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A commercial
and technical success, but is it art?
Whatever happened to holograms?
Twenty years ago these strange pictures, which usually take the form of glass plates
on which murky photographic images marked by an intense illusion of three-dimensional
space can be seen, enjoyed a flurry of attention as a medium for making art. A number
of major artists -- Bruce Nauman, Yaacov Agam, even Salvador Dali -- tried their
hands at making holograms, and a variety of institutions presented exhibitions of
the new pictures. But then a pioneering survey of work in the new medium, held at
the International Center of Photography in New York City in 1975, met with a considerably
less than enthusiastic response, and the art world's infatuation with holography
soon faded.
Not that it disappeared. The
process continues to have important technical and commercial applications, notably
the identifying holograms that appear on many credit cards. But although it has resurfaced
occasionally as an art medium, most artists and critics have long since ceased to
take holography seriously.
Now a new exhibition of recent
art holograms at the Whitney Museum of American Art, called "New Directions
in Holography," attempts once again to make a case for considering holograms
as art. The show was assembled by the guest curator René Paul Barilleaux,
former curator of the Museum of Holography in New York and now director of exhibitions
at the Madison Art Center in Madison, Wis.
Rather than undertake a survey
of current efforts in the medium, Mr. Barilleaux has chosen to present what he terms
a "more focused" view of the field, including six works by Rudie Berkhout,
a Dutch-born artist who now lives in New York, and one by the team of Martin Wenyon
and Susan Gamble, who now live in Japan. For this show, the first exhibition in many
years of work from a little-known corner of the art world, limiting the work presented
in this manner may have been a serious mistake. Viewers are given only a small range
of images by which to judge the current state, and artistic potential, of an entire
medium. Moreover, both Mr. Berkhout and the team of Mr. Wenyon and Ms. Gamble make
essentially abstract images, further narrowing the sense of the field provided by
the show.
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Mr. Wenyon and Ms. Gamble
are represented by "Stella Maris" (1989-91), a five-panel hologram mounted
low on a wall that protrudes into the gallery space. The hologram records the optical
phenomenon known as caustics, the weblike patterns of light and shadows produced
when light shines through liquid, as in an illuminated swimming pool at night. The
remarkable sense of depth in the images gives the pictures the feeling of windows
in an aquarium, and one half expects exotically colored fish or playful seals to
zoom toward the glass. But they don't. Even though the illusionistic space of the
picture shifts as a viewer walks in front of it, these are essentially static images,
more like stereographs than 3-D movies. Some forms of holograms can suggest a limited
sense of action as one walks past, and scientists have developed prototypes for holographic
movies. But so far no systems have become generally available that allow more than
a few seconds of action to be recorded.
Mr. Berkhout's pictures make
better use of the medium's chief strength -- its striking sense of depth -- while
avoiding some of its weaknesses. Now in his mid-40's, he is represented here by a
decade's worth of work. In his most effective piece, a bright red plank thrusts forth
from the depths of the picture space, appearing almost to break the surface of the
image; above it, a yellow calligraphic squiggle is tangled around a red moonlike
shape. In other pieces, he records traces of light shining off piles of sand in his
studio, producing semi-abstract images with a flowing, gestural quality. These never
achieve any real complexity or sense of coherence, though, and in any other medium
they probably wouldn't be looked at twice.
The problem with holograms
isn't simply that they're technically demanding and expensive to produce. At least
in their current state of development, they are both too real and not real enough.
The intense illusion of depth they offer is so startling that it's easy to get caught
up in it, at the expense of the picture itself. At the same time, holograms lack
the formal richness of more conventional media. The colors are always the same sort
of intense, spectral hues, and forms seem to be cloaked in smudgy gloom. Moreover,
holograms are so unusual that they require a suspension of customary habits of viewing
behavior. For example, in one type of hologram the image can be viewed only by light
transmitted through it from behind, and as a result viewers must move back, rather
than closer, in order to see the picture more clearly.The Whitney deserves credit
for taking the risk of presenting work that has long remained on the fringes
of the art world. But, at least judging by this show, holograms remain fabulous freaks,
tantalizing for the possibilities they seem to offer, but deeply frustrating for
their very real limitations as expressive objects.
"New Directions in Holography" remains at the Whitney Museum of American
Art, 945 Madison Avenue, at 75th Street, through Dec.29.
Article originally appeared in 'The Arts' section of The New York Times,
Saturday, November 30,1991, page 12
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