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Richard Tuttle’s installation in the Tate Modern Turbine Hall is lovely and forgettable. This is the first sculpture for several years in the famous series of interventions in this immense space by important international artists. It is also the first big three-dimensional creation there by a North American sculptor. As such, it occupies space in a very different, very American way. It is not grandiose, not histrionic. It just lives in the sky and embraces the light.
Two huge wings shaped from wood dominate half the length of the tall, grey Turbine Hall. They are hung with shreds of orange cloth, like giant bits of tissue paper glued to an unfinished balsa model plane. Between the wings dangles a massive construction that reaches from high up nearly down to the ground, covered with red fabric. It is organic, lumpen, and a delight to look at.
When I say Tuttle is classically American, what I mean is that he belongs to a line of development that runs from Jackson Pollock and Barnett Newman through to James Turrell’s skyspaces and appropriated geological phenomenon the Roden Crater. This tradition of American art ranges out, like a lasso, across often vast spaces, from the widescreen paintings of the abstract expressionists to Walter de Maria’s Lightning Field. To see something in the Turbine Hall with that natural expansiveness is a real pleasure. For a minute, I thought I was in New Mexico.
Standing, or still better lying, underneath Tuttle’s construction, you get a seductive sense of light and freedom. Changing daylight brightens or deepens the hues of this immense coloured kite, interacting with the golden glow of electric light on its flimsy beauty.
Perhaps this stalled flying machine is a homage to the Wright brothers. Or perhaps it is about – to quote the title of the work and also of Tuttle’s connected exhibition at the Whitechapel gallery – “I Don’t Know. The Weave of Textile Language”.
That’s the trouble with Tuttle. His art is nice to look at, but what’s it all about? This is post-minimalism so confident of its place in the modern canon that it just keeps on going like someone crocheting obsessively, or knitting one sweater after another, without stopping to ask why. At its best, it boldly and hilariously reduces art to nearly nothing – one work at the Whitechapel consists of pieces of string on the ground, another of a string suspended between two nails.
I enjoyed it at the time. But within – what? – an hour, it was gone from my mind. Even the big Tate Modern construction has all the depth and profundity of a Christmas garland. There’s an introspective quality that, far from being deep, is pointlessly obscure. It all starts to unravel if you take it seriously. Admire the colours, and it’s fun – try to fathom it, and you may as well be reading a postmodern edition of Moby-Dick from which the whale hunt has been removed. Just Captain Ahab doing conceptual scrimshaw for a thousand pages.
In fact, there is a reason why Tuttle is fashionable in the art world. His noodling ideas about “textile language” and sculptures that are overcomplex and lacking in true authority have much in common with the work of younger artists seen in such current shows as the Turner prize or the Hayward’s Mirrorcity exhibition. And isn’t it Frieze this week? So I hear. Tuttle is a godfather to the most pretentious stuff you’ll find at such events. Lots of apparent intelligence, but not so clever when you think about it.
It is all fascinating for people who want to argue about how original Martin Creed’s art is. But it seems vaguely disgraceful and unquestionably absurd that such a minor artist has such a big Tate exhibit when Richard Serra, who really could fill the Tate Turbine Hall authoritatively, and has created masterworks of imposing weight and scale in comparable public spaces in America and Europe, is kept waiting in the wings with yet another exhibition at the commercial Gagosian gallery. For a long time it looked as if the curators who commission big art for Tate Modern had something against the US. Waiting for a rangy American to inhabit this epic setting was like waiting for Philip Roth to win the Nobel prize.
Now we know better. Big US sculptors are not banned from the Turbine Hall – so long as they are safely second rate.
• I Don’t Know … is at Tate Modern, London, from today to 6 April 2015. Richard Tuttle’s exhibition at Whitechapel Gallery, London, is from today until 14 December.
