Modern Painters | September 2007

52nd Venice Biennale
Various Venues

Robert Storr has never been one to shy away from a fight. The former curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and current dean at the Yale School of Art has shunned the theory-laden criticism of his peers at October; he does not hesitate to write disputative letters to magazines that run negative reviews of his shows. As organizer of this year’s Venice Biennale, Storr was in charge of crafting exhibitions in two dauntingly huge venues: the Italian pavilion and the quarter-mile-long Arsenale. Both are grouped under a single title: “Think with the Senses—Feel with the Mind.” The title suggests a polemical framework, one that argues that art can be holistic and address the plight of human existence without compromising form. At the Italian pavilion, which stands in the center of the Giardini Pubblici, the Biennale’s hub, Storr has gathered new works by such elder statesmen and -women as Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, Louise Bourgeois, and Nancy Spero. The show’s vastness is numbing, even funereal—one room, exclusively dedicated to dead artists (Martin Kippenberger, Fred Sandback, the intriguing José Leonilson, Chen Zhen), drags the show to a complete halt with its demand for deference. Indeed, a churchlike air permeates the entire exhibition, leaving little room for play or surprise. One exception comes from Bruce Nauman, whose Venice Fountains (2007) is a jokey sendup of the city’s absurdly romantic reputation as well as the artist’s own early work. It consists of a pair of identical sculptures on opposite walls: two plastic face molds, tubes connecting the mouth of each face directly to the faucet of a dirty old sink below it.

Whereas Storr turned the Italian pavilion into a prissy, self-validating showcase for the artists he has championed over the years, the Arsenale exhibition is more pointed, involving a selection of younger, much more international artists. It opens with a multimedia installation by Luca Buvoli: shards of red, green, and clear Plexiglas dangling from the ceiling extend across the cavernous entry and appear to crash into the wall, where they become letters that spell out the work’s title, A Very Beautiful Day after Tomorrow (2007). Among the work’s many components, one documentary-style video shows various scholars defending Futurism against accusations of fascism, claiming that Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s famous manifesto encouraged a conflict of ideas rather than weapons. The message seems to be that good art can be political—so long as the politics are agreeable to liberal-minded folk. Unfortunately, this viewpoint informs the entire show. I don’t want art to endorse fascism, but a little anarchy wouldn’t hurt. Or maybe it would. But at least it would introduce a spark or feeling that was heretofore unknown. The curatorial premise seems to be in response to a question of some urgency—Should art bear responsibility for social concerns?—and this exhibition clearly answers in the affirmative. In so doing, it often insists on an approach to art that reduces it merely to a way of conveying information.

Despite these complaints, there is a promising, if indistinct, undercurrent here. It emerges from art’s struggle to define itself today, particularly in relation to world events. On one level, the contentious mood can be traced to modernism’s legacy and its failings, something artists have addressed for years. But modernism appears here less often through art-historical references (like Buvoli’s Futurism) than as an expression of technique. Purity of form is exchanged for purity of focal point, a methodology that uses a microview to call attention to macroissues. Early on, for example, viewers confront Yto Barrada’s photographic study of an indigenous Moroccan wild iris that’s being killed off by new luxury developments. The tiny flower stands in for the fragility of a disappearing locality and way of life.

Of course, there is something inherently journalistic about this sort of dissection, and it plays into Storr’s desire to cover every global conflict zone: the former Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Colombia, Chile, Iraq. This encyclopedic (or Wikipedic) style of curating becomes repetitive, almost self-parodic: Serbian artist Zoran Naskovski’s Internet-based work seemed to serve no other purpose than to actualize the show’s hypertextual tendency. The curation also seems to be a metacommentary on the art. In this context, Jason Rhoades’s riotous Tijuanatanjierechandelier (2006) becomes yet another pedantic entry in this endless compendium, its neon signs showing 51 ways of saying “pussy” reduced to a mere exercise in linguistics.

Rather than draw the senses and the mind together, the show seems to reinforce a dichotomous opposition. But the emphasis on edification means that work that is truly sensual, that lives up to the exhibition’s title, stands out even more strongly. Franz West’s brightly colored, turd-shaped sculptures are a welcome change, as is Yukio Fujimoto’s simple piece incorporating two long tubes that, when held to both ears, produce a haunting, echoing sound (Ears with Chairs, 2005). If only the exhibition were not so hell-bent on getting its point across. The argument for art’s political relevance is a losing battle. Better perhaps to ignore it altogether, and follow Marinetti’s absurd injunction to “swell the enthusiastic fervor of the primordial elements.” That seems like a way to stir things up—and if Storr isn’t the person to do so, someone else ought to.

—Claire Barliant


Modern Painters | September 2007

52nd Venice Biennale
Various Venues

Robert Storr has never been one to shy away from a fight. The former curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and current dean at the Yale School of Art has shunned the theory-laden criticism of his peers at October; he does not hesitate to write disputative letters to magazines that run negative reviews of his shows. As organizer of this year’s Venice Biennale, Storr was in charge of crafting exhibitions in two dauntingly huge venues: the Italian pavilion and the quarter-mile-long Arsenale. Both are grouped under a single title: “Think with the Senses—Feel with the Mind.” The title suggests a polemical framework, one that argues that art can be holistic and address the plight of human existence without compromising form. At the Italian pavilion, which stands in the center of the Giardini Pubblici, the Biennale’s hub, Storr has gathered new works by such elder statesmen and -women as Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, Louise Bourgeois, and Nancy Spero. The show’s vastness is numbing, even funereal—one room, exclusively dedicated to dead artists (Martin Kippenberger, Fred Sandback, the intriguing José Leonilson, Chen Zhen), drags the show to a complete halt with its demand for deference. Indeed, a churchlike air permeates the entire exhibition, leaving little room for play or surprise. One exception comes from Bruce Nauman, whose Venice Fountains (2007) is a jokey sendup of the city’s absurdly romantic reputation as well as the artist’s own early work. It consists of a pair of identical sculptures on opposite walls: two plastic face molds, tubes connecting the mouth of each face directly to the faucet of a dirty old sink below it.

Whereas Storr turned the Italian pavilion into a prissy, self-validating showcase for the artists he has championed over the years, the Arsenale exhibition is more pointed, involving a selection of younger, much more international artists. It opens with a multimedia installation by Luca Buvoli: shards of red, green, and clear Plexiglas dangling from the ceiling extend across the cavernous entry and appear to crash into the wall, where they become letters that spell out the work’s title, A Very Beautiful Day after Tomorrow (2007). Among the work’s many components, one documentary-style video shows various scholars defending Futurism against accusations of fascism, claiming that Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s famous manifesto encouraged a conflict of ideas rather than weapons. The message seems to be that good art can be political—so long as the politics are agreeable to liberal-minded folk. Unfortunately, this viewpoint informs the entire show. I don’t want art to endorse fascism, but a little anarchy wouldn’t hurt. Or maybe it would. But at least it would introduce a spark or feeling that was heretofore unknown. The curatorial premise seems to be in response to a question of some urgency—Should art bear responsibility for social concerns?—and this exhibition clearly answers in the affirmative. In so doing, it often insists on an approach to art that reduces it merely to a way of conveying information.

Despite these complaints, there is a promising, if indistinct, undercurrent here. It emerges from art’s struggle to define itself today, particularly in relation to world events. On one level, the contentious mood can be traced to modernism’s legacy and its failings, something artists have addressed for years. But modernism appears here less often through art-historical references (like Buvoli’s Futurism) than as an expression of technique. Purity of form is exchanged for purity of focal point, a methodology that uses a microview to call attention to macroissues. Early on, for example, viewers confront Yto Barrada’s photographic study of an indigenous Moroccan wild iris that’s being killed off by new luxury developments. The tiny flower stands in for the fragility of a disappearing locality and way of life.

Of course, there is something inherently journalistic about this sort of dissection, and it plays into Storr’s desire to cover every global conflict zone: the former Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Colombia, Chile, Iraq. This encyclopedic (or Wikipedic) style of curating becomes repetitive, almost self-parodic: Serbian artist Zoran Naskovski’s Internet-based work seemed to serve no other purpose than to actualize the show’s hypertextual tendency. The curation also seems to be a metacommentary on the art. In this context, Jason Rhoades’s riotous Tijuanatanjierechandelier (2006) becomes yet another pedantic entry in this endless compendium, its neon signs showing 51 ways of saying “pussy” reduced to a mere exercise in linguistics.

Rather than draw the senses and the mind together, the show seems to reinforce a dichotomous opposition. But the emphasis on edification means that work that is truly sensual, that lives up to the exhibition’s title, stands out even more strongly. Franz West’s brightly colored, turd-shaped sculptures are a welcome change, as is Yukio Fujimoto’s simple piece incorporating two long tubes that, when held to both ears, produce a haunting, echoing sound (Ears with Chairs, 2005). If only the exhibition were not so hell-bent on getting its point across. The argument for art’s political relevance is a losing battle. Better perhaps to ignore it altogether, and follow Marinetti’s absurd injunction to “swell the enthusiastic fervor of the primordial elements.” That seems like a way to stir things up—and if Storr isn’t the person to do so, someone else ought to.

—Claire Barliant