Continuing a biennial tradition that began in 1998, the Jewish Museum celebrated Hanukkah this season by opening an exhibition of light-emitting works by eight contemporary artists. Works made of gridded bulbs, neon tubes and video projections remain distributed around the museum, from the main lobby to a fourth-floor gallery where traditional menorahs are on display, providing viewers with a kind of scavenger hunt.
It is not, however, a very exciting show, in part because of the scattered installation, in part because of the uneven quality of the work. Most important, the conception itself is unimaginative. If all the works were more artistically striking, that might not matter; but as it stands, simply putting on display eight electrically illuminated artworks to turn the museum into a giant conceptual menorah isn't compelling enough. That is particularly true when one gives some thought to what Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights, is about.
The first menorah, according to the book of Exodus, was made by an artist and craftsman named Bezalel, following detailed instructions given by God to Moses. This menorah was a central ceremonial element of an incredibly lavish plan for a desert tabernacle, and it was made of pure gold and had seven branches.
Years later, Greeks determined to root out the Jewish faith desecrated the Second Temple of Jerusalem. After the Greeks were driven out by the Jews, the faithful cleaned up the temple and rededicated it by lighting the menorah. As it happened they had only enough consecrated oil to last for one day, but miraculously the flame burned for eight days, by which time fresh oil had been obtained. So two more candles were added to the traditional menorah, the ninth to be used to light the other eight.
Hanukkah, whose name means dedication, is in one sense the commemoration of a political and military victory over forces that threatened to annihilate the Jewish culture; for individuals celebrating it today, it is an expression of spiritual rededication to a traditional faith and way of life. It honors a determination to carry on, to persist in the face of adversity -- by contrast to Christmas, which signifies the birth of something unprecedentedly new.Continue reading the main story
All of this resonates in light of current discussions and disagreements about how to memorialize the events of Sept. 11 properly. Unlike the Jews of some 2000 years ago, we have no ready-made symbols to represent what that day means to us, nor any general cultural consensus. It is that lack of shared tradition that a visitor feels while viewing the art that makes up ''Light X Eight: The Hannukkah Project 2002'' at the Jewish Museum.
Consider, for example, Ben Schachter's ''Chess,'' a complete chess set made of variously shaped light bulbs that plug into a checkerboard of brown and white electrical sockets. The deepest meaning this will have for followers of modern art will be its reference to the chess lover Marcel Duchamp and the chess sets that Surrealists like Man Ray and Max Ernst designed. For the general public it will be little more than an amusing new version of a familiar board game.
Other than producing some kind of light, none of the other works have any readily discernible bearing on what Hanukkah might mean. Three were inspired by mathematical ideas. In Leo Villareal's ''Red Life,'' red light bulbs in a grid go on and off according to a game devised by the mathematician John Conway. Julian LaVerdiere's ''Golden Section'' has an illuminated liquid crystal cord woven into a fabric scroll, creating a rectangle proportioned according to the famous geometric ratio of ancient times.
And Tatsuo Miyajima's ''Floating Time,'' in which brightly colored numbers drift in a blue field projected by video onto the floor, is like a glimpse into the mind of a daydreaming mathematician.
Liz Phillips's lobby installation, ''Intermingling,'' has neon lights and a sound synthesizer that respond, quietly and apparently randomly, to the movements of museum visitors. Comparably gentle is Sheila Moss's ''Watermarks,'' which consists of perforated paper cylinders revolving around ceiling lights, casting watery patterns of light and shadow.
Jarringly aggressive, by contrast, is Xavier Veilhan's ''Naked Men,'' a big ovenlike grid of hot light bulbs programmed to produce almost indecipherably blurry shadows of advancing men.
The eighth piece, Philippe Parreno's ''Mont Analogue,'' can be seen only outdoors after dark.
Looking into second-story windows in the town house next door to the museum, you see dim, flickering colored lights. A museum label attached to a fence below informs viewers that the lights tell a story in Morse code. This is mystifying enough to be annoying.
If not very interesting as art, however, Mr. Parreno's feeble contribution dramatizes one of contemporary art's most deeply vexing problems: its inability to generate powerful, widely legible metaphors. One contemporary work that succeeded in speaking to and consoling an entire population was Maya Lin's Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. As discussions and debates about what to build at ground zero proceed, we wait, one fears in vain, for another such stroke of imaginative genius.
''Light X Eight: The Hanukkah Project 2002'' will remain on view at the Jewish Museum, 1109 Fifth Avenue, at 91st Street, (212) 423-3200, through Feb. 2.Continue reading the main story