The Museum of One Painting

(http://www.russianmuseums.info/M1574)

The Museum of One Painting is based in the Russian city of Penza and does as its name suggests - exhibits only one painting at a time. Set up in 1983, the gallery was setup to encourage people to ‘study and experience [paintings] in a relaxed way’ (Greenberg, 1996), as opposed to the usual overwhelming experience of a gallery filled with hundred of pictures.



To visit the gallery, one must buy tickets in advance and leave coats and bags in the cloakroom. This is to prepare the visitor for the experience, to help them leave the stresses and influences of the outside world behind. Before the painting is rather dramatically revealed from behind a curtain, the audience watch a 40 minute film about the picture. The idea is that ‘the exhibition of a single work produces a greater emotional impact on the visitor’ (Greenberg, 1996).


(http://www.russianmuseums.info/M1574)

So what has this got to do with a VR gallery?

At the moment the viewer, in a VR environment, has a rather lonely experience... which is actually great for viewing and contemplating artworks. In his book, Inside the White Cube, Brian O'Doherty discusses (in a rather tongue-in-cheek way) the idea of the ideal gallery as that which 'subtracts from the artwork all cues that interfere with the fact that it is art. The work is isolated from everything that would detract from its own evaluation of itself' (O'Doherty, 1999) and according to O'Doherty, this includes people!

O'Doherty goes on to talk about the photographic 'installation shot' as describing the perfect viewing experience, but this time devoid of the viewer! '...eyes and minds are welcome, space occupying bodies are not... ...you are there without being there - one of the major services provided for art by its old antagonist, photography' (O'Doherty, 1999).

I think this also describes the VR viewing experience quite well. Certainly in my gallery, the viewer is disembodied and is only accompanied by a single floating hand (that is very much attached to reality and its accompanying human body). One has to remember that ultimately, this experience is all about artworks and the ethereal power they embody and the historic power they imbue in a space specially set aside to show them... which it turn can empower/elevate (potentially) any object into a work of art.

I think it is safe (for me) to say that these ideas have hugely influenced my thoughts on galleries and the framing and placing of artworks over the years and VR has allowed me to enact upon and test them in a version of reality.

In Daniel Buren's Function of Architecture note, A Bit of Bread, explains this concept well(ish) -

An empty museum or gallery means nothing, to the extent that it can any time be transformed into a gym or a baker's, without changing what will take place there or will be sold there, in terms of works of art in the future, since the social status will also have changed. Placing/exhibiting a work of art in a baker's will in no way change the function of the aforementioned baker's, which will never change the work of art into a bit of bread either.
Placing/exhibiting a bit of bread in a museum will in no way change the function of the aforementioned museum, but the latter will change the bit of bread into a work of art, at least for the duration of its exhibition.
Now let's exhibit a bit of bread in a baker's and it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish it from the other bits of bread. Now let's exhibit a work of art -of any kind - in a museum: can we really distinguish it from other works of art? (Greenberg, 1996).

...these notes/writings/discourses always seem to end with open questions!

Greenberg, R. Furgusen, B. Nairbe, S. (1996). Thinking About Exhibitions. Routledge.
O'Doherty, B. (1999). Inside the white cube. Berkeley: Univ. of Calif. Pr.

If you are reading this blog and feel you can add something to my research then please comment… even if you are correcting me or don’t agree with something that I say.