Two Viewpoints: Idealism versus Reality
My hunt of finding the most captivating artwork ended when I stumbled upon an image of two identical white rimmed commercial wall clocks hanging side by side on a pale blue wall. The clocks tell the same exact time to the very second. In this image of Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s “Untitled” (Perfect Lovers) (1991), there is an almost irresistibly appealing aesthetic of doubling a simple, everyday object.
The more time spent reflecting upon the piece, the more I sensed a connection between the two clocks, as if the simple act of duplicating an object bonds the two separate entities into one cohesive unit. Looking deeper into the piece, the identical clocks seem to support each other, to lean on each other, to be united, to move peacefully together as one. The stillness of the clock, minimalism of the shapes, and muted solid colors of white, black, and light blue induce a peaceful feeling.
Many people would take a quick look at the picture and determine that Gonzalez-Torres was representing the beauty in the unity of lovers. With background information, people may even go further into the analysis and figure that the piece was about the “perfect love” between him and his lover, Ross Laycock. Be that as it may, these types of interpretations are as unfulfilling as looking at a still image of a piece meant to be moving.
Ultimately, I determined that looking at just an image of the piece did not do justice to seeing the live installation intended for Gonzalez-Torres’s audience. Since “Untitled” (Perfect Lovers) is no longer open for public view, it was up to me to recreate the work to the best of my ability. Doing so allowed me to truly interact with the piece. To begin my recreation, I pulled up two tabs on my laptop that both displayed the same analog clock website which matched how “Untitled” (Perfect Lovers) looked like in picture. The only difference was, this time, the clocks were moving.
After placing the tabs exactly side by side and sitting back to observe my digital replica, I immediately felt uncomfortable. I kept trying to mentally prepare myself for the disunity of the clocks, for the reality of imperfection. I was anxious. What I wanted to see was the unity of the hands moving as one to complete my idea of idealism, but what I expected was the exact opposite.
Why was there such a stark difference between seeing the image as a picture versus a moving replica? Why did I feel so deceived? Is there even really something that is “perfect”? The only “perfect” part of this piece that I can think of is the idea of the piece. The moment I laid my eyes on the still image of the piece, I saw all the hope and potential it brought. Looking at just the picture of the piece made me feel happy, but apparent the ideals of this piece did not match up to the reality of seeing the clocks actually moving together, or even worse, out of sync.
My first analyzing the artwork through a still image, I realized the photograph of the installment only showcases the idealistic reality people would rather focus on. It was only through the process of viewing the hands of two clocks move that I realized how much the installation was misrepresented. To my knowledge, there was never an image of the clocks on two different times on any website or book. The clocks were kept at a constant unity instead of relaying the real message of disunity in the movement of the hands.
This contrast between still and live portrayals is the focus of my argument. From the motion of the clocks and the knowledge that they will eventually fall out of sync, the installation conveys the imperfections of reality behind the facade of beautiful idealism to give a lesser analyzed interpretation of time, love, and queerness. Gonzalez-Torres’s piece, Untitled (Perfect Lovers) presents a striking balance between the still image and the live replication which then further parallels to the balance between idealism and realism.
To begin with my argument, the very first example of the juxtaposition between ideals and reality is in the name of the piece “Untitled” (Perfect Lovers). Although it may not be traditionally analyzed in this sense, I see that the inscription may suggest that there are two different titles within the one label. The first one we see is “Untitled” which represents the more public interpretation as it is the initial impression, for that is the very first word the audience reads. This portion of the title becomes a parallel to the still image, how a viewer may first lay his/her eyes on the piece, and the initial idealization people may interpret from the piece.
On the other hand, the second word “(Perfect Lovers)” in parentheses acts as his private reality that he hints at to his viewers. To truly know Gonzalez-Torres’s meaning, people would need to dig deeper into his life which represents the importance of looking into the depths of reality instead of just the initial feeling. Without knowing who he was, many would assume the piece was just about togetherness and love between two heterosexual people. In reality, Gonzalez-Torres actually wanted to represent his lover , Ross Laycock, who was dying from AIDS and himself not only as two identical clocks, but also as perfect lovers running out of synced time and the reality of how painful it can be to love. Here, a more jarring analysis rises to attention when it is discovered, and once revealed, the hidden message becomes a force that is to be reckoned with.
As Catherine Lord, an American artist and writer, argues in her book Art & Queer Culture, many queer artists during the AIDS crisis, like Gonzalez-Torres, were struggling with representing themselves intrepidly through art because of government and society putting blame on gays for the spread of AIDS, creating a bad image for the queer community. This time period resulted in many hiding their realities through implicit artworks. As Lord puts it, “Gonzalez-Torres insinuated coded references to queer coupledom into ‘public’ space”(38). Here, Lord is establishing the fact that Gonzalez-Torres embedded his messages through his piece to evade the public judgement, and he did this not just through this artwork itself, but the title as well. The effect of displaying his coded message in such a public sense makes it difficult to look past the idealistic messages put up as a barrier, but once reality hits, his work infects. Once placed out into the public, the work entices people towards his secretive codes. People are then forced to come face to face with the truth once they overcome the initial idealistic viewpoint. “Untitled” (Perfect Lovers) implicitly convey the pain of anxiety with running out of time, of losing another so early in life, of greed to want what reality cannot give us.
In contrast, there were still plenty of artists who displayed their queer art explicitly during the AIDS crisis. Those artists used the boldness of their pieces to clearly get their message out to the world as loudly as possible.
An example from an artist who creates installations with direct messages is Every 12 Minutes (1991) by Nayland Blake. He uses a numberless clock to refer to infection rates of AIDS every 12 minutes on the clock and bright red words “STOP IT” in the center of the clock. Blake utilizes the capital and bold letters to clearly show his political stance on queer activism during the AIDS crisis in the late 1900’s. Yet this may not be the most effective way to represent AIDS.
As Suzanne Perling Hudson argues in Beauty and the Status of Contemporary Criticism, “a turn toward abstraction and poetics here provides a strategy with real political efficacy for an artist caught between the hostile government and the placating institution” (Hudson). The essence of Hudson’s point is that through a set of clocks, Gonzalez-Torres was able to disguise his very public message about the effect of AIDS in a private manner. In this sense, Gonzalez-Torres challenges people to open their eyes and reveals what was so commonly a private matter in a public space. Hudson very accurately describes Gonzalez-Torres method as like a “Trojan horse” where the outer surface may seem welcoming and inviting for all, but the real significance of his message is far down within the more intense understanding and analysis of the piece.
In a further analysis of Gonzalez-Torres’s private and public life, a correspondence between Gonzalez-Torres and Laycock from 1988 is written by Gonzalez-Torres who is trying to comfort Laycock as Laycock becomes increasingly ill from AIDS. Gonzalez-Torres reassures Laycock that time is in fact this beautiful concept and that it is not to be afraid of but to be appreciated.
Gonzalez-Torres’s theory and idea seems so delightful and comforting, but in reality, that is not how he truly felt about time. In an 1991 interview conducted by Robert Nickas, an art critic and curator based in New York, Gonzalez-Torres commented, “Time is something that scares me . . . or used to. This piece I made with the two clocks was the scariest thing I have ever done. I wanted to face it. I wanted those two clocks right in front of me, ticking” (Nickas). In a deeper analysis, the words Gonzalez-Torres used to comfort Laycock contradict his fear of the clocks. Gonzalez-Torres did not want Laycock to suffer even more pain because of how little time Laycock had left so Gonzalez-Torres tried to keep the reality from him. In other words, Gonzalez-Torres portrayed time as a friendly character that was working with them instead of against. Nonetheless, what he truly felt was fear and pain caused by the disappearing of time he had left with Laycock, yet the more pleasant route was to give Laycock the idealistic sense to ease Laycock’s suffering. The idea of the clocks represented the inescapable tie between our desires and truths when forced to face the power of love. In sum, the installation mixes the two sides the romantic idealism and the harsh reality in the metaphor of time to create the chaotic beauty of love.
Through the process of coming to realize the darker and deeper side of “Untitled” (Perfect Lovers), it hit me how dim and unfortunate reality usually ends up being. In fact, human lives act like parallels to the piece, for early in life, humans start off by believing in such idealized thoughts and do not truly realize that is what they are doing until reality comes crashing down on them. Once we are faced with the painful truth, there’s no going back to the idealized and perfect perspective on life. As we grow even more and learn more about the world, we come to find an increasingly amount of crushing realities through new knowledge or experiences.
Likewise, this piece that once looked so beautiful and romantic in picture actually became such a pain where I could not even avert my eyes away because of how anxious it made me. But is it so bad? If we look at the other side of the spectrum and analyze a piece created by Tobias Wong titled Perfect Lovers (Forever) (2002), it looks exactly like “Untitled” (Perfect Lovers) on the outside, but Wong’s clocks are synchronized to the U.S. Atomic Clock that makes sure the clocks will be in sync to the infinity of time.
Although the problem is solved and the anxieties are relieved, I started to realize the tragedies were needed. Without the painful truths, there was no depth, there was no story. We could all easily view Perfect Lovers (Forever) in a still image and there would be no difference. In removing this conflict, what more do we lose? In this sense, I began to see how life is a tragic beauty.
We do not necessarily need to live through the struggles of not being accepted in society or the pains of losing love, but if we live a life with no downs, how will we know how to live a life with highs of fighting for our beliefs or loving someone so fully that it feels truly perfect? As humans, we crave the disunity no matter how much we dislike it because, eventually, we will all reach our fulfilling resolutions to come full circle and start again with new discord.
Works Cited
Buist, Kevin. “Art, Design, and Clocks.” Art21, 1 Feb. 2011, magazine.art21.org/2011/02/01/art-design-and-clocks/.
González-Torres, Félix, and Julie Ault. Felix Gonzalez-Torres. N.p.: Göttingen : SteidlDangin, 2006., 2006. Cat04202a. Web. 2 Nov. 2017.
Heartney, Eleanor. “Art & Audience/Politics — Felix Gonzalez-Torres.” Art and Today. N.p., 17 Oct. 2009. Web.
Hudson, Suzanne Perling. “Beauty and the Status of Contemporary Criticism.” October 104 (2003): 115. Academic Search Complete. Web. 2 Nov. 2017.
Lord, Catherine, and Richard Meyer. “Inside the Body Politic: 1980-Present.” Art and Queer Culture. N.p.: Phaidon, 2013. N. pag. Print.
Nickas, Robert, et al. “Felix Gonzalez-Torres.” Flash Art, 30 Dec. 2016, www.flashartonline.com/article/felix-gonzalez-torres/.
The Art Story Contributors. “Felix Gonzalez-Torres Biography, Art, and Analysis of Works.” The Art Story, The Art Story Contributors, www.theartstory.org/artist-gonzalez-torres-felix-artworks.htm.
