How does one describe the agglomeration of new art that has just opened at the Whitney?
Is it the “tweak-intensive” Biennial (Holland Cotter of the NY Times), the “Obama Biennial” (Jerry Saltz in NY Magazine) or “the shy Biennial” (Linda Yablonsky for Bloomberg)? Why do critics feel the need to come up with a catch-phrase?
I think it’s hard to come up with a pithy epithet for this year’s Whitney salon because it is not shaped by an overriding artistic trend or curatorial sensibility. I too came up with an over-simplification—“Things are not what they seem.” Perhaps I should coin a new term: “irreality.”
Speaking of salons, this painting from the Whitney’s show (with a face peering out from the upper left)…
Jim Lutes, “Tool,” 2009
…reminded me of the “Salon Cubism” arrayed in an evocation of the 1912 Salon d’Automne exhibition in Paris, which was the Picasso-less centerpiece of the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s current permanent-collection show, Picasso and the Avant-Garde in Paris. (I’ll have more on this faux salon, including a CultureGrrl Video from the scene, in a future post.):
My own take on the Whitney’s compendium of the new (as well as the works that I selected for mention) most resembled Yablonsky’s. I said that the show “has no overriding concept or theme” and “does not coalesce.” She said it “doesn’t always seem to know whether it is coming
or going. Nor will the viewer, who must change mental gears at
every turn.”
Linda’s commentary owes nothing to mine, although mine appeared first. When I ran into FabYab at the Museum of Modern Art’s Kentridge preview on Tuesday, before I trekked over to the Whitney, she told me that she had already filed her Biennial copy. I didn’t her ask what she thought; she didn’t volunteer. Great minds think alike.
The biggest coincidence was our reproduction of the same image, chosen from the works of 55 artists. It was the same painting from a series of untitled still-life abstractions by Lesley Vance, which we both termed “beautiful.” But Bloomberg’s image, unidentified on its website, added dark areas on both sides of the painting, wrecking the composition. My photo of the actual painting on the Whitney’s wall is on the right:
Linda also scored a Biennial article on the website of the NY Times‘ style magazine, in which she took note of the “gender equality” of this year’s edition. Unnoted by the commentators I’ve read is that no such balance is found in the companion exhibition on the fifth floor, “Collecting Biennials,” which consists of works in the museum’s permanent collection by artists from prior biennials.
By my count from that checklist, a mere 10 of those 57 artists are women. We’ve come a long way, Whitney?