Whitney Biennial 2012 - For Better or Worse

The Whitney Biennial has been pretty sickly of late so I was encouraged by reviews calling it the best in years, promising that this one was different, in a good way. I saw it Friday and don't agree - neither the 'best in years' part (though that's a fairly low bar based on the last two or three) or that the art was particularly different. What was different, not just for the Biennial but for the use and function of a museum, involved performance and process. The art objects - paintings on walls, installations, sculpture, videos - had an almost peripheral relationship within the exhibition; the focus was on the act of art, loosely defined. In that context, viewing the show was as interesting for the experience of seeing others viewing the show as it was for the show itself - it didn't really matter whether the 'performers' were officially sanctioned by the Whitney or had just strolled in to become part of a living tableau for a few hours. For example, the fourth floor of the museum has been transformed into a performance space in which different types of events take place on different days at different times. When I saw it Friday it was covered by a vast black mat, the setting for a dance class. About 35 people dressed in sloppy old dance class type clothes were standing or sitting, listening to instructions from one of the class leaders. The lighting was strong, coming from one corner, and the scene had the look and feel of a Caravaggio painting - each ordinary, barefoot character took on unearned significance. Then, in a moment, it all shifted - I moved to a different viewpoint, an order was given, the group quickly formed into four straight orderly lines and a whole different set of associations became relevant. The rest of the floor was a kind of maze of ideas and display. In a tight corner you stumble upon a clever, creepy scene by Gisele Vienne - a blonde boy mannequin holding a bloody-mouthed puppet. The puppet, speaking a tale of horror that floats over you, jumps to life now and then, shaking the boy's hand as if taking possession of his earthly soul. Beyond is a white space set up like a dressing room for the rotating performers, but with touches - the image of a staring sad-eyed woman behind a grill, white patterned panels that might recall the screens in mosques or medieval churches, heavy stage lights sprouting like trees in a corner - that make the room an installation, not simply a serviceable space. It's a one-way floor so you have to track back through the narrow spaces, intentionally forced to confront the tide swimming against you. The third floor installation This Could Be Something if I Let It, is the entire studio contents of the artist Dawn Kaspar who moved everything she owned into the Whitney for the three month run of the Biennial. This is certainly process over product, an aim compatible with modern and some historical art, though here product appears to have been dismissed as not really of interest. While I was there the artist milled in and around the throng of people examining her piles of stuff, looking a bit overwhelmed. She claims to have been without a permanent studio for years, thus her art is the move itself. She has replicated the Whitney installation elsewhere, carting everything to a gallery or museum for as long as they will have her. At the risk of being a Philistine, I don't find that enough justification  to be hailed as an 'artist.' But perhaps the labels 'artist' and 'art' are the problem. Both continues shifting and dodging, becoming ever more difficult to pin down. Is that bad? Not necessarily, but neither is it necessarily something to applaud. Maybe the truest thing about this year's Biennial is that it marches in step with us at our moment in time, when so many things - social, political, financial - are hard to figure out.

http://whitney.org/Exhibitions/2012Biennial?gclid=CPuZy-b6_64CFUURNAodkwvY4w

Sarah Sze - Our Artist in Venice

Sarah Sze, an artist whose work is rich, fascinating and a bit hard to pin down, has been chosen to represent the U. S. Artist for the upcoming Biennale in Venice, the prestigious international art extravaganza that holds court each summer in and around the familiar tourist spots of that city.  I'm particularly happy about the choice - I think Sze is one of the most interesting artists of our time; whatever she does it will be worth the trip to see it. I first came across her work at SF MOMA in 2001 on a class trip with high school students. Her installation Things Fall Apart, hanging from the atrium, snaking up the stairs, sneaking up on you in corners, and sort of dribbling its way into places where you least expected it, provided a great object lesson.  Just about everything I needed to say about (good) contemporary art was in the jumbled bits of her art. You're in a partnership of meaning: the art doesn't offer easy answers, it makes you work to figure it out, it doesn't allow you to walk away sure of what it was supposed to mean even if you thought you knew. Things Fall Apart has a sort of car crash theme, but it's jolly rather than gruesome, and the motif is more a convenience than a directive for how to interpret it. There's metal and there are car doors, but there's a lot of other stuff too. 'Stuff' is Sze's stock in trade, and it's amazing how she uses it to put her finger on the pulse of this frantic, fractured historical moment. In articles about her work writers grope for ways to describe it - 'organized chaos' is a popular phrase. It's perhaps easier to begin, as she does, with the 'stuff' - an incomplete list of her materials includes Qtips, tea bags, salt, light bulbs, plastic toys, feathers, twigs, dried flowers, tape, pebbles..... There can be no end to the list because everything is fair game. Her installations are at once energizing and soothing - they fit the universe we've either embraced or accepted, one of too much information zooming at us from every direction, and in what she does we recognize the struggle to keep up and make sense of it. In some sense she's taken the old 19th century 'cabinet de curiosities' concept and exploded it, super-sized it, blown it - literarly - to bits. Sze builds her pieces on site - she clearly has a very rational mind and follows a plan, often worked out beforehand in her Brooklyn studio, but she has an immense gift for maximizing the serendipity of space, time, color, form, texture .... and just about everything else. Sarah Sze's story is not as long as you'd think for someone doing work of this assurance and maturity; she graduated from Yale in 1991, got a master's from SVA in New York in 1997, and two years later had a landmark exhibition at the Fondation Cartier in Paris, an event that riveted attention on a new star. In 2003 she was the recipient of a MacArthur 'Genius Grant.' She's featured in the next PBS Art 21 series about living artists, available in April. Here's a link to the trailer for the series (she's in great company - it's a slate of artists with strong, interesting ideas.)   

http://www.pbs.org/art21/watch-now/trailer-season-6-of-art-in-the-twenty-first-century-2012

Politics of Another Color by Charles Wilson Peale

What DO American politicians look like? Have they always had pasty tans, over-gelled hair, and flag pins in their lapels? Thankfully no - there's plenty of evidence for a different model. Not to say that politics was ever a kind and gentle sport, but, thanks to an artist who played a part in the founding of the country, we have a vivid way of considering the nature of early politicians. Washington? Of course. We all know the painfully set jaw, the white wig, the stiff military posture, the disaffected presidential gaze. But there are other versions: ask Charles Wilson Peale, one of the most interesting, entrepreneurial artists this country has ever produced. Peale painted 60 versions of Washington, including a 1772 portrait, the earliest known depiction. Washington, wearing the uniform of his regiment from the French and Indian war, was at the time merely a Virginia farmer, though he was also starting to voice his opposition to oppressive British policies. Peale's 'Princeton Portrait' of Washington shows him 9 years later in full American Revolution regalia after a decisive battle. With all the trappings of a European state portrait, Washington stands elegant, fashionable and surrounded by paraphernalia and attributes, proclaimed a man of great character and deed. The painting (for which Washington posed) is thought to have been commissioned by Martha Washington. (Not one for 'photo ops,' Washington sat only a few times for Peale - Peale (the entrepreneur part) made good use of his resources to produce all those versions and numerous copies, including 18 of the Princeton portrait.) Charles Wilson Peale, himself a loyal patriot born and bred in the colonies who fought alongside Washington, left a treasury of portraits of colonial movers and shakers, many which can be seen in a Portrait Gallery just down the street from Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Peale, an ideal of the American pioneering spirit of inventiveness and pragmatic 'just-get-it-done' achievement, was a politician, a soldier, a fund-raiser, a naturalist, the founder of the first American museum for both art and science, the founder of the first American art school, the sponsor of the first American art exhibit,  and, by some accounts, could also fix your teeth, shoes, and furniture. He also had 16 children, several of who went on to become artists and found their own museums. Peale's museum was originally on the second floor of what is now Independence Hall - the mastodon that used to be the main attraction is long gone, but his paintings now form the collection in the Portrait Gallery. Many of the subjects have lost their 'household name' familiarity, but the history they reveal is fascinating. Peale, who studied for three years in London, manages a gloss of European sophistication of technique and observation without losing a kind of American honesty - the paintings are a rich aesthetic experience as well as an historic one. A double portrait of Robert Morris and Gouvernor Morris - not related, but linked by time and effort for the American cause - is a nice example of his relaxed but respectful approach. Gouverneur Morris slouches at the left, a little cocky but with a twinkle in his eye. The bright son of a wealthy New York loyalist family, Morris authored sections of the Constitution, and despite a wooden leg, was a notorious charmer of the ladies. Though he favored a more aristocratic standard for democracy, he opposed slavery and argued strongly for religious freedom. Robert Morris, a very wealthy merchant and businessman at the time of this portrait, was a man of integrity who financed much of the Revolution, including providing for the starving, freezing troops under Washington out of his own money. He also set up a clear financial plan for the young country and established the first national bank - his investments of time and money never paid off for him, however, and he died in relative poverty. Selflessness and dedication to the greater good - those ideas are in the fabric of the lives in these portraits - scientists, soldiers, intellectuals, artists, doctors, explorers, women in various capacities, and yes - politicians.