Last week I was in Boston where I finally caught up with the re-configured, expanded Museum of Fine Arts. This is one of the great museums of the Eastern half of the United States, full of beloved treasures, and, as all museums seem to, on an eternal quest to re-imagine itself and find more space for the display of its splendid collections. The redesigned building in this instance is superbly successful, the two wings – old and new, connected by an enormous, glass-topped central courtyard – function efficiently and of course there is much more exhibition space. As in the case of many similar expansions, however, a large portion of the new space is devoted to the often oversized contemporary works. I might as well admit here that I am usually unreceptive to most of this. I walk through the vast halls of MoMA, or the DIA complex in Beacon marveling at what seems to me to be a vast conspiracy between the art establishment and a hoodwinked, browbeaten public that acclaims the likes of Cy Twombly, Joan Mitchell, Ad Reinhardt and their ilk – not to speak of what followed later, the neon-tubes, the “word-art” and eventually the piles of garbage in a cardboard box presented as works of art – one could go on and on. It often strikes me that if it is not a vast conspiracy to drive the prices of such works ever higher and/or provide the super rich somewhere to park their money, then it is a sly joke to find out just how gullible the public really is and how far it can be manipulated.

So in the Boston MFA, having re-visited my beloved Copleys, and Sargents, and the European paintings collection, I was walking dutifully through the large, airy wing containing Contemporary Art where, other than a magnificent Anselm Kiefer work, I found little to engage me – until, across the room, shimmering in the distance I saw an El Anatsui!

I must backtrack. About a year ago I was on my way to the Brooklyn Museum to see an exhibit of John Singer Sargent’s watercolors.
As I was entering the museum building, I saw that a simultaneous exhibit was on display on another floor, that of a Ghanian artist called El Anatsui whose monumental works were reviewed several weeks before. At that time I had never heard of El Anatsui; I had no intention of seeing the exhibit; the review made it sound like everything I dislike: vast works made up of found objects. Sounded like some of the trash sculpture on display at DIA. However, with a little time on my hand after a thoroughly wonderful hour spent with the Sargents, I decided I might as well take a quick look at El Anatsui.

I was in for a tremendous surprise. Intending to walk through the exhibit in ten minutes, instead I was thoroughly hooked, enchanted, bowled over. El Anatsui was a revelation. Here was a contemporary artist who combined the craft that is necessary to achieve a complete work of art, one who was not afraid to actually aim for transcendental beauty, and who achieved this indeed by using “found” objects, in this instance discarded bottle caps and similar debris found on African beaches. The dichotomy between the shimmering beauty of what is in front of one and the materials used to create it, revealed by a closer look, is so astounding, I could not tear myself away from a repeat look at each work on display.

The works are hard to define for they hover between tapestry, textile and sculpture. They seem to be heavy, shimmering fabrics casually hung on the walls, until one comes close to them and realizes that instead of golden threads the fabric is created with thousands upon thousands of gold, green, red, silver bottle caps, the shredded remains of milk containers and other debris, all woven and held together by aluminum and copper wire. It has an unearthly beauty, made only more meaningful by the use of base materials, lowly discarded objects found on the African coast. Who discarded them? Locals? Tourists? What would have happened to them had they not been turned into these gorgeous objects? They would be garbage choking the landscape. Instead, El Anatsui’s assistants – for this is the work of multitudes – collect them and then follow his meticulous instructions in assembling them into the transcendental work we are looking at. Each giant tapestry achieves a unique shape each time it is exhibited, for, after all, these are a kind of textile, and as they are loosely hung on the wall of the museum or gallery, they hang differently each time they are exhibited. They are hypnotic, for they combine the quest for beauty with historical meaning, and transform base material into a comment on the way we live.

Ultimately, I was very grateful to find that it is possible for a contemporary artist to create works that are utterly original, consistent, unmistakable as something only he could have done, superbly crafted, emotionally meaningful – and beautiful; that, instead of creating chaotic, random painting dabs or the “metaphor” of an empty white canvas, a twinkling neon tube or a haphazard group of objects in a cardboard box, it is still possible to make order out of chaos, a goal toward which sentient beings have striven since the first cave paintings appeared on the walls of Lascaux.