Jori Finkel explores the shifting territory that exists between art fairs and biennials.
Dating back at least to the time of Jackson Pollock in the 1940s, the Whitney Biennial—then an annual exhibition—has had notable powers as a market maker. When it releases its list of artists for each edition, the burden of cultural curiosity shifts for many of us. The question “Why should I know this artist?” becomes “Why don’t I know this artist?” And if anyone on the list lacks a New York gallery, chances are they will land one before the show closes.
As art and art-exhibition historian Bruce Altshuler points out, biennials today serve similar marketing functions as the juried Salon exhibitions of 19th-century France, where catalogues published the addresses of artists so people could buy works directly from them.
But something peculiar is happening on the way to the marketplace. When Pollock was first featured in 1946, the Whitney survey was a showcase for American painting or sculpture, depending on the year. These days, despite or because of its own commercial power, the biennial is flaunting less marketable or flat-out anti-market art: performance, poetry, sound art and other non-objects that are defiantly hard to buy and sell... Keep reading on The Art Newspaper
Dating back at least to the time of Jackson Pollock in the 1940s, the Whitney Biennial—then an annual exhibition—has had notable powers as a market maker. When it releases its list of artists for each edition, the burden of cultural curiosity shifts for many of us. The question “Why should I know this artist?” becomes “Why don’t I know this artist?” And if anyone on the list lacks a New York gallery, chances are they will land one before the show closes.
As art and art-exhibition historian Bruce Altshuler points out, biennials today serve similar marketing functions as the juried Salon exhibitions of 19th-century France, where catalogues published the addresses of artists so people could buy works directly from them.
But something peculiar is happening on the way to the marketplace. When Pollock was first featured in 1946, the Whitney survey was a showcase for American painting or sculpture, depending on the year. These days, despite or because of its own commercial power, the biennial is flaunting less marketable or flat-out anti-market art: performance, poetry, sound art and other non-objects that are defiantly hard to buy and sell... Keep reading on The Art Newspaper