The Carnegie International exhibition in Pittsburgh is America`s oldest survey of contemporary art, and in the last three years it has again become the best.
Founded in 1896, one year after the Venice Biennale, the Carnegie show made its greatest impact at the beginning of the century and in the 1950s. Thereafter, it fell on hard times, having little to say of distinction or relevance.
But with the last installment in 1985, John L. Lane and John Caldwell, respectively director and curator of contemporary art at the Carnegie Institute art museum, set out to revitalize the exhibition. And in a way that no one could have guessed, they succeeded.
The 1985 show was a model of excellence and sound judgment. It proved so good, in fact, that many thought the next International would be hard-pressed to approach it. Yet the effort that opened at the Carnegie earlier this month maintains the same high standard. It is a ”must-see” exhibition for anyone interested in quality.
As before, Lane and Caldwell selected an advisory committee with members from America and Europe. However, during the planning, Lane resigned his post at the Carnegie to become director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and so functioned as another adviser, leaving Caldwell as sole curator.
The committee included Jean-Christophe Amman, director of the Kunsthalle, Basel, and Museum of Modern Art, Frankfurt; Maria Corral, director of the Fundacion Caja de Pensiones, Madrid; Kathy Halbreich, an independent curator from Boston; Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate Gallery, London; and Joan Simon, a critic and an independent curator from New York.
Unlike the other celebrated surveys in Venice and Kassel, West Germany, the International is not large. This time, it presents works of only 39 artists. But because the emphasis again is on excellence rather than a theme or new talent, artists who showed earlier are not excluded.
Caldwell and his advisers thus chose 13 artists from the 1985 exhibition and 26 others. Neither age nor fame was a factor. Most of the work dates from the last three years. Eighteen of the artists created pieces especially for the event. And while the International generally shows work by living artists, this time two of the exhibitors-Andy Warhol and Joseph Beuys-died after having been selected.
Interestingly, the present show occupies more space than any International in history-approximately 40,000 square feet-and extends even to the Parthenon-like Hall of Sculpture in the old building. (The only other difference in installation between 1985 and now is the use of all-white walls, which turned out to be an improvement.)
Much of the work is large in scale, but somber. This is a typical end-of- the-century mood, and the Carnegie`s curator of education, Vicky Clark, makes a case for it in her catalog essay. Yet the tone of the show is still something of a surprise, as we are, after all, only at the end of the `80s.
How to account for it?
The art of our time has been marked by a loss of faith in the modernist endeavor and a gradual turning toward the stuff of life. It would be nice to feel, as our forebears did a century ago, that we have not yet found the language to deal with the new conditions. But that would be dishonest, for now our skepticism is more far-reaching and extends even to the capabilities of language itself.
Artists such as Beuys and Anselm Kiefer show us a terrible legacy, as if to say that, however painful, history can still be a guide. Yet precisely because the legacy is so bleak, it only contributes to uncertainty, the uncertainty at the core of the work by Gerhard Richter and Jannis Kounellis.
Of course, some continue to hold to the values inherent in the modernist enterprise, creating pieces of transcendent beauty and power. But for every Brice Marden, Agnes Martin or Robert Ryman, there are scores of younger artists who grew to maturity on disappointment and thus are critical of both art and life.
Some of these artists take Warhol as a model, though it is not the Warhol shown here, in his late, troubled self-portraits. Meyer Vaisman, Jeff Koons and Peter Halley look more to Warhol the ironist, he who seldom said clearly what he meant and became a seer anyway. They are the great levellers, bringing down the temple of human aspirations with a cackle and a smile.
From Lothar Baumgarten`s ceiling installation of the Cherokee alphabet to Ross Bleckner`s painted memorials for AIDS victims, this is an exhibition about loss. Sometimes it is presented through Symbolist melodrama, as in Katharina Frisch`s sculptural ”Ghost and Pool of Blood.” Sometimes, too, it promises transmutation, as do Sigmar Polke`s ”alchemical” paintings. Yet even when Wolfgang Laib provides a cloister lined with beeswax and Bill Viola`s video installation explores the comfort of sleep, always a demon is nearby.
Not that the organizers planned the exhibition this way. It simply happened. It happened as naturally as their including 12 German artists, who produce work of considerable depth. The issues, like the artists, speak to us. And, by now, eight years into the decade, we know that uncertainty, disappointment, cynicism and loss make up the Zeitgeist, the spirit of the time.
The wonder of the 1985 and 1988 Internationals is that they consistently have presented the artists at their best. Some may feel that Julian Schnabel should not have been included either time or that Vaisman`s, Susan
Rothenberg`s and Rosemarie Trockel`s moments already have passed. Yet the exhibition still holds some of their finest work of the period; in that, there was no mistake.
Especially strong are paintings by Kiefer, Elizabeth Murray, Polke and Gunther Forg; sculpture by Georg Baselitz, Anish Kapoor and Koons; and installations by Giovanni Anselmo, Siah Armajani, Viola and Rebecca Horn (this year`s Carnegie purchase prize winner).
Peter Fischli and David Weiss remain more convincing in their films than their sculpture. Cy Twombly returns to his more familiar abstract style after a brief departure into representational art in Venice. Jeff Wall`s lightbox photograph (of three men making some sort of a deal in a parking lot) has finely honed ambiguity. Susana Solano`s cagelike sculpture again whets the esthetic appetite.
So far, so good. But what the next International will bring is anyone`s guess. Lane resigned from the Carnegie last November and Caldwell will join him in San Francisco next January. Ongoing series of exhibitions inevitably outlast the people who organize them but not always with the same distinction. Perhaps one anecdote will indicate the extent of the present commitment.
Shortly after the last exhibition, Lane and Caldwell travelled across America to ask critics and museum colleagues for suggestions. That, in itself, was unusual. But in their questions they encouraged negative comment.
”What should we have done differently?” they asked. Should the 1988 show be restricted to young artists who came to the fore since 1985. Or would it be better to focus on a particularly vital medium? The answer they received most often was that the exhibition should be done ”exactly the same way as last time.”
Now, the art world is not a generous sphere in which to operate. It has a large share of backbiting, envy and wholesale unkindness. So while a great deal can be said about Lane and Caldwell going out to face the lions, the response they took back with them counts for more.
Let us hope the organizers who succeed them have noted the extent of their achievement and will proceed with as high a degree of confidence.
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The 1988 Carnegie International continues at the Carnegie Museum of Art, 4400 Forbes Ave. in Pittsburgh, through Jan. 22, 1989.
