So Venice Biennale is opening tomorrow, one of the most important international art events.
The couple Jennifer Allora (born 20 March 1974) and Guillermo Calzadilla (born 10 January 1971) are representing the USA in front of the U.S. pavilion with a monstrous thing. They are a collaborative duo of visual artists (from the US and Cuba) who live and work in Puerto Rico.
Here is a video of their installation:
Now I'm thinking... is this cool?
I'm looking at it from a pure view of sculpture. Is there anything new to that? Not really. It is very noisy and it is massive for sure. It's got a human/performing element to it, which of course is temporary. You can't buy that thing and put it in your back yard with a runner on top of it. So O.K, it's an installation and performance rather.
The little technical finesse, the runner running on the tank tracks, does it make the thing sophisticated?
The concept, is that a sophisticated one - if you take out the aesthetics?
It is controversial for sure. And it's always been a great thing that art can be whatever it wants, including controversial. Is this however pure sensationalism? And can one simply go further and say "yeah, that's exactly what was intended, it reflects the USA?"
I mean, isn't it really easy to find pros for that piece by turning everything negative about it around, and say "yes, that's how it's supposed to be, you don't get it!"?
Like you can always answer "But this is America." The thing is ugly > this is America. The thing is superficial, noisy, rather silly, obnoxious, loud, decadent, unsophisticated, shallow and so on... "so this is America? And that makes it good art? And everybody will talk about it, like I am...
And it will turn American's guts around like mine, because: This is not America.
Or take it further and claim: This is playing with stereotypes, this is not America, this is what people think America is... Geee, why the hell bother? I want to see art.
I'm not embarrassed for America, though of course every more reflective American knows that not everything our nation does is brilliant, that there are things going very wrong and so on. I am embarrassed though, that this is where art stands in America.
Jerry Saltz, my favorite art critic, wrote a great, great article on the piece. He is so subtle:
Jerry Saltz on the Ugly American at the Venice Biennale
I really love Jerry Saltz and I'd wish more people would listen to him. In my opinion he always gets it.
I do understand that artists like Ai WeiWei have something rather serious to complain about their country - and that he reflects that in his work. People mostly don't know, what's going on in China, and if art can tell the world, great.
Does the world not know, that America is this war bully with a bunch of ignorant inhabitants running on a thread mill? Is that really new to anybody? Is it surprising news for the rest of the world, that the more sophisticated American, like an artist mostly is, is aware of the fact? A big confession?
Isn't this completely redundant information? I am walking away from this, like Jerry Saltz.
I do want to offer a suggestion for a solution to what I consider an issue though: Get more involved in arts, culturally interested Americans!
Take it a step further than being into the super hyped street art (that's not fine art, that's street art, and when it comes into a museum it's not street art any longer, and should deliver more... otherwise put it in the museum of natural history, where I think it actually legitimately and seriously belongs into. I like street art of course.)
I understand that DJing and many alternative art forms are more contemporary and likable than contemporary fine art to most. I understand that fine art has never been something for all, and that it was most interesting to the masses when there were no printed texts and people couldn't read.
But: Come on, art is not so terrible to get a bit more into it, so that not only this elite of I don't know what makes the decisions about what is good. And about what America is or at least is to be represented by. Damn it :)
