Or as artists, do we really need to be concerned with all of this? Not our job, not our responsibility, we just make art you might be thinking. Isn’t that enough you might be wondering. Irving Petlin and Mark di Suvero didn’t think it was enough in 1966, midway into the fight for Vietnam, them and 418 other artists who contributed art works to the Peace Tower in protest of an escalating and seemingly un-winnable war. Does this mean that artists today have lost a political or social voice they once had – forty years later? Has it been reduced to a faint whisper that no one hears or cares to hear? Or are we just content with ourselves to fight it out on canvas or paper, satisfied to exhibit our works of art in galleries and museums? Do we have time to fight, the money to fight with or the experience to carry it through? What was the revolution across the globe in ’68, of civil and human rights, racial equality, a woman’s right to vote, a need and a time for change – is now?, Hummers and cell phones, studios downtown and Art Expo. Pessimism? I don’t believe so, just perhaps a notable softening of a current reality and lifestyle. I question the relevancy and importance of the artist’s role, his/her voice and its need to be seen, heard and understood in a time of war.

Specifically, I wonder about the relationship and relevancy of the new Peace Tower to these current political times and the war in Iraq. I had this same reflection of thought when I recently read a review of 7 or 8 “updated” performances, several months ago at the Guggenheim Museum by Marina Abramović. Marina had re-done a series of performances in the sanctity of the Guggenheim that were originally performed several decades earlier by artists such as Vito Acconci (Seed Bed), Bruce Nauman and even an earlier performance of hers. It’s as if there is this current tendency, a longing for the good ‘ol days when life was simpler and everyone had a cause, to re-do, re-live, re-experience the thrill of those heady revolutionary times through show and tell, and instruct a whole new generation of oblivious converts or roadside hawkers in how to see the light that once shined so glaringly. Just how much “Satisfaction” do the Rolling Stones or anyone else for that matter, need before they become as expendable as any non-recyclable throwaway. What I question the most is not so much the content of either Marina’s performances or Petlin’s new tower, but the context and physical place(ment) of both and the message it sends out – text messaging not withstanding.

If you’re a newcomer to the art scene or a younger artist just starting out, you might see these events as new and refreshing, avant garde to say the least, but they’re not, at least not today stripped of their original context and meaning, their original desire and lust for life, their inherent truth(s). They’re simply safe. Lukewarm. Commercialized. By products. Exploitable. You can’t help to make comparisons between the original ACT and its diluted half-sister. You can’t help to make comparisons between the violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somali and other forsaken territories, and the porntificating - my made-up word – of face value shock and frontal nudity before a group of blasé museum or gallery goers already primed for the event. Have we gotten to the point where the piece makes the ARTIST and only the most respected brand name artists will suffice regardless of what they’ve done already? Is if it was good then, it must still be good now, still à-propos nowadays? Since when does being a classic become a substitute for a lack of quality and substance?

Why the hell didn’t Petlin, di Suvero and Tiravanija rent some abandoned dirt covered lot in Ohio, where the highest mortality rate of American soldiers thus far fighting in the Iraq war come from – where there is almost always a funeral once or twice a week – to erect their new Peace Tower, instead of building it in front of the Whitney Museum of Art in New York? Why? Was it for exposure?, for Peace?, the blessing from a recognized American Institution?, for $$$ ?, out of boredom? Eat what you kill takes on new meaning when standing holding a placard in the museum’s cafeteria. Why does it smack of public Sculpture and not public Protest? And finally, how much risk is involved this time around for the contributing artists in donating their works? Can Nancy Spero, James Rosenquist, Hans Haacke amongst others, truly consider they’re making a sacrifice for the good of the cause? How much effort does it really take for them to donate a little something from the back of their studios? But most importantly, will these works of art be auctioned off like their predecessors’ works were to help continue the fight against, this time, the war in Iraq? Somehow, I just don’t see an American Institution such as the Whitney, purveyor of taste in Contemporary art and the infamous Biennial, donate proceeds to an anti-war movement. That they recognize the importance of debate is one thing, to jeopardize any government funding for their continued existence is another. Perhaps we’ll find answers in Tiravanija’s philosophical outlook when he says,

“For me, I would like to think that the project is not so much against something, but rather for peace”.

Amen.


Review of the Whitney Biennial 2006 Chicago Tribune You'll need to register first in order to have access to the article - it's FREE. Or contact me, I'll send you a copy. Art as Authority

Excerpt from Christopher Knight's article:

The biggest groaner is Rirkrit Tiravanija's restaging of Mark di Suvero's 1966 Artist's Tower for Peace. The original Constructivist-style tower, a grass-roots Vietnam War protest, was erected in Los Angeles on a vacant where hundreds of contributors added 2-foot-square panels registering their political opinions -- sparking a citywide commotion. (A man even got shot.) Rebuilt in the sculpture garden at the Whitney, where it pokes its head up to greet shoppers along Madison Avenue, the once-anarchic public sculpture is tamed like a goat in a petting zoo.

The peace tower is emblematic of the show -- earnest and stale. Having abandoned the Whitney Biennial format without abandoning the Whitney Biennial, the museum has created a no-win solipsism of its own.

Had the museum organized -- separate from the regularly scheduled biennial machine -- a sharp, cogent theme show dissecting imperial U.S. ambitions and taking on an activist role, the exceptional effort might have galvanized attention. Pretending that the best recent art is characterized by international anxiety over an environment of gloom serves no one.

The last time I thoroughly engaged with and enjoyed a Whitney Biennial, the Persian Gulf War had just come to an abrupt end, grunge music was on the horizon and Octavio Paz had recently been awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. It was spring 1991.