Social historians of the future are likely to be puzzled by the transportation of a huge rock to the Los Angels County Museum, the publicity surrounding the event and the responses of the crowds of people who observed it. For reasons suggested below, these historians may well include this event among the symptoms of cultural decline that have proliferated during the past half century in American society.
It would be interesting to know whose idea was to move the 340-ton rock from a quarry (at a distance of almost a hundred miles) to the Los Angeles County Museum—an operation costing millions, necessitating extra police forces to deal with the traffic problems caused by the slow progress (five miles per hour) of a gigantic truck (“196-wheel transporter”) specially made for this project. Trees had to be cut down and parked cars towed away to allow the truck to proceed. The operation
took seven months longer than originally planned and followed a circuitous route through four counties an 22 cities. The journey lasted 11 days—and drew on the services of hundreds of drivers, police officers, utility workers and construction workers. . . . [C]rews . . . leapfrogged ahead to lift power lines and turn aside traffic lights.
The movements of the rock were extensively covered by both television and the printed press, including the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. Reportedly the funds required for transporting and installing the rock were provided by unspecified private donors.
Several aspects of this operation remain unexplained. How was the rock chosen? Who decided that it was an object of art to be moved to a museum at great cost and effort? How were donors persuaded that this undertaking was worth shelling out millions of dollars? How and why was the public convinced that this was a worthwhile project, as indicated by the enthusiastic comments reported in the press? Why did thousands turn out to watch the movement of the rock? Why were there so few, if any, voices raised about the folly of this undertaking—including that of the author of the long upbeat article quoted above?
The closest we get to an explanation was provided by Tom LaBonge, a Los Angeles City Council member quoted in the Times article: “Mr. LaBonge said the installation was worth the considerable effort and expense. . . . ‘Look around you, and how this brings out people,’ he said. ‘This will be a big magnet here at L.A. County Museum of Art.'” He was so anxious to attend the event that “he had set his alarm clock for 2:30 a.m. and woke up with a start, fearful that he had missed the moment [of the arrival of the rock].” In other words, he considered moving the rock to the museum an attention getting device, a gimmick that will attract big crowds.
We learn nothing from the New York Times article about the aesthetic or artistic considerations and deliberations which led to the designation of the rock as an object of art deserving to be exhibited in a museum. On the other hand, the article describes some of the remarkable responses of the onlookers, evidently incapable of distinguishing what Daniel Boorstin had called a “pseudo-event” from an occasion for being deeply moved and calling for the expression of heartfelt feelings. Thus “a retired television producer who had waited nearly three hours” in Los Angeles to witness the arrival of the rock said “We’ll never see this again in our lifetimes. I cried when I first saw it.” Another observer, Mr. Jeff Miller, quoted in the article, “who stayed up all night, said he had rarely witnessed events like this. . . . ‘I grew up in L.A.,’ he said. ‘I love it when a moment like this comes along that brings us together.'” [my emphasis].
According to the Los Angeles Times “the chance to touch the rock brought smiles on everyones’s face.” In a similar spirit the author of the Times article alluded to “the weird awe of the early-morning spectacle.” [my emphasis] An onlooker said “I’ve been really fixated by this, that something like this can get so many people out here.” Another witness to the event referred to the movements of the truck as “truly performance art.” Along Wilshire Boulevard “people [were] running alongside [the truck] as if it were the bulls of Pamplona.” Many “touched the rock, marveled at its size [and] posed for photographs and congratulated the workers who had overseen the complicated task of transporting the rock-turned art… There were cameras, baby strollers, folding chairs, politicians and other people of every race and class.”
One may wonder if these responses spring from the same impulses which “bring people together” when fans congregate to ogle celebrities, or engage in outbursts of short-lived and synthetic feelings of solidarity at ball games.
Why did so many people find this pointless and meaningless spectacle so moving and exhilarating, even a source of social solidarity however short lived and inauthentic? The desire to gratify a longing for community and social bonds is likely to be stronger in (and around) a city such as Los Angeles, hardly a city in the conventional sense with a well defined center, long established neighborhoods and settled ways of life. Instead it is an area with an exceptionally mobile and rootless population in the thrall of the entertainment industries which help to define its character. Under such circumstances the sense of belonging is attenuated and the search for symbols of community, however ephemeral, become especially intense.
The unquenchable thirst for entertainment may be another reason for being so enchanted with the rock: The desire to be entertained is likely to be stronger among those who live in or near the entertainment capital of the United States. Whatever is unusual is deemed to be entertaining and that includes moving a large rock on a huge truck at five miles per hour at 3 a.m. The onlookers were also impressed by the sheer magnitude of the technological effort involved, no matter how pointless. Presumably there was the element of crowd behavior, the dynamics of being influenced by the physical proximity of like-minded people. Probably the most important point, enthusiasm about transporting a big rock reflects a striking inability to distinguish between an important and a trivial event and a readiness to indulge in a free floating, shallow sentimentality that can attach itself to almost anything. It may also be noted here that there are numerous historical precedents of the worship of rocks (e.g., Stonehenge and similar collections of stones in Ireland, Sardinia and elsewhere, which served similar purposes). However, those rocks were associated with longstanding traditional beliefs, not randomly picked from a quarry.
It is more difficult to speculate about the motives of the art “experts” at the museum who designated the rock as an object of art and succeeded in getting it moved to the museum. It helps to keep in mind that classifying this rock as an object of art is not an isolated event and has much in common with other dubious and misguided designations of worthless objects as “art.” They are often called “installations” and may include urinals, assortments of junk, body parts floating in formaldehyde, or empty canvasses pretending to be “paintings.” The covering (“wrapping”) of natural settings (coastlines, trees, parks), as well as large buildings with miles of fabric is another peculiar “art form” practiced by Mr. Christo that should also be mentioned among the contemporary misapprehensions of the nature of art. It is noteworthy that his “enviromental scupltures” are invariably gigantic (tens of miles long), as if size could compensate for meaning and quality.
In the final analysis, moving this rock to a museum may be seen as an apt symbol of the cultural/aesthetic relativism that has of late engulfed much of our society. Admiration of the rock also illustrates a rare agreement between elite groups (such as curators and benefactors of museums) and ordinary people about what should be regarded as an object of art. Perhaps most importantly it reflects a growing incapacity of many Americans to distinguish between events which are appropriate occasions for reaffirming social bonds and experiencing exhilaration and those which are meaningless and wasteful spectacles.