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Of America, Vladimir Nabokov once wrote, ‘Nothing is more exhilarating than
philistine vulgarity.’ The collision of artifice, cunning and cheerful brutality is
one of the chief characteristics of modern American culture. This year’s
Whitney Biennial, ‘Day For Night’, is explicitly concerned with the many
inversions and conflations that are a natural byproduct of this cultural state.
Probing beyond the seductive surface of American exuberance, the Biennial
strives to examine the dark underside of a national identity. Therefore,
although it is helmed by two European-born curators (Chrissie Iles and
Philippe Vergne) and contains a substantial amount of non-American art, it
remains, nonetheless, a distinctly American biennial.

Taking its title from François Truffaut’s 1973 film, ‘Day For Night’ refers to
the filmic procedure whereby night scenes are artificially shot by daylight.
Using this technical process as a kind of loose metaphor for curation, the
exhibition skilfully melds the colourful exuberance of kitsch and artifice with
the more sober tones of the contemporary American nightmare. Whether it is
Marilyn Minter’s forcibly gritty, large-scale enamel paintings (Stepping Up
(2005), a slick concoction of high-fashion crystal and urban dirt) or Dash
Snow’s rowdy installations, many Biennial artists have invested the glamour of
American pop culture with a palpable sense of disorder and decay.

For all this busy evocation of glamour’s decay, there is, nonetheless, a
simultaneous emphasis on the potential sterility of this very same culture. The
pop culture exuberance of kitsch, camp and artifice has perhaps always
carried with it an element of flatness. Over the course of the 20th century, that
vocabulary has, if anything, grown further depleted through relentless
repetition and dissemination. If one strand of the Biennial seems to celebrate
the sinister energy of American culture, then another seems intent on
emphasising the more barren turns of its identity. Josephine Meckseper’s
storefront windows imbue the shop window’s vibrant ethos of show and
display with an archaeological coldness. Sturtevant’s recreations of artworks
by artists ranging from Duchamp to Warhol explore the element of unique
variability that is introduced through flawless reproduction, an artistic
experiment somewhat along the lines of Jorge Luis Borges’ Pierre Menard,
Author of the Quixote (1939). But the very success of her work finds its basis
in the fact that this element of unexpected excess is revealed only through the
sterility of the reproduction that forms both its counter and its background.





The foundation of Sturtevant’s work is in the simultaneous seduction and
impossibility of the perfect copy. This necessarily requires a rigorous
approach to reproduction as a process. In contrast, other works in the Biennial
demonstrate a loose allusiveness, wherein the original reference is often
displaced. Creating an intricate system of reference and self-reference,
allusion, copy, and influence, is one of the chief characteristics of postmodern
creative production; however, in this self-conscious complexity, the very
exhilaration as described by Nabokov becomes perhaps increasingly difficult
to locate. Judging by the current Biennial, what has replaced that simpler
mood of enthusiasm is a thoroughly postmodern version of political
consciousness and agency, which is in a sense particular to our cultural
moment.

The Whitney Biennial provides, with varying success, a snapshot portrait
of American art, and thus by extension, American culture. Certainly there is
a groundswell in the political consciousness of the nation; this new sense of
political agency has the potential to become the single most salient
characteristic of the contemporary American arts. But what is most striking is
the degree to which this newly awakened consciousness is modelling itself
on the student protests of 1968. Nowhere is this more staunchly evident than
in the American art in this Biennial.

‘Day for Night’ is fairly bursting with the slogans of 1968 and its aftermath,
in what appears to be an epidemic of quotation. T. Kelly Mason and Diana
Thater’s JUMP (2004) features Middle American school children jump-roping
to Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues (1965). Dash Snow’s
installations read ‘Death to the Fascist Insect’, while Jamal Cyrus’s
Africanisms #120469 (2005) features a vest covered in seminal civil rights
texts of the period, by iconic authors ranging from Angela Davis to Leroi
Jones. The title to Dan Graham’s collaborative video installation perhaps
sums up the mood of the moment most succinctly: DTAOT: (Don’t Trust
Anyone Over Thirty, All Over Again) (2005).

There are a multitude of differences between 1968 and 2006, and these
differences resonate on political, social, ideological, economic and moral
levels. Nevertheless, an enduring iconography seems yet to be created for the
post-September 11 generation. Instead, the voices issuing from this
generation seem by and large compelled to recuperate the language of a
cultural and political moment nearly four decades old. This need not
necessarily be problematic; one of the ambitions of the Biennial is to explore
‘the uses of history and historical reference’. Certainly it is interesting to note
the diligent recitation of historical reference in the exhibition, but there are
perhaps certain risks inherent to this usage of history – not least of which are
those of nostalgia and sentiment – that should nonetheless be heeded. The
current political situation, both within America and internationally, surely
requires a full engagement with the facts of the present, and one that resists
falling back upon the reliable aura of nostalgic slogans.

It is for this reason that Richard Serra’s Stop Bush (2004), a poster and
painting created during the last presidential election and campaign, and
distributed freely over the internet, carries a particularly strong resonance.
Here, Serra identifies the single most iconic image of the war in Iraq, that of a
hooded, tortured prisoner of Abu Ghraib. The message is simple, and
powerfully direct. It is also perhaps the best example of politically engaged
work in the Biennial. Though he may be one of the oldest exhibiting artists,
Serra nonetheless illuminates the power and possibility of political action in
contemporary American culture. By exploiting new technologies and investing
current political quagmires with a simple sense of urgency, Serra resists the
alluring backwards glance, over the shoulder and into the past, to focus on the
present and its possible futures.

katie kitamura

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