The 2015 Venice Biennale was, as usual, a mixed bag. The German Pavilion was well done, but, like many of the exhibitions, it seemed more of a PR/propaganda tract than what we formerly, perhaps naively, referred to as "art," i.e., something largely divorced from current events - that being in itself a political statement by those rich and secure enough to be removed from the travails of the world. The French Pavilion was a masterpiece of irrelevant, new age nonsense, and the British Pavilion by Sarah Lucas showed truncated female torsos with cigarettes emanating from their butts. It was supposed to be about the victimization of women but ended up being tasteless misogyny. Russia, Japan and Korea were interesting. Swiss and Venezuela were puerile. Spain and Belgium were shallowly fixed on the past (Dali as a source of modern Spanish critical thought - really? - and in the case of Belgium more tired and useless obsession with the Congo past). Netherlands was flimsy, and what Okui Enwezor installed in the main pavilion was sullen and mostly bad art. The U.S. appeared silly to us - some childish films by Joan Jonas, now 78, seemingly selected for sentimental value (another neglected woman artist). We spent 60 seconds in the U.S. Pavilion.
The Arsenale was more
interesting because many of the objects were very good artistically. Still
it was mostly about resurrecting morose middle aged artists who never fit into
the commercial art world (the commercial milieu being so happy that one buys
the works to become happy). I think that many of the artists had been
preciously overlooked, many of them African-Americans, because Enwezor thinks
we wear blinders. We do, but much of the art presented is simply not very
good either. The entire Biennale is some respects is a welcome antidote
to the Christmas Tree consumerist optimism of much of the commercial gallery
offerings, but much of it was stuck in what is now ancient history for the
kids, i.e., the decolonization of Africa in the 1950’s and ’60’s and the present
day plight of African "immigrants" in Europe.
In any event, we now
realize that Dare and I throughout our collecting years were entirely creatures
of the avant garde. Our game was precociously finding new artists and
trends which told of the actual present and were predictive of where the
culture was headed. We believed in and thought we perceived trends.
Now most of the art world declares the avant garde dead. The last
three Biennales were dedicated to finding overlooked artists from every nook
and cranny of the world outside the main lanes of art commerce. As far as
we are concerned, whether because these artists were overlooked because they
came from some obscure corner of the world or because they were out of phase
with critical thought, most deserved to have been overlooked. I am a
Marxist, i.e., good art is always and exclusively an expression of the dominant
economies/cultures, and Amazonians and Aborigines can't ever produce good art
by definition. We are bored stiff looking at the output of a blind hermit
from upstate New York. Of course, the avant garde is never dead, and
there are geniuses out there who are mining the future. Those who declare
it dead, which constitutes about 98 percent of the art public, are just too
backward to get it and need to justify their stupidity.
Enwezor is a very
intelligent political hack and propagandist who knows what he is doing.
We knew him personally during his brief tenure in SF. He once called me
by name and knew me as a trouble-maker. He has made his point very well,
i.e., life is grim for the poor and colored, and the art world caters to the
ignorant, removed rich. We just wish that the "artworks" he
selected to make his point were better art. But, then, as Marx would have
said, they can't be.
