Movers & Shakers

Question: What do customized motorcycles and 19th century furniture have in common?

Answer: They are equally powerful symbols of a dynamic America that creates culture and tradition of international impact by breaking old molds.

Such is the vision advanced by British culture maestros here at the launch of a yearlong exhibition called “Inventing America” at the Barbican Centre, London’s giant emporium of the arts.

Staging what it grandiloquently calls “the world’s largest celebration of American culture,” the all-under-one-roof Barbican is showcasing American art, music, dance, theater, film and literature in a series of loosely themed shows and exhibitions that run until December.

Uncommon daubs from the American cultural palette could attract more than 2 million spectators. The idea is to treat them to American experiences that go beyond hamburgers and soft drinks, jeans and sitcoms.

For Americans, the audacious--and controversial--exhibition is a prime chance to see how our Ever-Ever Land looks through a friend’s looking glass.

“I felt that the view of America as overbearing, overexposed and over here was the wrong one. It has more diversity, variety and innovation than that,” said Graham Sheffield, the Barbican’s artistic director. “We’re taking a more rational, balanced view--a voyage of discovery. I’ve had American friends say to me, ‘I didn’t realize we were so interesting.’ ”

But not everybody here thinks Sheffield is on the right track. More than one critic thinks that the concept is flawed: Selling America to Brits is like selling iceboxes to Inuits, the argument goes.

“American culture doesn’t need promoting--it needs tranquilizing,” groused Bryan Appleyard of the Sunday Times of London. America, he notes correctly, is already everywhere in London, from Planet Hollywood to the Hard Rock Cafe to TV, beer, coffee bars, pop music and foreign policy,

“A bigger story, under the circumstances, would be British culture taking root in London,” Appleyard complained, arguing that rather than celebrate American culture, Britain should ask itself: “How do we deal with this restless, domineering monster? How do we get out from under? And do we want to?”

Richard Gott, steadfastly left-wing in the Guardian newspaper, dismissed the Barbican’s year as “an overly hyped ragbag.” Said Gott: “Europe has been part of the American empire since 1944. All of us are now, alas, as American as apple pie, so it may seem just a bit strange that we should be asked to pay to celebrate the cultural triumphs of our conquerors.”

The whole thing starts in the Barbican Art Gallery with a grungy khaki Harley-Davidson motorcycle, a U.S. Army veteran of World War II, when Europeans got their first good look at American iron.

The rest of the 30 Harleys are more modern wheeled sculptures from a cult that is now international: Captain America from “Easy Rider”; customized machines by California wizards and England’s Battistini family; distinctive Scandinavian choppers; a bike painted to look like snakeskin; a gleaming yellow marvel borrowed from the London chapter of the Hells Angels.

On the gallery’s upstairs level, above the glare and glamour of the motorcycles, stand 120 austere exhibits of furniture and ephemera by American Shakers.

The Shakers fled England in the 18th century in search of religious freedom. In America, they became designers and craftspeople whose skill and vision are celebrated today. The Barbican offers capacious chests of spare, functional beauty and chairs whose clean, simple lines make them all the rage among contemporary British yuppies.

So we have powerful machines with strong sexual overtones juxtaposed against ascetics’ woodworking based on celibate religious conviction. What’s going on here?

Sitting on a wooden bench with satisfying views of both movers and Shakers, gallery curator John Hoole has been waiting for just that question:

“We wanted to reach into the American roots,” he said. “Here, we have two examples of decorative art that are uniquely American as the result of the individualistic approach that is so common there.

“Both exhibitions speak for dissenting voices: the Shakers sought isolation and lived a life apart. Bikers see themselves as separate; a voice of freedom.”

More other-dimension looks at America are in store during the gallery’s American year. In May comes an exhibition (now at the Whitney Museum in New York) showing how Andy Warhol’s fascination with fashion, style and glamour became an integral part of his life and art. That’s followed in September with a photographic exhibition documenting the life and death of Native American cultures from 1850 to 1914 and a show from L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Art by Cindy Sherman focusing on female identity through staged and manipulated photographs.

The gallery presentations are visual microcosms of other-angled visions of America that will appear in Barbican venues as part of the $5-million extravaganza funded by the Corporation of London, the municipal funding authority and the Barbican’s official angel, and sponsored by American Airlines, lately joined by Gallo and Chrysler.

“We want to be provocative and innovative, and part of our mission, I guess, is evangelical with a little ‘e.’ We’re encouraging people to reevaluate their prejudices and to think freshly,” said artistic director Sheffield.

Visitors are encouraged to move from medium to medium, seeing more than they intended to see, and perhaps learning along the way that the boundaries between different art forms are breaking down, Sheffield said.

Drummer Max Roach, case in point, brought a jazz sextet and a gospel choir to open the Barbican’s Music America series last week. “There were moments from the vocal soloists for which ‘electrifying’ is a weak word.” And Roach himself, now in his 70s, was in “tremendous form,” said critic Martin Gayford of the Times of London. Pop-rock singer-songwriter James Taylor has passed through and will be followed by country, gospel, bluegrass, blues and Native American artists.

The London Symphony Orchestra, a Barbican resident along with the Royal Shakespeare Company, opened the concert series with John Adams’ opera “Nixon in China.”

In what Sheffield wryly calls his attempt to “show there are bits of America between New York and L.A.,” the festival includes music of composers such as Aaron Copland, George Gershwin and Charles Ives played by Miami’s New World Symphony and the Minnesota and Detroit symphony orchestras.

In May, the Barbican Theatre will present the European premiere of Robert Wilson’s new “Monsters of Grace,” a collaboration with Philip Glass that uses 3-D film and contains no “live” actors. Later, American Peter Sellars will direct a new interpretation of a 16th century Chinese epic drama called “A Peony Pavilion.”

Drama presentations will include Chicago’s groundbreaking Steppenwolf Theater company in performances of the comedy “The Man Who Came to Dinner,” starring John Mahoney. A British company will stage the Marx Brothers’ “Animal Crackers” on the Barbican roof during the summer. Barbican dance will feature iconoclastic companies led by Twyla Tharp and Merce Cunningham, while authors such as Garrison Keillor, Alice Walker, John Irving and poet Lucille Clifton will appear as part of what the Barbican calls its “Written America” series.

From American cinema will come everything from westerns to a series of film noir gems, Hollywood musicals and B movies complete with creepy-crawlies risen on cue from the grave.

“We aim to broaden and deepen our audiences’ understanding of America today and to position the Barbican as one of the world’s most forward-thinking arts centers,” Sheffield said.

Sheffield said it is important that “Inventing America” has leaped off the arts pages and into a more general public debate.

“America is a dominant cultural force in the world, for better and for worse,” Sheffield said. “There are pernicious influences, but paradoxically they could be a goad to people to respond with a stronger culture of their own.”