The fact that artist Spencer Finch's installation Cosmic Latte at MASS MoCA is accompanied by a description in Braille (for the blind) has already been written, including in WSJ: Art and Culture. It sounds like a mockery and looks the same. But for such accusations, it is still worth checking the depth of the concept.
“The name Cosmic Latte is not a poetic metaphor, but a real scientific term. In the early 2000s, astrophysicists calculated the average color of light in the universe by analyzing the emission of approximately 200,000 galaxies. It turned out that the Universe is not blue or black, as people often imagine, but a warm beige-milky hue,” the description says.
A huge walk-through hall of a huge museum, with huge windows on both sides. Parquet floors. And nothing more. At first you don’t even understand what’s funny? Many people pass through this “Ballroom” without ever feeling the meaning of the concept. But a powerful stream of light from the ceiling makes you look up and wonder: “Am I in a store where the Chinese sell chandeliers?” As you guessed, I didn’t like either the installation or the concept, and I don’t even think of tolerant epithets.
Hundreds of identical chandeliers, attached close to the ceiling, each have three bulbs and emit a glow. The bulbs are arranged like the arc of the Milky Way as seen in the Northern Hemisphere during spring. But this is not an astronomical model in the strict sense. Finch connects science, poetry, memory and emotional perception. Therefore, the installation is perceived simultaneously as a starry sky and as a stream of light, as a river and as a musical rhythm, but at the same time it has a molecular structure. This is what the artist is trying to instill in us, defending the main theme of his work – the transition of the invisible into the visible.
The author wants the viewer to enter the installation as if into a river. He swam, contemplating the starry sky, and experienced the emotional thrill of childhood. The atmosphere of soft glow of yellow incandescent lamps is intended to evoke the sensuality of home comfort. Why? Well, that's what he thinks. He is an artist – he sees it that way!
And here is a shock for those who crossed the exhibition hall and found explanations in Braille on the wall at the end. And he imagined a blind man who was offered to swim in an intriguing atmosphere under the stars of the Cosmic Latte and feel the whole thrill of the transition of the invisible into the visible. A concept within a concept? It seems so. But the cruelty of the action erases the original idea of the idyllic atmosphere. This is no longer a cute artistic performance, but a completely unsuccessful concept in which the author is trying to impose his cute idea on people with visual disabilities. Cruelty, I will say gently, without attacking the artist.
In general, have you often seen blind people who came to a museum or gallery?
