Photograph courtesy of the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts
He sent fried, gold-leafed Polaroids as Christmas cards; ran a restaurant with friends called Food, where he served soup swimming with live brine shrimp; bought 15 parcels of what New York City termed "gutterspace"—fragments of land, some only inches wide, left over from sloppy surveying work—and spent years lovingly documenting them with maps, photos, and deeds. He swung from harnesses, chain saw or blowtorch in hand, cutting swaths of floor, wall, or girder out of condemned buildings, resculpting them to reveal their armatures and allow light to enter in new ways. He shaved the facades off condemned houses in the contaminated Love Canal neighborhood in Niagara Falls, and cut a New Jersey house in half, lowering the cinderblock foundation so that a walk through this formerly unremarkable suburban home became an exercise in disorientation. He was the son of a card-carrying Surrealist and called what he did "anarchitecture."
In the 21st century, the art stunt has become glib; often, it's more about marketing than art. For Gordon Matta-Clark, art was about community. At Food, he simultaneously fed, employed, and entertained poor young artists in SoHo. His gutterspace project, "Fake Estates," was a way to talk about wealth disparity, land ownership, and common space. And the Love Canal building cuts, titled "Bingo," asked questions about environmental disasters, as well as the politics of who suffers as a consequence. Though it's true that the artist died young (in 1978, at age 35, from pancreatic cancer) and that his work was ephemeral, experienced mainly as films, photographs, and remnants of his "building cuts," it may be that his beautifully weird and socially engaged art was out of fashion until recently. After all, the art market of the early aughts became nearly as cutthroat and speculative as the real-estate bubble; had he lived longer, he would have had fun commenting on it. Because he was also a Cornell-trained architect, real estate—or rather, unreal estate—was one of Matta-Clark's favorite mediums.
This month, The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts opens "Urban Alchemy/Gordon Matta- Clark," a retrospective of his work that includes pieces never shown in St. Louis, including the 1971 silent film "Fire Child," 40 photographs from Matta-Clark's estate, and "Bingo." And very appropriately in this case, the Pulitzer is planning an ambitious, yearlong agenda of community programming that mirrors the social awareness intrinsic to Matta-Clark's work. One of the first pieces to be installed will be a "garbage wall," based on similar pieces that the artist built in the early 1970s.
"His whole idea behind the garbage wall was that he'd collect trash—at the time, he was thinking that it would be a good way for homeless individuals to build shelter for themselves," says Lisa Harper Chang, the Pulitzer's manager of community engagement. "So he constructed these and used them as a backdrop for a performance piece that he did. In keeping to those themes, we will be constructing a garbage wall that will be in our space, and we'll be collecting the trash from members of the community. The widow of Gordon Matta- Clark, Jane Crawford, will be here with our assistant facilities manager, so the actual construction is going to happen with them."
Matta-Clark was passionate about supporting local artists (and not just by feeding them brine-shrimp soup). To that end, the Pulitzer will be, Chang says, "using artists as ambassadors in the community." For instance, Jenny Murphy, who just graduated from Wash. U. with her BFA in sculpture, is refurbishing bulk trash items and returning them to the community in a free sale. "It fits well within Gordon Matta-Clark's whole idea about taking things of little to no perceived value, and then viewing them with very high value," Chang says. "Another project he worked on toward the end of his life—and I don't think it came to fruition, because he died—but he had procured a property for very little money in a developing neighborhood. His plan was to train youth in ecologically sustainable rehabbing. He was very much ahead of his time—he called them eco-cadets! And then he would have them return that building to the community."
The show also has several Web components, including an online catalog, where people can see a virtual 360-degree tour of the exhibit (mattaclark.pulitzerarts.org), and a programming Web catalog (transformations.pulitzerarts.org), where users can post their own Google Maps tours of their neighborhoods, contribute to a Flickr photo pool, play interactive games, or watch do-it-yourself video clips on refurbishing buildings (or bulk trash items!).
The third big component of this show, Chang says, can't be described in one word; it's a "panel–slash–discussion–slash–interactive series," based on concepts that were dear to Matta-Clark (including alternative art spaces, urban archaeology, food, and ways of inspiring hope through art creation in abandoned spaces). For example, Chang says, there's a woman who gives graffiti art tours of St. Louis, but "you can't drive—you have to take public transportation and walk with her. So we'd pair that with a panel discussion with different perspectives on graffiti art and the impact on community." She adds that the Pulitzer also recognizes that St. Louis has a superlative urban blogger community, and that group will be participating in, as well as documenting, these hybrid events.
"The whole focus is going to be on what St. Louis means to individuals," Chang says. "So you see the lay of the land, how the architecture's evolved, but how the people have evolved. How do people define their neighborhood? We will be doing very active on-the-ground investigation and talking and surveying, trying to figure out: How do people define where they are?"
"Urban Alchemy/Gordon Matta-Clark" opens on October 30 with a reception from 6 to 9 p.m. and runs through June 5 at The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, 3716 Washington, 314-754-1850, pulitzerarts.org. Public hours are noon–5 p.m. Wed and 10 a.m.–4 p.m. Sat.
