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Interpretations of Hendrix and other rocky icons highlight this year's Art for Art's Sake.

By D. Eric Bookhardt

Marclay's video Guitar Drag is an interpretation of the murder of African American James Byrd along a dirt road outside San Antonio.

Over the years, Art for Art's Sake has become so ingrained in the fabric of the city that no one seems to recall exactly when it began or whose idea it was in the first place. Not even Don Marshall who, as director of the Contemporary Arts Center at the time, was involved from day one.

"It was sometime in the late 1970s," he says, "and some of us were talking about fear. You know, the fear of art, and the way some people feel intimidated by galleries. We thought that if the openings were coordinated it might create a more relaxed kind of atmosphere." That was a quarter of a century ago. Since then, it has become an annual rite for those curious to see what the new season portends -- as well as for those who are merely curious.

And what does the new season portend? Although Art for Art's Sake is an imperfect oracle, there appear to be more offerings involving music, or sound, as well as concepts, or ideas. For instance, Swiss-American artist Christian Marclay's Graffiti Composition at the host site Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) is a series of 150 photographs that came about as the result of an experiment in Berlin, where sheets of blank music paper were posted in public places. No instructions were given, but over the course of days they became covered with everything ranging from musical notes to words and drawings. Even birds, insects and the elements left their mark. The initial 800 were photographed and culled to a suite of 150 that can be viewed randomly, in no particular order. They can also be played that way, and will, on the evening of Nov. 12, when the experimental composers group Voo Doo Tek performs its own interpretation of Graffiti at the CAC.

If that seems like a head trip, Marclay's video, Guitar Drag is more visceral. A personal response to the 1998 hate crime in which an African American, James Byrd, was dragged to his death behind a pickup truck in Texas, Drag recreates the incident with the sounds and video footage of a Fender electric guitar being dragged to its death along country roads outside San Antonio. Like Graffiti, it employs randomness or chance as a technique, but with the guitar-smashing catharsis associated with 1960s rock legends like Pete Townshend of the Who.

Sharing the CAC with Marclay's work is 1822, a collaborative installation by Stephen Paul Day and Sibylle Peretti that also takes violence into account. Utilizing their expertise in glass and other media, and invoking the ideals of Marcel Duchamp and St. Francis of Assisi, 1822 poses a series of visual "questions without answers" that deal with the relationship of creativity, nature, healing and childhood's remarkable capacity for wonder even under dire circumstances. "It's really a continuation of the work that we've been doing," Peretti says, "but the events of 9/11 gave it another level of meaning for us." (The title, 1822, is derived from 911 multiplied by 2.)

On a lighter note, Bunny Matthews' Art for Heterosexuals at Space Gallery also involves ideas, music and questions. Even the show's title seems to raise questions, but Matthews says it's a critique of political correctness, not of any gender orientation. "Hell, half my friends are gay; I just think correctness can be overdone," he says as he notes the diversity of his drawings' subjects, including cultural icons such as John Coltrane, Earl King, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, B.B. King, James Booker, the goddess Circe, Mrs. Jimi Hendrix, Leda, Taj Mahal and God -- all punctuated with lots of song lyrics and scantily clad maidens. Rounding out the atmosphere of convivial incorrectness, he says he also plans to have topless waitresses that his son recruited in the Ninth Ward serving hors d'oeuvres at the opening to the accompaniment of the scintillating sounds of Quintron and Miss Pussycat.

Striking another note entirely, Bruce Barnbaum's Tone Poems series of Western landscape photographs appear at A Gallery for Fine Photography in conjunction with the premier of his new book of the same name. Although topically similar to the work of the late Ansel Adams, Barnbaum's stuff is quirkier, more surreal and abstract, and in some ways more fun. A big-time classical music buff, he incorporates into his new book a CD of piano pieces performed by Judith Cohen.

So there you have it. Art is on the walls, but music is everywhere -- especially at the CAC, where a special memorial Tribute to Jimi Hendrix features 28 local musicians ranging from Astral Project and Little Queenie to Bonearama, Renard Poche and the Dirty Dozen's Gregory Davis performing their own versions of Hendrix's classics in honor of what would have been his 60th birthday on Nov. 27. The party starts at 9 p.m. and the music starts at 10 p.m. A must for anyone who's ever wondered how Hendrix would have sounded had he been born on the bayou.

While multidisciplinary art combinations were part of the milieu in which Art for Art's Sake was born, this year's shows may have taken things to another level. A fluke or a sign of things to come? You never know. Don Marshall, now director of UNO's Arts Administration graduate program and the UNO Downtown Theater, says he never dreamed that the original handful of participating galleries would mushroom to this year's grand total of nearly four dozen. That number would grow by at least one if Marshall follows through on his idea to start showing art at his theater facility, located in the old Masonic Temple at 619 Carondelet St. Some things take on a life of their own, it seems.

i. TwiRoPa
1544 Tchoupitoulas
Art for Art's Sake Late Night Voo Doo Art Experience
Doors open at 1 a.m.; www.twiropa.com

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