Who could resist? This week, SITE Santa Fe biennial curator Klaus Ottmann rolls back through town to address "critics and the art public" with a lecture titled "How to Explain Art to a Dead Horse." Now, I try not to chase the bait of trollers, but-gee whiz, Klaus-that sure is a shiny lure of a lecture title.
Ottmann, apparently, intends to speak to issues regarding his biennial,
Still Points of the Turning World
, because, apparently, his biennial has issues. These, we're told, have been generated by "the press" and "the blogosphere" as well as "the general public" (and
here I'm not privy to the difference between the "art" and "general" publics). Press reviews have been slim for Ottmann, as are Internet search results related to any issues the biennial might have, but the public I know has delivered a beating nearly as severe, if not quite so snippy and school girl-ish as that given Ottmann by Washington Post critic Blake Gopnik. But I applaud a guy who realizes that issues, whether his own or those of his major international art exhibition, ought to be talked through, and I adore a dude with a feisty title, so, like the lady says, let's give 'em something to talk about.
A member of an unpopular minority, I like
Still Points
. Meant to remove the idea of a biennial from its common manifestation as a sprawling morass of superstar artists and conceptually bloated curators, it's a calm exhibition with a few off-key notes, a plump midsection of mediocre efforts and one or two tiny glimpses of transcendence. A kind of quietness was intended by the curator and is quixotically achieved. Thus, despite a void of much truly great work,
Still Points
is underscored with a simmer of thoughtful possibility in each visit. It's a wholesome stew that's not spiced well enough to be delicious but is strangely satisfying nonetheless.
I am even willing to defend the borderline dubious idea that the show is predicated in part on the idea that failure is inevitable. Rather than being a Platonic defense against criticism, Ottmann's intent, I believe, is to urge viewers away from the notion of experiencing an infallible masterpiece in the museum environment and toward engaging the process of creation, where not all ideas do or should come to fruition and where a series of small triumphs and small defeats is more human, real and meaningful than a single façade of success or failure. Should people come to relate to such a process inside each work of art, then the gulf between the everyday and the aesthetic will have been pulled narrower. It's a subtle and admirable idea that never quite makes it because, well, the show fails.
Still Points
does not fail because philosophically it must. It does not fail because of its daringly diminutive number of participants or even the riskily high number of fair to middling artworks. Ironically,
Still Points
fails because it lacks the curatorial conceit that Ottmann worked so hard to remove.
He crafted the biennial to celebrate the work of individual artists over the swollen pretensions of the curator-a dynamic perceived as almost endemic to the genre-and to take a stand in favor of modest appreciation against celebrity worship and academic claptrap. But to be robbed of a curator with a strong, if self-aggrandizing, vision is worse, it turns out, than to have to suffer one. Biennials are not, in the end, about appreciating the work of individual artists; they are about using art to engineer and exercise theories that may or may not prove useful, but are grand in aspiration. Ottmann's overt removal of himself from the equation, however, fails to lay down much of a gauntlet and instead comes across as a kind of passive-aggressive curating that leaves the artists in his service confused and uninspired. Creating the simple, proverbial clean, well-lit space for art may have titillated Ottmann's sense of justice and order in the world, but it clearly did little to excite the actual artists. As Wangechi Mutu glibly proves in her installation for Ottmann, if you don't give artists a challenge, they just might dig up some old graduate work and pawn it off as a still point on a turning résumé.
A title like "How to Explain Art to a Dead Horse" reads as a pre-emptive lament for the presumably Promethean struggle Ottmann faces when dealing with critics or bloggers who, armed with jadedness or ignorance or both, are unable to appreciate that their success or failure at critiquing his show is of even less consequence than his own success or failure. It also chimes perilously close to invoking a sort of Klaus clause: That the biennial's merits are determined by the people who pass through its doors and what critics (and maybe even the "art" as opposed to the "general" public) have to say is of little concern or meaning. To invoke futility as a key aspect of an impending lecture is uninviting at best, but thus far Ottmann's strongest moments have been his personal interviews and discussions. His curating is perhaps too oblique or just too bland to resolve the populist desires and pure intent of his biennial vision, but his willingness to engage has been remarkable. It's suggested in the press for "How to Explain Art to a Dead Horse" that a renewed emphasis on the visitor experience may be the legacy of
Still Points
. I cannot think of a more horrifying death for an earnest but troubled experiment. The least all of Santa Fe's armchair (and professional) critics can do is show up and try to make the product of Tuesday's discussion more memorable than a clean lobby, a nice brochure and a friendly docent.
And really, can you resist?
"How to Explain Art to a Dead Horse"
6 pm Tuesday, Dec. 12. $10
SITE Santa Fe, 606 Paseo de Peralta, 989-1199
