“Is It Art?” Part II: Black Box

A few months ago, I wrote a post about a massive piece of art on display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art: “Levitated Mass,” by Michael Heizer.

It’s a 300-ton boulder suspended above a 15-foot-deep concrete trench.

The question I asked, “Is it art?” generated a number of interesting comments.

Recently I saw another work — albeit much smaller — that begs the same question.

That is “Black Box,” by John McCracken, created c. 1965. It’s on display in the Portland (Oregon) Art Museum. The museum’s description reads, “Polyester resin on fiberglass and plywood.” I didn’t measure it, but it’s approximately 18″ on each side.

As you can see, the visible faces are reflective. It’s only occurred to me now that there are two sides — the “back” and the bottom — that I did not see. Does one assume they’re identical? Is part of the artistry to make us question our assumption that the parts suggest the whole?  A question of the gestalt?

I went out of my way to avoid reflections in the image above other than the unavoidable one of the white plinth and the object’s own shadow. A second image shows the reflection of a passing museum-goer and the descriptive card to the right.

 

There is certainly “artistry” involved: imagining and then executing the fabrication of a (presumably) perfect cube with no surface variation other than in the reflection of light on its surface.

That, after all, is precisely what is going on in adjacent rooms of that museum and every other museum in the world: Light is reflecting from paint, stone, bronze, ceramics or precious metals used by Monet, Degas, Tiffany et. al. One of the most profound lessons a beginning painter learns is that she isn’t painting the object, she’s painting the light reflected from it.

Black Cube is an object, not a representation. If it represents anything, it embodies the idea, “cube.” But it’s also about light, because it reflects light (and does almost nothing else). Is that enough to call it “art?” René Magritte famously painted a pipe with the label, “Ceci n’est pas un pipe,” naming the painting “The treachery of images.” McCracken calls this a cube: Is that what it is? If that’s all it signified, wouldn’t he have simply made the surface a nonreflective matte black?

At the very least, McCracken makes us think about the light, not just the object.

So, is it art?

I already know what I think. What about you? Leave a comment. I relish discussions like this.

Additional information:

John McCracken on Wikipedia

John McCracken Survey, David Zwirner

© Brad Nixon 2017. Black Cube © John McCracken, Portland Art Museum, gift of Karen and Henry Groth. No commercial use of the image without express permission.