An empty wooden box, a clear plastic cup, a pair of balloons, a moment in time. Employing everyday materials and minimal gestures, the artworks in this exhibition transcend their humble means as they evoke other places, times, and states of mind.

Giving form to intuition and speculation, the artists featured in A Shot in the Dark—including Rivane Neuenschwander, Joseph Beuys, Marsden Hartley, and many others—embrace subtle shifts in the order of things. Together their works ponder presence and absence, the body and its traces, and the hidden workings of the mind, as well as the unseen and sometimes mysterious energies that permeate everyday life.

What is going on in this painting? 

Where do you think the viewer is standing in order to see this scene? What do you imagine the viewer is hearing? Feeling? Smelling?

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, "Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact."

What do you think the artist had in mind when he made this painting? Do you think it includes "spiritual facts"?

(My paintings) are the product of wild wander(ing) and madness for roaming—little visions of the great intangible... Some will say he's gone mad—others will look and say he's looked at the lattices of Heaven and come back with the madness of splendor on him. —Marsden Hartley, 1908

Finding inspiration in the poetry of Walt Whitman and the transcendentalist writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, modernist painter Marsden Hartley matured as an artist in the early 20th century with a series of neo-impressionist landscape paintings. One of his earliest developed works, Storm Clouds, Maine, depicts fleeting thunderclouds as they pass over Speckled Mountain in the town of Lovell near the artist’s place of birth. Restricting his brushwork to a dense accumulation of short dashes, Hartley builds up an ochre topography that captures the transitory nature of sunlight breaking through quickly moving clouds. Immersed in the study of theosophical mysticism at the time, Hartley believed he might glimpse divinity through communion with nature. As a result, this evocative canvas is steeped in mystery. “The geological reality alone of the mountain,” he wrote, “makes it bear heavily on one’s senses, a terrific force pressing down upon one’s center and shaking one with its vital energies.”

Artist: Marsden Hartley
Date: 1906-1907
Medium: Paintings
Size: unframed 30 x 25 x inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 1954.8

What do you notice about this work? 

What surprises you?

The words "bed" and"queen" both have more than one meaning.  Why do you think the artist chose them as part of the title of this work?

Moss Bed, Queen (1986/2005), a sculptural installation by artist Meg Webster, consists of a mound of living earth transplanted from a nearby forest to the artificial environment of a climate-controlled gallery. There it lives out the remainder of its life until the work's delicate flora perishes. Unlike many other artworks in the Walker's collection, Moss Bed is not kept in art storage. As a conceptual piece, it exists as a set of instructions printed on paper and filed away until someone chooses to exhibit it. Only then does the work come into physical being. Like any garden, Webster's conceptual work requires daily tending. Watered frequently, exposed to grow lights periodically, and covered nightly with an insulating sheet of plastic, the piece will thrive briefly before it perished and we return its materials to the earth.

In the early 1980s, Webster began creating bed forms with loose materials from the earth. Employing the shape as “a symbol for mating, pleasure, and safety,” she used her beds to signify absent bodies and to call for direct engagement with our own. Created on an intimate, human scale, Moss Bed mimics the exact proportion of a queen-sized mattress and summons us to it as a source of comfort and respite. Its gentle swale suggests the impression of invisible sleeping bodies and also the topography of a woodland landscape seen from above.

"I think of my work in an elemental way—circles, triangles, squares, earth, water, air, plants, wood....I am a sculptor who makes minimal art with natural materials to be directly perceived by the body." —Meg Webster

Artist: Meg Webster
Date: 1986/2005
Medium: Sculpture, Sculptures
Size: overall 10 x 60 x 80 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 2006.15.1-.4

This is a still from a short film by Rivane Neuenschwander.

Have you ever watched a soap bubble float? What does that image remind you of?

What do you think the title is referring to?

What do you think the artist had in mind when she made this film?

Brazilian conceptual artist Rivane Neuenschwander uses simple materials and gestures to elicit multisensory experiences. Her works convey a curiosity about natural life cycles and the properties of unusual materials, such as dried flowers, desiccated insects, dust, pepper, and rainwater. An Inventory of Small Deaths (Blow), a Super-8mm piece produced with filmmaker Cao Guimarães, documents the movement of a large soap bubble as it traverses a tropical landscape. In a continuous loop of seamless dissolves, the precarious form undulates as it distorts and refracts the background. The bubble expands and contracts, but it never pops, perpetually deferring the "death" to which the title refers. Neuenschwander allows this ephemeral shape to remain with us indefinitely. The resulting film is a poetic yet paradoxical study on the confounding nature of space. “It expresses the relationship between what is inside and what is outside,” she writes. “The multi-formed translucence of a bubble exhibits the world that contains it and is contained by it.”

Artist: Rivane Neuenschwander
Date: 2000
Medium: Media Arts, Videotapes/Videodiscs, Audio-Video
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 2005.22

What is intuition? How would you draw a picture of it?

How would you describe this piece to someone who could not see it?

What can you see inside this box? (Hint: use the zoom feature to look closely.)

Joseph Beuys was an artist, teacher, and political activist who became one of the art world’s most discussed, celebrated, and controversial postwar figures. His sculptures, performances, lectures, and political activism were all part of a grand enormous goal: the transformation of Western culture into a more peaceful, democratic, and creative system. His famous slogan “Everyone is an artist” proposed that this could be achieved, if only humans would apply their innate creative energies toward positive change. An important part of Beuys’ plan for the broad distribution of his ideas was the production of multiples—two- or three-dimensional objects made in multiple copies. He spoke of them as vehicles, travelling objects meant to move his ideas through space, through which he stayed in touch with people. Each multiple is a condensed notation of a moment in Beuys’ work or life: an idea, material, a performance, a drawing, a lecture, and exhibition, a journey, a collaboration.

Artist: Joseph Beuys
Date: 1968
Medium: Mixed Media, Multiples, Other
Size: overall 11.875 x 8.3125 x 2.25 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 1992.212

This work is a latex cast of the artist's own foot.

How is this work like a self portrait? How is it different?

Can you think of stories or myths that reference a person's foot?  How might a foot be a symbol for something else?

Do you think this piece could be seen as symbolic?  Why or why not?

“Everything is beautiful and everything is ugly simultaneously." — Paul Thek

A self-described “mystic showman” Paul Thek imbued his work with a personal symbolism that was deeply rooted in his preoccupation with the body, death, rites of passage, and the symbolic function of objects and images. His work evolved primarily from two negative impulses: a reaction against the clean, cool forms of Minimalist and Pop Art and, more importantly, his revulsion with U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Both impulses positioned the artist in opposition to the mainstream current, where he continued to stand until his death from AIDS in 1988.

Artist: Paul Thek
Date: circa 1968
Medium: Sculpture, Sculptures
Size: overall 6.75 x 9.75 x 4 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 2005.92

Compare this work by Jim Hodges with the previous ones by Gabriel Orozco.  How is it like Orozco's work? How is it different?

This abstract composition was made with blue ink. The artist wet the support paper with saliva and then placed images drawn on small sheets of paper onto the damp support, transferring the image.

Artist: Jim Hodges
Date: 1992
Medium: Drawings and Watercolors, Drawings
Size: sheet 12 x 9 x inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 2007.21

The title of this work describes how the artist made it. 

Why do you think the artist let chance determine the arrangement of this work?

Do you think this is a valid way to make art? Why or why not?

From his early collages made in Paris, to his large freestanding sculptures, Ellsworth  Kelly has continually searched for ways whereby his art might compose itself through chance. This drawing collage made in 1951 borrowed a technique used by Dadaist Jean Arp, whom Kelly had met in Paris that year. Arp’s collages were made by dropping pieces of torn paper on to a larger sheet and gluing them where they fell. Kelly's collaged composition recombines fragments from two of his own rejected drawings. Though the order in which the strips are arranged is random, the artist nonetheless pasted them to the paper in a deliberate row to avoid overlap, and thus any reference to depth, since the illusion of flatness was now of paramount importance to his art.

Artist: Ellsworth Kelly
Date: 1950
Medium: Drawings and Watercolors, Unique Works on Paper, Mixed media
Size: sheet 16.5 x 77.25 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 1999.15

Describe what you think this apparatus is designed to do.

Think a little deeper about the lowly potato. How do you encounter potatoes? What symbolic associations might you make with a potato? Why do you think Polke chose a potato for this work?

"Well, if there is anything at all that manifests everything artists are supposed to be or have—the delight in innovation, creativity, spontaneity, productivity, creativity entirely out of oneself, and so on—then it is the potato."--Sigmar Polke

Initially associated with the Capitalist Realist movement, the German critical reaction to American Pop Art of the 1960s, Polke creates paintings, photographs, prints, and sculptures that draw inspiration from mass media, banal objects, and low-culture icons. Physically retooling his work to invoke metaphorical transcendence, Polke comments on the real and imaginary as seen through the lens of postwar Germany.

Kartoffelmaschine (Potato Machine) demonstrates both Polke's use of simple materials and unusual iconography. During the late 1960s, Polke repeatedly incorporated the potato into two- and three-dimensional works. In this piece, a modified stool makes reference to Marcel Duchamp's Bicycle Wheel, an early icon of 20th-century sculpture that incorporated found objects. Here Polke transforms the ordinary: as one presses the button, the potato begins an orbit beneath the stool as if it were the center of the universe.

Artist: Sigmar Polke
Date: 1969
Medium: Mixed Media, Multiples, Other
Size: overall 31.5 x 16.25 x 16.25 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 1994.131

This is a still from a slow-motion video of the artist excuting a series of leaps.

Have you ever experienced this type of actvitiy? How would you describe the moment?

Why do you think the artist chose to manipulate time in this video? 

What does this video piece remind you of?

Trisha Donnelly's untitled video might be seen as a way to redirect and complicate themes of speculation and projection. The piece documents the artist executing a series of slow-motion leaps. At the ecstatic apex of each, she appears to be suspended in midair. With these simple, repeated actions, which are vaguely familiar gestural tableaux, her video meditates on the indefinable instant when performance takes over performer.

Artist: Trisha Donnelly
Date: 1998-1999
Medium: Media Arts, Videotapes/Videodiscs, Audio-Video
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 2008.3.1-.5

This work includes a rotating turntable with a clear plastic cup and a flashlight that projects light through the cup onto the wall.

What would you say is the subject of this artwork?

Would you describe it as a sculpture? Why or why not?

Could you imagine a story or poem inspired by this work?

With a childlike affection for the stuff of everyday life, the work of Peter Fischli and David Weiss embodies a deceptive simplicity that falls somewhere between reality and fiction. Since 1979 the two have collaborated to create photographs, films, sculptures, and kinetic contraptions, often repurposing banal commodities into whimsical assemblages that render the familiar strange.

The title of this work references a rare optical phenomenon known to occur seconds after sunset: as the Earth’s atmosphere refracts the sun’s light, a fleeting green flash may be seen as the sun disappears below the horizon. The title also references Jules Verne’s 1882 adventure novel of the same name, which tells the story of a group of travelers who, despite their search, never witness this extraordinary solar spectacle. At once awkwardly mechanical and hypnotically alive, this humble apparatus produces a mesmerizing play of light and sound that is endlessly variable.

Artist: Peter Fischli, David Weiss
Date: 1993
Medium: Mixed Media, Multiples, Other
Size: installed 10 x 24 x 10 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 1996.131.1-.3

The list of materials used in this work includes bamboo, wire thread, guitar strap, cigarette package, sock, and badges. How many of these materials can you see? Where do you think the others are?

What do you speculate the artist did to make this work?

What does the title remind you of?

What do you think the artist had in mind when he created this?

Leaning casually against the wall, Jim Lambie’s Psychedelic Soulstick (43) is composed of a piece of bamboo adorned with everyday objects—a sock, a guitar strap, a cigarette carton—cocooned in colored threads. Despite its mundane materials, the object emanates a totemic presence as if it were a relic from a mystical ceremony meant to conjure spirits or magical forces. However unearthly his assemblages may seem, Lambie’s choice of ephemera belies any cosmic aspiration. Sourcing bits and pieces from junk shops, secondhand record stores, or even his bedroom floor after a long night out, he is always drawn to things that resonate autobiographically, transforming the detritus of his life in order to catch a glimpse of something beyond.

Artist: Jim Lambie
Date: 2003
Medium: Sculpture, Sculptures
Size: overall 48 x 4 x 2.75 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 2003.58

Read each of three quotations below. They are drawn from a 1957 essay titled The Creative Act  by artist Marcel Duchamp.

Do you agree with each statement?  Why or why not?

Match each quotation with a work of art in this Set and explain how you think they are related.

"What I have in mind is that art may be bad, good, or indifferent, but, whatever adjective is used, we must call it art, and bad art is still art in the same way that a bad emotion is still an emotion."

"Through the change from inert matter into a work of art, an actual transubstantiation has taken place, and the role of the spectator is to determine the weight of the work on the esthetic scale."

"All in all, the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualification and thus adds his contribution to the creative act."

“So, why is this art?” is a very common question—either spoken or unspoken—among visitors to the Walker Art Center. It is an important inquiry because it can enrich an individual’s experience and engagement with contemporary art. The multidisciplinary work presented at the Walker is, by its very nature, new and frequently challenging. This resource guide is designed to lead students in grades 6–12 and their teachers in thoughtful, open-ended explorations of the nature of art.

URL: http://schools.walkerart.org/swita/

"So, Why is This Art?" centers on nine key questions and various activities that will prompt discussions about the nature of art. It is not an art history survey or overview of 20th- and 21st-century art. This Web site includes images of 36 artworks from the Walker’s permanent collection and brief background information about the art and artists. Selected sets of images will be viewed in different combinations as each key question is explored. Works of art that correspond to each key question can be viewed in two ways. A link in each key question page leads to an interactive online image, or a PDF file of images may be downloaded from each key question page for printing.