The Biennial is the American art world's
most meretricious event. It has the combined
tawdriness/bawdiness of a home grown artworld
Cannes Film Festival /medicine show. A marketing
event spangled with show-biz glitz and fed with
lots of hype --- many of whose artist participants are
well versed in the use of the grammar of scandal and
affect as the subject of their art --- the Biennial is
regularly picked clean and evaluated for signs of life
by the culture industry. And the post-mortems are
kept in enormously thick and heavy binders in the
public-relations office of the Whitney for, what else?
, the art historical record. In spite of the obvious self
serving function of this show to validate Parkett
magazine's editorial choices and to substantiate the
Whitney's past / future curatorial practices and
collecting tendencies this Biennial exhibition has its
intricacies and difficulties and joys. If you know how
and where to look, it has some powerful , moving
moments, many of these laced with gracious and
affecting humor. Step right up and welcome
inside the tent, folks. We will show you marvels and
mysteries never before seen by (wo)man . Please
leave your identity complexes with our assistants
before you step inside ..."
There are high points and low points in the Biennial --- the American artworld ceremony that
includes its time-honored practices of disclaimers on
the part of the museum in its catalogs ("... the most
salient constants of the Biennial are the plaintive
wails that greet it " (1987) , " ...the Biennial does not
pretend to survey the totality of American art of this
moment"1997) , etc, etc, as well as the ritualistic
ho-hum/hipper-than-thou musings of the press.
Let's go through some of these just for old times
sake: in 1946 Clement Greenberg remarked on "the
evenness with which the Whitney [Annual] shows
have been bad..." in The Nation ; "the
nation's unofficial Salon " (San Francisco
Examiner, 1991) , "...since 1932.. the oddest
of art world rites" (New York Magazine,
1975) , "...the art world's weather vane..."
(Christian Science Monitor ,1993 ); "...
a big barometer..." (New Art Examiner) ;
"the equivalent of the debutante's ball"
(Newsweek 1993) ; ..."an unendurable
bore" Hilton Kramer, (NYTimes 1977 ) ;
"the worst in living memory" ; Robert Hughes
(TIME , 1985) ; and finally : " the
Biennial ]...is an impersonal survey, dutiful and
official "( NYTimes , 1997) .
The 1997 Biennial, as usual, is a multi-leveled
event , functioning as a universal hinge calculated
to infiltrate, influence , and appeal to a broad
definition of the social body ( the attempted
definition of which is one of the main topics of the
show --- as the Charles Long/Stereo Lab installation
with Bubble Gum Station, 1995 and the
Jason Rhoades' accumulation makes clear ) in order
to appeal ( in descending order) to tourists, to kids
and to art professionals. This exhibition at the
Whitney isn't just your ordinary show of presenting just ordinary new -virgins -on- the -block - artworks (as Paul
McCarthy's hilariously naughty Untitled,
1997 installation in the Lobby Gallery makes clear ).
There are old timers and veterans from previous
shows at the Biennial (Lari Pittman, Ed Ruscha, Sue
Williams, Bruce Nauman, Dan Graham) among
others) as well as unknowns (Cecilia Vicuna,
Annette Lawrence, Aaron Rose , among others ).
The curators and the museum should also be
credited for expanding the definition of allowable
artists allowing for the first time any artist who lives
and works in the United States not only artists with a
US citizenship. This is very good news.
On the whole this Phillips-Neri tag-team
Biennial looks better than the "metaphor" Biennial
curated by Klaus Kertess two years ago. It is edgier,
and more thoughtful than the 1995 show and
installed in a more cogent way than the 1993 "issues
of identity" show (without evoking the illusory
coherence that this cyclical event always implicitly
promises). Each work of each artist is given plenty of
room to show off without impinging on the space of
its neighbors and this gives the exhibition a smart
even stately feel. In this regard Douglas Blau's
Sacred Allegory, 1996 a assemblage at
the introductory wall on the third floor with its
metahistory of lent the right elegiac note to the show
as well as a touch of longed- for class. Along with
this elegance is a determination by the curators to
make this exhibition user-friendly as witnessed by
the witty sound broadcast installation by Martin
Kersels (Whitney Lobby Composition,
1997)the Paul D. Miller soundtrack in the passenger
elevator( Zona Rosa, 1996) , and Dan
Graham's viewing stations in the Lower Gallery
with seat cushions (New Space Showing
Videos, 1995).
The best artworks in the Biennial are just that,
the best, because they're poetically contradictory ,
multilayered , elliptical. Beggaring description, let
alone categorization., they elude classification since
they include overlapping formal concerns and
sensibilities and deal with several overriding issues
and entertwining themes. But here are a few
permeable themes paired with artists who share
these motifs that I was able to identify at random
(keep in mind this is hardly a complete list of artists
or categories, of course) : the body
(Bourgeois,Long, Rhoades ) sexuality (Bourgeois,
Lawrence, McCarthy, Williams ), conventions of
beauty (Conner, Long, Philips, Rose ) , dislocation
/displacement (Ashkin, Bourgeois,Burden,
diCorcia,Gitlin, Martorell, Orozco, Seator) , the
contingency of memory (Blau , Bourgeois, Burden,
Kabakov, Leonard, Lawrence ,Oursler) , the
(de)construction of self-identity (Bourgeois, Ewald
,Hammons, Lawrence,Leonard, Marshall, Philips,
Ritchie, Schimert, Sikander,Talukdar,Thater, Vicuna,
Walker), errant science/technology and media
/information pollution (Schabel, Shambroom,
Pittman, Ritchie, Rhoades. ). The depiction of
systematic crisis ( of signs, of society, of the self ),the
definition of (post)modernity itself , is sensed in the
strongest of these efforts.
I want to make a special note of how I enjoyed,
even marveled at, Matthew Ritchie's work. He is in
the leading phalanx of a new generation of artists
who enfolds Blakean and archetypal impulses with
information theory. His paintings and drawings
depict the genesis, the expanding and the
contracting of universes. They are activated by the
forces and activities of seven celestial agents who
have their own life stories recounted through
theapplication of the artist's made-up scientificity.
His confabulated universes within universes are
allegories about the spawning of information and
they are sensational. Ritchie's contemporary
mythologies Seven Earths, 1995,
The Binding Problem, 1996,The
Hard Way web site , 199, Time
Novel, 1997 and his 21 illuminations on
mylar Autogenesis , 1996-7 quite simply
epitomizes creativity. There are other very good
works in the Biennial that comment on the influx of
physical and mental proliferation in a media-
saturated end -of -the-millennium world. Twined
with the notions of the fluidity of boundaries ,
psychic and public, the dissolution between
peripherality and centerdness , between physicality
and evanescence , between staged reality and
equally staged fiction, these art pieces take a great
deal of time to absorb but are worth the visit and the
patience. Among these highlights are Jason
Rhoades' installation (Uno Momento/theater in
my dick/a look to the physical/ephemeral,
1996) , the Chris Burden Pizza City ,
Glenn Seator's monumental Untitled,
1997, and Bruce Nauman's End of the World
video installation (1996) . George Bataille's
ideas of transgression, the abject, eroticism ,and
taboos and Antonin Artaud 's thoughts onthe
function of the theater of cruelty as curative magic
seems to preside over the best works dealing with
sexuality and the body. In this category I would
include two major works. The first is Paul
McCarrthy video installation on the ground floor
Lobby Gallery. The second is the Louise Bourgeois
room on the second floor which includes
Torso 1996 , Arched Figure
#1 1997 , and Pink Days and Blue
Days, 1997 . This sequence of works is a
staggeringly important milestone in contemporary
art. I am quite sure it is unoriginal but accurate to
claim the Bourgeois installation is easily the best
work in the Biennial.
When art references the body and perme-
ates it with suggestions of technological
irrevocability the result is often very biting and
troubling as in Tony Oursler's
Mansheshe, 1997 on the second floor, the
Suicide Box video by the Bureau of
Inverse Technology on the floor 3 ,the video of
Robert Wilson's 1995 La Mort de
Moliere , Brian Crockett's Ignis
Fatuus, 1997 , Paul Shambroom's photographs
from his Nuclear Weapons series 1990-
5. I found some very good, thoughtfully
hung pairings of artworks in this Biennial. Two
particularly good confluences of space, content and
style come e to mind . The first occurs on the Lobby
Gallery and on the first floor simultaneously. I have
rarely seen Gonzalez-Torres 's work so movingly
installed in across the main window of the gallery.
Seen in the evening , the reflections between the
lights of Untitled (America), 1994-5 ,
floating between the grids a of the construction
scaffolding outside create magnificent spatial plays.
While very different from his neighbors on the
fourth floor Ilya Kabakov's touching Treatment
with Memories, 1997 seemed to fit with the
Burt Barr (Slow-Mo , 1996) /William
Forsythe (Solo, 1995) /David Hammons(
Phat Free, 1995-7) video programs
because of the very different rates of perceptual,
physical and mental movement between that
occurs each separate viewing experience.
One of the main puzzles about the show was
the inclusion of paintings and drawings by Vija
Celmins, Ed Ruscha,Richard Prince and Francesco
Clemente. All of these old timers are good, even
great artists I and I experience no resistance in
enjoying these works. The question I have is why
were these particular artists chosen over other artists
of their generation (why not Alex Katz, now doing
the best work of his career, or Brice Marden ,or
Nancy Spero? ). I can't come up with an answer. Of
the works that looked noticeably stronger outside
of a gallery context I would include Kerry James
Marshall and Bruce Nauman, Gabriel Orozco, Kara
Walker. Of the non-video works I felt were not
convincing I would cite Diana Thater's tedious
overtheorized Electric Mind , 1996 as
much ado about not much, Richard Phillips'
paintings as tired, uninspired , re-heated post Pop
imagery of the dullest kind, Jennifer Pastor's irritating
The Four Seasons 1994-6, an em-
barrassing display of the Jeff-Koons-gone-nature-boy
school of artmaking and Cecilia Vicuna's Black
Net , 1997 a tepid , well intentioned
installation that seems lost on the fourth floor, and
Annette Lawrence's four untransformed
diagrammatic paintings on the second floor.
This year's Biennial is pretty and brainy . It's
filled with many many charms and it has its wits
about it too, which leads us to ponder what is in
store for us the next time around in 1999. Anyone
want to place any millennial bets?
Copyright ©1997 Dominique Nahas & REVIEW All Rights Reserved
Dominique Nahas is former chief curator of contemporary art at Everson Museum and former director of the
Neuberger Museum. He is now an independent curator, critic and art historian.
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