The Nation. - Department of Government at Cornell University

June 5,1995 The Nation. 807aphorical and then undertakes to justifywhy the work he has chosen is somehowespecially metaphorical, there is a poemby John Ashbery which is. well, a poemby John Ashbery; a chapter by Lynn Tillman,“Reveal Codes, or Life Is a Joke,”from a novel in progress that treats of themalheurs of living in a dirty building ina noisy neighborhood with a man whohas a joke for every occasion; an essay,by the neurobiologist Gerald Edelman,on works of art as wordless metaphorsand the brain as a non-computer, whichit must be left to another occasion to discusscritically. Only the essay by JohnHanhardt, who was responsible for thevideo art in the show, bears any resemblanceto traditional catalogue writing.Meanwhile, one approaches the sectionof texts through a suite of interestingphotographic images: a woman’s handholding a pencil and resting on her tattooedarm; an aerial view of Manhattan;what appear to be survivors of an acci-dent gazing on some not so lucky; abranch of coral; a collection of wheels orperhaps gyroscopes; what looks like atantric pair in fornication intense enoughto require a bit of support from obligingassistants; the Tower of Babel as shownin an old engraving; and, finally, theWhitney Museum itself as, I suppose, theBabel of today. Kertess’s text is titfed“Postcards From Babel,” and it is clearthat this is the way he sees the show-adiffuse sampling from the art world asBabel. And I suppose the implication isthat if indeed the art world LS that, anyselection that implied a greater orderwould be a misrepresentation.Still, postcards imply sites and sights.While there is no question that whatKertess has chosen to send us as images,along with a cheery “Having a great time.Wish you were here,” records stops alongthe winding ramp of the great old towerof incoherence, the question remains, asit always must with the single curator,whether this tells us something aboutBabel or something about him. There is,for example, a fair amount of what 1 thinkof asfrn desiecle sexuality-sexuality Inthe mode of Aubrey Beardsley’s Underthe Hilt or The Story of Venus and Ennhauser,though of course in the mediumof photography rather than drawing, andin the contemporary world a flamboyantway of having safe sex-a lot of touching,cross-dressing, body-piercmg andtattooing, and erotic ritual. Among thedark glossy images of Nan Golden’sBkyo be,for example, a man, seeminglybound with red velvet ropes, prostrateshimself before a woman wearing blackfishnet stockings, whom we saw in anothershot wearing a shiny red plastic penis.Catherine Opie shows a self-portraitnaked to the waist, wearing a leatherS&M mask, enough pins stuck in her toequip a team of acupuncturists, and atattoo reading PERVERT (which may ormay not be real-who knows in this ageof computer enhancement?) across herchest. Alongside the generous helping ofsexuality, there is a lot of frivolity, someof it spectacular. Most of what we see fitsunder the three categories of frivolity,sex and quiet painting. So we are a longway indeed from 1993, when everythingfit pretty much under the one categoryof hortatory multicultural politics. Buthow close are we in fact to the Americanart world of 1995? The lesson of twoyears ago was that simply having seriousTHE ECLIPSEThe first time I played golfwas the afternoon of the partial eclipsein Nashville, Tennessee. I had justreturned from school with my degree,and my father chose to acknowledgemy maturity by standing me drinksat the close of our nine-hole round.My golf game is a loss in memory,a stroke sliced so far wide, my eyecan’t follow; I hear the pond gulp.But I remember the one o’clock eclipse,how when I stepped from the housethe clear sky unexpectedly darkened.The air turned cool in the animal silence.And I noticed under the tall shrubswhere shadows of the oval leavesmet and parted, a thousand dancingmoon-shaped suns shifting and dividingas the air shuffled the stiff leavesand a thousand foci blinked and stared.I called the others out to show them.Moments after the display had vanished,I remember I remained entranced.I saw eclipses everywhere. My car eclipsedthe family car, the house across the streeteclipsed the hill that stood above It,tall irises ecllpsed the box, andevery object rose to obscure another.themes does not ipso facto make seriousart. The lesson of today is that not havmgserious themes does not Ipso facto makeserious art either.Are there any masterpieces for whichall New York will be clamoring? 1 thoughtthe mural-sized photograph by Jeff Wallwas mysterious and worth viewlng, andin truth I remain haunted, as I almost alwaysam, by Nan Golden’s unflinchingphotography of the sexual underground.I would keep my eye out for Nicole Eisen-man for her impudence and fun. The hitof the show is a wall-painting just by theentrance to the museum’s restaurant,which shows her painting on a wall amidthe ruins of a Whitney Museum demolishedas completely as the federal build-ing in Oklahoma City. Various figures arebeing carted away on stretchers, andMy father joined me carrying his clubs,and we went. But on the way, all buildings,cars, trucks, signs, and trees, held orbitsthat met and overlapped. The golf swlng, too,caused an eclipse, and the sinking balleclipsed the cup. Nothlng seemed safe,that afternoon, from apparent loss.Joseph Chaney