Trompe L'Oeil

WITH THE installation of Mary Miss's Mirror Way, the Fogg makes one of its all-too-infrequent ventures into the realm of contemporary art. The scaffold-like sculpture, constructed mostly of unfinished two-by-fours, is visually and conceptually anomalous to the neo-Renaissance interior of the museum courtyard.

Miss's work is part of a series of exhibits honoring former Fogg director John Coolidge. The artists selected for the series create what is known as environmental art, or art that somehow responds to or interacts with the conditions of the site. Miss also tries to involve the viewer--she designs her pieces so that they can (and should) be studied from several directions. The Fogg piece can also be seen from several different heights; one can look down at it from the arcades of the second and third floors of the museum.

Miss designed the work to take advantage of these various viewpoints. She also calls attention to the verticality of the space--the piece is composed of a series of layered steps and ladders that extend up toward the ceiling skylight.

The artist did not, however, attempt to incorporate the sculpture into the architecture of the building. While Miss was interested in exploiting the unique quality of the space itself, she did not want to compete with the existing architecture. Hence the sculpture's somewhat ungainly appearance; in scale (over 20 feet high) and in the vocabulary of its forms (steps, platforms, walkways), the piece seems to conform to an architectural setting. Yet Miss prohibits this fusion of art and environment. The piece is asymmetrical; its axis runs perpendicular to the entranceway of the museum, and the horizontal elements are not aligned with those of the building. The sculpture strains toward an awkward autonology further accentuated by the contrast between its stick like construction and the stone interior of the courtyard.

In the past, Miss's works have been more successfully integrated with their sites. An outdoor piece done for the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid used an existing path running down a wooded hillside. Miss designed a series of gates and fences along the path, the uppermost gate framing a spectacular view. Another work, built for the Battery Park landfill site in New York City, consisted of a series of flat wooden structures with holes cut in them. If the viewer stood at one end, the holes would be in alignment and the viewer could focus on a measured expanse of open land.

In all her works, Miss makes use of architectural motifs--fences, staircases, walls, roofs and ceilings. Though never trained as an architect, Miss says that her observations of the built environment supply her with a broad vocabulary of forms. Influences come from a wide variety of sources: the Indian sites and abandoned mines of the American West, the horizontal and vertical wood membering of Japanese architecture, the hierarchical order of ancient religious and ceremonial buildings, the false fronts of Hollywood stage sets.

Miss draws indirectly from this array of sources, combining and juxtaposing motifs to achieve certain effects. She hopes to convey a sense of the "content" of the forms, to stir memories of past experiences. Thus she tries to reach out to the viewer both emotionally and psychologically.

AND THERE LIES her weakness. While she speaks of stirring memories of, for example, a grand entrace hall or a cramped tenement staircase--her work seems instead rather devoid of content. The problem may be one of materials. The staircase of the Fogg piece suggests ancient Aztec monuments; it might be more powerful if constructed of weathered stone rather than lumberyard wood. Miss, like many intellectually oriented artists during the sixties, gives priority to idea over aesthetic. In failing to point up the qualities of her sculpture, Miss deprives her pieces of visual and emotional richness.

Miss also involves the viewer in perceptual games which distract from an appreciation of the works themselves. Specifically, Miss repeatedly confuses one's perception of space by exaggerating perspective. In Perimeters/Pavillions/Decoys, an outdoor piece done on Long Island in 1978, Miss sets up three apparently identical wooden towers on a field. The towers, however, actually decrease in size as they recede into the distance, so that the last tower appears farther away than it actually is. In an indoor piece which resembles a walled-in staircase, Miss abbreviates the perspective by angling the walls together as the stairs recede. She uses color to add to the effect--blackening interiors to obstruct the viewer's perception of depth.

Miss also tricks the viewer by setting up apparently ordinary situations and then altering them. The effect is somewhat like the Escher prints in which water flows uphill, straight columns bend, and roofs and ceiling invert on each other. Mirror Way at the Fogg is an elaborate experiment in such deception: pathways are blocked, stairs run up into floors, a ladder leads up to a slatted roof which then leads nowhere. In short, the structure is illogical--it feigns functionalism and yet refuses to function.

The use of architectural terms toward non-architectural (or at least non-functional) ends has become popular among some contemporary artists and architects. Alice Aycock's drawings of imaginary cities, the current popularity of architectural drawings as art in themselves, and the revival of decorative facades in post-modern architecture are all part of a new interest in the nature of architectural forms as entities in themselves. Miss offers clever explorations of perspective and, through visual illusions, calls attention to the exact nature of ordinary forms. What her works lack is an overt sense of personal and emotional involvement on the part of the artist. If this human element were attended to, the result might then be a work which would transcend stylishness.

Miss also involves the viewer in perceptual games which distract from an appreciation of the works themselves. Specifically, Miss repeatedly confuses one's perception of space by exaggerating perspective. In Perimeters/Pavillions/Decoys, an outdoor piece done on Long Island in 1978, Miss sets up three apparently identical wooden towers on a field. The towers, however, actually decrease in size as they recede into the distance, so that the last tower appears farther away than it actually is. In an indoor piece which resembles a walled-in staircase, Miss abbreviates the perspective by angling the walls together as the stairs recede. She uses color to add to the effect--blackening interiors to obstruct the viewer's perception of depth.

Miss also tricks the viewer by setting up apparently ordinary situations and then altering them. The effect is somewhat like the Escher prints in which water flows uphill, straight columns bend, and roofs and ceiling invert on each other. Mirror Way at the Fogg is an elaborate experiment in such deception: pathways are blocked, stairs run up into floors, a ladder leads up to a slatted roof which then leads nowhere. In short, the structure is illogical--it feigns functionalism and yet refuses to function.

The use of architectural terms toward non-architectural (or at least non-functional) ends has become popular among some contemporary artists and architects. Alice Aycock's drawings of imaginary cities, the current popularity of architectural drawings as art in themselves, and the revival of decorative facades in post-modern architecture are all part of a new interest in the nature of architectural forms as entities in themselves. Miss offers clever explorations of perspective and, through visual illusions, calls attention to the exact nature of ordinary forms. What her works lack is an overt sense of personal and emotional involvement on the part of the artist. If this human element were attended to, the result might then be a work which would transcend stylishness.