It’s as if America is no longer the youthful shiny penny it used to be. Well, that would be right. It’s not. And this is the Whitney Biennial that reflects the new world order.

Stephanie Sinclair, Self-Immolation in Afghanistan: A Cry for Help, 2005 Digital print, dimensions variable Collection of the artist; courtesy VII, New York

People–art’s favorite subject–are not beautiful in this exhibit. They are distorted and injured here.

Detail from Lorraine O'Grady's series of paired photos of Charles Baudelaire and Michael Jackson.

Stephanie Sinclair‘s gruesome photos show Afghani women who survived self-immolation. Lorraine O’Grady‘s portrait of Dorian Grey-like photos pair Charles Baudelaire and Michael Jackson as they age. Michael Jackson’s transformation from beautiful young African-American man to the whitened melting flesh of a white-woman-wanna-be is devastating. Baudelaire, for all his own issues, holds up a lot better over time. The themes of grotesque humanity come out in Storm Tharp’s drawings, Nina Berman’s family-album-like photos and Jessica Jackson Hutchins’ ceramic body parts on a sofa.

Bruce High Quality Foundation, We Like America and America Likes Us

The can-do country can’t do when it comes to cultural imperialism. Kerry Tribe‘s video installation about a real-life medical failure and Bruce High Quality Foundation‘s video installation of the American Dream and its cliches in movie clips projected on the windshield of a giant white hearse–both tell the story of our cultural crash.

Marianne Vitale, Patron, 2009

Videos were where the action was in this biennial. Marianne Vitale‘s drill-sargeant harangue, Patron, had me cowering–as intended. The lowly chair in front of the high video is the wayward student’s seat in front of the teacher. Obey your out-of-control government.

from Josephine Meckseper's video Mall of America, where surveillance and commerce meet

And Josephine Meckseper’s Mall of America has a similar message, only the control freak is American commerce and not the government. Franz Kafka’s Amerika comes to mind.

Rashaad Newsome, untitled video of vogue dancer

Rashaad Newsome‘s mesmerizing videos of vogue dancers are beautiful and surprising–at least they were to me. The relationship of the dancers to the camera as well as the stylized dancing were pretty trippy. I’d like to see Sharon Hayes’ “Parole,” over again and in its entirety. Hayes’ installation is a ramshackle enclosure, a sort of transient corral. The videos, which focus on women, were filmed in several foreign cities, and the language had a sense of falling apart. Hayes’ installation is a ramshackle enclosure, a sort of transient corral. The videos, which focus on women, were filmed in several foreign cities, and the language was shifty. Its meaning seemed to fall apart.

Kate Gilmore stars in her own video; so does Hayes star in her own video.

Tearing apart a constrictive room is the action in Kate Gilmore‘s video of her can-do self. And it bears comparison to the constrictive space in which Newsome’s vogue dancers perform. There’s a theme here of an America that is quite different from its own propaganda, an America that has far too long believed its own rhetoric, now proven meaningless.

Ari Marcopoulos, from Detroit, 2009. DVD; 7:32 min. loop.

The noise music video by Ari Marcopoulos shows preteens creating a noise that’s both wonderful and hard to listen to. They are the worm within–invasive threats no doubt to their parents’ peaceful, suburban existence. The parents are the nation. The kids ‘r’ us. This video also stands out for its beautiful, saturated colors.

James Casebere, Landscape with Houses (Dutchess County, NY) #1

Though beauty in the show wasn’t much of a presence, it was there–James Casebere‘s enormous photos of tabletop models of suburbia are beautiful surreal landscapes of a giant social mistake (at least that’s how it looks to me), not that far from the messages of Marcopoulos, Meckseper and Vitale.

Roland Flexner, Untitled, 2008-9, Sumi ink on paper, 5.5 x 7 inches, collection of the artist, courtesy D'Amelio Terras Gallery, NY, from http://www.whitney.org/Exhibitions/2010Biennial/RolandFlexner

Another beautiful great escape from reality is offered by Roland Flexner and his gorgeous, small sumi ink landscapes of the mind. Also, Lesley Vance’s gorgeous, painterly abstracts serve as a reminder of the still-life tradition.

Tam Tran, Battle Cry, 2008. Digital print, 24 x 16 in. (61 x 40.6 cm). Collection of the artist

Tan Tram’s photos of a young boy imagining himself as a superhero seem like the most hopeful works in the exhibit.

Robert Grosvenor, Untitled, 2009. Fiberglass, flocking and aluminum, 48 × 48 × 192 in. (121.9 × 121.9 × 487.7 cm) (red unit); 48 × 312 × 1/2 in. (121.9 × 792.5 × 1.3 cm) (aluminum unit).

The great suburban showdown also expresses itself in sculpture, in Robert Grosvenor’s giant garden feature which ties for my official Tactility Prize along with Piotor Uklanski’s fabulous theatrical burlap hanging, which seems to belong to a different exhibit altogether. While I may not know what it’s doing here, I like it.

Daniel McDonald's allegory of the U.S.' loss of clout, with Michael Jackson paying off Charon to cross him and Uncle Sam across the River Styx.

The catalog of this show is a disappointment–cheap in quality, not in price. But women have a big presence in the show–about 50 percent! Mirabile dictu. All in all, this Whitney Biennial is reading the sign of the times.

In a year when we lost the King of Pop, it’s no surprise that there’s a second Michael Jackson piece in the show. Floating on a pedestal above a glowing dry-ice miasma, Daniel McDonald’s theatrical kitschy sculpture of Jackson in the lobby transitions viewers in and out of the exhibit. Jackson is helping a poor Uncle Sam cross the River Styx by offering the boatman, Charon, a giant shiny copper penny to pay their passage. Jackson holds it up like a shield, but the shiny penny can’t shield any of us from the new world order.

Michael Jackson, group dance in Beat It, very reminiscent of the Jets and Sharks in West Side Story

Keeping Together in Time: Dance and Drill in Human History by historian William H. McNeill talks about the physical and emotional underpinnings of dance and drill and other human synchronous movement. We all love to dance and we fall easily into step with each other when walking; even aerobics classes are satisfying whereas doing aerobics by yourself is odious.  Why is that? McNeill says there’s something in the human bones and psyche that compels us to move together — and then rewards us for doing so. We feel good when moving together with others. There’s a spirit of group cohesion and shared emotion that happens, some pack animal body-and-mind-happiness that occurs.

Marching band stepping together.

Our ancestors learned this, and dancing allowed them to bond. Dancing may even have helped foster language development (chanting being a natural partner with dance). Moving together rhythmically helped Homo Sapiens evolve and dominate the landscape over non-dancing and non-marching species. Governments have corraled group movement for use in the army — Hitler of course abused this human love of mass physical movement with his goose-stepping soldiers and Heil Hitlering citizens.

University of Michigan graduation. Football crowds often do the human wave, another way to move together in time.

In very early times, organized religions allowed group dancing as a way to commune with god. (One of the byproducts of the rhythmic dancing for some people is the onset of a trance state, seen as a direct communication with god.) The Quakers and the Shakers got their names from the group movements associated with their religions according to McNeil.

Mardi Gras, Bourbon Street New Orleans, crowd in unison hoping to get some beads. Far from a mystical religious experience...or who knows, maybe for some it is.

Visual representations of dance, drill and other synchronous movement

Image of a battle in the War of 1812. By Oleg Parhaiev, Russia

McNeill’s book got me thinking about visual representations of dance and drill and about visual repetition motifs in general. And here’s what I think: That even if you’re not physically moving but are observing dance or drill — or are looking at a visual representation in 2-D of dance or drill — the visual image triggers a similar pack-response as your eyes move around the image and pick up the the rhythmic movements  and register them on you.

Fra Angelico. Early religious paintings often repeated motifs like halos and body stances to achieve visual harmony

And while there’s less of a physical response when looking at a 2-D image than there is to looking at a video (after all, there’s no music to enhance the effects), there is still something immediately satisfying when you look at a work with a repeat motif of bodies moving together.

Busby Berkeley movies in the 1930s specialized in images of group motion. This is a still from Footlight Parade.

Popular culture and art both love these movement spectacles. Think of Busby Berkeley (watch video) and the Rockettes; the human wave at college football games; and the standing and singing of national anthems everywhere. Think the Olympic parade and church rituals (Catholic ritual when I grew up was all about standing sitting and kneeling en masse triggered by some unseen signal–all while chanting unknowable Latin words in haunting melodies). In choreographed dance for the stage, especially in musical theatre, often it’s the group numbers that bring the house down.

Breughel's Wedding Dance in a Barn shows a whole town dancing it up.

Certainly artists have always loved making images of synchronous bodies in motion. McNeill’s book has pictures of a Minoan Crete harvester vase from 1500 BC that shows people dancing and singing in time: Medievalists painted legions of angels (and legions of praying sinners) in synchronous harmony; Breughel painted peasants dancing at a wedding; and many artists working for governments have drawn, painted and photographed army battalions in formation.

Sandra Scolnik, painting from the New York art fairs in 2007.

In our day Matthew Barney, one of our age’s great visual image-makers, has a scene of a chorus of dancing girls ala Busby Berkeley in one of his Cremaster films.

Matthew Barney, from the Cremaster series.

Visual representations of repeat patterns

Bruce Pollock, a Philadelphia artist, makes mandala-like paintings.

Mandalas and other abstract art designs with intricate repeat patterns have a similar bodily appeal. Mandalas are used for meditation and can produce calm or trance; Op Art is about provoking a bodily/retinal response of a different kind.  Standing in front of a Bridget Riley painting triggers my flight response.  (For more about Op Art check out this website.)

Edna Andrade was a Philadelphia practitioner of op art.

Jackson Pollock’s works are like melted mandalas.

Jackson Pollock, Number 1, 1950 (Lavender Mist)

One reason that works of abstract repeat patterns like those of Agnes Martin and Brice Marden are popular and have helped spawn an entire universe of artists working in similar fashion is that the works are satisfying to look at and make.

Brice Marden, Marden, Brice, Chinese Dancing, Oil on canvas, 60 x 108 inches, from the UBS collection

I’m not sure why all this fascinates but it seems that there’s a human need for perfection expressed in the desire to move together and make images of repetitive movements.  We know we’re not perfect and maybe this is all a way of saying even though perfection is not possible we can get pretty close with these bodily and emotionally satisfying movements and representations.

Michael Jackson will be remembered as a great and widely imitated mover. Other things about him will be remembered too, but it is amazing how many of them are apparent in his dancing. The sweet boy, the angry dissident and the weirdly glamorous star are all there; and so is the androgyne who gives off conflicting male/female signals in the course of a single number.–Alastair Macaulay

Michael Jackson as his dream self. Image from http://www.starpulse.com/news/index.php/2009/04/15/michael_jackson_auction_called_off

Not only did I think this was an interesting comment. But it also set me thinking. Never before had it occurred to me that a performer or a performance artist is the art, not just a creator of the art. Doh.

Michael Jackson, unfortunately, both got it and got it confused. He knew he was as important as his performance, that he was not just the medium but the message. Alas, however, he decided to improve on what was already excellent, reaching for some strange idea of perfection (the dude had too much money). Carving up his face, bleaching his skin–these are both expressions of self-loathing–and of creation. He makes Cher look like an Sunday painter in the plastic surgery department.

In some sense, every artist who reaches for the stars also seeks to create a perfect expression of themselves. And when the art is performance, the self is subsumed to whatever that performance requires. But Michael Jackson confused his spectacular performing abilities, his perfect dancing and singing and composing, with his face. In the continuation of the bell curve of wrong-headed body art, Jackson was at the extreme, the edge where Chris Burden put bullets through his body. I am puzzled at why this is accepted by anyone as OK.

This is not OK.

I wonder if Jackson’s many-layered new faces are more crazy or less crazy than Marina Abramovic. Does presence of a concept excuse cutting? Or maybe extreme pop reinvention and beauty are worthy concepts in and of themselves?

I am staking a very conservative position here. I can’t go for the cutting.

Maybe if I were a fan, a fan who thought a public figure was my personal friend, I would just embrace all this–after all, if you love the guy, you love him for his very wrong-headedness, accepting the transformation as part of the art and part of the act.

Not me. This wasn’t an act; this wasn’t art. This was desperation and insanity. If I were a fan sort of person, I think I’d fix my adoration on someone who liked themselves a little more.