See No Evil; Hear No Evil?

On Saturday I made my biennial pilgrimage to the Whitney Biennial to keep up-to-date with what is going on in the visual arts in America. Of course, this is something of a panacea because as nominally diverse as these events claim to be, they are inevitably the byproduct of a curatorial vision of one person, usually – this year it’s two. And, no matter who the curator happens to be in any given year, for all the years I’ve attended (which is since the 1980s), the emphasis has always seemed to be on “shock art”: work that somehow transgresses commonly held assumptions of taste or aesthetics, or work that blatantly promulgates a specific, somewhat outside the mainstream, political agenda.

But despite being underwhelmed by a series of framed enlargements of fake newspaper obituaries of Nicole Kidman, Bill Clinton, and others; a “painting” made from seemingly-random blotches of old, stepped-on gum (inspired by NYC sidewalks); or a series of Mason jars containing pickled film—well, I actually liked the last two—I kept wondering why there isn’t a similar biennial in our music community that could involve an orchestra, chorus, several chamber ensembles, soloists, etc. in a week-long festival highlighting provocative music that has been made in America over the past two years. What would it take to put on such a festival? Could it have the same cultural relevance that the Whitney show does?

Well, you might say that most folks don’t enjoy or even comprehend the often dissonant sounds that many of us love so much, and they certainly wouldn’t choose to listen to this music over pre-dinner cocktails. But I highly doubt that most of Saturday’s seemingly endless sprawl of cultural tourists—who weren’t deterred by the pouring rain or the $15 price of admission—”enjoyed” the taxidermized rabbit in the fake shopping window display or the open coffin/tanning machine made from an oil barrel. And I imagine that most folks were as baffled as I was about the aesthetic behind the video displays of the solitary sheep. I also doubt that there are many people out there who would want such items hanging around at home.

So, why was it so crowded? And why do the multitudes from all over the world continue to come back every two years? I think it’s ultimately a question of perceived relevance. Ultimately, you don’t have to like the way it looks (or sounds) or even understand it, but there’s something about assembling recent, provocative work under the imprimatur of an established and respected venue that is immediately attractive to audiences looking for a way to, well, keep up-to-date. The real question is why haven’t the folks who program Carnegie, Severance, Tanglewood, Dorothy Chandler, etc., instituted such an initiative in our world? What are they waiting for?