Review: Delirious Exhibition at The Met, 2017
When I was younger, I used to think that art meant beautiful, perfect paintings of nude women laden with fruit and other renaissance trinkets on a large canvas, hanging in a museum my grandmother had dragged me into. As I have grown older and studied different art forms in varying genres, I now know “art” is a broad term that very simply means self-expression, and if we’re lucky, storytelling. Sometimes it is beautiful paintings of renaissance women in the nude, but more often it’s completely random, imperfect, and impactful. Whether it be paintings or sculpture, drawings or photographs, art is meant to have an effect on the viewer and after visiting the Met Breuer on Wednesday, this became exponentially more clear to me.
When entering the Delirious exhibit on the fourth floor of the Met’s 2016 expansion on Madison Avenue, the first piece one sees is a large destructed grid installation hanging from the ceiling. This structure contributes to just one section of a four-part exhibition meant to explore irrationality through Vertigo, Excess, Nonsense, and Twisted themes. The apparatus is part of the first section of the exhibit, Vertigo, which is meant to “create dizzying compositions and sightlines”, while “those in Excess exaggerate serialisation; the Nonsense and Twisted sections focus on artists who subvert language and disfigure or debase the human body” (Stamler).
While all of the pieces are captivating in different ways, the one I found most interesting is Ana Mendieta’s Untitled (Glass on Body Imprints-Face, 1972, ten gelatin silver prints from a set of thirteen) from the Twisted section. Mendieta has a history of creating controversial art, exhibited in 1973, in her piece Untitled (Self-Portrait with Blood). It was a self-portrait of her face tilted backwards with blood dripping down. Later that year in her artwork, a piece known as Untitled (Rape Scene) was, “created in response to a brutal and highly publicized rape and murder of a nursing student, Sara Ann Otten, by another student in March 1973” (Manchester). For this piece, Mendieta set herself up in the crime scene of a rape. She was bent over a table, with her pants around her ankles and blood dripping down her legs. Understandably, most of her work during this time period was explicit and sometimes negatively judged.
In her work displayed in the Delirious exhibit, there are ten prints of Mendieta’s face pressed against a square of plexiglass, all in black and white. The contortions are disturbing and harsh to the innocent eye, as she warps her face in unappealing ways, attempting to create the illusion of sexual violence and brutality. In some of the prints, “Mendieta’s eyes appear bruised, her cheeks swollen. In others, the displacement of her flesh suggests she has been punched in the face” (The Met-Breuer description of Untitled Glass on Body Imprints-Face). Everyone interprets art differently, therefore some people may conclude that Mendieta is trying to mock idealized standards of femininity with this piece, or parody stereotypes, while others believe she is taking a stand against sexual violence. Maybe the artist had multiple meanings in this creation, but regardless, it is extremely powerful.
Kelly Baum, the curator of the Delirious exhibition, although critiqued in the placement of other pieces, I feel did a good job in placing Ana Mendieta’s contortions among the Twisted works. Twisted is meant to focus on artists who disfigure the human body for disillusioned interpretation, and Mendieta definitely fits that description. Overall, the exhibition was captivating, while potentially abrasively modern for some with more traditional taste.
Works Cited
Manchester, Elizabeth. “Untitled (Rape Scene)”, tate.org.uk. October 2009.
Stamler, Hannah. “Fever Dreams: On Delirious at the Met Breuer”, The Art Newspaper Beta, 7 October 2017.
Cover Image: Mendieta, Untitled (Glass on Body Imprints-Face, 1972, ten gelatin silver prints from a set of thirteen), photography by Carey Marr
