The Whitney Museum of Art was one of the first American institutions to foray into that most on trend of art events: the Biennale. This year marks the 79th iteration for the Whitney Biennial, which rises like a disinterred mummy every two years to shakily anoint a new herd of bright young artists burning up the firmament of “American Art” as of right now. It used to be held in the old Whitney building near the Metropolitan – an oppressive concrete structure that makes you feel like you’ve survived a nuclear culture war by huddling in a bunker hundreds of feet under ground. This year was the first time I saw it in the Whitney’s sparkling, sprawling, looks-like-a-penthouse downtown space.
I’ve always had a deep suspicion of survey shows that promise to give the viewer a simplified version of “Who’s Who”, and this is particularly true of survey shows in America. For the longest time it felt that American art – like American movies, TV, books, and people – happily believe themselves to be the centre of everything, everywhere. The rise of other art centres in the world plus the absurdity of relativity TV contemporary politics has shaken that belief system. Critique, both of the state as well of well-intentioned liberal institutions, is one of the things that united most of the work in an otherwise fairly isolated show.
Indeed, one of the more popular pieces in the show critiques the Whitney Museum itself. A 10-minute video exposes Safariland, one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of law enforcement equipment, including tear gas. The company has been owned since 2012 by Warren B. Kanders, who is also a vice chairman of the Whitney’s board of trustees. The video, “Triple-Chaser” (named for a type of tear gas grenade) is by a group called Forensic Architecture (please look them up, they are fantastic) which specializes in interpreting public-domain data and presenting it to the public. They have researched and analyzed U.S. drone warfare in the Middle East, the deaths of migrants off the coast of Libya, illegal prisons in Iraq, drone deaths in Pakistan and Afghanistan and murders committed by German neo-Nazi cells. You can the inclusion of the piece is meant to be awkward in a thrillingly Instagram way, because after seeing the fifth person photograph themselves against the explanation of the piece, you also get the sense that the Whitney is in on the joke.
From the video 'Triple Chaser' - this still depicts Safariland tear gas cannisters
There was a lot of art by African and Latin American artists, though I only spotted one from the Muslim world – at least that I could see. I enjoyed seeing the new kind of paintings out there, which is a rarity because the Whitney usually treats paintings like lepers without antibiotics.
While walking through the floors looking at some really ugly pieces, I thought about the idea that for years the art world has been committed to unspoken premise that art can be anything – not simply any kind of medium of style, but that it can also be made with any level of technical prowess. Drawing a hand realistically may be impressive, but isn’t terribly necessary or often welcome. The premise means that people avoid admitting when one work is strong while another is nauseating because whether it looks nice is no longer the only measure of its success. But good art usually makes itself known, and occasionally you can tell when an artist knows what they are doing versus one who hasn’t a clue but hopes no one is looking. I don’t mean that in terms of theme or politics (nowhere is the absurdity of preaching to the converted more obvious than in the art world), but in terms of aesthetic concerns that may not be terribly relevant to the casual observer.
Occasionally you can tell when an artist knows what they are doing versus one who hasn’t a clue but hopes no one is looking
In most of the reviews I read after the show, the critics were unified in their snarky observation on the amount of identity art included this time (i.e. art based on things like race, religion, gender, sexuality, etc). I was thrilled to see it and brought it up later when I was having dinner with a friend. He works for a magazine that had published a long review of the show which chided the show because it believed that identity politics were a cheap way of talking about serious things, like the state of the nation or climate change – as if identity doesn’t touch those concerns. I thought about that review in waves of rage, and it took me a whole day to finally realize that the guy writing it was white. The kind of art he was championing – the sterile, conceptual kind that exists in a subliminal, often fictitious place between absurd and irrelevant – was overwhelmingly the domain of white artists. They rarely made identity art because, frankly, they didn’t need to. The world reflected their identity back to them so often they take that for granted. The sheer number of people in the world (well intentioned or otherwise) who are totally unaware of that reality is more disturbing than the worst piece at the show (it involved hangers).
If I came away from this survey of American art today with one idea, it would be this:
America has begun looking at herself and she’s pretty shocked to find that she’s not entirely one colour.
