The Nation. - Department of Government at Cornell University

June 5, 1995 The Nation. 803ART.ARTHUR C. DANTOThe Whitney BiennialNot long ago I was sent a bookmade up of Roy Lichtenstein’scomic-strip-panel paintings ofthe early sixties. It is calledBrad ’61, and its clever author, TonyHendra, has turned the tables on Lichtensteinin a benign way. He has returnedthe panels, so to speak, to the genre fromwhich Lichtenstein first appropriatedthem, and has arranged them into kind aof comic-book romance in which an artist,Brad, who llves in Tenafly, New Jersey,finds true love with Vicki, the girlnext door, as well as artistic glory in NewYork, across the river. Brad and Vicki arethe sixties ancestors of Julio and Marisol,whose steamy narrative of dubious fidelityand sexually transmitted disease haskept us all descending dank stairwaysinto the subways of New York in thehopes of finding out what happens next(we may never know, as those marvelouslydrawn Latino lovers have, at least fornow, been bumped by gentrified adver-tisements). The central panel in the storyof Brad is a famous painting, Lichtenstein’sMasterpiece (1962), which showsVicki exclaiming over a canvas, of whichwe see Only the back: “WHY, BRAD DAR-LING, THIS PAINTING IS A MASTERPIECE!MY, SOON YOU’LL HAVE ALL OF NEW YORKCLAMORING FOR YOUR WORK!” Beneaththe speech balloon, Brad gazes confidentlyinto the future. And if the paintingVicki alone is privileged to see wereto have become as clamored for as thepainting that shows her prediction, Bradtoday would be a very celebrated artistindeed.I thought of Masterpiece when I sawthe cover of The New York Times Mag-azine for February 26, which showedKlaus Kertess, curator of the 1995 WhitneyBiennial, holding a canvas of whichagain we see only the back, somewhatsmaller than Brad’s and affixed to itsstretcher by means of staples rather thantacks. Kertess 1s wearing a dark shirt withlight pinstripes of the kind that had all ofNew York clamoring for Frank Stella’spaintings in the Brad era. Kertess lookscryptic and I would say glum: The photographerhas said “Smile,” and he hasobliged with a minimal displacement ofhis lips. Just above the canvas is textworthy of Vicki, if we can imagine her ascynical: “The Next 15 Minutes in Art Arein His Hands.” Beneath the canvas is adescription of the story on page 30:“Klaus Kertess and the Making of theWhitney Biennial.’’ The strained smile isno better evidence for the fact that Kertesswas being cooperative in the shootthan is the canvas he holds; it is so muchsmaller than anything likely to have beenin a show made up of works one couldnot hold in one hand, let alone lift withtwo, that the photograph has the qualityof a cartoon. Paintings that size belongperhaps to the Whitney Biennials ofBrad’s first giddy fame, if then. The canvasindeed is of the dimension one mightencounter on Bellport Lane in Bellporton July Fourth, when artists come fromfar and wide to sell oil paintings ofwharves, bouquets, beguiling dogs,bowls of fruit, old salts. It is not the kindof art all New York clamors for.The conditions are inplace for curatorialreputation to exceedartikts’ mown.There is another way to Interpret thedisproportion between Kertess and thepainting. The image can be read as an allegoryof the ascent of the curator in thecontemporary art world and the correspondingdemotion of the individual artist.Or, correlatively, it is an emblem ofhow the exhibition has replaced the workas the least un~t of artistic significance.Curatorial ascent has come wlth a transformationin the curator’s role, from thatof care-giver (Latin curatus, derived fromcura, care) to a collection, with primaryresponsibility for preservation, inventory,authentication and acquisition-to thatof organizer of the exhibltlon construedas a creative act. The original concept ofthe curator is captured by the British term“keeper,” as used in such titles as “Keeperof the Queen’s Drawings,” but there IS nosense in which the current concept of thecurator corresponds to that of the keeper,for often the curator has no collection towhich to minister. 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