For independent artist Isaac Ardis ’11, what started out as a course assignment evolved into what Ardis described as “good clean trouble” at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art.
Soon after graduating from Bowdoin as a German major, mathematics minor and art enthusiast, Ardis decided he would pursue art full time.
Thanks to the support and mentorship of visual arts professor and Sculptor-in-Residence John Bisbee, Ardis has been able to set up shop in Brunswick, where, in addition to making art in his studio, he is auditing Contemporary Art with Associate Professor of Art History Pamela Fletcher.
Fletcher’s assignment to write about an object in the museum inspired Ardis to not only pay a visit, but to bring his own art, in costume form, with him.
“Our assignment for the day was to not come to class but instead to go to the museum and spend the time there instead with an object that we wanted to—anything in the museum—and you could write anything about it that you wanted,” said Ardis. “So I figured it would be a great time to go and I decided to wear a painting of mine.”
In cape-like form around his neck, Ardis’ artwork-worn-as-costume was meant to raise eyebrows and add to the intellectual debate regarding questions of “what is art and what isn’t art.”
“If I take a painting and I put a painting on the wall, it’s art, but if I take a painting and I put it on as a cape, is it still art?” questioned Ardis.
Ardis fully admits that he did not put too much deep thought or intellectual intention behind his actions—he simply wanted to challenge the confines of the museum institution while challenging the assignment by rendering himself the art object of study.
“People want to say it’s performance art,” said Ardis in reference to his experiment. “Intellectually, that ground between what’s art and what isn’t art is blurry, but practically it’s not. And that’s the interesting part.”
As predicted, not only did Ardis cause a ruckus, he also garnered attention from the museum staff that he though was ultimately positive.
“They want me to come back,” he said. “They thought it was funny.”
During his stint in the museum, Ardis also ran into a class session with Professor Linda Docherty’s first-year seminar, The Museum World.
“They talked about me, since it’s a class on museums,” he said. “I was carrying out a little cardboard thing, a little name plate thing…and then I gave it to some kid in the class…They mostly talked about me, they were interested in how much that little name plate meant to seeing me as art or not seeing me as art or if it was just a stupid little fashion statement.”
In addition to his art robe, Ardis also carried in two pieces of artwork. One he described as a “typical painting” while the other was a “piece of paper that said ‘It’s just a piece of paper.’”
While Ardis said he did not particularly value these works very much, he carried them into the museum to see what would happen. Upon entering the gallery and deciding to leave his works in the coat check because of their obtrusive nature, Ardis was surprised to find that the museum guards had another destination in mind for his work.
“There was really no security problem,” said Ardis, in reference to being anonymously mentioned in that week’s security report. “The only thing that happened was that I got a lot of attention. The only ‘problem’ was the question of bringing art into the museum. Apparently any art that gets brought into the museum becomes the museum’s responsibility.
“So I was asked if it would be all right if they took my ‘art’ that I had left in the coat check, and kept it safe for me in the museum gift shop office, which I was told would be a very secure place for it. So they took my paintings and locked them up for me.”
“I’m mostly just interested in causing trouble,” said Ardis. “It’s whatever it takes—it doesn’t matter if it’s a painting or a behavior, it’s not about the technique or the apparatus as much as it’s about the content—which is the feeling you get before you walk into a museum wearing a stupid cape.”