This year both the Whitney biennial and the New Museum triennial where held. Despite the New York Times’ breathless assertions of the “first time ever!” this is really only the second time the New Museum has had its triennial and this kind of occurrence will happen every 6 years. But nonetheless, These two shows revealed two emerging foci in contemporary art.
The Whitney’s show was all about performance and audience interaction. At least that’s what I was led to believe by the stellar New York Times review. However, upon arriving I only found the remains and evidence of such works. Yes the big downfall of event based art, you have to be there at the right times. I wasn’t. I like to go to my museums when I have time, not when the artist does. Some works seemed like outright false advertising. The artist who was going to practically live in the museum and use it as her studio, only really was going to be there for 3 performances. I want my performance artists to be more Marina Abromovic about this, be there all the time, maybe even live there. I found the show to be overall underwhelming. The paintings were mostly forgettable, the performances weren’t performed. Lets also not forget that the Whitney isn’t cheap, many people can’t go to the Biennale at multiple different times times to see the scheduled performances.
Lutz Bacher’s strewn baseballs at the Whitney looked better in person
On the other hand I was pleasantly surprised by the New Museum triennial. The trend here was globalism but also message art. It was for the most case art-activism, which in my opinion has just as many pitfalls as performance art. However this show managed to mostly avoid them. Often artivism means tacking up some pictures of your trip to Africa. There’s often a hint of paternalism and too little attention paid to aesthetics. The new museum avoided this pitfall by going global, choosing artists working to improve or critique their own culture or it’s domination by the west. Most everything here was both pleasing to the eye (or ear). Many of the pieces stood out conceptually, such as the artist who traded favors with inmates. Others nailed interaction such as the “flying carpet.” One of my favorites was the advertising agency who were paid to rebrand communism. The works were engaging, I wanted to stay and watch everything.
Adrián Villar Rojas who first wowed me at the Venice Biennale had another great piece at the New Museum
It only goes to show that being on trend only gets one so far. Performance might be all the rage, but it is still essentially an exclusive medium, only those in the know, plugged in and dedicated often get a chance to see the show, everyone else gets the left-overs. Don’t get me wrong performance art can be great, but don’t leave all the show’s remains just to point out to people what they missed, it’s rude and usually pretty danged ugly. Globalism and activism can too often be crass and shallow, or not be art at all, like donating to charity as a gift to someone, it’s great that you did this but it isn’t a gift (or art). I’m glad the New Museum once again showed that art can say something important without being preachy and without sacrificing it’s own visual appeal.
