The experiment has ended. Long live the experiment.
Those of us who infrequently visit MASS MoCA in North Adams, Mass., might never notice the “reinstallation” of Natalie Jeremijenko‘s Tree Logic—the six maples, hung upside down in the entry courtyard ever since the museum opened in 1999. (At that time, I wrote in my June 1 WSJ review, “I have seen the future, and it’s MASS MoCA.”)
But thanks to a piece by Timothy Cahill in the September 2006 issue of “Berkshire Living” magazine (articles available in hotel rooms, but not online), I learned that the five surviving, stressed-out trees were removed last spring and replanted on the hillside behind the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown. The ones I pitied at MASS MoCA yesterday were Jeremijenko’s new victims.
Some other artist should have been given a chance to perpetrate creative mayhem in the courtyard. The original experiment, described on the museum’s website (which does not mention the latest development), has been completed and the results are in. Here’s the project’s description:
When inverted, the six trees in this experiment still grow away from earth and towards the sun—so the natural predisposition of trees might well produce the most unnatural shapes over time, raising questions about what the nature of the natural is.
Now those questions have been answered. Here’s Cahill’s description of the old trees sent out to pasture (corroborated by a photo that accompanies the article):
They stand in a row as straight as a fence, threadbare and lanky, like specimens from a mutant arboretum. Their branches droop forlornly downward, like the ribs of a naked umbrella….They grew very little in height while hanging by their feet….All their energy went into bending towards the light, a poetic metaphor of the human condition if there ever was one.
As I saw yesterday, some of the branches of the healthy-looking new trees are already yearning towards towards the sun. Poor things don’t know what they’re in for.
Will someone please call the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Plants?