Andrea Fraser, "What do I, as an artist, provide?" [electronic resource].

Andrea Fraser Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum 2007

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“If you haven’t already done so, walk away from the desk where you picked up this guide and out into the great, high space of the atrium. Isn’t this a wonderful place? It’s uplifting. It’s like a Gothic cathedral. You can feel your soul rise up with the building around you.” These are the first words of the official audio guide at the Guggenheim Bilbao as heard on Andrea Fraser’s video Little Frank and His Carp (2001). Shot with hidden cameras, Fraser’s seven-minute video piece documents an unauthorized intervention into the museum designed by the architect Frank Gehry, the “Little Frank” of the video’s title. During the course of her visit, Fraser listens raptly to the words on the audio guide and experiences what can be described euphemistically as an intense identification with the museum. As the recording rambles on about the glories of this revolutionary architecture, never mentioning the art it contains, Fraser’s face expresses a range of exaggerated emotional states. When the guide discusses how the great museums of previous ages made visitors feel as if there was no escape from their endless series of corridors, Fraser frowns and looks pensive. When she is told that at the Guggenheim “there is an escape,” she smiles and appears reassured, but soon furrows her brow when the guide admits that “modern art is demanding, complicated, bewildering.” She quickly bursts into a grin of relief when she is told that “the museum tries to make you feel at home, so you can relax and absorb what you see more easily.” The less than subtle implication here is that instead of providing a refuge for contemplation, the museum now moves away from discussing art to turn narcissistically to itself and its affective architecture, physically and emotionally overwhelming the visitor with its spectacular spaces and grand scale…
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Art criticism
Art--Economic aspects
Artists
Economics
Sociology

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Meredith Malone
Andrea Fraser