Nirvana Takes a Holiday:
The Whitney Biennial in 2000

by Therese Schwartz

When I began exhibiting my work in New York in the 1960's, a Whitney Biennial represented nirvana. It was the heaven on earth an artist could enter, after which would follow fame, possibly fortune, and a secure place among the angels. As a young artist, I was not interested in the fact that when the first Biennial was held in 1932, it was also a mirror of visual art from across the country.

In 2000 the Biennial still performs that function, but there is much more. It also presents a picture of a different art world in which young artists must look for recognition in the face of enormously increasing numbers of competitors and in the absence of pioneering art dealers and curators yearning to promote new vision and new ideas.

For the record, I write about this Biennial as a reporter, not a critic. Because I am still one of the pack, I don't think it would be fair to make aesthetic pronouncements. What I do bring is a knowledge of evolution of styles, an understanding of some of the motives of an artist, and a familiarity with material.

The earliest Biennials were assembled informally; easy groups of artists and museum personnel made the selections. Most of those in the show lived in New York City, although many had originally come from elsewhere. In 1937, the format was changed and the exhibitions became Annuals, with one year for painting, one for sculpture and various media. Some years, a single Whitney curator chose pieces; sometimes an outsider was added. In 1973, they went back to Biennials.

Because of circumstance, not policy, the current show was entirely chosen by people not connected with the Whitney Museum of American Art. Maxwell Anderson, the director, was appointed in 1998 and he had wanted Thelma Golden, a Whitney curator, to be the sole judge. However, she resigned soon after, and he needed to assemble a jury. He turned to curators in museums across the country and found six who were not too busy to take this on. In a sense, this was an exemplary jury because they were chosen at random and their aesthetic standards were not well known.

Given the composition of the jury, I was surprised that nothing in the show could be described as "regional" - almost everything resembled stylistically what is seen regularly today in the art enclaves of this city. Out of a thousand possibilities, the number of artists who made it is ninety-seven. Work includes painting, sculpture, mixed media, video, and Internet art. In this piece I take on only the first three and leave video, etc. for another time.

To each work presented, another ingredient was added to guide the viewer. Anderson, the director, told us at a symposium held before the opening that an explanatory note was attached to each piece in order to set up a dialogue with the public. He explained further that these notes were written by the Whitney's Education section, and that some in the show were not pleased with how their work had been characterized. The notes puzzled me. I have always believed that if art has a function, it is to be individual and private for each viewer. I had never thought of my work as education.

To illustrate: The painter Ingrid Calame's piece is a huge sheet of Mylar that takes up one whole wall and rolls onto the floor. On its surface are large, random drips of bright red enamel paint. It is definite, impersonal, and finished. I quote the note attached: "Jackson Pollock meets the police blotter in Ingrid Calame's monumental work on Mylar. The imagery may resemble the classic drips and pours of Abstract Expressionism cascading onto the floor, but the source is the streets of Los Angeles where Calame, like a detective, makes tracings of what she calls 'the lacy stains left by the evaporation of nameless liquids.' Back in the studio, she files the tracings for future use in mapping out layered silhouettes of enamel paint. The babble of fluids, and more human grunts of satisfaction, are spelled out in the onomatopoeic title [b-b-b, rrgR-UF! b-b-b]."

Ingrid Calame / b-b-b, rrgR-UF! b-b-b / 1999 /
enamel paint on trace Mylar 348 x 300 inches.
Courtesy Karyn Lovegrove Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

In contrast to other large groups this season (e.g., at P.S. 1), painting has its fair share, and all modes are represented. Realism uses drama, humor, and sex, and all reveal expert technique and few surprises, but no shock. Lisa Yuskavage's pink, twisted nudes might have seemed mildly pornographic in an earlier time, but here they appear vulnerable and victimized; John Currin's sly, naughty takes on venerated Old Masters are funny.

Kurt Kauper's canvases depict elegantly dressed, larger-than-life women whose genders seem ambiguous in spite of their costumes. And Salomon Huerta's photo-realistically detailed men in back view are like portraits without identification.

 

Salomon Huerta / Untitled Head / 1999 /
oil on canvas 11 3/4 x 12 inches.
Courtesy Patricia Faure Gallery,
Los Angeles, CA and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Abstraction with no easily discerned content makes up a small minority. The large pieces by Ghada Amera are composed of multicolored threads that, at first glance, look like paint. They are delicate and of muted color, and although the label says they are suggestive of women and sexuality, this is not easily seen. Katherine Sherwood's work is full of literary allusions; there are suggestions of old manuscripts, weathered parchment, and also paper collages involving x-rays. (The note informs that they are about her recent cerebral hemorrhage.) Susan Frecon - one of the very few whose paintings stem from geometry - shows sturdy, solidly structured, modestly sized compositions.

Katherine Sherwood / Facility of Speech / 1999 /
mixed media on canvas / 108 x 84 inches.
Private Collection. Courtesy Gallery Paule Anglim,
San Francisco, CA and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

There are few traditional sculptures - three-dimensional objects standing alone. The most prominent are made by Joseph Havel - tall, standing images with loose drapes hanging from slender poles. They are cast in metal and look like ghosts.

Now for those who combined, mixed, and played with a full inventory of material. Al Souza's huge piece decorates the entrance to the third floor - it is made of pieces of old jigsaw puzzles that form fuzzy landscapes of indefinite color, gone somewhat out of sync. The Zombie paintings by Vernon Fisher use simulations of houseflies made of cast epoxy, some of which are also present on the walls beside the work. Joseph Grigely's collage looks like an enlarged bulletin board in one corner of a studio, on which an artist would clip notes, reminders, unpaid bills, items from a newspaper, and other little homey bits. The piece, which runs along a whole wall, attracted many viewers the day I was there, and it reminded me of a time in the 70's when there was a mad desire to expose anything personal, from bits of a diary to shots of one's naked body, flattering or not.

Al Souza / The Peaceful Kingdom / 1998 /
puzzle parts and glue on wood / 84 x 216 inches.
Courtesy Moody Gallery,
Houston, TX and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

A huge wall piece by Chakaia Booker is made of discarded rubber tires - slashed, sliced, and thickly assembled. It is densely black, allows no light, and is at once sad and unfriendly. At the press opening, the artist, dressed in splendid African costume, was there as part of the piece. Glass cases contain Michael Joo's three-dimensional pieces: a girl patchworked from intravenous bags, a large buddha, and two dogs, one with an exposed human heart.

Richard Tuttle is one of the older exhibitors and one of the small number of well-known artists in the show. In his celebrated Minimal-Conceptual style, his wall is hung with a series of small wood squares; on each, there is either a single geometric shape or combination of several in primary colors. The note attached to Kojo Griffin's paintings, which contain stuffed animals, dolls, and other benign or threatening symbols, explains that they are motivated by his studies in child psychology and his interest in how toys are used to evaluate disturbing behavior in children. The note, in this case, is a necessary clue to the content. Petah Coyne's figures dominate all of their space, as well as the space around them. Using commercially manufactured, life-size figures of female saints, she clothes them in elegant cloth hoods and then drips melted wax down their backs and on the walls around them. To round out this depiction of virtual (?) religion, fragments of the figures - hands lifted in prayer, humbly sloping shoulders, and downcast averted faces - surround the figures and complete the pious tableaux.

For fun and wit, there is Josiah McElheny, who is described as an expert glass blower. Glass is his material in an installation using exquisite vases, figures, and bottles. All the objects are placed in a long glass case, and all bear a strange resemblance to the idealized shapes of women as they have changed over the decades. Of course, they range from the full bosoms and hips of yesterday to the desired flat contours of today. The effect is good-natured, humorous, amusing, and could be placed almost anywhere.

Hans Haacke's political piece was the only one to be noticed in the New York Times before the Biennial's opening. Placed in a darkened room and accompanied by ominous rumbling, it is aimed at the wild rhetoric of New York City's Mayor Giuliani about the so-called scandalous Brooklyn Museum show (of the dung-flung Madonna). While it is a well-intentioned, well-designed, well-hung, and interesting piece, with its text in Nazi typeface, it will be seen by a museum audience, most of whom are already of the converted.

To sum up: The examples I have used are only to illustrate the general nature of the whole. They are neither the best nor the worst, but they do catch the spirit of this first Biennial of the New Millennium, which seems to be - no risk, no rebellion, no desire to set the world on fire.

And of the future? I am no fortuneteller, but with so many competing, machine-made, and team-conceived visual media, the individual artist, working alone, will find another way.

AMEN

About the Author:

Therese Schwartz, an artist known for her geometrically based panoramic collages, has had numerous solo exhibitions, both domestically and internationally. Her works can be found in museums, corporations, and private art collections, among them: The Brooklyn Museum of Art; The Corcoran Gallery of Art; Syracuse University Art Collection; Herbert F. Johnson Museum; Edwin A. Ulrich Museum; Ciba-Geigy Corporation; Barnet Arden Collection; Phillips Memorial Gallery; Women's Interart Center Museum; Advanced Elastomer Systems; PepsiCo Corporation; Monroe Geller Foundation; and the Huntington Museum.

An accomplished essayist, Ms. Schwartz has written feature articles in such publications as Art News, Arts Magazine, Women Artists' News, and Art In America, where she contributed a four-part series entitled The Politicization of the Avant-Garde, which continues to be widely used as a research tool for art historians.

For the Arts4All Newsletter, she has contributed The Year that Was: Marching toward the Millennium, a four-part series on the state of the art world at the turn of the century, as well as Cinema Everyday a report from the 1999 New York Film Festival.

Resources:

The Whitney Museum's website includes some information on the Biennial and the artists whose works are represented. http://www.whitney.org/exhibition/2kb_fs.html

In the next Newsletter, Therese Schwartz will return, with her comments on the video installations in the Biennial, and Newsletter correspondent Michael Geisert will comment on the Internet artworks included in the Whitney's show.