by Douglas Messerli
Helen
Molesworth and Ruth Erickson (curators) Leap
Before You Look: Black Mountain College: 1933-1957 / Los Angeles, Hammer Museum,
February 21-May 15, 2016, I saw the show, with Thérèse Bachand on February 26,
2016
There were no required courses, and
students were encouraged to work collaboratively and to develop
cross-disciplinary and independent areas of study. Members of the community,
moreover, were made responsible for its day-to-day upkeep, including building
maintenance, farm work, and cooking, which surely helped them to identify the
institution as their own.
Not only did the college offer standard
visual arts and literature courses, but included the applied arts such as
weaving, pottery, jewelry making, as well as architecture, music, film,
theater, and dance.
Much has been written about this
remarkable gathering of creators, including Martin Duberman’s important Black Mountain: An Exploration of Community and
books by Vincent Katz, Eva Diaz, Christopher Benfey, Mary Emma Harris, and Anne
Chesky Smith. And a museum devoted to the institution exists in nearby Asheville,
North Carolina.
Now, in what claims to be the first
“comprehensive museum exhibition in the US,” Helen Molesworth and Ruth Erickson
have curated Leap Before You Look: Black
Mountain College 1933-1957. The show at Los Angeles’ Hammer Museum brings together
a large sampling of art, artifacts, and photographs, all beautifully grouped,
as well as numerous performances and lectures centered around the actual
productions and products that the school’s faculty and students produced, which
is such a glorious sampling that one simply feels overwhelmed by the creativity
of the place.
Yet one can observe some of the abstract
forms and colors weave their way from Albers through early works by
Rauschenberg, Bolotovsky, Ossip Zadkine, Robert Motherwell, Elaine de Kooning
and others. Photographers such as the young and talented Hazel Larson Archer
used the bodies of dancer Merce Cunningham and others as subjects for her art;
and the young poet Jonathan Williams beautifully captured photographic images
of fellow writers such as Dan Rice, Robert Creeley, and musician Lou Harrison.
Perhaps more than anything else, one
perceives in viewing this show the overwhelming power of the creativity Black
Mountain had by intentional accident brought together; and, as you wander through
its several rooms, you feel as though you have been invited to a wonderful
party where everyone has absolutely amazing things to express.
What is most sad is that, despite a few
other such Utopian-like institutions (CalArts was and imagines it is still such
a place), there have been few other attempts in US history to make such a grand
gesture as to “leap before looking,” to have such faith in the arts as to
imagine that something miraculous might happen just by bringing those who
created and those who might want to create together into an isolated spot where
they might explore wherever their imaginations took them.
Los Angeles,
February 28, 2016
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