7.27.20 — These Eyes
“Monet is only an eye—but what an eye!” Paul Cézanne may have offered a left-handed compliment, but it rings true.
It also sums up the experience of art. To earn it, Claude Monet had first to translate his vision into paint, for all to see. When you enter a museum of Impressionism, it becomes your vision, too. One can almost hear him sing, “I Only Have Eyes for You.” 
Care to sing along? You are here, and so am I—and so are at least a dozen others in a 2012 video by Doug Aitken (and I work this together with an earlier report on networking in new media as a longer review and my latest upload). The classic song gets them through a lost moment, a lonely night, or a repetitive job. You will not hear a popular version by Art Garfunkel or the Flamingos (and you will not miss it), only them. Just when you think that you have pinned one down, another begins, and then they all disappear from view. Although a night-club act comes first and returns later on TV, others must sing to themselves, and they can count on only the artist’s gaze and yours.
They could not count on you for long, at 601Artspace online through July 25. At a time of museum closures and “virtual exhibitions,” the gallery gives just four days each to a single video, as 601TV, and it is hard to single out just one. The pace approaches Aitken himself, in the video’s constant reinvention. Song 1 starts with a click, as reel-to-reel tape sets in motion and the camera closes in, and it ends with a firmer click on those same reels, like a pair of enormous eyes. Still, it takes a few moments to guess at its subject, past a motel strip and a hand striking a match. And then one catches that club act, on stage amid a circle of candles—and the song.
The moon may be high, but I can’t see a thing in the sky—and no wonder. It is out of reach, beyond artificial lights in an endless night. It lies beyond taillights on a highway, factory workers, and a cook in a diner that Edward Hopper could only admire. Aitken is searching for art and love, but also the sleepless underside of America, as with Sleepwalkers in 2008. In place of continuity, he finds only disruption, much as he did with a wrecking ball in Chelsea in 2013. A young woman turns from behind the wheel of a car to meet your eyes, and you should be flattered, though you may wish she kept her eyes on the road.
He finds, too, a sleepless rhythm. The clink of factory equipment and the bell of diner orders could almost conform to the song. Other red cars join the young woman’s in synchronized driving. Aitken divides many a scene into two or three images, for video or audio counterpoint that his subjects never saw or heard. He is not above manipulating images either to create his own high-tech rhythms. Playing cards or letters from the lyrics tumble through the air, and the factory becomes a kaleidoscope.
His actors are complicit, too, for all their felt isolation. They snap their fingers and move their lips, and it is hard to know which are lip synching and which are singing along. Just when you think that you are back in the parking lot with that young woman, you discover an older blond standing alone. They may not find company, but they may yet find relief. When a rumpled man in an empty station returns beside a huge bay window, he looks less weary, more collected, and downright rich. Still, they only have eyes for you.
Read more, now in a feature-length article on this site.





