The ICA takes a spirited swing at American yard art.
One of the most striking—and fun—pieces on view in “Where I Learned to Look: Art From the Yard,” which runs through December 1 at the Institute of Contemporary Art, is a handmade contraption that exemplifies what inspired Josh T. Franco, the exhibition’s guest curator, to become an artist and art historian. A whimsical windmill crafted from found objects by his grandfather, Hipolito “Polé” Hernandez, it’s a prime example of “yard art.” Often made by untutored artists, such works—adorning backyards, porches, and driveways across America—expand the idea of who gets to create art, and where it’s displayed, Franco contends.
He adds that Hernandez’s untitled mixed-media tower also epitomizes the Chicano aesthetic known as rasquachismo, which the curator defines as a culturally specific term for “creating the most with the least.” Many of the 30 pieces on view, from both well-known and community-trained artists, are made using unexpected and often inexpensive materials.
Examples include Franco’s own Giant White Snake (probably Mescalero Apache), which slithers across a bed of artificial turfand is crafted from cheap marble chips sourced from big-box garden centers. Nearby, a monumentalized tangerine-hued birdhouse, Lot 060624 (house, orange) by San Antonio–born artist Donald Moffett, rests high atop a common driftwood post that’s set into a mound of pecans—a symbol of Texas—piled into the center of an abandoned rubber tire. Others, such as Gazing Ball (Birdbath), a signature piece by Jeff Koons, elevate common garden ornaments, in this case by casting a Classical-style pedestal from plaster and topping it with a royal blue mirrored glass orb. And Franco playfully juxtaposes Koons’ grandiloquent version of a birdbath with an imposing assemblage by self-taught artist vanessa german. Titled nothing can separate you from the language you cry, and composed in part of cobalt blue bottles, it references Southern “bottle trees”—real or fake trees hung with glass vessels, a tradition brought over from Africa and designed to ward off evil spirits.
There’s also a minimalist pine bench by the one other contemporary celebrity artist to make the cut, Donald Judd. It’s a beautiful piece, and one that has an unexpected connection to the place where the exhibition’s curator first “learned to look.” It turns out that Franco’s grandfather lived in Marfa, the West Texas town to which Judd famously retreated in the 1960s and which has since turned into a pilgrimage site for art buffs.
Franco underlines that linkage with a video and mixed-media installation of his own creation that interweaves the artistic movements and intergenerational traditions that this diverting collection of work aims to unpack. Filmed in the home and yard where his grandfather once lived, Preparing La Virgen (December 3, 2023, Marfa, TX) follows the Sanchez family who now live on the property as they cobble together an altar with rasquachismo inventiveness—a bathtub stood on end serves as a small chapel—in anticipation of a feast day celebrating the Virgin of Guadeloupe. Accompanying their preparations is a fanciful spoken and written narrative from the Virgin, who muses on the nature of iconography and pilgrimages and considers those who worship her and those who come to pay tribute to her neighbor, Judd.
More directly, this collection of art from the yard attempts to explore the purpose of an often communal and always liminal outdoor space between our homes and the greater world. And, as several pieces obliquely point out, the yard doesn’t have to be pastoral. Selections from Baltimore’s Painted Screen Society, for example, showcase the decades-old tradition of painting mesh screens to provide privacy when windows were thrown open to allow in cool breezes. The images here range from a portrait of three neighborhood women (wearing huge pearls, bouffants, and cats-eye glasses), to depictions of the horse-drawn carts used by the mobile vendors long known by Baltimoreans as “arabbers,” to a cartoonish but fierce alien creature. Also attention-getting and very urban is Clarke Bedford’s Art Car (Volkswagen), a bedazzled Beetle that’s completely covered in junkyard finds like rusted fencing, metal figurines, architectural salvage, and a surfeit of rear-window mirrors.
Occasionally these ideas veer further afield, both literally and figuratively, as in a disturbing pair of films, shot in the snowy interior of British Columbia by First Nations artists, that attempt to expand our notions of the backyard while exploring the difficulty of carrying on cultural traditions that contemporary circumstances have a way of thwarting. Coney Island Baby, a digital videoby the collective BUSH Gallery, follows the filmmakers as they stalk and gut rabbits. Brian Jungen and Duane Linklater’s 16mm Modest Livelihood—the title refers to a 1999 Canadian Supreme Court decision that affirmed the rights of First Nations to hunt and fish but only to the extent needed to maintain a moderate living—similarly depicts a moose hunt. While far from pleasant to watch, these graphic actions are intended, according to curatorial notes, to “represent the resurgent assertion of indigenous rights.”
There’s a lot more to sift through—from beat-up vintage cars languishing in driveways (Apsáalooke artist Wendy Red Star’s photographic series Rez Pop) to lawn mowers transforming into lowriders (Mexico City–born Rubén Ortiz Torres’ video The Garden of Earthly Delights). Visitors might not always get the connections or understand exactly how a piece fits into this generously inclusive survey. But while it sometimes seems that all that’s missing is the pink flamingo, this lovingly twisted roundup of the traditional icons of the American domestic landscape will surely hit a chord with anyone who’s spent some time dreaming in the yard.
—JoAnn Greco
