ART + ARCHITECTURE
Melgaard Room which could easily
serve as the set of a seventies porn
film with its plush velour sofas, kitschy
pillows and silicone sex mannequins.
With no boundaries for the definition
of art, the notion of presenting a comprehensive survey became pure folly.
Whether by coincidence or not, it was at
this time, in the early seventies, that the
Whitney defaulted to an every-otheryear format. It is absolutely axiomatic
that whatever approach the Biennial
takes is doomed to fail in the eyes of
many due to the sheer impossibility of
the task at hand and the countless art
world panderers lobbying for representation of their special interests in the
show. The breather year was perhaps
necessary in order for the Whitney to
process the vitriol each Biennial inevitably
inspires. Truly, it has become the show
people love to hate.
Peter Schuyff, Sans Papier,
2004–14 (detail). Carved
pencils and sticks, dimensions
variable. Private collection.
Since the notion of placing some sort
of all-encompassing armature around
contemporary art today is patently
preposterous, the best the Whitney can
do is come up with some sort of organizing theme that resonates with the
current state of the art world. The Sao
Paulo 2012 Biennial did a brilliant job
by framing its show around poetics and
the 2012 Whitney Biennial was critically
acclaimed for presenting the hybridization of art. This year’s show could have
leveraged any socially-relevant theme
as a springboard but instead, the Whitney opted for a maximal approach. The
museum brought in three “outsider”
curators to present three autonomous
shows on three different floors. The
concept is a bit absurd, particularly in
a museum with admitted space constraints. The result is a show stretched
too thin, wandering in too many directions, with sprouts of sheer genius that
Lisa Anne Auerbach, We Are All
Pussy Riot, We Are All Pussy
Galore, 2013 (sweater). Collection of the artist; courtesy
Gavlak Gallery, Palm Beach.
Photo via Andrew M. Goldstein,
editor-in-chief of Artspace
Magazine, from his article
entitled “The Most Spectacular Artworks in the Whitney
Biennial”.
APRIL MAY 2014
105