Three Blind Mice: Fairs, Festivals, Expositions

The Art Show, The Art Dealers Association of America, Seventh Regiment Armory, New York, February 19-23, 2004. Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, March 11-May 30, 2004. The Armory Show, Piers 90 & 92, New York, March 12-March 15, 2004. -ScopeNew York 2004, Hotel Gansevoort, March 12-15. Fibbergibbet and Mumbo Jumbo: Kara E. Walker in Two Acts, Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, March 26-August 14, 2004. Fred Wilson: Objects and Installations, Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, April 26-July 4, 2004. New Directors/New Films, Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art, March 24-April 4, 2004, Tribeca Film Festival, New York, May 1-9, 2004.

Springtime in a Small Town is the title of Tian Zhuangzhuang's stylish remake of a classic 1948 Chinese film; though shown at the New York Film Festival in 2002, it finally received an American theatrical release in May of 2004. Yet that title might be appropriate to the art and film events of the first six months of 2004 in New York City, because these seemed to take place in such enclosed environs that the art and film worlds might just as well have been a small town.

Take, as the first example, the Art Dealers Association of America's Art Show in the Park Avenue Armory in February. Walking through the partitioned hall, there were innumerable delights: a superb edition of Goya etchings, a series of energetic small John Chamberlain metal sculptures, marvelous vintage photographs. Everything, in fact, except anything really challenging or outlandish, and nothing too trendy, too fashionable, too up-to-the-minute. The feeling of The Art Show was one of safety, and that tepidness was so pronounced that the remarkably high quality of the art finally exerted the spell of narcolepsy. (Not surprisingly, Hilton Kramer absolutely loved the show in The New York Observer; his praise was the death knell, showing how decrepit his critical faculties have become, because he can only work up true enthusiasm when he's lathering with bile: to show critical insight into works he believes to be of high quality, he can't do any more than exhibit insights which are hackneyed and platitudinous.) The Art Show was a snooze, because it didn't show us anything we didn't already know.

The safe, tepid, sleepy Art Show was a prelude to the security blanket offered by this year's Whitney Biennial. This year, the Biennial (dubbed "the show the art world loves to hate" by Kim Levin of The Village Voice) turned out to be the most critically acclaimed Biennial in memory. Curated by Chrissie Iles, Shamim M. Momin, and Debra Singer, this Biennial showed what the active young curator had been seeing. Over one hundred artists and/or artist collaborative groups had works in the exhibition; because Chrissie Iles was the senior curator in the group, and the curator of film and video at the Whitney, you might have expected a heavy emphasis on media (film, video, audio and installation), but, surprisingly, this wasn't the case. For many critics, the fact that there were so many painters represented (Cecily Brown, Elizabeth Peyton, David Hockney, Laylah Ali, Fred Tomaselli among them) signaled a return to pleasure, hence a welcome addition to the annals of contemporary art. Most critics used the Biennial as a confirmation of their own prescience: Peter Schjeldahl in The New Yorker, for example, loved this Biennial because it proved that he had been right to champion Elizabeth Peyton. But this return to painting had an insidious after-effect. Mel Bochner, once one of the most ornery of conceptual artists, came up with a series of sloganeering paintings which were embarrassingly retrograde; Alex Hay, having amassed a reputation in performance and sculpture, was on display with very fine, very traditional paintings of wood grain. But the net effect of the...