There were horses in Grand Central station.
These horses were part of a art installment named “Heard NY” created by Nick Cave, a Chicago based fabric sculptor, previous Alvin Ailey dancer, and performance artist. To see the horses in action click here or here. The installment was hosted by MTA Arts for Transit and Urban Design’s celebration of Grand Central’s hundredth anniversary. Promoted by Creative Time, the installment piece was intended to facilitate dreaming and imagination among travelers.
“We are so sort of consumed by holding onto our jobs and just surviving, we don’t dream,” said Cave. “So be able to bring something to the public that perhaps sort of help stimulate or jump start that sort of thought again, is really what I was thinking about.”
These horses, are not actual horses, but dancers in soundsuits that are crafted from natural materials such as twigs, sticks and dried mud, ceramic birds, buttons and sequins, old toy spinning tops and even dyed human hair. Cave is known for creating these suits, that a prominent contemporary art blog called “wearable mixed-media sculptures”. The suits stayed in the Vanderbilt terminal of Grand Central station, as a sort of solitary art exhibit when it was not time for performances.
“Each horse has its own identity,” said Cave.
These suits are very large, and in this installment each of the 30 costumes contained two young dancers from the Alvin Ailey School of Dance. Accompanied by a harpist and a percussionist, the horses paraded around imitating the constant, rushing flow of traffic in New York’s Grand Central Station.
Each of the two daily performances lasted for about an hour, with one at 11am and another at 2pm. The installment performances were not choreographed step by step, but by categorizing different types of movement. Each horse’s partners got to choose what type of movement the horse was going to take and when during the performance. William Gill, the peices’ other choreographer explained the beauty of this type of improvisation.
“As a trained dancer, you are so used to okay, what’s one, what’s two, what’s three, but to me, the true artist can improvise on the spot,” said Gill.
According to Cave, the way this piece is choreographed, only allowed for more organic creativity.
“The personality of the dancer has to be amplified, especially in this big, big, space.”
In an interview with PBS Cave described his new, and innovative practice of mixed media art.
“I’m always sort of looking for projects that I can sort of put out into the world, into the public sphere, and to somehow cause an effect. I want to be able to create projects that sort of are going to make people think and think in this sort of magical, sort of fantastical way.”
This magical sort of practical way that Cave talks about creating art just may be the way of the future of art. Installment art has become increasingly popular over hundreds of years. French painter Paul Gauguin once said of modern art,
“The history of modern art is also the history of the progressive loss of art’s audience. Art has increasingly become the concern of the artist and the bafflement of the public.”
The art world is losing its audience very, very quickly. Its beginning to seem like with the Internet nowadays instead of being able to GO somewhere and APPRECIATE art, we can look at art in the comfort of our own home, or create our own art. We can jump online get the same satisfaction of looking at art on our terms, instead of the terms of the artist and the terms of the art itself.
In response to Nick Cave’s dancing horses, Whitney Kimball explained this tension between the constant ‘go’ of our culture and the unappreciated beauty and wonder that surrounds us.
“It’s hard to feel the intended irreverence standing around a corral, over Creative Time’s “#IHeardNYC” signage and iPads and cell phones, and this being New York, you gotta fight the shovers.”
From Kimball’s experience it can be seen that the pace of New York overrode the necessary, or intended wonder for Cave’s piece. One has to wonder if the art of stopping to appreciate and take in art is a ‘lost art’.
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