Expect the Enema Bag Sculptures: Rachel Whiteread at the National Gallery of Art

December 31, 2018

tags: amber, andrea pawley, bathtub, bins, doorway, enema bag, flap, hive, mattress, national gallery of art, night glass, rachel whiteread, slab, study, torso, twenty-five spaces, untitled, white, yellow

This exhibit is not what it seems
I’m told that art is supposed to provoke a reaction. My first reaction to Rachel Whiteread’s exhibit at the National Gallery of Art was surprise. As I walked from room to room, amusement followed. Soon, amusement was leading me, or more like pulling me, into each new part of the exhibit.

I don’t think amusement was what Whiteread or the curators at the National Gallery of Art were going for. Clearly, I am not their target audience. If there had been a pre-test to determine my worthiness to view this exhibit, I would have failed it.

This is what happens when museums are free. No-cost museums mean simply anyone can walk in, lured by what appears to be a photograph of a not-yet-hung door in a Caribbean home, and opinionate about the difference between what they expected after not reading about the exhibit ahead of time and what the exhibit actually contained.

I sincerely apologize to the art-loving community for my complete and utter lack of refinement. Usually, in situations where I just don’t seem to be “getting” the art or the lecture, or I don’t understand the “transitional elements in the Mark Rothko-esque moth-loves-lamp meme,” I lurk near other people. I listen to the appreciative, knowing things they say, and I try to learn something.

Eavesdropping for knowledge was not possible at the National Gallery of Art on the day I saw the Whiteread exhibit. It was a Wednesday morning right after the museum opened. The only ones to talk with were the guards. This being me, I talk with guards all the time, or at least I give them the wide-eye about odd human behavior going on in an exhibit. But it didn’t seem right to chat with the guards about this exhibit. The only questions I could come up with were leading ones, and I would have been fighting a chuckle or a snort. The wide-eye would have been about me, and the guards would have been giving it to each other.

Instead of chatting, I spent an inordinate amount of exhibit time taking pictures and contemplating the difference between what I guessed certain pieces should taste like and what they would most likely actually taste like. The tasting-thoughts portion of the exhibit did not begin until after I was beyond the enema bag sculptures. Thank the Maker.

Just because I don’t get Whiteread’s art doesn’t mean people who can’t visit don’t want to see it. I can only hope enough good comes of my posting these pictures (despite the internal dialogue I offer below) that all the negative karma I’m accumulating on this page is somehow abated.

If that’s not how karma works, I’m in big trouble. Regardless…