Saturday, March 06, 2010

Gopnik on the Whitney Biennial
"I see hints, at least, that we're a country that just spent something like a trillion dollars and more than 3,000 lives so that a foreign nation's sects can once again be free to bash each other. And I see a country that is still hemorrhaging blood and funds in the fond hope that another foreign nation, dysfunctional and misogynist, can be kept from fully imploding.

Here at home, I see the richest nation in history being so obsessed with getting back to still more growth -- so that the rich among us can have a yet bigger house or plasma screen -- that it won't spend money to rescue a neighbor's health, a crumbling bridge or our children's planet. Most important -- if not in the details of this biennial, then in the overriding spirit of so much of its art -- I also see a country that recognizes that all this is some kind of a problem but feels as though it's powerless to do anything about it -- except take solace in that bigger home or screen."
Not all of it sounds like a Keith Olberman rant; read the rest of the review by the Washington Post's Chief Art Critic here.

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