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The Dartmouth
July 25, 2025 | Latest Issue
The Dartmouth

Hood's new modern art exhibit crosses genre boundaries

It is such a tiny pedal. Gray, bland and unassuming, it seems almost invisible on the floor next to the welded, steel motor concoction that is Jean Tinguely's "Iwo Jima." In fact, it is so tiny that I barely registered stepping on it until "Iwo Jima" started loudly, grinding away with all the subtlety of a charging rhinoceros. I stared in awe as the motor forced the sculpture's separate parts into an ongoing cycle of push, pull, push, pull until a steel flag rose majestically behind the mechanical masterpiece.

By now I had realized that most everyone in the new "Modern and Contemporary Art at Dartmouth" exhibit at the Hood Museum, which opened on Friday, Sept. 25, was staring at me. A mousy older lady with a beret walked up to me, peering out from under her thin wire-frame glasses.

"Iwo Jima" clearly is a fascinating example of modern art. It shuns genre conventions, employs a technique rarely found in sculpture (mechanical engineering, to be precise) and captures its viewers' eyes with its stunning display of sound, motion and history. It's a fine example of the extreme artistic diversity that the Hood Museum has attained with its new exhibit, packed with installations that don't fit into conventional artistic categories.

"Apache Pull Toy," by Native American artist Bob Haozous, attracts the eye with its bright, solid display of painted steel in the shape of a cowboy. With a second glance, though, one notices the pristine, ruby-red bullet holes riddling the cowboy's torso, arms, and waist. The piece is described as a mash-up of conceptual and pop art; supposedly the artist blurred these genres in order to make a statement about the connections between Native and Western art.

The exhibit boasts several installations that, like "Apache Pull Toy," relay artistic messages that are both highly political and utterly grandiose. "The Grand Uniform (The General)," by Enrico Baj, depicts a garish general covered in all sorts of oppressive, unattractive medals and insignias in order to convey the overbearing nature of autocratic politicians. "Lonnie and Marie Lived Together" is an expressionist painting that draws attention to racial issues.

These political pieces, instead of falling into one designated section, span the entire exhibit's categories ranging from "Surrealism" to "Performance Art." Although these section designations and their accompanying information labels are helpful, they are a bit unnecessary. Since many of the exhibit's pieces don't necessarily fit into single categories, the labels' descriptions of what "should be" surrealism or what "should be" portrait art frequently seem arbitrary.

Labeling inconsistencies aside, the section on "Performance Art" is easily the most interesting, and disturbing, part of the exhibit. "Trademarks," by Vitto Acconci, is a documentation of the performance artist biting himself. In one grisly close-up, Acconci's camera captures a single shiny strand of saliva trickling down from a row of deeply-embedded teeth-marks in his skin. Another picture captures Acconci artistically touching a woman's nipple.

Although these pictures are certainly unconventional and engaging, they come across as self-torture or porn instead of "high-concept art," the category designated by the exhibit. Moreover, Acconci seems to be trying too hard to convince his viewers that his piece does, in fact, have a concept. He writes in big, bold letters along the side of his piece, "MAKING BITE-MARKS, LIKE FINGERPRINTS AND STAMPING THE WORLD," as if he predicts we wouldn't understand it otherwise.

This over-explanation of things, and not just on the part of Acconci, seems to be rampant in the Hood's exhibit. Frequently, labels fully explain what a piece is "supposed" to mean, such as in the case of "Cach," a reclining wood female figure by Alison Saar swathed in ceiling tin and attached to an immense ball of wire. The Hood explains to us that the ball represents the oppressive racial and cultural burdens of being an African woman. Once again, what happened to my own interpretation? Why should "Cach" mean only one thing?

Over-explanation takes away from the beauty of modern art pieces. When viewers are forced to gaze at "Cach" from afar and read about its African political implications, they miss out on the opportunity to admire the awesome symmetry of its form, the tormented weight of its wire ball and the mottled realism of its texture.

While attending the Hood's exhibit, viewers should forgo the museum's informational labels and simply observe these pieces for what they seem to be.

Approaching the exhibit from this angle, there turns out to be something for everyone. Traditionalists will love pieces like "To the Rescue," a mystifying surrealistic conglomeration of dream-like images by Dorothea Tanning. Pop-art and Warhol consumerism fans will love pieces like "Supper," a large-scale brightly-colored satire of pretentious intellectuals by Alex Katz. Even those truly avant-garde Dartmouth students who enjoy everything unconventional will find themselves intrigued by "Fire Table I," an apocalyptic combination of sculpture and painting that depicts a blazing and seemingly invincible garden. Maybe those kids could even stomach "Trademarks."

"Modern and Contemporary Art at Dartmouth" is by no means a standard art collection. Not only do its pieces rely on almost every medium known to artists, but they make radical political statements, cross genre boundaries, and, most importantly, please the eye. The pieces do not, however, accomplish all of these feats at once, and that is why viewers should ignore the Hood's labels and come with an open mind. Otherwise, the beauty of these pieces will be wasted.