Zoe Roller

One of the strange aspects of the internet's ever-growing presence in our lives is the way we carve trails into the online landscape. Visiting the same sites regularly mimics the feeling of a neighborhood; a group of familiar spaces whose imagined proximity increases through frequency of visits. Many functional sites recreate features of a neighborhood, like banks and stores, while others provide the security of being close to home. Wikipedia's list of the world's tallest statues is, if I can stretch this analogy a little further, equivalent to the corner bodega in my online geography, while their colossal statues list is the liquor store down the street. I certainly spend more time at these pages than I do at C-Town Town, my local supermarket.

I return to these lists partly to discover strange monuments that I hope to visit someday. New Yorkers may be dismayed to learn that, when it comes to female colossi, the Statue of Liberty is comparatively puny. The amazonian Mother Motherland is nearly twice Liberty's height.

Virgen de la Paz, Venezuela. Two feet taller than Liberty, at 153 feet.

Guanyin of Mount Xiqiao, China.

Mother Motherland, Ukraine.

Mother Motherland, Russia. 379 feet tall!

The world's tallest statues are primarily Buddhas and Redeemer-type Christs (the tallest in the world is a 420 foot Buddha in China), interspersed with massive manifestations of Americana.

Golden Driller, Oklahoma.

But the allure of roadside attractions is not what keeps me coming back to this website. Confronting an overwhelming physical presence in the cramped, flattened space of the internet creates a weird disconnect. Sculpture on this scale is dizzying in person, and imagining its size from afar induces conceptual vertigo. These tiny pictures of towering figures stretch the mind almost painfully. The list of the world's tallest statues collapses two strange spatial experiences into one: the rambling progression of the internet and the mental strain of confronting the gigantic. The claustrophobic browser window augments the anxiety of the scale disconnect. The statues list is both an anchor to the physical world and a reminder of the bizarre phenomenology of living online.

The sculptural qualities of light have been explored in depth by contemporary art. Illumination is a cornerstone of minimalism, and artists like James Turrell and Anthony McCall create beautiful, architectural pieces using only light. Darkness has yet to be the subject of so thorough an investigation. Anish Kapoor's installation at the Guggenheim, Memory, demonstrates that it can carry as much structural and emotional force as its opposite.

Museum-goers who sneak away from Tino Sehgal's show in search of some material art might encounter an enigmatic object wedged into a corner gallery. The piece resembles a petrified zeppelin, and like Alice in Wonderland after eating the wrong cake, it fits so tightly into the space that it appears to have arrived smaller and expanded on site. The object's proportions are hard to gauge, since the viewer cannot fit into the room to take it in all at once. It resembles a long-buried ruin pushed up into the modern world by seismic forces.

The feeling of weight and solidity created by the steel is quickly dispelled by a square cut out of the wall in an adjacent gallery, into the dark interior of the object. Because we so rarely encounter complete darkness, the black window stirs up the visceral dread of a backpacker lost in the wilderness. Without surface, depth, or texture, it baffles physicality. It is impossible to gauge the depth or dimensions of the void. It limits the gaze to convey limitlessness. At the same time, the piece avoids minimalist austerity. The darkness itself is luxurious and fascinating, commanding attention without disclosing anything. Kapoor's metal pod isolates darkness for contemplation,  and it proves just as compelling as light.

Attending cultural events usually makes me feel like a real jerk. My friends calmly discuss the show and praise the work, while I'm rendered inarticulate and foul-mouthed by indignation that such atrocities merit a museum show. My relentless negativity doesn't prevent me from enjoying art shows, though; they give me an opportunity to rant. Tearing apart a mediocre show for anyone who'll listen is almost as much fun as seeing a really good one.

Tino Sehgal's solo show at the Guggenheim circumvents either variety of enjoyment: it's a lousy show, literally devoid of art, yet I'm unable to rant about it. What can I say? Wright's beautiful building is completely empty. The viewer walks up the spiral, encounters a series of people employed to make chit chat, and arrives at the top after a few minutes, having seen all Sehgal has to offer. That's it. You talk to a few people, they ask you vaguely significant questions, and you're done.

Using children and personable strangers is a devious tactic to deflect criticism; I feel guilty hating the show because the kids were so cute, and the conversations so pleasant. I talked to a precocious young man about verbs and nouns, and tried to convince my second guide to watch the movie Cube. But I have interesting and thought provoking conversation with strangers all the time, and it only costs one ride on the subway, rather than $18. I go to a museum to escape the ordinary, and see or feel something exciting and unusual. Sehgal's show was little more than extension of the subway ride to get there. Even worse, it was a wasted opportunity to engage a spectacular space. Artists like Matthew Barney and Cai Guo-Qiang transformed the spiral building to create unforgettable spectacles, but Sehgal flattens it into a big sidewalk.

So much more exciting than chatting with kids.

Cai Guo-Qiang at the Guggenheim

Matthew Barney at the Guggenheim

Of course, art doesn't need taxidermy and explosions and vaseline to be good, but a gaudy spectacle is better than nothing. Sehgal's references are just so dull and tired. Relational aesthetics is a lazier redux of the institutional critiques made thirty years ago. Ultimately, I don't care what statements Sehgal thinks he's making. I don't want to waste my time and money on an empty museum.

Dubai's downfall lends itself too perfectly to metaphor. The Burj Khalifa could not provide a more textbook example of hubris if Emaar had expressly set out to rebuild the tower of Babel. The skyscraper was the crown jewel in Dubai's collection of superlatives, emerging from the forest of glittering spires as one triumph among many. As Dubai's economy collapsed, though, the Burj became the Emirate's last hope for recapturing its lost grandeur and refuting international ridicule. The building opened with much fanfare, but could not rescue Dubai from abysmal financial straits. Today's report that the tower is already closing (albeit temporarily) proves the failure of this desperate attempt to save face

Instead of struggling to maintain a crumbling facade, Dubai should embrace the spectacle of failure as wholeheartedly as that of success; stop denying that their islands are sinking and their skyscrapers are abandoned shells, that thousands of cars sit empty in derelict parking structures. Exaggerating the aesthetics of decay could recapture the global imagination. Dubai should manipulate the glorious tragedy of their own downfall into an equally vulgar, glamorous show.

I was initially saddened by the news of J.D. Salinger's passing, but this sadness was quickly replaced by uncertainty. His books meant the world to me a few years ago, as I'm sure they did to countless high school kids, and popularity with teenagers is inherently somewhat suspect. Rereading Franny and Zooey this weekend left me dismayed by the message and tone of his work. This ambivalence has been beautifully described elsewhere, so I won't linger on my distaste for Franny, or the smarminess of the conclusion. The unseemly urge to critique the dead reminded me of a couple of great essays written and regarding recently deceased writers. It is a bit disrespectful to memorialize Salinger with a harsh review, but I find the clash of literary heavyweights endearing and impressive. Discussion and criticism are crucial to literature. John Updike's third to last paragraph captures exactly what I hate about Salinger, and inclines me to forgive some of what I hate about Updike himself. This pairing doesn't give Salinger a chance to defend himself, but I think David Foster Wallace's hilariously accurate appraisal deflates Updike and evens the score. His essay also gives us reaons to be grateful that Salinger didn't produce much, especially at the end of his life.

Anxious Days for the Glass Family, by John Updike

John Updike, Champion Literary Phallocrat, Drops One; Is This Finally the End for Magnificent Narcissists?, by David Foster Wallace