THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2010


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C9 At the Corcoran, cloudy days from Spencer Finch art reviewfrom C1


the cloud in its title and of the light that passes through it. It does that by giving us the light it- self along with the cloud. High under the room’s dome Finch has suspended a huge “cloud” as- sembled from 110 crumpled the- atrical gels in an assortment of pale blues and grays. Light pierc- ing the rotunda’s skylight passes through the tangle of filters on its way to us below, so that it winds up matching the blueness and brightness of the light we’d see on a bright day under a passing cloud.


Finch could have given us that cloud by painting or photograph- ing it, like his great cloud-art predecessors John Constable and Alfred Stieglitz. But he prefers to make cloud art that actually works on us the way a cloud-filled reality would. Cross from one side of the rotunda to the other, while keeping your eyes focused on your hands or clothes, and you see the light on them pass from blue to a sunny yellow-white. One way to understand Finch’s piece, then, is to keep your eyes turned away from it. There aren’t many other art works you can say that about. Is a cloud mostly about what it happens to look like or what it does? For Finch, it’s the doing that matters. One thing atmospherics do is


evoke particular places, and the times we’ve stood in them. “Pass- ing Cloud” registers the cloud light at the corner of Vermont Av- enue and L Street NW one day this July. Finch stood there with an electronic light- and color- meter, then later matched those readings with his filters in the Corcoran’s rotunda. He chose that particular corner because it resonates in our cultural history. It was where Walt Whitman used to stand, in July of 1863, to bow to Lincoln as the president made his daily trips to the White House from his summer retreat in Washington’s north end. That is the moment and the light that Finch’s piece evokes, or at least tries to. The history itself — the physi- cal and material reality of being there, then — is forever lost to us. Finch knows that. His piece in some sense proclaims it. It tries, and fails, to put us there, then. And the poignancy of that failure, of the irrevocable lost-ness of the past despite our best efforts to re- vive it, is part of what this work is about.


All of Finch’s art tries to get closer to what matters in the world, by leaving behind the sur- face appearances that most art has always been about and that most adults dwell on. And then it acknowledges the near impossi- bility of getting very far, no mat- ter how wide-eyed innocent you remain. Upstairs at the Corcoran, Finch presents a number of other pieces that make the same effort at baby-like vision. One major new work is wildly


peculiar, even by Finchian stan- dards of eccentricity. It’s a room- filling assemblage of 64 fluores- cent fixtures, two and three and four feet long, joined at their ends to become something like a


vision of Constable our eyes ex- pect, with their very adult goal of confirming things we already know. Instead, it gives us Con- stable’s own light. Look around at the other Finches in the gallery, or rather look around at the air and space around them, and you’ll realize that the filtered bulbs in “Open Cloud” are casting a outdoorsy, even British illumination on ev- erything else. It’s as though the light captured in Kent in the 1820s by Constable’s paint were infiltrating this gallery, now. (It’s important to visit the show dur- ing daylight hours, when the in- candescent lighting is off.) Another piece, called “Taxono-


PHOTOS BY KATHERINE FREY/THE WASHINGTON POST CLOUDY: Seventeen prints make up Spencer Finch’s “Taxonomy of Clouds,” in which differing clouds are depicted in puddle reflections.


my of Clouds,” consists of 17 framed color photos that depict some of the different kinds of clouds that scientists have named. Except that, instead of taking the obvious step of looking up, Stieglitz-like, to shoot his cu- muli and stratuses, Finch has found them reflected in puddles in dirty Brooklyn streets. Where the rest of us adults would only see the things, the puddles, in front of us, Finch looks at them and sees everything they show. If we then take our lead from him, ignoring things and paying atten- tion to the full range of our sensa- tions, we realize that the glass protecting Finch’s photos is also reflecting clouds — this time, in the shape of the glowing fluores- cent tubes of Finch’s nearby “Open Cloud.” If this art sounds a touch con-


fusing, it should. There’s no quick take on Finch’s work, no instant read, no 20-minute visit to his show. Its complexities deserve to be unpacked, the way you’d work at one of the more metaphysical poems of John Donne or Emily Dickinson. (The show’s title is a line from Dickinson.) It takes the brains of a baby to


do it. gopnikb@washpost.com


Spencer Finch: My Business, With the Cloud


opens Saturday at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, 500 17th St. NW, and runs through Jan. 23. Call 202-639-1700 or visit www.corcoran.org.


REPRESENTATIONAL? Finch’s “The Four Seasons (Specific Humidity, Northern Hemisphere, 2010)” is another in Finch’s exhibit “My Business, With the Cloud,” opening on Saturday at the Corcoran.


CLOUD-LIKE? Each tube in Finch’s “Open Cloud” represents one of the famous cloud studies that Constable painted in the 1820s.


geodesic dome gone wrong. Imagine trying to depict a storm cloud using 64 Tinkertoy rods, and you’ll get some idea of the shape and strangeness of Finch’s sculpture, called “Open Cloud.” Clouds again, yes, but this time taken from art rather than his- tory.


Each of the fluorescent tubes represents — as always with Finch, you have to use that verb


loosely — one of the famous cloud studies that Constable painted in the 1820s. Finch began his piece by observing a stripe across the surface of each Constable, nar- row enough so that the variations in color and brightness across its painted sky were reduced to a se- ries of abstract colored bands. He then reproduced those bands on the surface of his fluorescent tubes by sliding short lengths of


sleeving, in blues and grays and even sunset-pinks and golds, along their lengths. His 64 striped tubes mimic 64 stripes across Constable’s paintings — without ever looking a bit like a Constable. “Open Cloud” certainly cap- tures something important about Constable’s pictures, with an at- tempt at almost scientific pre- cision. But it refuses to give us the


Spencer Finch prefers to make cloud art that actually works on us the way a cloud-filled reality would. . . . Is a cloud mostly about what it happens to look like or what it does? For Finch, it’s the doing that matters.


After trying to help his mom, a son gets it from all sides ASK AMY


Dear Amy: My 83-year-old widowed mother


and I were having our weekly phone conversation last night (I live in California; she’s in New York) when she began to repeat herself over and over — more than a dozen times. I kept asking her, “Why are you


repeating yourself?” My mother’s cognitive skills are exceptional, and this odd behavior had me worried.


She had earlier complained about how hot it was, and I suspected the heat may have contributed to her problem. I asked her if she was feeling okay, and she said she was fine, but again she began to repeat herself. I told her I would call her back, then tried to get a hold of my sister who lives 20 minutes away. No luck. I called my brother and asked him to call her. He spoke with her and then called me back, agreeing that she sounded strange. I took it upon myself to call 911. An ambulance went to the house. The EMTs examined her and found nothing wrong. Now she refuses to speak with me. She says I humiliated her. What is the proper protocol here? She lives alone and I


couldn’t reach anyone, so I decided to send help. I worried that she might be having a stroke. Now my brother and sister say I


overreacted. Amy, what do you think?


A Very Concerned Son


You did the right thing. Your mother is embarrassed, your siblings are backing her up, but there are far worse fates than a little embarrassment. Suffering a stroke, for instance, and not getting help. The fact is, something was wrong with your mother, and she should follow up with her doctor. Take this incident as your


wake-up call to work with your siblings and your mother on making some small changes so she can continue to live safely at home. I recommend you look into a monitoring service. For a monthly fee, she can have an intercom installed onto her phone line and a “panic” button. This adds another set of ears, another entity in the chain of contact and another person available to try to assess her needs. You should also add a couple of neighbors to your contact list.


Dear Amy: I know a man, “Gregory,” who has terminal cancer. He and his family are acquaintances of mine, not really friends, and I don’t see them that often.


The last time I saw his wife,


several weeks ago, she indicated he might have only a matter of days to live, so he may already have passed away. We don’t really have any mutual friends from whom I would hear if he had died. The next time I see one of the


family, what should I say? It would sound dumb to ask,


“How is Greg doing?” since I already know he is dying, but it sounds insensitive to say, “Is Greg still with us?”


Uncertain You can search online for an


obituary for your acquaintance through obituaries.com, which features obits in local newspapers listed state by state. There is a high likelihood you would be able to learn of this person’s death through this search. Otherwise, you could call


“Gregory’s” wife and say, “I want you to know that I have been thinking about your family since


I saw you a few weeks ago. I was so sorry to learn of Greg’s illness.” She could then fill in to say, “He passed away” or “He’s still fighting and in the hospital.” You can react with an expression of sympathy or concern. It’s okay not to know what has happened. If he has died, you can simply say, “I’m so sorry, I didn’t know.”


Dear Amy: Regarding “Worried,” whose husband had started criticizing her every move: I knew when my ex-husband starting behaving like that, and generally acting totally miserable, that my marriage was in trouble. We are often afraid to ask the


key questions that we should ask. I hope “Worried” won’t be afraid to take that step. It could save her marriage.


D


I agree that it is vital to talk — before someone walks.


Write to Amy Dickinson at askamy@ tribune.com or Ask Amy, Chicago Tribune, TT500, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, Ill. 60611.


© 2010 by the Chicago Tribune Distributed by Tribune Media Services


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