Visiting the Exhibition -- Becoming

Visiting the Exhibition -- Becoming a Part of an Interactive Exhibition FIELD TRIP to the SANTA MONICA MUSEUM of ART to SEE the PAT O'NEILL EXHIBITION Go to the Santa Monica Museum of Art From September 11 through November 13, 2004 to see -- a film? An artistic exhibition? Or both? The museum, when faced with the challenge of presenting Pat O'Neill: Views from Lookout Mountain, was forced to contemplate how to present the works of an area artist who is both an artist and a filmmaker, a producer of plastic and static as well as moving celluloid material, someone who is still alive and producing engaging works, yet has a considerable history as an artist in the state and in this country.

Normally, when one presents paintings in a museum, the gazer moves and the pictures are static. In a film, the gazer is static and the images move. However, this exhibition is designed to illustrate, by the way the spectator can move through the space of the museum's main gallery, according to his or her own whims and will, and also the ways he or he is forced to remain still, to enjoy the full, the pluralistic range of O'Neill's art.

The gazer must stand still to look at movies, and yet can move about in a wide space to view the paintings in the order he or she chooses, or to proceed along the chronology of the wall. The exhibitor can see the films or the paintings first, depending on his or her choice. The exhibit combines a range of media-sculpture, photography, photographic composite prints, film projection, film installation, drawing, and even makes use of an interactive DVD-ROM.

Thus, Pat O'Neill: Views from Lookout Mountain enables the spectator to become a creator in his or her experience of the exhibit, as well as merely warehouses and catalogues in any particular, pre-determined order, this artist's major works from the early 1960s to the present. Because this is a community museum, with strong ties to the local, California community, the museum stresses on its website that it is the first museum exhibition to provide a complete film retrospective in of such an important Los Angeles artist.

O'Neill's films enjoy a devoted following in the avant-garde film community, and the exhibit draws upon this renewed interest in independent films amongst younger people in the area, particularly art students and college students. The exhibit also clearly has an appeal for older individuals who remember the 1960's and might have a greater interest in O'Neill's paintings from a historical, reminiscent point-of-view.

However, because of the basic nature of the wall texts, the exhibition is clearly also intended as introduction to O'Neill, as well as purely as a retrospective of the artist's talents.

Also, because the writings connected to the work of this artist stress his relationship to the dominant aesthetic movements of the Post-War era, in California, such as the Beats and the independent film movement, a layperson or a beginning student of art history could also enjoy the exhibit/ The content of the exhibition, particularly the films and interactive works, however, are designed to upset notions of art in such laypeople, as well as provide a seamless and conventional introduction to a figure's most notable works.

The exhibition is clearly an experience, or intends to be, as well as is a museum.