Word: whitney
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...this struggle for the soul of American art is mapped in all its fitful chaos in the Whitney Museum's mammoth, frenetic show, "The American Century: Art and Culture 1950-2000," part two of a yearlong survey, on view through Feb. 13. The first installment of the retrospective, covering 1900 to 1950, was all about American artists striving to find their identity in the shadow of European masters--and finally making the leap with the figure-breaking canvases of Pollock. The sequel shows the rampantly imaginative shattering of that identity from Pollock onward, shuttling at high speed between the spiritually...
Hundreds of works are on view, all of the Whitney's rooms and corridors crammed with pieces dating from AbEx to those practically yanked off the walls of today's downtown galleries. Yet nowhere is the primal battle pitted so bluntly as in the opening salvos on the top two floors of the show. First is Pollock's Number 27 (1950), its swooping marks scraping away the recognizable shapes of the world, implying in the skeins of paint a web of pure energy, limitless and deep. Its yellows and pinks, its muted greens and blacks are autumnal; a pure buzz...
...clear who she thinks won the struggle for the soul of that art. Despite a token gallery or two thrown in at the end of the show that seem little more than a grab bag of hot names in the '90s, the real finale to the Whitney's survey comes just before these rooms...
DIED. BENNO SCHMIDT, 86, pioneer venture capitalist, health-policy adviser to several Presidents and father of former Yale president Benno C. Schmidt Jr.; in New York City. A J.H. Whitney partner, Schmidt backed risky start-ups, including Minute Maid orange juice--which he at first deemed "tinny" in taste...
...most contemporary art making in all media," or so say their brochures. Despite the silly analogy, the List Center is impressively cutting-edge, showing artists like Kiki Smith, Ann Hamilton and Matthew Barney. The new director, Jane Farver, was selected as one of the six curators for the next Whitney Biennial: the exhibition program here has credibility to spare...