Whitney 2004 Biennial

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

The line in front of the Whitney Museum snaked around the corner. When I 
finally made my way through the front door, it was hard for me to figure 
out whether this was the result of a largely black and American-flag pin 
festooned security guard contingent checking each handbag, knapsack, 
etc., or larger than normal crowds attracted to the much hyped Biennial 
show. When I asked one of the guards whether his flag was meant to 
indicate support for the war in Iraq, he looked perplexed for a second 
and then explained that it was "because of September 11th." In other 
words, he confirmed my suspicions. I wondered how long those pins would 
stay on if they knew that it cost each and every one of them $4,000 to 
keep the war going (a statistic courtesy of Doug Henwood.)

The Biennial shows are famous (or infamous depending on your viewpoint) 
for mixing postmodernist inspired radical politics with sexual 
outrageousness. They have generated controversies such as the one over 
Hans Haacke's "Sanitation" from the 2000 show, which compared Mayor 
Giuliani to Hitler. It upset Marylou Whitney, the daughter-in-law of 
Whitney founder Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, so much that she decided to 
no longer donate to the museum. Haacke's installation piece was 
quintessential Biennial stuff, consisting "of a wall lined with garbage 
cans, each containing a speaker playing audio of marching troops. A 
gold-framed reproduction of the First Amendment would be on the wall, 
along with six quotations--three from the mayor--written in the Gothic 
typescript favored by Adolf Hitler." (Washington Post, March 19, 2000)

As I worked my way down from the top floor, I had the distinct 
impression that most of the artists were driven by the same kind of 
market-driven imperatives as the rest of bourgeois society. The need to 
"make something new" is as intrinsic to the art market as it is to the 
world of soft drinks or automobiles. In the case of the Biennial, it is 
essential to figure out how to be politically or sexually 
"transgressive" but without doing so in a way that has been done before. 
Whether it is breakfast cereals or sculpture, this is a tall order.

There were large-scale installation pieces that juxtaposed everyday 
objects into jarring combinations that forced the viewer to ask "what is 
that supposed to mean?" In essence, these works take the innovations of 
Joseph Cornell and turn them into oversized clichés. There were also 
countless abstract or minimalist paintings and sculptures that were 
interesting to look at but for no longer than 2 minutes or so. When I 
ran into a group tour on the 3rd floor, which I accompanied for about 15 
minutes, I saw another important group of works that helped to define 
the exhibition to the mainstream world. The tour guide was explaining 
the intentions of Robert Longo, whose large-scale oil paintings were 
some kind of humanist response to 9/11, especially his "Hell's Gate", 
which appeared to my untutored eye as just a picture of a wave in the 
ocean.

After explaining that Longo, like many of the artists at the show, were 
trying to keep alive the radical spirit of the 1960s and 70s, she walked 
the group into the next gallery where they saw paintings of anti-nuclear 
protestors in Great Britain. These images were meant to remind us that 
the radical movement never disappeared. I nearly opened my mouth to say 
that I am reminded of that every day when I wake up, but I thought 
better of it.

What was in short supply at the show was anything that was beautiful. 
For that you have to go to museums where the works come out of a kind of 
organic connection between the creator and the society he or she lives 
in. In such societies, the artist was considered more of a servant or a 
craftsperson than a prophet/genius and was expected to reinforce the 
dominant values of society. They either painted nativity scenes or 
teepees. In any case, their work was never intended as market ploys to 
'epater le bourgeoisie'.

All of NYC's museums are driven by marketing agendas right now. The 
Whitney's niche is to come up with something shocking and new, while the 
Guggenheim, its neighbor 15 blocks north, often seems happy to simply 
display the same commodities that are on sale in various boutiques, from 
BMW motorcycles to Armani suits. The Museum of Modern Art and the Met 
play the same game, but are less vulgar about it.

All of them were totally dependent on the largesse of robber barons to 
get started. The MOMA was the godchild of the Rockefeller family, while 
the Whitney was launched directly by the granddaughter of Cornelius 
Vanderbilt, Gertrude Whitney Vanderbilt, a would-be artist who started 
the original museum in 1931 after divorcing her playboy husband Harry 
Payne Whitney. It is of course ironic that the Whitney, for all its 
radical pretensions, would not exist without the super-exploitation of 
Irish and Chinese rail workers.

Images from and commentary on the Biennial show can be seen at: 
http://www.whitney.org/biennial/. It might not be obvious due to the 
dark text set against a dark background, but you can click "pop large" 
or "pop small" at the bottom of the page, which will initiate a slide show.

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