Art of everyday people

WHAT: Common Sense: Art and the Quotidian
WHO: Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and more
WHEN: Feb. 6 - May 23
WHERE: Weisman Art Museum, 333 East River Pkwy.

As Ralph Waldo Emerson observed, “Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.” While Emerson may not have been referencing the dirty overalls of America directly, curator Diane Mullin connected the dots for him with her new exhibit at the Weisman Art Museum called “Common Sense: Art of the Quotidian.” The display gathers a wide range of art that focuses on the gritty intrigue of everyday people as opposed to the posh exclusivity of the elite.
Some of the pieces address the common in content and some use medium. Documentary photographs from the Great Depression era depict country folk in the South and the Midwest, while spaghetti sauce and cigarette ashes are the source material for other works. Particular moments in history are preserved with a cartoon from the premier issue of Seventeen Magazine and an auditory piece by Molly Roth in which she eerily recorded herself whispering “good night” and “good morning” each of 365 days.
Much of the exhibit focuses on finding the extraordinary in the ordinary. For example, Joel Sternfeld’s photograph entitled “Exhausted Renegade Elephant, Woodland, Washington” depicts the bizarre occurrence of an escaped circus elephant being taken down on a Washington country road. Also under this category happens to be Andy Warhol’s soup can opus “New England Clam Chowder.”While Warhol portrays the ordinary with not-so-ordinary materials, Robert Rauschenberg takes that idea up a step, where both the subject and the material used (cardboard, paper, pencils) are everyday. The result is sophisticated work seemingly made out of Crayola fare.
Jan Estep, University of Minnesota associate professor and director of Graduate Studies, contributes the show’s video feature in the “Ordinary Language” wing of the exhibit. Her piece explores the topic of time, as she went to a prison in St. Louis and asked inmates to repeat various clichés involving the word “time.”
“[My piece] invites an audience to see something ordinary that we take for granted and realize how remarkable it is. Unfortunately, in our culture it is ordinary to be a prisoner — we have a lot of prisoners in America — but for others it could be extraordinary,” she explained.
But “Common Sense” also investigates the ordinary inside of the extraordinary. For example, Nina Katchadourian’s “Indecision of the Moon” is an audio recording of the moon landing played in a room as dark as space. But the listener will not hear “the eagle has landed” or “one small step for man” because, staying true to the exhibit’s theme, the artist removed all the famous lines.
Christopher James, Weisman communications and events director, explained, “These days, many people are thinking about the extraordinary and the ordinary because of the economy. Since they can’t necessarily achieve the extraordinary as easily, people are trying to find a way to make common things satisfying.”
Ladies and gentleman: the art of the Great Recession.