Trashing Tranquility: Pierre Huyghe Invades Oases at Metropolitan Museum and Museum of Modern Art (with video)

In a audacious double-play, French artist Pierre Huyghe has managed to sabotage both the Metropolitan Museum’s Roof Garden and the Museum of Modern Art’s Sculpture Garden—two of my favorite outdoor summer spaces in New York. Both are beloved refuges for those seeking tranquility and aesthetic pleasure…not to mention snacks, beverages and a place to take little children:

Now Pierre Huyghe has ruined my bliss. My first reaction to seeing the shambles he’s made of the Met’s Roof Garden was incredulity. My second: dismay that a source of so much pleasure had been transformed into something off-putting and unappealing:

“Be careful!” the French artist anxiously admonished me as I clambered over the jumbled paving blocks of his provocative installation (to Nov. 1).

Notwithstanding my advanced years, I was surefooted. But unless they roped off the uneven areas after the press preview, this could be an injury attorney’s field day: Some visitors are likely to gaze at the installation without watching where they’re stepping. The right foot of the woman standing second-from-left in the image below is poised at the edge of a drop:

I appreciate the Met’s impulse to get away from “plop art” installations (which included the wonderful Anthony Caro display or the less wonderful Jeff Koons showcase), commissioning projects for the last three summers that have directly engaged the site (for which Doug + Mike Starn‘s 2010 “Big Bambú” was the hugely successful prototype).

I also “get it” that an important function of art is to be transgressive, subverting expectations. In this instance, though, Huyghe’s artistic vision runs afoul of urban values. For me, these outdoor museum spaces, used and enjoyed by a large public, are far more important as city oases than the off-limits “viewing garden” at the Frick Collection that preservationists and journalist/critics were so hellbent on saving.

Huyghe intended his project to be seen as an “excavation” of the site, revealing rocks, insects and even the remains of previous Roof Garden shows:

The project’s greatest visual interest comes at the far end—an aquarium containing an improbably floating rock (shades of Koons’ floating basketballs?), which relates to the companion rock that introduces the installation (seen in the second image above).

If you look at the tank closely, you can spy small marine creatures, including the snake-like lamprey on the left. (A critic creature can be seen in the reflection on the right.):

Even the tank is vexing, however. Every time I got close to peer in, the view suddenly morphed from transparent to cloudy and opaque, thwarting my gaze. After several frustrating encounters, I felt certain this transformation was governed by a sensor activated when a visitor came close. But Ian Alteveer, the Met’s associate curator, assured me that it was pre-programmed and had nothing to do with my proximity.

The aquarium has another unexpected feature: It leaks (intentionally). In an interview (published in the Met’s companion booklet) with Sheena Wagstaff, the museum’s chairman of modern and contemporary art, Huyghe explained that “the water sinks under the tiles, creating a stream that releases biological life and oxidizes other elements as it flows through the building to the sewer.”

I guess I’ll have to make a return visit to see how the piece has evolved over time. But I doubt that I’ll linger for my usual iced tea and brownie.

Now comes news that MoMA has purchased another unsettling work by Huyghe, a reclining nude whose head is a live beehive, which will be on public view in its sculpture garden beginning Tuesday. His “Untilled,” 2012, is from the same edition of five sculptures plus artist’s proof as this one, created for dOCUMENTA(13) in Kassel, Germany:

The Kassel site was clearly grittier than MoMA’s well-tended garden, which is frequented by city folk (like me) who prefer to stay as far from bees as possible. Others may have serious—even fatal—reactions to bee stings. All of which raises the obvious question:

Might we get stung?

MoMA’s spokesperson didn’t directly answer that query, which I emailed to him twice. What he did say is that “these Italian honeybees will spend about half their time on the hive itself and half foraging for pollen and nectar, principally outside of the Sculpture Garden, in large areas of flowering plants (e.g. Central Park and Park Avenue).” The listing on the exhibition’s webpage describes the hive as a “live colony of a gentle breed of bees.” (We can only hope.)

“Untilled” was part of the LA County Museum of Art’s Huyghe retrospective, installed outside on its Resnick terrace. For that show, it was paired with a work that included a white dog, called “Human,” with one leg painted pink. (Mercifully, no dog will roam MoMA’s Sculpture Garden.)

“Would love to know how they’re handling the bees!” LACMA’s director of communications, Miranda Carroll, wrote me. For her show, she said, the sculpture was “roped off to prevent visitors from getting too close.” In addition, a sign on doors leading to the outside space where the sculpture was displayed warned: “There is an active beehive beyond these doors. All visitors viewing the sculpture do so at their own risk.”

MoMA’s online announcement says that “beekeeping services for this installation [are] provided by Andrew Cote of Andrew’s Honey. (Will they be serving MoMA-made honey in the garden’s café?) Bee-phobic visitors will be forewarned: “All entrances to the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden will have signs indicating the presence of an artwork with a living beehive,” according to a museum spokesperson, so that visitors will be aware of the bees and will “take caution when viewing the sculpture.”

Think I’ll get this museumgoing accessory:

Whether intended or not (probably not), the plan to install bees in MoMA’s garden resonates with Yoko Ono‘s 1971 conceptual project, “Museum of Modern (F)art,” which helped to inspire Yoko Ono, One Woman Show, 1960-71, now at MoMA (to Sept. 7). In the 1971 “exhibition,” Ono purportedly released flies in the Sculpture Garden, which were to scatter through the museum and beyond.

While we await the latest buzz from MoMA, let’s return to the Met’s Roof Garden (via my CultureGrrl Video, below) to hear Alteveer discuss the concepts and the prehistoric strata underlying Huyghe’s Roof Garden commission, where a bee did hover near my face as I stood in front of some wisteria, wistfully listening to the curator’s remarks.

Seeing my obvious discomfort, Wagstaff, standing beside me, reassuringly whispered, “They don’t sting.” As far as I can tell, neither the wisteria nor the bees were intended to be components of Huyghe’s project.

Then again, it was meant to be site-specific!