What’s art? The 2008 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art provides an answer — whatever the work of the eighty-odd artists has in common.
The exhibit included some videos, documentaries (Spike Lee), photographs, drawings, and paintings. Most of the work, however, was everyday stuff — what artist Adam Putnam called “frugal materials” — used in unusual ways. Here are some examples:
- bird excrement (Charles Long)
- automotive paint (Daniel Martinez)
- styrofoam and resin (Jedediah Caesar)
- CDs and styrofoam balls (Jason Rhoades)
- drywall (Lisa Sigal)
- rebar and chain-link fence (Ruben Ochoa)
- printed matter (many)
Collages (e.g., Rita Ackermann) are the school-art-project example of this sort of thing. The goals of the artists seemed to be about 20% beauty, 30% emotional impact, 50% novelty. The Biennial also included old technologies used in new ways: Matt Mullican made drawings while hypnotized and then did similar drawings while not hypnotized. An outpost of Neighborhood Public Radio allowed anyone to be on the air for an hour.
As I’ve said, I believe the tendencies behind art evolved because they generated material-science research. The tendency to make art caused some people to make new things that required control of materials but weren’t obviously useful; enjoyment of art meant that others would trade for what they’d made, allowing artists to spend more time making art. A premium for novelty kept artists on their toes; it pushed them to find new ways of making things. Wandering around the Whitney Biennial, these ideas seemed easy to believe.
I can see beauty as being obviously valuable, and novelty as useful research. What’s your take on why emotional impact is a a goal of the art? Are the artists trying to show empathy and therefor their value, or learn about the psyche by creating something that stimulates reactions? Part of me wants to say artists might be precursors to psychologists. Maybe market researchers too?