Whitney Biennial: Crappier Than You Think
Just because the NY Times describes this year's Whitney Biennial as "easily the best in some time," don't expect big changes in the kinds of work that are shown. The Biennial is always about the art world, and the art world has been astray for a long, long time.
But since there's so much wrong about the show, I'd like to point out what's right. I'll be returning to look at many of these artists again, and probably revise my opinions. But here are my highlights.
Amy Cutler uses surrealistic imagery (like women's torsos on bicycle wheels) and trees in a sparse, patterned way that keeps her canvases full of intensity but still very quiet.
Barnaby Furnas is the Quentin Tarantino of the show, using the subject of violence as a tool for dazzling formal experimentation. Some painters quietly go to abstraction when they want to squeeze, squirt, and spray on their canvases. Furnas paints bodies disintigrating, bullets whizzing, and heads exploding on the Civil War battlefield.
My favorite work in the show may have been Amy Sillman, whose palette pits warm and cool temperatures against each other, oranges and reds against purples and blues. She refers to landscapes in the paintings shown at the Whitney, but the subject is where your eye goes, how one abstract form visually competes with others.
I'm also intrigued by Zak Smith, who did over 700 small drawings inspired by Thomas Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow," and David Hockney, whose recent paintings compress scenes from his Los Angeles house into bright abstract spaces of pure color. There are others who deserve my attention; more later.
Posted by harry at March 15, 2004 10:45 AM
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I still don't think anything of soy products. They make my teeth want to vomit. But I can certainly second Eric Asimov's rave review of the Spotted Pig, while remaining surprised that he also saw fit to write an entire separate article on Ken's prowess with an iPod and a volume knob.
And watching various bloggers pile on to Amanda Hesser today, I have to admit to feeling a certain amount of sympathy for the author of "Cooking for Mr. Latte: A Food Lover's Courtship, with Recipes". (How anybody can even get past the title of that book without their teeth wanting to vomit, I have no idea.)The line about teeth and vomit, in case you're not hooked in to the New York blogosphere, comes from Eurotrash, who eviscerated Hesser's latest restaurant review today, calling it an "unspeakable piece of codswallop" before getting really nasty. It's something of a baptism of fire for Hesser, who recently took over the job of chief New York Times restaurant reviewer – a very powerful position with a legendary expense account
