On Thursday, I wrote about artist Jeffrey Gibson’s exhibition at the American Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Gibson — the artist who represents the U.S. at the prestigious, much-visited Biennale — is driven by aesthetics, money, and, since the federal government does the selecting, politics, though of a soft-core variety. In walking through Gibson’s radiant though facile pavilion, I sensed the zeitgeist, or, better, the “spirito dei tempi” unfolding at home. American politics is in the air, everywhere.
There’s politics and political art, which, like all art, can fall into categories of the good, the bad, the ho-hum, and the heinous. There’s nothing wrong with that. Politics is part of life, though political art tends to concern transitory topics that don’t stand the test of time. Then there’s art about civics, which overlaps with political art but treats the subjects of citizenship and how citizens, government, and politics commune. It’s how we deal as individuals with matters, not all of them problems, of common concern among people who aren’t family and friends. That art can be about fundamentals.
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