LONDON
On a recent Tuesday in Washington, the Corcoran Museum held the members' preview of "Closer to Home," its 48th biennial survey of contemporary American creativity. Hundreds of fashionably dressed patrons mingled amid an elegant, appealing spread of recent art. There were several rooms of colorful oil paintings, mildly aggressive on the surface but basically cheery underneath, as well as various suites of tastefully intriguing videos and photographs and computer-generated prints.
Two days later and an ocean away, London's Institute of Contemporary Arts, one of the world's oldest venues dedicated to vanguard creativity, launched its sixth annual "Beck's Futures" exhibition of emerging British art. That opening included visitors in every kind of denim, from high-end to threadbare, as well as one bare-chested man in a glam rocker's spandex suit. The raucous crowds ranged from almost-sober to fall-down drunk, and some might say the same about the art. It included a "performance" in which naked amateurs acted out the medieval tale of the temptation of Saint Anthony. (An unwritten rule: It isn't performance art unless you see a breast or two.) There was also a live, ongoing "installation" that involved asking a gallery attendant to read a piece of utopian fiction written by William Morris in 1890 -- or at least to keep a finger in the book as he watched over the exhibition's other art.
"The Way Out," a video by Luke Fowler and Kosten Koper, goes in some curious directions.
(The Modern Institute, Glasgow)
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I'm not sure which was the better show.
The Corcoran's was no doubt a more pleasant experience. But it didn't feel like anything more than an unusually good day out at the galleries of Manhattan: It was full of attractive work that only rarely posed a challenge.
The London show sometimes made you squirm, and often made you yawn, and mostly made you grind your teeth or scratch your head. But there was at least some sense that it was trying to resist the corporate status quo. There was also a sense that the alternatives it offered failed.
Maybe it doesn't matter which show was better or worse. What's interesting is the two poles they represent.
"Beck's Futures" is named after the German brand of beer that sponsors it. The show presents a bunch of young or unknown artists -- six, this time around, but more in most past years -- whom an expert jury nominates as finalists. After the artists' work is up for a month or so, the jurors name one of them as winner of a prize worth about $40,000.
The exhibition offers a handful of emerging artists a modest alternative to the overheated market for British art. In the 1990s, that market made superstars of shark-embalmer Damien Hirst and his fellow YBAs -- the "Young British Artists" who are now among the wealthiest artists on the planet.
In the "Futures" catalogue, ICA exhibitions director Jens Hoffman rails against that recent British past. He condemns the need for "a rhetoric of sensation that fits so neatly with the desires of market forces, sponsor branding, and even the [non-profit] institution's reputation as a scout for the latest trends." He brands the art scene's love of novelty "a desire to fantasize about future possibilities that emerges from an inability to confront the pressing questions and problems of our present." Then he launches a final tirade against "the most profoundly disturbing alignment between art and commerce in the market-affirming, object-based practice of the YBAs."
It's hard to imagine many American curators lashing out like that, since they tend to work hand-in-glove with dealers and collectors.
It's not that they've sold out. Or even that they're actively complicit with market forces. Making money has such clear cultural authority in the United States that it goes almost unquestioned. If an artist's work gets picked up by one of the right, tastemaking dealers and sells to the right, well-informed rich people, then it is by definition "good." And since, on average, the market prefers relatively tame and stylish art, that's what, on average, ends up filling American museum exhibitions. (Of course, there are exceptions.)
In Europe, Hoffmann and the jurors of the latest "Futures" exhibition seem to prefer art that is, in his words, "too discrete, opaque, or conceptual to fit the demands of the society of the spectacle." But when that society, and its markets, have already anointed sharks in formaldehyde and an unmade bed (the former property of YBA Tracey Emin) as eminently salable commodities, you have to go pretty far to find potent opacity and defiant concepts.
For now at least, all we seem to be getting is a rebellious roar without much substance behind it. Or not even a roar. More like a lethargic whine.
A lot of the work in "Beck's Futures" has a mildly punk-rock quality that doesn't so much attack the status quo as give it a tired middle finger. It's like the Sex Pistols, only on valium.
An "aesthetic of ugliness" has been a standby of modern art at least since Picasso's day, but that's not where most of the artists in this exhibition want to go. They prefer to forge an aesthetic of the merely lame.
A video called "The Way Out," by finalist Luke Fowler working in collaboration with someone named Kosten Koper, is a tribute to Xentos Jones, described as a latecomer to punk music and film. Or not quite a tribute, since that implies some kind of articulate brief in a subject's favor. "The Way Out" is a haphazard collage of bits and pieces of material more or less related to its hero -- who may not even exist. It's clear that several of the tribute's talking heads are making things up as they go, and you wonder whether Jones himself might be as specious as the talk that's spun about him. (One movie critic drawls that the glorious "timbre" of Jones's work in film is like "a bell ringing in a distant lavatory.")
That naked performance built around the temptation of Saint Anthony was the work of artist Lali Chetwynd. It looked like a piece of experimental theater by a high school drama club, working on the fly and on a shoestring. The set was made of raw cardboard, and scene changes were a giggly muddle. The story, and its symbolism, were inchoate in the extreme. (Chetwynd's pseudo medieval drama included appearances by heavy-metal rockers as well as references to personal-finance counseling.)
A 10-minute film by Daria Martin shows us a young magician teaching card tricks to a hopeless female apprentice, as a three-tier Lazy Susan made of glass spins their discards into abstract patterns. Everything about the work -- sets, makeup, lighting, editing, narrative (such as it is) -- feels entirely offhand and amateur.
The sloppiness in all this art is clearly deliberate. It involves a rejection of the serious and the polished -- of brains or looks or passion. It favors instead a goofy, almost adolescent acting out. Where Europe's artistic radicals once advocated bomb-throwing anarchy, this latest crop seem to settle for the listless shooting of spitballs.
This makes their work an interesting contrast to well-mannered American art and its gracious courtship of the well-heeled few.
But not much of an antidote.
The winner of the "Beck's Futures" prize will be announced on April 26. The exhibition continues in London through May 15, before moving to Glasgow. Visit www.ica.org.uk.
