Once it seemed to matter — the high end, I mean. Art and money, when you put the two words together, would invariably lead to HirstMurakamiKoons unless they were referencing KoonsMurakamiHirst. And the crazy gushes of cash that went their way, and the way they flaunted it, became prime rib for glossy magazines and academic panels alike. But that was so 2007.
PARIS — In a recent article on AFC, Paddy Johnson argues that Werner Herzog’s piece in this year’s Whitney Biennial is essentially a throwaway. She sees Herzog’s contribution as a quick fix for inclusion that relies mainly on “bells and whistles” rather than substance. But her account is conspicuously reactionary and seems to be more of a response to the glowing reviews of the art writers she quotes than to Herzog’s work itself.
When the list of the 2012 Whitney Biennial artists was made public, it included a very interesting trio of names, probably not immediately recognizable to most of the visual arts world: choreographers Sarah Michelson and Michael Clark, and theater director/playwright Richard Maxwell. All three are extremely well known in their respective fields, but how and why are they relevant to the Biennial audience? Hyperallergic asked me to write a series of articles looking at performing arts, not performance art, in the museum context, and whether it’s an important, or completely arbitrary, shift in visual arts programming.
Forrest Bess was born in Bay City, Texas on October 5, 1911, one year before Agnes Martin (1912-2004) and Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) joined him on this planet. Martin’s entry point was Macklin, Saskatchewan; Pollock’s was Cody, Wyoming. Martin and Pollock moved to New York in order to study, and left in order to preserve themselves. Both made the paintings by which they became famous after leaving New York.
To walk into the artist Robert Gober’s installation of paintings, photographs and writings by Forrest Bess — a visionary painter and self-described, self-surgically-altered “pseudo-hermaphrodite” — was to encounter art frontloaded with (as the reader put it) “cultural significance while also being visually intoxicating, or mesmerizing, you can choose a description.”
I left the 2012 Whitney Biennial with a feeling of leadenness that no amount of free coffee (available at Monday’s press preview, and many thanks for that) or Werner Herzog’s video ode to beauty (“Hearsay of the Soul,” 2012) could alleviate.
Art lovers in attendance at last night’s conversation with Werner Herzog at the New York Public Library were fortunate enough to hear a little of the backstory behind Herzog’s participation in this year’s Whitney Biennial. The inclusion of the celebrated filmmaker in the exhibition took many art-worlders by surprise when the list of participants was announced in December.
Tonight’s Whitney Biennial VIP Party brought together two sectors of the art world that continue to butt heads in this post-Occupy Wall Street world. Chic art world partygoers were lined up on Madison Avenue waiting to drink champagne at the Sotheby’s-sponsored Biennial, while a few dozen protesters and an inflatable cat were bringing attention to the museum’s association with the auction house that has locked out union art handlers since early August.
![Post image for OWS Arts & Labor Working Group Calls for End to Whitney Biennial By 2014 [UPDATED]](http://hyperallergic.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/occupy-whitney-HOME.jpg)
This week, the Whitney Biennial opens but Occupy Wall Street’s Arts and Labor working group has already started to question the usefulness of the exhibition for artists and cultural workers, many of whom are unpaid to participate.
![Post image for As Whitney Biennial Approaches, Museum's Art Handlers Face Potential Labor Dispute [UPDATED]](http://hyperallergic.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/labor-issues-whitney-HOME.jpg)
First Sotheby’s, and now the Whitney. While the Teamsters of Local 814 have been fighting with Sotheby’s since August for a better contract, a new labor dispute has cropped up for the art handlers of Local 966 that work at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Advertise on Hyperallergic with Nectar Ads
Subscribe to our Email Newsletter
Advertise on Hyperallergic with Nectar Ads
Graffiti Writer Gets Pwnd by Marc Jacobs
A Truly Subversive Artist Is Not Necessarily Someone Who Is Theatrical or Gimmicky
Brooklyn Designer Held Without Bail for Hanging Plastic Bags from Trees
Gay Life Portrayed in Traditional Chinese Paper-cuts
North Korea's New Website
The Daily Practice of the Impossible
Should Museum Acquisitions Come at the Expense of their Education Departments?
The Painting That Launched a Thousand Lawsuits![Release Takeshi Miyakawa Now! [UPDATED] He's Free!](http://hyperallergic.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/plugins/wordpress-popular-posts/scripts/timthumb.php?src=/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/takeshi-miyakawa-hanging-plastic-bags-from-trees-146x90.jpg&h=60&w=97&zc=1)
Release Takeshi Miyakawa Now! [UPDATED] He's Free!
