It's Art, Not Revolution

Photo: P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center. Damián Ortega's "Controller of the Universe," a 2007 sculpture in the Weapons section.

Disclaimer: This review misses the mark; art is art, and revolution is revolution. It's about seeing works from different generations/periods that have never been seen together before. I like this beautifully installed if sprawling show with its deft juxtapositions -- hurray: no historical time line, which would have been deadly dull. The connections here are visually clear, and not at all dull -- amazing, considering the number of curators involved. (But of course, I'm not ever going to be "neutral" on this one!)

via NYTimes:

Art Review

Will the Revolution Be Museumized? Will There Be a Revolution?

By KEN JOHNSON

Published: July 25, 2008

{Excerpts}
Simplistic yet muddled, strident yet curiously tepid, "That Was Then ... This Is Now" at the P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center is an ambitious if disappointing effort to extend the activist spirit of the Vietnam War protest days into the Iraq war era.

The exhibition presents a confusing mix of politically motivated artworks from the 1960s to today by more than 60 artists, united, a wall text says, "by a desire to mobilize art as a means of change." It was organized by the director of P.S. 1, Alanna Heiss; the center's senior curatorial adviser, Neville Wakefield; and six other advisers. So many curators! Maybe that is why the show is so unfocused.

Instead of following a historical time line, the exhibition is divided into three theme-based sections: Weapons, Flags and Dreams.

Weapons begins impressively with "The Reason for the Neutron Bomb," Chris Burden's 1979 installation of 50,000 nickels, a wooden matchstick attached to each, arrayed on the floor in a big grid. Its reference is to the number of Soviet tanks at the time.

Elsewhere a beautiful digitally animated video from 2002 by Jeremy Blake meditates on a mysterious house built in San Jose, Calif., by Sarah Winchester, the Winchester rifle heiress. [...]

Wandering through the rest of this section you come across Steve Mumford's hand-drawn scenes from the war in Iraq; paintings of mercenaries from 1975 by Leon Golub; a glossy, heavily pixilated enlargement of an Internet image of one of the twin towers burning by Thomas Ruff from 2004; a big drawing of a handgun pointing at you from 1993 by Robert Longo; and fiercely expressionistic allegories in ink and watercolor protesting the Vietnam War made by Nancy Spero in the late 1960s.
[...]

The Flag section, which consists of various representations and misrepresentations of the United States flag, is similarly inconclusive. David Hammons's 1990 rendition of an African-American flag with the stars and stripes in red, green and black is visually sumptuous. Barbara Kruger's 1991 silkscreen version with white stripes made of letters spelling out questions -- "Who dies first? Who laughs last?" -- still has great rhetorical punch. And Marc Handelman's big semi-abstract red, white and blue painting from 2008 composed of free-floating stars and stripes has a painterly and theatrical verve.

In a big, photographic reproduction of a poster by Adam McEwen, a rock group in military gear plants the flag, à la Iwo Jima. In a sculpture by Peter Hendrick the flags of Iraq, Ireland, Israel, the Palestinians, Britain and the United States have been recreated in white fabric. In the elevator, you'll find a flag made of flashing tubular lights by Leo Villareal attached to the ceiling.

[...]

But the least coherent section is Dreams. If you were hoping to draw some inspiration for the future from this theme, it’s also the most disappointing. In the main gallery of this section, a 1994 word piece by Lawrence Weiner high on one wall reads "Milk and Honey Taken Far Away" in English and German. It's accompanied by a 1978 architectural model for a pavilion of see-through mirrors by Dan Graham; jazzy '60s-era posters with corny liberation slogans by Sister Corita Kent; and, from 1989, gauzy blue curtains hanging over windows by Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Another room presents an indigestible accumulation of printed material documenting activity by the Art Workers Coalition, a protest and lobbying group in the late '60s.

Videos include a semi-abstract film by Josephine Meckseper focusing on a 2006 peace march in New York, an understandable reference to Dreams. But an oblique 2000 video by Paul Chan in which he used law enforcement software to depict activists' facial-hair styles makes less sense under this heading.

A 1997 video in which Andrea Fraser mimics museum dignitaries and politicians' speeches about the importance of art and culture is great satire. But it's hard to see how her witty critique is going to help spur the activist revival so ineffectually imagined by this show.

"That Was Then ... This Is Now," continues through Sept. 22 at the P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, 22-25 Jackson Avenue at 46th Avenue, Long Island City, Queens; (718) 784-2084, ps1.org.