On Art

...The Whitney, in its standard response to such complaints, contended that it was not making value judgements but simply presenting an impartial survey of "what's going on" in American art...

...Other efforts include reconstructions of the familiar: railroad ties, an industrial chute, a mill pond with water wheels, a super-realistic two-story house with porch—all derived from the Minimal concept...

...For people who drive mainly in altitudes over 4,000 feet we offer a special high-altitude package, including a larger engine, to ensure satisfactory performance...

...GM dealers have cars that you can take for a test drive...

...The exhibit breaks down into themes: sculpture that derives from architectural and industrial forms...

...This advertisement is part of our continuing effort to give customers useful information about their cars and trucks and the company that builds them...

...That's the nice part of energy conservation...

...Despite these considerations, the Biennial has a good deal to offer that is astonishing, pleasurable, perplexing and, of course, outrageous...

...However, to get the most out of any GM engine, follow the maintenance schedule in the GM Owner's Manual...

...These horses summon up.feelings of despair, degradation and futility...

...The present Biennial's mixture of much that is exquisite, stimulating and enjoyable with much that is difficult and unpleasant probably assures that the controversy over the event will continue, even if it now takes a somewhat different direction...

...The fourth floor is for the most part cool, cerebral and meticulously fabricated...

...Lois Lane, who appeared in the recent Whitney show of New Image Painting and seemed to me then self-indulgent and innocuous, has a painting here that is arresting and memorable...

...It is a black canvas, interrupted by a slim silver column through the center with a small silver-colored greyhound precariously perched on top...

...The geographic range of the film and video entries is much wider...

...But each facade reveals a little surprise—an open, see-through grid, an unexpected incline, a sudden stepped-back extension...

...The familiar Minimal and Geometric painters are also on hand: Robert Mangold with pictures that resemble problems in Geometry II...

...works that combine words and pictures...

...Viewing them, I became suddenly aware that no one ever laughs out loud—or even smiles—in an art museum...

...with a small trailer or pulling a heavy boat...

...A short while ago, however, these exhibitions started coming in for severe trouncings...

...A few observations about these goals and preparations should be made...

...Among the fourth-floor creations devoted to the human figure are Gregory Gillespie's Self-Port rait in super-realist trompe l'oeil technique...

...For much of that time it was a prestigious event, and any artist invited to participate was regarded as having "arrived...

...Lane suggests a tension and vulnerability that reaches beyond the simple composition...

...This concoction makes our New York subway graffiti look like an exercise in restraint and good taste...

...Finally, I am sick to death of the Jonathan Borofsky narcissistic school that encourages artists to scrawl their dreams and fantasies on the walls of museums...

...1 could not, for instance, appreciate the paintings that imitate weavings and fabric patterns, because nothing I've ever seen in this mode approaches the decorative beauty of primitive motifs, folk patterns and the best of commercial designers...

...There are some reasons for choosing larger, optional engines: if you intend to carry six passengers and luggage with any frequency, if you intend to haul a trailer over 1,000 pounds, and if you expect to drive often in hilly terrain...

...In the midst of this sobriety, we encounter two zany ceramic heads by Robert Arneson that are a commentary on heroic statuary...

...decorative, patterned and repeated motif paintings...

...The combination story and picture paintings are particularly loathsome—either selfconsciously cute to the point of being cloying or boring...

...Finally, your own sense of how a car should "feel" must be the deciding factor...

...She works on vellum, a semitransparent surface...

...And history, we know, is capricious with art movements and reputations...

...The incredulous Captain Ace has just had an egg laid on his helmet by a chicken (or turkey...

...General Motors People building transportation to serve people...

...Because more and more artists are now emerging from their lofts carrying ever larger works, a comprehensive show of current American art has become impossible...

...Still, not everything on the third floor is disturbing...

...Decide for yourself...

...Michael Singer's First Gate Ritual Series is a graceful cradle-like construction of low-slung interlaced wooden horizontals, surrounded by tall, attenuated verticals...

...The animals are built life-size, on a steel armature, with chicken wire, twigs, mud, paper pulp, hog's hair and hay...

...Here we find highly personal explorations with new forms, images and materials...

...The effect is of a loom or harness—something imminently mobile that could be stirred into motion by a touch of the hand...

...It is an engine that provides enough acceleration to merge safely with traffic when entering a freeway, enough pick-up to cross a street quickly after heeding a stop sign, and in most models, even enough power to haul a trailer weighing up to 1,000 pounds...

...Incidentally, the sculpture in the Biennial, as well as in other recent exhibitions, reveals a new interest in hand-wrought shapes and in natural materials like wood, clay, rope, and bricks...

...To the Whitney's credit, the displays have been arranged with great discretion...

...And remember, please, that small engines are as durable as large engines only if you give them the same care...

...Since we redesigned almost all our cars to make them lighter and more efficient, the power-to-weight theory enables us to move them with smaller engines that use less gas...

...Mid-size cars, luxury cars, and redesigned compacts to be introduced this spring follow the same pattern...

...new approaches to imagery...

...Take that test drive...

...Another ambitious and formidable work, by Deborah Butterfield, consists of a pair of horses...

...The power-to-weight theory holds true no matter how you intend to use your car: city, highway or suburban driving...

...It is painted, scrawled on and spattered with a mixture of media from pure paint to silver glitter...

...These are surely not great art, but they are fun...

...CUSTOMER INFORMATION FROM GENERAL MOTORS HOW TO CHOOSE THE RIGHT SIZE ENGINE BIGGER ISN'T NECESSARILY BETTER IN NEW, MORE EFFICIENT GM CARS...

...her marks are simple diagonals and arcs made with colored pencils...

...I suppose this trend has two wellsprings: It is a rebellion against the Modernist manifesto that the painter must never violate the flat picture plane...

...It helps, too, that each artist is represented by more than a single piece...

...Standard engines cost less than bigger, optional engines and get better gas mileage, especially in city traffic...

...the transitions are smooth and the disparate ideas do not intrude on one another...

...lL f the fourth floor of the Whitney is the scene of rationality and high form, on the third floor it's no-holds-barred...

...Jackie Ferrara's Trids?slender oblong blocks of polished pine—are deceptively simple structures resembling models of buildings and have a pristine beauty...

...with two passengers or six...

...These works focus our attention on the commonplace because we confront them out of their usual context, and in a space that is out of proportion to their usual environment...

...the second head, similarly macho, is anointed with bird droppings...

...Whether intentional or not, the artist tells us something about ourselves, and hers is the only work in the show that does (with the possible exception of the film and video selections, which I was not able to view...

...Perhaps "fashionable" would be more accurate than "important...

...But I am certain the Whitney Biennials will endure, for they do provide us with an opportunity to visit the wildest reaches of artists' minds...

...The lighter the car, the less power it takes to move it...

...Pop Art and Photo Realism, for example, have already lost their charm, and many once-celebrated artists are mere ghosts today...

...Other artists, too, have been projecting their paintings into three dimensions...

...You can get good performance from a full-size GM car under most conditions with a six-cylinder or a small eight-cylinder engine instead of a larger optional V8...

...Literally and figuratively "off the wall," it consists of an arrangement of cut-out shapes—squares, rectangles, French curves, and free forms—that are attached to a metal grid protruding from the wall...

...Even so, our honest advice is to buy the smallest engine that fits your taste and needs...

...We charge more for optional engines...

...That's the most important thing to know when you're trying to decide what engine to order for your car...

...second, it is a retaliation against sculptors who have taken to painting their constructions...

...In addition, the experiments with materials—rope, cotton, modeling paste, linoleum—produce enormously irritating textures...

...and the deadpan head and figure studies by respectively, Alex Katz and Philip Pearl-stein, who continue to be more concerned with shapes, patterns and arrangements of forms in space than with humanistic themes...

...You'll save money when you buy your car, and in most cases, you'll save money on gas for as long as you own it...

...Only history, after all, can decide what will be influential and enduring...

...So this year, we have been told, the Whitney has narrowed its objective: The Biennial is presenting the most "important and provocative" American painting, sculpture, film, and video produced since 1977 (through April 1), and the curators have traveled across the United States in search of material to insure an ail-American flavor...

...A few years back the concentration was on machine-made structures of steel, aluminum and plastics that gave little hint of the artist's hand...

...Further, the Whitney's use of the word "important" to describe its selections seems to me debatable...

...Stella, who is known for his meticulous, heraldic paintings of chevron-and-protractor-shaped canvases, is not alone in this imperialist invasion of the sculptor's space...

...The result is such a perfect amalgam of materials and structure that you can almost smell the animals...

...There is no difference in durability between standard and optional engines...

...One of the most provoking pieces on the third floor is by Frank Stella...

...Yet her arrangement and overlays of squares, rectangles and triangular shapes create an interplay of light and patterns that is energetic and exalted, like a Bach fugue...

...Drive the same model with a standard and an optional engine, if the dealer has "demonstrators" with both configurations...

...First, the curators' claim to a broad geographic representation notwithstanding, almost all the painting and sculptures—except for a few pieces from California, Texas and Chicago —are not only from New York, but there is a particularly heavy concentration of artists affiliated with certain outri galleries in Soho...

...Brice Mar-den with a variation on flat panels of color (they are slightly convex in relation to the wall), Sol LeWitt's wall painting in red, yellow, blue, and black with a superimposed grid...

...objects concerned with private mythology...

...Critics, artists and the public alike began to loudly deplore the Museum's choices, arguing that the curators preferred quirkiness to quality and were committing sins of omission...

...You're the driver...

...Mary Frank and Robert Graham fragment the figure in their sculpture, though Frank works out of a spontaneous sensibility with unglazed clay, while Graham's cast bronze pieces are classically wrought and painted...

...In this group the drawings of Dorothea Rockburne are the smallest in size and the richest in visual pleasure...

...lb help you choose an engine, we designate one as standard for every model...

...Unfortunately, there are trouble spots for me...

...pieces exploring new materials...