The exhibition of Ruth Asawa’s work at the David Zwirner Gallery was a one of a kind experience. The half hour walk from the Baruch building passed quickly with conversations about irrelevant topics, I did not know many of the people in my class at the time, so we all had much to say. Ironically when we got to the gallery, we had a very minimal understanding of what Ruth Asawa was trying to say with her aesthetic wire sculptures. Some were hanging off the ceiling, long in formation. The others had perfect geometrical patterns and were up on the walls, circular and thorny on the sides.
The artist’s unique background of growing up in California and being interned during the second world war is reflected in her work in way which we cannot explain. She described loving music, but not have the money to take lessons. The internment of Japanese Americans changed that situation rather abruptly. With Ruth Asawa’s betrayal by her own government, came extra time to read, create art, learn, and perfect a number of useful skills.
Ruth Asawa extracted the unique properties of the material she used in her art. Wire could interlock, expand, and contract within just a single strand. This explains the experimentation presented in the David Zwirner Gallery. It was a mystery to me how Ruth Asawa could seek out such geometric perfection, when her own life pattern had been smashed, interrupted, and regrouped by an unnatural, unmitigated force. She seems to see a beautiful perfection in the universe.
I greatly admire her public endeavors as well. Ruth Asawa fought to have a diversified arts curriculum in American public school. Art education funding is currently being cut in favor of more “practical” things such as language, mathematics, and the sciences. Art is just as essential to the human spirit as any of the other areas of study. Our younger generations need to be exposed to the fine arts, develop a taste and appreciation for them early on.
Camille Paglia, an intellectual who I admire greatly, talks about the importance of art education in public school. In the modern age, the eye is not trained to focus, to admire something. The closest thing we have to a work of art is the iphone, and that simply won’t do. This lack of funding has resulted in shorter attention spans and spiritual deserts searching helplessly for meaning. History, literature, all of these things tie into the arts. Without the greatest creations of man, we are but modern beings with no history or depth.
Asawa had a smart approach to making this an essential part of the school curriculum. Her proposal involved making use of empty rooms, additional space and excess materials to makes such programs as the Alvarado Arts Workshop possible. Even marketing the kid’s work, an outside the box idea, could bring in some revenue. I enjoyed examining the pieces on display in the gallery, and even though we were in the city it felt like we were witnessing a natural accrance. The spirals and spheres were there by the will of nature, Ruth Asawa simply brought its wishes to fruition.
