon in Beacon New York.
It’s the largest museum in the world dedicated to art from the late 60s and early 70s.
This was a very convulsive period in art history, as all the old paradigms seemed burned out and their replacements had not been found yet.
The collection focuses on three of the movements from this era:
minimalism,
conceptual art, and
process art.
All three take the art-making process itself as their fundamental subject matter.
As one artist in the collection put it “My art is what it is and nothing else”.
As such, hostile critics accuse this art of being about nothing.
The museum is a former printing factory located next to the Hudson River.
It has an amazing view of the valley.
Inside are huge galleries lit from above by skylights.
Each room is dedicated to a single artist.
The work has no labels.
Instead, each gallery has a handout that describes the works.
This was done deliberately, so nothing would interrupt the viewer’s direct experience with the art.
I have
Storm King Highway
The Storm King Highway on the northern slope of Storm King Mountain in New York. mixed opinions of these art movements.
All three are very intellectual and theoretical.
This is not bad by itself, but this type of art has a tendency to create things that only people with a doctorate in art theory can fully appreciate.
This collection certainly had works like that.
One room consisted entirely of gray Plexiglas panels hanging from the walls.
What is this about?
Only after reading the handout does one realize that this artist has a pessimistic view of art trends (quite possibly a nihilistic view) and his intension is the show the gallery as he sees it, a place with all the color drained from it.
On the other hand, there are several rooms of work by
Donald Judd.
One of the most famous minimalists, he creates sculptures of simple forms that are often repeated.
As the viewer walks around them, their view of the sculpture changes.
The viewers’ interaction with the sculpture is a fundamental feature of the works’ effects, in often subtle ways.
I had two favorites of the artists on view.
The first is
Richard Serra.
He is famous
Hudson River from Storm King Mountain
The Hudson River from an overlook on the Storm King Highway for his extremely large sculptures made of heavy steel.
They are an exploration of one’s experience with space.
As viewers walk around them and through them, the experience of the space changes in often disturbing ways.
One of his sculptures is a large steel spiral with wavy walls.
Walking in is like passing through a steel canyon where the walls expand and shrink.
One is much more conscious of the surrounding space afterwards.
The other artist is
Sol Lewitt.
Dia Beacon has a selection of his wall drawings on display.
Sol Lewitt wrote a series of instructions for creating each drawing, which other people then carry out to create the work.
What I liked about this show over the one at
MassMOCA (see March 2nd) is that the instructions themselves are also on display, so I can compare them to the finished work.
Some of them are pretty simple: “Write wavy lines on a wall that do not touch, in four colors. Draw lines until as much of the wall as possible are covered”.
The goal of this art is to experiment with how a set of simple
Storm King Highway
Pictured from a rest area near West Point related ideas can create a wide tapestry of final effects.
The museum had plenty else to see.
One room had constructions by
Dan Flavin, known for his florescent light sculptures.
One sculpture was squares of florescent tubes arranged like window panes.
They overlapped to create a wall of lights that filled half the room.
Another room held a long series of
Ellsworth Kelly’s shaped canvases painted in primary colors.
The museum has one of the largest displays in the world of this work.
Yet another room had an unusual series of paintings by
Andy Warhol.
They are all silkscreens of the same image, a blown up brushstroke, in different combinations of colors.
There are dozens in all.
With the huge size, the canvases become investigations into abstract color.
Storm King Highway
After Dia Beacon, I needed something to do for a few hours.
Nothing else in the area is open at this time of year, so I went for a drive.
The road I chose is the
Storm King Highway.
The Hudson River passes through the Mid-Atlantic highlands ridge just south of Beacon.
Storm King
Hudson River
The Hudson river close to West Point Highway goes over the eastern slopes of Storm King Mountain along the river.
The road climbs and climbs, offering views along gorges and steep valleys at every turn.
At the bottom of them all is a wide river surrounded by steep cliffs.
The top of the ridge featured classic scenery of glacial carved rocks covered in small trees.
On the way down, the road features a vista of a group of granite buildings in the distance, behind a bend in the river.
The buildings are part of the
US Military Academy at West Point.
The road continues down until it reaches the river at Bear Mountain, and the namesake bridge across the Hudson.
The drive is considered one of the most scenic in New York State, which is high praise indeed.
After the drive, I passed into New Jersey.
In the popular imagination, the state is an amalgamation of endless suburbia, strip malls, and post-industrial hell.
The reality is more complicated than that, although parts certainly fit the stereotype.
I ended up at a mall.
New Jersey has a large number of malls, to the point that
West Point
West Point from an overlook along the Storm King Highway asking a native “Which mall?” is about as effective in locating their home (and about as insulting) as asking “Which exit?”
Some
quick web research revealed that most New Jersey malls are about the same as the malls everywhere else, but several do stand out.
One of them is the
Mall at Short Hills.
This mall is as upscale as malls get, and has long occupied a
top five spot in rankings of sales per square footage.
The mall is certainly gaudy.
It has valet parking of course, along with a concierge service that will order theatre and concert tickets while you shop.
The stores themselves cover every famous designer name, along with some I’ve never heard of.
In this place, the Macy’s branch seems outright down market (the other anchor stores are Bloomingdale’s, Sak’s Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, and Nordstrom).
A great place to window shop, but mere mortals like me need to do our buying elsewhere.
In this part of New Jersey, most travel is for business.
This is a great thing.
The business travelers mean that there are a large number of hotels with great amenities that cater to them during
Sunset
Sunset from a Storm King Mountain overlook the week.
Since they leave on the weekend, people like me can then get those same wonderful hotels at ridiculous discounts.
In my case, Expedia found an all suite hotel that had a last minute discount of over 40%!,(MISSING) which brought it under my budget limit.
It’s a nice place, and the room is larger than my old apartment.
The free breakfast is much better than normal.
New Jersey Diners
I had dinner in a great New Jersey contribution to American culture, a diner.
They are found throughout the Northeast (see
Valley of Romantic Memories), but the ones in New Jersey are considered the cream of the crop.
These diners are famous enough that there is
an entire website dedicated to them.
Paul’s Diner was recommended by the manager of my hotel as one of the better ones in the area.
Tonight they had a special: A lamb chop dinner including desert for under $20!
It was delicious.
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