Art of the 1990S

Art of the 1990s Alexandra Schwartz With contributions by Huey Copeland Jennifer A. González Suzanne Hudson Frances Jacobus-Parker Joan Kee Kris Paulsen Paulina Pobocha John Tain Art of the 1990s montclair art museum in association with university of california press Copyright page text to come Cover: detail of plate 8 Frontispiece: detail of plate 39 Proofreader: Carrie Wicks Typesetter: Tina Henderson Contents 6 Foreword Lora S. Urbanelli 7 Lenders to the Exhibition 9 Chaotic Input: Art in the United States, 1989–2001 Alexandra Schwartz 25 Unfinished Business as Usual: African American Artists, New York Museums, and the 1990s Huey Copeland 35 Costume: Come as You Aren’t Jennifer A. González 45 After Endgame: American Painting in the 1990s Suzanne Hudson 55 As the World Turns in 1990s’ America Joan Kee 65 Ill Communication: Anxiety and Identity in 1990s’ Net Art Kris Paulsen 75 Event Horizons: Gabriel Orozco and the 1990s Paulina Pobocha 85 A Place to Call Home: Artists In and Out of Los Angeles, 1989–2001 John Tain 97 The Exhibition/Plates Alexandra Schwartz 98 1989–1993 130 1994–1997 168 1998–2001 192 Selected Chronology: Art, Culture, and Society in the 1990s Frances Jacobus- Parker 220 Selected Bibliography 223 Acknowledgments Alexandra Schwartz oo Photography Credits 6 Since its founding exactly a century ago, the Montclair Art Museum has been a passionate supporter of contemporary art. When we opened our doors in 1914, works by artists such as Childe Hassam—one of America’s most prominent contemporary painters at the time—hung in the galleries, and since then, MAM has consistently exhibited and acquired recent art. In 2010, we strengthened our commitment with the appointment of our first designated curator of contemporary art, and our subsequent establishment of a new and vibrant contemporary art program. Come as You Are: Art of the 1990s is the largest and most ambitious contemporary art exhibition ever to be mounted by the Montclair Art Lora s. urbanelli Museum. Continuing MAM’s tradition of first-rate scholarship, it spot- Director lights a pivotal moment in the recent history of art. Chronicling the Montclair Art Museum “long” 1990s between 1989 and 2001—from the fall of the Berlin Wall to 9/11—the exhibition examines how the art of this period both reflected and helped shape the dramatic societal events of the era, when the combined forces of new technologies and globalization gave rise to the accelerated international art world that we know today. In so doing, it continues MAM’s long-standing commitment to the study and exhibition of socially engaged art. We are proud that Come as You Are will tour nationally in 2015–16, traveling to the Telfair Museums, the University of Michigan Museum of Art, and the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin; we are also honored to co-publish this major catalogue with the Univer- sity of California Press. It has been a pleasure and a privilege collaborat- ing with these institutions and their staff, and we thank them all for their enthusiastic partnership in this project. Come as You Are: Art of the 1990s is made possible with generous support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and Fur- thermore: a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund. Additional support is provided by Sarah Peter. We would like to thank Alexandra Schwartz for bringing this fresh historical perspective to one of the most vibrant, chaotic, and difficult periods in recent history, and for her wonderful work as MAM’s first curator of contemporary art; MAM’s staff for their extraordinary work on the design, installation, and execution of all sides of Come as You Are; and our Board of Trustees for their dedication and support of this exhibition and our new contemporary art program more generally. Without the determined grace, generosity, and vision of Carol and Terry Wall, and the long-held passion and energy of collectors Ann and Mel Schaffer, MAM’s contemporary program could not have taken hold. All of us on the staff and board are deeply grateful for their dedication to this mission. We are also indebted to the many lenders to the exhibition for their generosity; to the galleries who assisted with details large and small; and last but certainly not least, we are all here to celebrate the artists themselves, who create for us the profound insight and historical reflec- tion that only the arts can provide. 7 Lenders to the Exhibition 1301PE Gallery JODI Doug Aitken Helen Kornblum Andrea Rosen Gallery Luhring Augustine Gallery Janine Antoni Marc Foxx Gallery Alex Bag Marian Goodman Gallery bitforms gallery The Metropolitan Museum of Art Blanton Museum of Art, The University Nina and Frank Moore [TK] of Texas at Austin Prema Murthy Blum & Poe, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago Marieluise Hessel Collection, Hessel The Museum of Contemporary Art, Museum of Art, Center for Curatorial Los Angeles Studies Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Sherry and Stuart Christhilf Museum of Fine Arts, Houston [TK] Bill Cisneros Mark Napier Eileen and Michael Cohen Peter Norton Currier Museum of Art Mendi + Keith Obadike David Zwirner Gabriel Orozco Carlos and Rosa de la Cruz Pepón Osorio Mark Dion Philadelphia Museum of Art Jeanne Dunning Regen Projects Martin and Rebecca Eisenberg [TK] Roberts & Tilton Electronic Arts Intermix Nicholas Rohatyn and Jeanne Greenberg Erie Art Museum Rohatyn Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation Ronald Feldman Fine Arts The Frances Young Tang Teaching Arthur G. Rosen Museum Ann and Mel Schaffer Family Collection Andrea Fraser Diana Thater Greene Naftali Gallery Mark Tribe Alvin Hall Walker Art Center George Horner Andrea Zittel Michael and Susan Hort Marina Zurkow Indianapolis Museum of Art The 1993 Biennial Exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art . is a pious, often arid show that frequently substitutes didac- tic moralizing for genuine visual communication. It could easily be subtitled “The Importance of Being Earnest.” It could also be called the Reading While Standing Up Biennial: the art is often heavy with text, even without the simplistic artists’ statements featured on many labels and the reading room, where one can peruse the latest books of cultural and sociopolitical theory. Nonetheless, this Biennial is a watershed. —Roberta Smith, “At the Whitney, a Biennial with a Social Art in the Conscience,” New York Times, March 5, 19931 United StAteS, Twenty years after its publication, Roberta Smith’s barbed yet ambivalent review of the 1993 Whitney Biennial stands as a star- 1989–2001 tlingly acute summary of one of the most controversial, but indis- putably rich, periods in the recent history of art. In assessing the Alexandra Schwartz exhibition, Smith felt not quite happy with the featured artists’ “earnest” engagement with current “cultural and sociopolitical theory,” but acknowledged the importance not only of their exceptional 1. Roberta Smith, “At the Whitney, a Biennial with a Social concern for societal issues but of the exhibition’s foregrounding of Conscience,” New York Times, March 5, 1993, http://www. these issues in such a prominent institution. From today’s perspec- nytimes.com/1993/03/05/arts/at- the- whitney- a- biennial- tive, what came to be known as the most “political” of Biennials with- a- social- conscience.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm. remains a landmark in the recent history of art, regarded by some 2. The reception of the 1993 Whitney Biennial was exten- sive, and today the exhibition has a long historiography. as a near- utopian period when art, “social conscience” (call it pol- Among the first and most influential (and controversial) itics), and humanist discourse (call it theory) not only intersected discussions of the show was “The Politics of the Signifier: but shared an extremely public stage. Roundtable on the Whitney Biennial,” a published conver- sation between Hal Foster, Rosalind Krauss, Miwon Kwon, I am one of those people who remember this moment with rev- Silvia Kolbowski, and Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, (October erence, even nostalgia. I was an undergraduate at the time, taking a 66 [Autumn 1993]: 3–27). More recently, Elisabeth Suss- course on contemporary art, and a visit to the Biennial was on the man wrote an account of the exhibition, first presented at the 2004 College Art Association Annual Conference syllabus. Hearing from the professor about the debates surround- and subsequently published as “Then and Now: Whitney ing it sparked my curiosity, and the exhibition itself confounded Biennial 1993” (Art Journal 64, no. 1 [Spring, 2005]: 74–79). and captivated me and, as it turned out, proved to be a crucial Most recently, the 2013 New Museum exhibition NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash, and No Star sparked a new juncture in my intellectual formation. The ’93 Whitney Biennial spate of writing, including Jerry Saltz, “On ’93 in Art,” New provoked conversations—in the mass media, the art world, the York Magazine, February 3, 2013 (http://nymag.com/arts/ academy, and, crucially, among museum visitors—concerning the art/features/jerry- saltz- 1993- art/). The first interview I conducted in researching Come as You Are was with Elis- most complex societal issues of gender, sexuality, race, and class; abeth Sussman, the leader of the ’93 Biennial’s curatorial today the debates around this exhibition continue to resonate team, who notably stressed the importance of the curators’ with—and are still regularly referenced by—artists, critics, and art engagement with new developments in critical race and 2 postcolonial theory (spearheaded by Thelma Golden), as historians. As fraught as these conversations often were, the exhi- well as her own dialogue with the art historian Benjamin bition created a rare occasion when artistic discourse penetrated Buchloh, in formulating her ideas for the show (Elisabeth public discourse on a broad scale, when the merging of art and life— Sussman, interview with the author, January 13, 2011).

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