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ROBERT GOBERMUSEUM OF

CONTEMPORARY ARTLOS ANGELES

LI Y LUMPKIN

Robert Gober took four years to makehis new untitled installation at the GeffenContemporary, two to think it, two tocraft it. The result doesn t so much ex-ceed expectations as it utterly defeatsthem . Nothing here is quite what youwould expect-of Robert Gober, or ofcontemporary art.

Just to begin, Gober s piece reinsti- tutes the tradition of the grand narrative

summation. Such summations rarelyconstitute an artist's best work, str:lined,as they often are, under the weight ofdefinitive answers, .defensive posturing,or high purpose: Gustave Courbet s TheArtist s Studio, Paul Gauguin'S Where DoWe Come From? What Are We? WhereAre We Going?, and Marcel Duchamp sThe Large Glass and its later three-

'..dimensional version, Etant donnes, Ithink, make this point. Gober s versioncombines aspects of all these worksalong with bits and pieces of myriad others. But if his theatrical tableau reachesa bit too far and wide, it does not reachtoo high. It's grand, but not grandiose.

Throughout his career, it seems,Gober has been allegorizing the everydaytravails of his life as gay man in straightculture-from the tilted crib of his in-fancy, through years of domestic dys-function, to time spent in the jailhouse

z 0 z,. Libby Lumpkin, "Robert Gober, Museum ofContemporary Art, Los Angeles," Artfarum(December 17 1997).

OppOSite page: Robert Gober, ntitled (detail). 1995-97, mixed media. dmixed media, dimenSions variable. Installation view. Robert Gober, ntitl

of culture s normative nature. But if inhis early career he was lost, at mid-career he is found Gober, it seems,would bring his psychodrama to a con-clusion-in the form of a simple quasi-biblical story of redemption.

If Gober s tale is simple, however, histelling of it is not; the work s multi-layered iconography would give Panofskypause. The unusual vertically bipartitecomposition-the upper level separatedfrom the lower by the museum s 1ooris indebted to medieval and Renaissancepaintings of apotheosic themes, such asthe Assumption of the VU'gin, in whichthe hierarchy of heaven and earth is embodied in the design. It is also indebted,of course, to Duchamp s commentaryon that tradition in The Large Glass, in

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Opposite page: o b ~ r t Gober, Untitled detail), 1.99 >-97, mixed media. dimensions variable . This page. top to bottom: Robert Gober, Untitled :l.99 >-97,mixed media. dimensions variable. Installal ' n view. Robert Gober, Untitled detail), :l.99 >-97, mixed media. dimensions variable. Photos: Russell Kaye.

which a fourth-dimensional shadowrealm rests above the three-dimensionalrealm of the bachelors and the real.

The discretely treated sculpturalcomponents inside the installation, thetraditional domain of ready-made conceptualism, are elaborately handcrafted,a harmony of thought and practice thatsets the devotional tone. Just as Netherlandish artists cloaked Catholic narratives in meticulously detailed renderingsof the natural world, sacrificing pictoriallogic in order to saturate each discreteconfiguration with symbolic meaning(sometimes to surrealist effect), Gobercloaks his personal narrative insidemeticulously crafted public symbolsof an and religion, in layers of memoryand erudition too dense to be priedapart, whose meanings are inseparablefrom the idea of artisanal practice.

As you descend from the platformof the Geffen s reception area, you seea dimly lit proscenium that fills the museum's cavernous main gallery. Thewalls and floor are painted a uniformgray, creating a vast, mildly gloomycolor field sparsely inhabited by a sixfoOt-taU domestic-grotto-style VirginMary, two identical oversized suitcases,and a stairway that has been transformedinto a fountain, all arranged to suggestthe floor plan of a cathedd .

At center stage, the Virgin Mary re StSatop a storm drain where the baldachinowould be. The Virgin is cast in roughsurfaced concre::te, from Gober's original

IF GOBER'S TALEIS SIMPLE, HISTELLING OF IT IS NOT;THE MULTILAYEREDICONOGRAPHY WOULDGIVE PANOFSKYPAUSE.in clay, and with seeming indifferenceto political consequence, he has intersected its midsection with a six-footlength of standard screw-ribbed culverpipe, cast in bronze. Despite the contemporary tendency to read this configuration, with its Surrealist gestalt, as aviolation of woman or Catholicism, itis perfectly articulate within the traditio

of medieval Catholicism as a personification of the Church. Just as Jan vanEyck s oversized Mary in his Madonnain a Church with columnated robe, pesonifies the basilica in which she standthe ribs of Gober's culvert pipe reprisethe vaults of late medieval cathedrals,which themselves were meant to symbolically transform the interior of thechurch into Mary's womb (or the bodyof Christ, depending on the particularexegeti c source).

The suitcases that flank the Virgin,whose open lids reveal two more stormdrains, establish the tr:mse::pt. Thus, thculvert pipe becomes a me::taphoricalnave that leads the e ye dire::ctly rowarJ

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Gober s stunning approximation of anapse: a staircase whose steeply ascending cedar steps are inundated by arapidly descending cascade of water180 gallons a minute noisily trippingdownward, then pooling on the floorbefore dramatically plunging througha fourth storm drain at the foot of thestairs. This ingenious design embodiesthe structural simplicity of clapboardPuritanism even as it exploits the theatrical excitement of the baroque. Thus,it inverts the hierarchy of heaven and hellby replacing the supernatural streams oflight, symbolized and embodied in theapses of cathedrals, with a naturally embodied earthbound source of redemption .

This Romantic theme of redemptivenature seemingly is reiterated in theallusion to Friedrich s Cloister Graveyardin the Snow-the weathered Virgin suggesting the decay of institutionalizedreligion-and brought to full force in theelaborate tableau Gober has installedsome eight feet bene:lth the floor. Peering through the grates of the stormdrains is a bit like opening the grisailledoors of an altarpiece, the architecturalmonuments above theatrically givingway to an inviting paradise, a brilliantlylit subterranean tide pool, complete withsandy bottom, sparkJing clear, lightlychurning water (about a foot deep

throughout), and all the rocks, mussels,seaweed, and such one would expect tofind there, each item painstakingly fabricated Vija Celmins-style. The despairand pessimism of Bruce Nauman s Roomwith My Soul Left ut gives way to :vision of salvation and hope.

This watery Eden seems nst, but thedrains allow only tightly framed, distinctscenes. Bene:lth the Virgin the sandybottom is littered with oversized coins,and barely visible through the gr:ltes inthe suitcase-and easily missed at firstthe focal point of Gober s piece comesinto view: a man s nude, Anglo-middleAmerican legs and feet, veristically castin wax. Submerged to midcalf, he holdsa diapered infant against his lower abdomen. Oddly, the infant faces forward,its lower body dangling between theman s slightly parted legs, JUSt belowthe crotch-a sort of funky conflationof Hans Memlinc s St . Christopher andFrida Kahlo s Giving Birth to Myselfwith sexualized overtones.

Thus, the iconographic narrativewould seem to be this : the turbulentwater pours down the steps and out ofthe Puritan domestic structure, throughthe grate at the base of the stairs, andmetaphorically through the culvert pipe,into the underground where it is redeemed-an allegory of leaving home,

Above: Robert Gober UntItRobert Gober UntItled (de

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Above: Robert Gober, ntitled 1995-97, mixed media. dimensions variable. Installation view Below:Robert Gober, ntitled detail), 1995-97, mixed media. dimens ions variaole. Photos: Russell Kaye.

leaving the Church, slipping throughthe cracks, and finding salvation inthe counterculture of the undergroundwhich is symbolized by the disorderlycommon beauty of the tide pool teeming with jjfe The man in the water,then, would be Gober, whose baldingcalves and thighs-like Kahlo's hairy

eyebrows and upper lip-constitutehis recurring signature . And the babywould be Gober, too, Kahlo's iconicnarrative ot martyrdom restaged as anarrative of redemption.

Kahlo's career-long drama was stagedin terms of the sacrificial body-piercedby the handrail, rendered barren, losingbabies, losing love. For Gober redemption is a process of remaking and rebirth:one crafts one's identity as the artisanconstructS art, hammering, casting,shaping daily, in a perpetual labor ofreincarnation. Thus for all the grandiconography, the meaning of Gober'spiece is embodied in its form. TheChurch, and the church of Duchamp'sconceptualism, are just baggage, imprisoned in the gray, bodiless Platonicrealm. And the tide pool beneath-partGauguin's T: hiti, part holy water, partprimordial soup-presents itself not asan emblem of redemptive nature overcorrupt culture, but as body over mind,of practice over theory.

After thirty years of sophisticatediconography and ready-made pr: ctice,then, Gober inverts this conceptualisthierarchy with ready-made iconographyand rigorous pr: ctice . It is the embodied devotion that speaks to us in thisambitious t: bleau, and the grandiosityof its Iiter: l complexity is redeemed inthe humility of the simple work that ittakes to leave home . 0