Thursday, May 28, 2015

Observations on the 2015 Venice Biennale


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.

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