The show was much criticised at the time but has proven prophetic. Now large,international exhibitions,such as the current Sydney Biennale,make strenuous efforts to include art from all over the world.
In 2007,Martin collaborated with Mattijs Visser and Axel Vervoordt on the exhibitionArtempo:Where Time Becomes Art,held at the Palazzo Fortuny during the Venice Biennale. The idea was to create experimental relationships between artworks and objects from different periods and places. The range was encyclopaedic,and the show was a huge hit. One of its fans was David Walsh,who would invite Martin and Visser to work on a similar exhibition for MONA.
The result is not a rerun ofMagiciens de la Terre orArtempo,but a fascinating collaboration between MONA and the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG),which allowed Martin's team to forage in its collections,looking for works that might be used in entirely novel displays.
The show takes its title from an eccentric''memory theatre''constructed by Italian scholar Giulio Camillo (1480-1544) for the French king Francis I. It was an attempt to give concrete form to all branches of human knowledge in a structure that resembled a semicircular theatre. This eccentric idea preoccupied Camillo for most of his life,bringing him a fame that has not lasted.
Theatre of the World is Camillo's monument,adapting his methods of analogical thinking for contemporary purposes,but the scope of the project is much broader than the Renaissance version of''universal knowledge''.
There are more than 300 objects in this exhibition,but the heart of the display is an astonishing,vault-like room draped with more than 80 antique barkcloths (or''tapas'') from many parts of the Pacific. Standing at one end is an Egyptian sarcophagus,at the other an emaciated bronze figure by Giacometti. All the barkcloths come from the TMAG collection and have not been shown for years. The patterns are meaningful but we can only guess at the stories embedded in them. The origins of many pieces,and their secrets,have been lost.
Our urge for understanding may be thwarted but the visual impact of this room is staggering. It's one of the most amazing things I've ever seen in a museum. The inspired addition of the mummy case and the Giacometti sends us ricocheting from ancient Egypt to postwar Paris and back,in a room crowded with secret,sacred knowledge from the opposite side of the planet.
This is the most spectacular part of the show,but every gallery contains unlikely juxtapositions that oblige us to see familiar objects in a new light. To give structure to this display,to which Martin compares the''ordered chaos''of a private collection,each room has a theme. There is a room devoted to the eye,to the body,to death,to animals and so on. One darkened room has a large wall covered in masks illuminated momentarily by spotlights. By the time we have focused on a mask,it has faded and another has appeared as if by magic.
In another room is a work by Jason Shulman that consists of only a thin candle with a circular aura,created by the shape of the enclosure. The twists in a shell are echoed by a spiralling arrangement of coloured beetles. The red lines of an Emily Kngwarreye painting are mirrored by a sample of red crystals. A panel encrusted with dead flies by Damien Hirst finds a cousin in a block of Chinese coins retrieved from the ocean floor. A waxy,elongated torso by Belgian artist Berlinde de Bruyckere is exhibited alongside another Egyptian sarcophagus,and a Minoan burial casket from circa 1300BC.
Elsewhere,John Dempsey's watercolour portraits of the British working classes from 1823-'24 are paired with grotesque photos of the Russian underclass by Boris Mikhailov. Two craggy-faced figures in a painting by Albert Tucker are compared with two dogs in a video by William Wegman. In one photo,Gunter Brus holds an axe to his head;in another,Gordon Matta-Clark splits a house in two.
If you're thinking that much of this sounds whimsical,the charge is undeniable. Some of the relationships are obvious,some cryptic,but Martin and his colleagues have gone about their task in a shamelessly subjective manner. There is a lot of humour in this show,as if to make us conscious of the exaggerated reverence with which most museums display their treasures. We are encouraged to view each object as a feat of the human imagination,not a holy icon. We are also made aware that our sense of an object comes as much from the way it is displayed as from its own material qualities.
Some of the most striking examples are Sidney Nolan's African paintings,which have never played a leading role in assessments of this overproductive artist's career. InTheatre of the World,these paintings have a presence and power I had not previously suspected.
Martin realises this kind of exhibition will never replace the standard museum model. It is an interruption:a chance for us to stand back and explore a different form of visual experience.''The pleasures of a museum,''the curator argues,''should be like that of a concert-hall or theatre.''
In other words,we should go to enjoy ourselves - to experience the rapture of the moment and leave the educational anxieties to a later date. Needless to say,we're learning all the time in a museum,even if it happens to be fun.
THEATRE OF THE WORLD
Museum of Old and New Art,Hobart
Until April 8,2013