Art on a grand scale

The Age

Saturday March 13, 2010

Raymond Gill

LUDWIG Mies van der Rohe designed Berlin��s New National Gallery in 1968.It��s a pure, modernist design �� little more than a large box made of roof, floor and walls of glass. It usually houses a collection of mostly German 20th-century art, but this month it has been turned over to a single installation called Live by Tyrolborn and New York-based artist Rudolf Stingel. The entire entrance floor of the gallery has been denuded �� including its ticket box and cloakroom �� and its granite floors are now covered window to- window by an expanse of thick carpet designed by Stingel.The carpet��s richly decorative pattern comes from an Indian rug owned by the artist, which he has digitally copied and magnified into a black and white image that is endlessly and blurrily reproduced on carpet like an enormous photocopy.Stingel completes his installation with a massively ornate crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling��s centre. His art comes ��live�� as visitors wander through the empty space or lounge on the carpet beneath the light while security guards pad about with even less to do than usual �� unless someone decides to pull out a Stanley knife and hack away at the carpet.The decadence of the carpet and chandelier are a dramatic contrast to the building, designed by Van der Rohe to strict Bauhaus principles of simplicity and lack of adornment.Whatever one makes of Stingel��s work, said to be about complex allusions to European cultural history or the distanced role of the modern artist whose art requires an audience to ��complete�� it, what strikes the viewer is the sheer audacity of the artist��s (and curators��) ambition, with every square of the floor of the Neue Nationalgalerie��s vast hall covered by the carpet.There��s something about an unexpectedly monumental artwork that makes it so much fun for the viewer. And who��s not for putting some fun into the visual arts, especially if it means you can twirl your body across the gallery floor like a human strudel under the noses of a bunch of German security guards?Meanwhile, Ron Mueck��s sculptures, now at the National Gallery of Victoria, can be slightly disturbing, but his lifelike (but not life-sized) renderings of the human form offer the same fascination and delight as Stingel��s in that your perspective is turned on its head. A lifelike, naked, hairy man is so much more interesting when he��s the size of Hagrid.However, an arts maven recently almost spoilt the fun by telling me that Mueck��s perfectly detailed versions of oversized human bodies were ��banal��, ��fine for kids�� and ��don��t stay with you for more than three minutes��.That��s three minutes I��m happy to take, and the enduring popularity of distorted-scale works suggests there are many museums, collectors and audiences who will happily support supersized artists. London��s Tate Modern entry hall is a former turbine room that hosts a changing roster of superstar artists whose large-scale works delight the busloads of cultural tourists arriving in the hope of artistic epiphanies.At one of the world��s best sculpture parks, Storm King in upstate New York, scale is played with as visitors wander its hundreds of hectares of verdant fields and valleys. What looks like a small sculpture sitting in a glade hundreds of metres away becomes a giant Meccano set of steel as you get closer. And there��s barely a city in the US that doesn��t have or want to have a Claes Oldenburg sculpture to give it an instant landmark, one of his Land of the Giants versions of mundane objects. Whether it��s a melting ice-cream atop a skyscraper, a tap and hose large enough to occupy a city block, or a working Swiss army knife as big as a frigate, it seems there��s no end to the delight in the way Claes makes small things big.It��s hard to think of an Australian artist (other than UK-based Mueck) who takes this upsized approach to art. But Melbourne artist Callum Morton goes in the other direction and gets the vote for the most fun artist of the moment. The theme-park thrill of his work includes last year��s Melbourne Festival installation outside the Arts Centre where he recreated a reduced version of his family home. Then there��s his slightly reduced scale fake hotel on EastLink and before that was his famous miniature Gas and Fuel building. Many learned things have been said and written about his work and his deconstruction of modernism, but you can��t deny that they are also very, very cute. My favourite Morton work is his quarter-scale replica of Mies van der Rohe��s famous Farnsworth House, which Morton animates with recorded sounds of a party followed by a scream, a fl ash of light and the sound of a gunshot.Mies van der Rohe done big in photocopied carpet in Berlin, or done small as a doll��s house in Melbourne �� what��s not to like about art with an outsized sense of humour?

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