“The Two Planets,” Thai artist Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook’s latest solo exhibition at the Walters Museum, shows the reactions and discussions of rural Thai farmers presented with four modern European “masterpieces”: Vincent Van Gogh’s La Sieste (1889-90), Jean-François Millet’s The Gleaners (1857), Edouard Manet’s Dejeuner sur l’herbe (1863) and Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Bal du Moulin de la Galette (1876).
Seeking to build a bridge between eternally famous art and the “naturally born, pained and easily demised” lives of the farmers in the suburbs of Chiang Mai, the museum arranged the paintings to be viewed on easels outside — in other words, about as far away from a museum wall in Paris (where all four paintings are displayed) as one can be. With the camera arranged over the shoulder of the group facing the painting and (English) subtitles presented below, the distance between the dark room in the Walters Museum and the outdoor space of a small village in Thailand fade away, inviting the viewer into the discussion.
Two films play simultaneously, and while the viewer is immediately drawn into one, the reactions of the farmers — ranging from amusing to insightful to revealing — spike curiosity about what the others are saying in the film on the opposite wall.
For example, Van Gogh’s La Sieste (1889-90), which portrays two farmers in rural France napping in a field, reveals aspects of the observer’s daily life — “They use the oxen to do the threshing, like when we extract the juice from the sugarcane,” as well as unbiased discussion — “Are you sure? Isn’t it a nose, the white one?”
You find yourself analyzing the clothing of the figures, questioning how the farmer can wear torn shoes in a field with thorns, and in Millet’s The Gleaners, how the women are probably looking for insects — “I just know that people in a foreign country search for insects like us” (although the museum label in the Musée d’Orsay will inform the viewer that these peasants are searching for ears of corn missed by the harvesters).
While the presumably familiar subjects of farm emphasize the difference between the subjects and the average museum visitor, the discussion of the famously scandalous Dejeuner sur l’herbe demonstrated a uniquely universal perspective. Debates around the figures—“She’s beautiful,” “You call that beautiful? The girl’s a floozy”— and honest opinions, such as, “I wouldn’t know how to hide my eyes,” are probably not too dissimilar from those of its original audience.
Overall, you can’t escape the meta-level of observation: watching people examine the paintings, re-examining the paintings yourself, and realizing your own participation in the exhibition. However, the most striking element of the installation remains the simple fact that visitors examining the paintings are free from over a century’s worth of connotations, criticism and comparisons that accompany anyone who has set foot in a Western art museum. Historical conduct and reproductions in the form of dorm-room posters, coffee mugs, and jigsaw puzzles become inseparable extensions of the work of art itself.
The farmers from a rural village in Thailand effortlessly, (and unknowingly) accomplish create a purely objective point of view. This type of pure perspective, enhanced by the removal of a physically imposing and influential context, like that of a famous art museum, can come across as elementary at first, but becomes refreshing and even eye-opening.
The artist herself has become known as one of the leading Thai artists of her time, and is particularly famous for her video installations. Since 1989, Rasdjarmrearnsook undertook video installations in the late 1990s and gained the attention of the international scene via international art biennales. Her first solo exhibition in the United States, a video installation of Two Planets, premiered in New York last winter.
The Walters currently hosts her first solo exhibition in a US museum. Rasdjarmrearnsook was inspired to curate the exhibit after reading an article from an Asian art exhibited calling for Western participation and criticism in the exhibition of Eastern art. She further thought about an image of observers critiquing European masterpieces without any knowledge of European art.
Two Planets effectively explores the bias with which we observe a famous work of art, and how the meaning of said work changes in relation to where and to whom it is displayed.
