Wednesday, I visited the Whitney Biennial for the second time. I hoped to like it more, and since seeing it last month, I’ve read the catalogue. The Whitney is a fine, essential place. It’s less of a museum of heritage worth preserving than a contemporary art gallery. Life, like love, is a many-splendored thing. It follows that life, love, and art of any given era will sometimes stink, too, and we take the bad with the good.
Even Better Than the Real Thing, this year’s Biennial, doesn’t have much of either, which might be the reason it seems more coherent. Or, to be more precise, the curators deserve praise for making so much incoherence flow. The show is smaller, covering only 44 artists in the galleries and a few more who performed in one-off productions or made films shown in a separate film series. Even Better is attractively, rhythmically arranged. Most of it fills two floors. There’s a harmonious balance among video spaces, sculpture galleries, terraces with art, and paintings.
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