What is the current state of visual art in Maryland? What is important and not so important work, and to whom? What is the work saying about our time and what does it offers to the average person? If we can step away from the ping-pong game of personal preferences and agendas and wrestle with an overview, what emerges can be a vital glimpse into the dilemma and hopes of the human condition, unpacked along the sliding scale quadrants of communal, social and world perspectives. Regions vary greatly, yet all share common ground.
These kinds of perspectives are sometimes best revealed through large regional shows. Even so, it is always a question of who curates the show and what their political agendas are. These days, more and more curators are more interested in their careers and the look of the show than in presenting an eclectic range of what is truly happening in a region. Life is short. The art world is vast.
There is a fascinating study in contrast between a new venue being presented by the University of Maryland University College and the recent Sondheim Prize at the Baltimore Museum of Art. They are in general, a universe apart in intention, scope, craftsmanship, morals and cultural values. It is too easy for the insiders of the art world to downplay this new venue, with its emphatic focus upon traditional painting, the figure and gifted craftsmanship as being past tense and without any cutting edge towards art history (or a curatorial career). After all, when one considers the vast ocean of cutting edge art theory, books and essays of the past few decades which seek the unfolding of art history, it is very easy to buy into those often controversial perspectives. Therefore, is controversy more highly esteemed than integrity, or God forbid, actual talent? Even so, for this show, nothing could be further from the point.
As a mirror to the American economy, art world trends have generally focused upon sales bolstered by the right connections and collections, the cult of the personality, hype, speed, glitz and a host of other factors that have less to do with the actual art and more to do with insider networking. Take Jeff Koons as an extreme example. It is doubtful there is a more collected, celebrated and controversial artist on planet Earth, who built his career stealing the ideas of other artists. Even now, he rarely touches his own work. The point is, his ilk represents a polarity that has brazenly claimed to represent an ethic, if you will, that is a mirror of the international/American soul. Well, folks, we are face down in the stinking mud of a collapsing economy built upon enormous lies and greed. Perhaps we need to rethink our values in art as well. Home base is always the place to consider.
This first Biennale offers a refreshing course in visual pleasure and a celebration of simply being human without any three second conceptual zingers. There is little if any posturing, almost no art world pretensions and quite a bit of gifted work that offers a warm, thoughtful, often humble presence that continues to unfold after several viewings. Some will dismiss this biennale as being a provincial kind of survey, and in an international sense, there is truth to that, especially for the New York obsessed. But that perspective has no internal bearing here. This show is not about inflated egos or hot resumes. The work oscillates around the central issue missing from so much cutting edge art- the love and reverence of life.
That simplicity and quiet clarity comes from a place of integrity that is more authentically American than much of the blue chip art we overvalue these days. At this biennale, the President’s Best of Show Award went justifiably to Jo Israelson’s Dovecote: 365 Prayers for Peace. Poignant and to the point about the personal losses and devastation resulting from our overseas wars, the work gracefully delivers a much needed voice curiously lacking in the Sondheim. Politics in art these days are too often delivered like a blunt club. Not so here. This burnt offering of ceramic doves, wire mesh, sound and cinders grieves and hopes in the same breath.
A serene peace was beautifully manifested in Andrei Kushnir’s oil on canvas: Potomac Riverscape. This is landscape painting at its most conventional and its most timeless self. Does it break any rules? Gladly, not a one. Instead, this gifted painting offers up authentic joy and grace with a sensitive air that appeals and reveals the hunger in our own souls. It is the kind of resonant mirror the burnt and the cynical are blind to.
So too with Helen Glazer’s sweeping Angler Panorama 2. This extraordinarily well crafted pastel airscape soars atmospherically to the edge of space. It sings of a Presence easily missed by those only considering the beauty of the image. It is a deceptively familiar, near perfect visionary mirror that expands far beyond the artist’s technical statement. How often are we offered up a place outside of time and location- outside of the mud in the valley? In its transient, fleeting nature as an abstract image, it allows the viewer enormous access to dream, to bring in one’s own soul and inhabit a spiritual sense where flesh and bone vanish in the fire of being. There is ample space to move and breathe.
The show is well worth visiting. It stands in contrast to much of the culture wars that overwhelm our media these days. We are often fed toxic spin posing as fact as we dash about, too mesmerized by the head rush of technical effects and fads. Are we so numbed by endless transgressions as a culture that we cannot dive below the surface and come back to the core issues of why we make and value art in the first place? Witness the blatant stupidity, gore, horror and devastation in our movies and TV programs, where lustful humor has withered to a petty meanness that routinely tramples virtuous living as stupid or ignorant.
Art is a powerful tool for change and cultural continuities. We need to cultivate hope these days and return to a sense of value and foundational truth that does not operate out of a run-away political correctness that allows for everything to proceed as being equally legitimate. We would do well to heed the repeated lessons of history. Consider the art that was being made at the collapse of the Roman Empire. It eerily resembles our own. Which side are we on?
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