A Layer of Sterility

A FEW WEEKS ago, a friend invited me to New York with them to see some art. After taking the commuter train down from New Haven, Conn., we made our way through Grand Central Station, onto the subway, then up a steep escalator, eventually arriving at the gallery’s entrance.

Visiting Manhattan during a pandemic is a fascinating study in strangeness. The Times Square subway station is so quiet you can hear your own footsteps. Sweaty players duel on a basketball court, and I am shocked by seeing unmasked faces in public. Even the experience of gallery hopping, one that used to be extremely familiar to me, feels askew. A few of the places we visit require a signed liability waiver before entering. Each desk is punctuated by a giant bottle of hand sanitizer. This imposing combination does not stop me from enjoying the work I see, however. There are many juxtapositions of color and line that sparkle in my brain. An image of a fabric store, itself made out of fabric, proves especially delightful. I see some art books that I think I might like to have in my home. I am glad to have gone.

As my friend and I cross the street on our way to dinner, a scrambled-looking man asks us if we are “art people.” I am amused, but slightly embarrassed because, in an existential sense, I suddenly don’t know. For some reason, this question pops my illusion that everything is the same as it was, that I can look at art as I used to and that everything is normal. It isn’t. I used to go to galleries for the frisson of human interaction, the joy of bustling next to other human beings. Now, I find my art-watching brain suffused with a constant hum of fear and uncertainty.

In 2019, the painter Chloe Wise had a show in London titled, enigmatically, Not That We Don’t. I remember browsing photographs of the show online and puzzling over the repeated depictions of hand sanitizer in these paintings. Kleenexes emerged from benches throughout the gallery as if Wise were waiting for viewers to burst into tears or be sick. It seemed, from the choice of nondescript gray carpet to the rolls of paper towels hung on mysterious blocks, that Wise was designing an avant-garde doctor’s office or waiting room. As her glamorous, gorgeously rendered subjects pouted and glowered from their canvases, you were left even more conscious of your human body, with its germs and fluids.

Since the pandemic’s arrival, I’ve thought about this show a great deal. The obvious connection is a fear of contamination and ever-present hand sanitizer. More subtle, however, is the way the coronavirus has added a layer of sterility and distance to everything, from galleries to trains to the experience of looking itself.