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This year, the conceit is "artistic generations."
The 1991 installment of the Biennial Exhibition lately opened at the Whitney Museum of American Art surveys the aesthetic landscape of the last two years in the work of 70 painters, sculptors, photographers and installation artists. For the first time in a decade, the entire building has been turned over to the show (which continues through June 16), but the installation has not been guided by essential affinities among individual works of art.
Instead, placement has been determined by the moment the artist first came to prominence: Fifteen who initially gained notice in the 1950s and '60s have had their works installed on the second floor; 26 who emerged in the 1970s and 1980s occupy the third floor; and 29 younger artists, most of whom had their debuts in the late '80s and haven't been included in prior Biennials, will be found on the fourth floor.
As conceits go, divvying things up by generation is not a bad one. Overall, the difference in tone between the "grandparents" on the second floor and the rambunctious "kids" on the top floor is dramatic and inescapable-an Old Masterish assuredness vs. an edgy, exploratory chaos. But, more important, a bold line is drawn under the coexistence, at any given time, of diverse and overlapping communities of artists.
This emphasis on generations speaks subtly but firmly to the present moment. Since the last Biennial, the visual arts have been the much-publicized object of scurrilous attack by assorted hooligans claiming to be the guardians of both righteousness and the public weal. Against these pious minions the Whitney's generational array lines up artists who have persevered from the 1950s to the 1990s-or, shall we say, from the era of Joseph McCarthy to that of Jesse Helms.
Whitney Biennials typically respond to perceived shifts and movements of the art world, as seen from the vantage-point of its capital city. The 1989 installment seemed strangely becalmed, rather like the end-of-the-'80s art world itself, while in 1987 it reflected the high-rolling, high-power gallery scene in New York. Two years before that, it had gone slumming in the then-booming East Village.
This time, the Biennial declares E Pluribus Unum. The show's organizers-Whitney curators Richard Armstrong, Richard Marshall and...