Whitney Biennial 2006: Day for Night

Granted, this is mostly a re-blog of some links I got from Art Fag City and MTAA-RR (two of my favorite blogs – and don’t miss the MTAA Upgrade! at Wits this afternoon!), but there are some great posts / reviews already up on the Whitney Biennial. The basic gist is that there are some newbies (which is nice), it is mostly courageous and slightly un-American, it kinda sucks (what else is new?), and they should have asked me for work. Everyone is agreed on that last point.

I think I like some of Jerry Saltz’s review for a start, from artnet:

"Day for Night" is the liveliest, brainiest, most self-conscious Whitney Biennial I have ever seen. In some ways it isn’t a biennial at all. Curators Chrissie Iles and Philippe Vergne have cleverly re-branded the biennial, presenting a thesis not a snap-shot, a proposition about art in a time when modernism is history and postmodernist rhetoric feels played out. This show and the art world are trying to do what America can’t or won’t do: Use its power wisely, innovatively and with attitude — be engaged and above all not define being a citizen of the world narrowly.

"Day for Night" is filled with work I’m not interested in; it tries to do too much in too little space; it is often dry and confusing. Nevertheless, the show is a compelling attempt to examine conceptual practices and political agency, consider art that is not about beauty, reconsider reductivism, explore the possibility of an underground in plain sight, probe pre-modern and archaic approaches, posit destruction and chaos as creative forces, and revisit ideas about obfuscation and anonymity. This show is less market-driven than usual; in fact it attempts to cross swords with conventions that have brought us to the brink of madness. It’s also an anti-manifesto taking on romanticism, expressionism and decorative psychedelia.
…
This biennial is positively un-American.

I should note that there’s a bit of a double entendre there, in that there are lots of foreigners on the show, compared to usual (um, none), and there are more than a few political pieces. Then, there’s this interview with the curators, which had some interesting bits in it, but I could only skim (something is wrong when art bores me… I just tried again, and there are still some interesting bits and it still kinda bored me). Not a terrible intro tho, "In an undertaking described by Whitney directorr Adam Weinberg as “absorbing the immediacy of artists’ responses to the world,” the curators have focused on notions of uncertain identity, unfixed images, “lavish abandon,” ambiguity and a sense of social and political questioning as evidenced in contemporary art." Look, ma! I can be ambiguous (indifferent?) about ambiguity!

There’re some interesting concerns on bloggy, extensive (but not so great) pics on Heart As Arena, and a slightly hilarious (tho again, boring at points) mash-up (14MB) on Art Dirt Redux. (For those not in the know, definition of mash-up aka bastard pop – we’re latecomers in Africa).

I can’t help but think of my sister, who is taking her first History of Art class as she does an MFA in acting (paraphrasing here) – "Nathaniel, you make this stuff so sound cool, while these books and my lecturers make it sound boring. So, which is it?"

Good f^ck!ng question, and I’m real sorry, Sammy – maybe it’s because I never took a History of Art class? Sigh.