Thursday, March 09, 2006

My Favorite Take on the WB so far

Another short post...gotta run back and forth like the Lederhosened figure on a cuckcoo clock between the gallery and art fair today.

Despite scoring the best invitation to a Whitney Biennial I've ever gotten thus far (yes, I'm petty like that)...I have yet to actually make it over, what with the gallery just re-opening and the fair opening tomorrow, but I've been reading the reviews and drilling my friends, and well nothing I've read so far has come close to the breath-of-fresh-air take that Barbara Pollack offers on artinfo.com. Barbara, who was considered as an artist for the WB herself but "rejected," attended the opening with her teenage son. I'm now convinced that visiting with a youngster should be a pre-requisite to gaining entry. Especially if you're an artist and feeling bad about not being included. Here's a snippet:
[A]s my 18-year-old son Max said, “We never get into the Whitney Biennial. We’re like the Red Sox, our day will come!” For that, he earned his place beside me at the opening, an event so-super-hot among his high school friends that Max had no doubts about being the coolest kid in the city that evening.

Even though I didn’t feel part of the cool crowd at the opening festivities, it was pretty nifty seeing the show through a teenager’s eyes, a point of view that was both fresh and jaded at just the right moments. Max made me sit through every video—he loved Cameron Jamie’s costumed troupe of wild things and T. Kelley Mason and Diana Thater’s Jump, scored to the tune of Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues—wondering why videos like these are never nominated in the short film category of the Academy Awards.

Read the whole thing...it's refreshing and insightful.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I think that just proves the point that contemporary art is at a juncture where it is very exciting and more and more accessible than ever. Whenever I have non artist guests staying with me, I take them to PS1. While no is ever particularly excited about me dragging them there, they always end up thoroughly enjoying themselves.

3/09/2006 11:26:00 AM  
Anonymous Aleksandra Aude said...

Really? I feel like I get the opposite reaction from out of town guests. They seem to catch what I call "contemporary art flu" from the bad-faith cynical malaise that so much recent work evinces. Friends and family seem to come away depressed.

3/16/2006 10:35:00 AM  

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