First take..
A friend and fellow critic asked me four specific questions after my return from Europe. Here are my answers; consider them the draft version of many future articles and reviews. I will fill in the text with links soon.
1) I did not hate the Venice Biennale as much as everyone else. I had the good fortune of seeing it on a ninety-five degree day instead of one topping 100. I also had the good fortune to be left to my own devices, not finding a single person I knew aside from a friend-of-a-friend who was babysitting Ofili's British Pavilion as a summer job. I gave myself a full day for the Arsenale and the Giardini; a second half day was spent checking a few last pavilions and visiting a few off-site locations. I agree with the sentiment that there were a few diamonds scattered in a lot of rough. Those highlights were largely centered in 'Delays and Revolutions', a few in Utopia Station, some classics in 'Painting 1964-2003', and a couple of sharp individual performances in national pavilions.
I had never before seen Slides of a Changing Painting, nor the Dan Graham video/mirror installation, and was incredibly happy to experience both. I was impressed by Damien Hirst's mirror/pill artwork (a rarity for me; many of the YBAs leave me cold), and, by the time I'd arrived, Rudy Stingel's torn-up and scrawled-upon silver room made for a nice counterpoint. The new Matthew Barney works seemed a little dry. Helen Mirra continues to impress; I've yet to see a sculptural work of hers that I did not like. The biggest surprise for me was a small two-video projection by a Swedish artist named Felix Gmelin. One projection was a 1968 film of young protesters running through the streets of Berlin with the revolutionaries' red flag; just to its right was a 2002 restaging organized by the artist in 2002. I can shake neither the imagery nor the implications involved in the delay of the revolution, so to speak, and the fact that the artist's father took part in the original run. I need to contact Michelle Maccarone to borrow a preview copy so I can pay greater attention to its details.
'Utopia Station' was lovely in concept but, in my view, a shade too haphazard in execution. The idea of the randomly-placed map/checklists frustrated me in my attempts to make sense of who did what. Perhaps that's part of the whole endeavor, letting the viewer get swept up in some utopian, uplifting moment; but, as always, there was a lot of bad mixed in with the good and I needed to know who to praise and who to criticize. On the upper hand in that regard was Marine Hugonnier's film 'Ariana' (see an issue of Frieze from two or three months ago to see what I think is an incredibly well-written review of its London debut that first whetted my appetite for the project), Angela Bulloch's sculpture of a mobius strip night sky, and many of the posters. Even now, the artworks are all jumbled in my mind, though I also distinctly recall being disappointed by the Elmgreen & Dragset performance relic and Nick Relph and Oliver Payne's remix of their 'Mixtape' video. (Did you stick around to watch it? In this new extended version, a lot of the spot-on editing that tied the visuals to the soundtrack is lost and the whole loses its feel, something that's hard for me to describe but was what attracted me to it in the first place.)
Bonami's painting show taught me a few things: 1) never, in the name of national pride, should you try to insert artworks by hometown artists into an international canon from which they are generally excluded, as they will almost invariably look shabby; 2) if you don't have a coherent curatorial agenda, which I feel many of the Arsenale exhibitions lacked, it's best to admit it and move on, as this show did; and 3) Bonami has an incredibly sharp eye for painting. This show made me want to go back to the little catalogue for 'Examining Pictures', a show he organized for the MCA sometime around 1999, and study. I took extensive notes about this exhibition, and without even referring to them can reconstruct almost the entire show in my mind, so I will definitely write more about it soon. Bonami chose very sharp examples of work by Riley (which must have been tough given her simultaneous retrospective at Tate Britain), Buren, Ryman, Dumas (the two portraits from 1984 taught me, in thirty seconds of looking, how she got to where she is currently), Peter Doig, Jenny Savile, Murakami (who I normally cannot stand), and especially Kai Althoff. He seems equally facile in selecting newer work as old, and I wish he'd applied those talents to his group exhibition in the Arsenale.
A quick run through the pavilions: Su-Mei Tsei in Luxembourg won best pavilion not for the pavilion itself but for the poetic beauty of the video showing her performing a call-and-response cello piece with a surrounding mountain landscape, another highlight of the entire Biennale; Claire Barclay's third of the Scottish Pavilion confirmed in my mind her position as one of the leading lights in a new generation of casually formal sculptors (it was the first time I'd seen her work in person); Ofili is a great painter but I couldn't tell--thanks to the lighting--whether or not the drawings were worthwhile; Olafur Eliasson's best artwork was the least expensive (the wooden cone in which one glimpsed down toward a water fountain lit up by a strobe light); the Belgian pavilion, despite my being unfamiliar with both artists, sticks in my mind. Oh, and I don't really want to get started on Fred Wilson at the moment.
2) Compared to the New York scene, London seems buttoned-up, a tad conservative, and very well-funded. I spent a day visiting commercial galleries, and was only impressed by the art on view at one of them (a group exhibition of sentimental conceptualism, right up my alley, at both Lisson spaces). The rest seemed either a couple of years behind the times. Perhaps that's the nature of summer shows, when dealers know that everyone will be vacationing in Sicily or some other place, and they therefore reserve the fresh stuff and the heavy hitters for the middle of the season. The museums, on the other hand, benefitted from the same characterizations: both Tates and the National Gallery impressed me with their size, the scope of their collections, and their upkeep. They were each comfortably moving many more people through their doors in a day than would ever visit the New Museum, but managed to look twice as sharp as it ever would. The folks at the Whitechapel opened their doors for me on a Monday, a generous gesture, and I was incredibly happy to spend private time with Janet Cardiff's Forty-Part Motet, which you may remember from its presentation two autumns ago at PS1. The Serpentine is a lot smaller, and darker, than I expected, and despite attending a symposium on Cindy Sherman's work the morning of my visit, I didn't really like the show itself.
3) Compared to the New York scene, Berlin is... Berlin is like New York's kid brother, it seems. Everyone in Brooklyn was incredibly excited about my visiting Berlin and everyone there was happy to welcome me because I was from Brooklyn. The cities share an overabundance of creative young people involved in art, music, fashion, and design; what I think has thus far been overlooked is what creates those conditions. In New York, everyone has a job and must make artsy t-shirts or DJ or design websites on the side in order to get by. In Berlin, there is 20% unemployment and the kids, to save themselves from idling and going completely broke, make artsy t-shirts or DJ or design websites on the side. Necessity is the mother of invention in both cities, but it takes on a unique feel in each place. I think that New Yorkers respond to the urgency and 'vitality' of the Berliners because for us, this side-project creativity is not absolute necessity it is over there. I'm not sure exactly what it all means, but I couldn't get past this slight but noticeable difference. Another idea, one that crystallized for me in conversation earlier today, is that Berlin is both a few years behind the times (notice a trend?) and yet New Yorkers just getting there now are somehow also a few years too late. I kind of feel like the apex of Berlin's underground creativity and cross-fertilization across the arts must have happened in about 1998; now it is getting enough attention to try and ape the styles coming from New York, which in turn focuses more attention on Berlin from those they are aping. Does that make sense? We see in Berlin a reflection of ourselves and, in our excitement, encourage and extinguish it at the same time. See last spring's issue of Nylon magazine dedicated entirely to the city and you will see what I mean.
4) This last question will eventually merit a separate e-mail of its own. Quickly, though, I think that this autumn will see a return to the NYC status quo. Big names, big shows, and the summertime ('our June 2003 moment') will move over out of the spotlight for a while. In Venice, I came up with this analogy: the 'kids' taking over NYC galleries for the summer are akin children whose parents have left the house for a weekend vacation, holding a big party for all of their friends in the absence of supervision. It helped that many parts of the Biennale looked like they could have been from any gallery's summer group show. But the reason I have to write about this more is that I'm spending a lot of time working out how I actually feel about what happened this summer, about the change that we've all been talking about. Now that I'm removed from the D'Amelio Terras exhibition--we de-installed it this past week--I feel like I'm better able to reflect on what just happened and what it might mean. So of course I'll want your opinion on that, and will write you again soon. In the meantime, what do you think? Do my impressions of Venice line up with yours? As always, I'd love to talk it out further, as that helps me learn as much as the looking and the writing.
1) I did not hate the Venice Biennale as much as everyone else. I had the good fortune of seeing it on a ninety-five degree day instead of one topping 100. I also had the good fortune to be left to my own devices, not finding a single person I knew aside from a friend-of-a-friend who was babysitting Ofili's British Pavilion as a summer job. I gave myself a full day for the Arsenale and the Giardini; a second half day was spent checking a few last pavilions and visiting a few off-site locations. I agree with the sentiment that there were a few diamonds scattered in a lot of rough. Those highlights were largely centered in 'Delays and Revolutions', a few in Utopia Station, some classics in 'Painting 1964-2003', and a couple of sharp individual performances in national pavilions.
I had never before seen Slides of a Changing Painting, nor the Dan Graham video/mirror installation, and was incredibly happy to experience both. I was impressed by Damien Hirst's mirror/pill artwork (a rarity for me; many of the YBAs leave me cold), and, by the time I'd arrived, Rudy Stingel's torn-up and scrawled-upon silver room made for a nice counterpoint. The new Matthew Barney works seemed a little dry. Helen Mirra continues to impress; I've yet to see a sculptural work of hers that I did not like. The biggest surprise for me was a small two-video projection by a Swedish artist named Felix Gmelin. One projection was a 1968 film of young protesters running through the streets of Berlin with the revolutionaries' red flag; just to its right was a 2002 restaging organized by the artist in 2002. I can shake neither the imagery nor the implications involved in the delay of the revolution, so to speak, and the fact that the artist's father took part in the original run. I need to contact Michelle Maccarone to borrow a preview copy so I can pay greater attention to its details.
'Utopia Station' was lovely in concept but, in my view, a shade too haphazard in execution. The idea of the randomly-placed map/checklists frustrated me in my attempts to make sense of who did what. Perhaps that's part of the whole endeavor, letting the viewer get swept up in some utopian, uplifting moment; but, as always, there was a lot of bad mixed in with the good and I needed to know who to praise and who to criticize. On the upper hand in that regard was Marine Hugonnier's film 'Ariana' (see an issue of Frieze from two or three months ago to see what I think is an incredibly well-written review of its London debut that first whetted my appetite for the project), Angela Bulloch's sculpture of a mobius strip night sky, and many of the posters. Even now, the artworks are all jumbled in my mind, though I also distinctly recall being disappointed by the Elmgreen & Dragset performance relic and Nick Relph and Oliver Payne's remix of their 'Mixtape' video. (Did you stick around to watch it? In this new extended version, a lot of the spot-on editing that tied the visuals to the soundtrack is lost and the whole loses its feel, something that's hard for me to describe but was what attracted me to it in the first place.)
Bonami's painting show taught me a few things: 1) never, in the name of national pride, should you try to insert artworks by hometown artists into an international canon from which they are generally excluded, as they will almost invariably look shabby; 2) if you don't have a coherent curatorial agenda, which I feel many of the Arsenale exhibitions lacked, it's best to admit it and move on, as this show did; and 3) Bonami has an incredibly sharp eye for painting. This show made me want to go back to the little catalogue for 'Examining Pictures', a show he organized for the MCA sometime around 1999, and study. I took extensive notes about this exhibition, and without even referring to them can reconstruct almost the entire show in my mind, so I will definitely write more about it soon. Bonami chose very sharp examples of work by Riley (which must have been tough given her simultaneous retrospective at Tate Britain), Buren, Ryman, Dumas (the two portraits from 1984 taught me, in thirty seconds of looking, how she got to where she is currently), Peter Doig, Jenny Savile, Murakami (who I normally cannot stand), and especially Kai Althoff. He seems equally facile in selecting newer work as old, and I wish he'd applied those talents to his group exhibition in the Arsenale.
A quick run through the pavilions: Su-Mei Tsei in Luxembourg won best pavilion not for the pavilion itself but for the poetic beauty of the video showing her performing a call-and-response cello piece with a surrounding mountain landscape, another highlight of the entire Biennale; Claire Barclay's third of the Scottish Pavilion confirmed in my mind her position as one of the leading lights in a new generation of casually formal sculptors (it was the first time I'd seen her work in person); Ofili is a great painter but I couldn't tell--thanks to the lighting--whether or not the drawings were worthwhile; Olafur Eliasson's best artwork was the least expensive (the wooden cone in which one glimpsed down toward a water fountain lit up by a strobe light); the Belgian pavilion, despite my being unfamiliar with both artists, sticks in my mind. Oh, and I don't really want to get started on Fred Wilson at the moment.
2) Compared to the New York scene, London seems buttoned-up, a tad conservative, and very well-funded. I spent a day visiting commercial galleries, and was only impressed by the art on view at one of them (a group exhibition of sentimental conceptualism, right up my alley, at both Lisson spaces). The rest seemed either a couple of years behind the times. Perhaps that's the nature of summer shows, when dealers know that everyone will be vacationing in Sicily or some other place, and they therefore reserve the fresh stuff and the heavy hitters for the middle of the season. The museums, on the other hand, benefitted from the same characterizations: both Tates and the National Gallery impressed me with their size, the scope of their collections, and their upkeep. They were each comfortably moving many more people through their doors in a day than would ever visit the New Museum, but managed to look twice as sharp as it ever would. The folks at the Whitechapel opened their doors for me on a Monday, a generous gesture, and I was incredibly happy to spend private time with Janet Cardiff's Forty-Part Motet, which you may remember from its presentation two autumns ago at PS1. The Serpentine is a lot smaller, and darker, than I expected, and despite attending a symposium on Cindy Sherman's work the morning of my visit, I didn't really like the show itself.
3) Compared to the New York scene, Berlin is... Berlin is like New York's kid brother, it seems. Everyone in Brooklyn was incredibly excited about my visiting Berlin and everyone there was happy to welcome me because I was from Brooklyn. The cities share an overabundance of creative young people involved in art, music, fashion, and design; what I think has thus far been overlooked is what creates those conditions. In New York, everyone has a job and must make artsy t-shirts or DJ or design websites on the side in order to get by. In Berlin, there is 20% unemployment and the kids, to save themselves from idling and going completely broke, make artsy t-shirts or DJ or design websites on the side. Necessity is the mother of invention in both cities, but it takes on a unique feel in each place. I think that New Yorkers respond to the urgency and 'vitality' of the Berliners because for us, this side-project creativity is not absolute necessity it is over there. I'm not sure exactly what it all means, but I couldn't get past this slight but noticeable difference. Another idea, one that crystallized for me in conversation earlier today, is that Berlin is both a few years behind the times (notice a trend?) and yet New Yorkers just getting there now are somehow also a few years too late. I kind of feel like the apex of Berlin's underground creativity and cross-fertilization across the arts must have happened in about 1998; now it is getting enough attention to try and ape the styles coming from New York, which in turn focuses more attention on Berlin from those they are aping. Does that make sense? We see in Berlin a reflection of ourselves and, in our excitement, encourage and extinguish it at the same time. See last spring's issue of Nylon magazine dedicated entirely to the city and you will see what I mean.
4) This last question will eventually merit a separate e-mail of its own. Quickly, though, I think that this autumn will see a return to the NYC status quo. Big names, big shows, and the summertime ('our June 2003 moment') will move over out of the spotlight for a while. In Venice, I came up with this analogy: the 'kids' taking over NYC galleries for the summer are akin children whose parents have left the house for a weekend vacation, holding a big party for all of their friends in the absence of supervision. It helped that many parts of the Biennale looked like they could have been from any gallery's summer group show. But the reason I have to write about this more is that I'm spending a lot of time working out how I actually feel about what happened this summer, about the change that we've all been talking about. Now that I'm removed from the D'Amelio Terras exhibition--we de-installed it this past week--I feel like I'm better able to reflect on what just happened and what it might mean. So of course I'll want your opinion on that, and will write you again soon. In the meantime, what do you think? Do my impressions of Venice line up with yours? As always, I'd love to talk it out further, as that helps me learn as much as the looking and the writing.