Art and Grace And a Few Laughs, Too

Dia: Beacon, the Nabisco box factory turned art museum on the Hudson River, inspires awe, anxiety, calm, joy and, now and then, little pricks of, well, are you kidding me?

   It is a gorgeous place — brick, glass, steel and concrete, making tremendous vaulting galleries streaming with natural light from tall windows and hanging skylights.  

   Dia: Beacon’s 240,000 square feet of exhibition space is occupied largely by long-term shows.

   Some are long term because they are very difficult to move, like Michael Heizer’s four gaping cavities: “North, East, South, West,†sinking two stories from the floor of the gallery’s northwest corner. It is walled off by glass, keeping visitors distant. Not a bad idea. It’s a dizzying place, viewed up close in guided tours only, during which some people approach the openings on hands and knees. Others close in on their bellies. And some pace warily at a little distance, minding the sparks of terror induced by vaunting emptiness where it absolutely does not belong. Like in the floor.  

   Just as stimulating, and probably just as hard to move are Richard Serra’s walled in, tippy, 20-ton rolled- steel ellipses between which visitors sidle, getting the idea that filled space is as awesome as vacant.   

   Then there are some real shockers, like Robert Smithson’s “Map of Broken Glass.†This ton of shattered spikes and glinty edges is piled on the floor, troubling because it’s so beautiful. So close. And so lethal.

   And some delights are housed here, too, such as Fred Sandback’s stretches of yarn tethered ceiling to floor: taking space in two dimensions with no interiors, just edges that warn trespassers to keep their distance, and thrilling those who dare walk through the yarned-in places.

   As for painting, Dia: Beacon has a very beautiful, serene installation of Agnes Martin’s large, pale geometric works in shades of sand and oyster and moss, some on hand-drawn pencilled grids, evoking images of this strange, small, woman working alone in the desert, away from the art world, making the most beautiful paintings of her time.

   For fans of artist Blinky Palermo (born Peter Schwarze and later renamed because of his resemblance to a Philadelphia boxing mobster of the same name), his cadmium yellow and red and black rectangles on aluminum return to their permanent home at Dia: Beacon this summer.

   And in the are you kidding me? category, On Kawara’s “Today†series seems destined to continue in its ionized quarters (“a redemptive gesture perfuming the atmosphere†Dia literature notes) for the foreseeable future. Beginning “June 16, 1966†Kawara began painting the day’s date on small dark canvases, each on the day it was executed and in the language and style of the country in which he was working at the time. If the painting was not completed by midnight, he destroyed it. On some days he did two paintings. Very occasionally he made three. Most days he did none. The last one in the exhibit: “18 Mai 2000.â€

   This is a particularly popular section of Dia: Beacon, with lots of people streaming through. One fellow,  tall and serious, stopped before “June 16, 1966,†stepped closer for a moment and then moved back to view it thoughtfully at a distance. He did the same with the next date. Really. So did his son.

  Since Kawara does not give interviews or talk about his work we know little about him, other than he sends post cards to friends saying “I am still alive,†rubber stamped with the day’s date, and Wikipedia figures he’s 77 years old.

   Now some long-term exhibits, such as Andy Warhol’s “Shadows,†canvases placed edge to edge on four walls, are not hard to move, but finding this kind of space is not easy outside Dia: Beacon. Nor could some of the temporary intallations such as Sol LeWitt’s “Wall Drawings†find such majestic room elsewhere.   

   This is a glorious place for art with a (now) pleasant staff of young people dressed in black and bearing walkie talkies and information about how to find bathrooms and exits and the coffee shop. And with its $10 admission, $7 for seniors, it’s a bargain as big museums go.

   One quibble, though: the description cards are crammed with artspeak, dropping terms like phenomenological, elegiac, paradigmatic and, yes, calendrical, with unsettling abandon.

   No matter, though. The art, the artists and their ideas speak clearly for themselves at Dia: Beacon.

   Dia: Beacon is at 3 Beekman St., Beacon, NY. For information, call 845-440-0100. Or go to www.diabeacon.org.

   To view Michael Heizer’s “North, East, South, West,†call the same number and ask for ext. 22.