"The Third Mind" at the Guggenheim
JMS and I went to see "The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860-1989" last Friday at 6 PM, when admission was free. According to the exhibition notes, The Third Mind refers to a "cut-ups" work by Beat writers William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin, whose cult of spontaneity in art and life drew inspiration from Asian attitudes. As even this note illustrates, there was far too much generalizing about "Asian attitudes" in the exhibition than I could stand. "Asia" in the exhibition was predominantly--and predictably --Japanese, and within Japanese culture, Zen. "Asia" was presented as an ahistorical and undifferentiated Other. Yes, the artists saw Asia that way, but I would have liked the exhibition to give more context to that way of seeing. I did not care for the post-War World II stuff (mainly installations, performance art, videos), though Ernest Fenollosa's book "The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poe...