America Is Hard to See

May 1–Sept 27, 2015

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“Under the enthusiastic banner of opening up the institutional art world to expansive diversity, the Whitney has in fact perversely narrowed its scope to an almost excruciating degree. The result: Artistically, it’s awful.” Critic Christopher Knight’s review of the 1993 Whitney Biennial was one of many negative appraisals of the exhibition, applauding the unprecedented presence of art by women, ethnic minorities, and gays and lesbians, while decrying the show’s artistic quality and polemical tone. The following year, the Whitney’s Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art proved equally controversial. Now regarded as landmarks, these exhibitions featured many of the artists whose work is on view in this room and the adjoining one: Matthew Barney, Jimmie Durham, David Hammons, Mike Kelley, Karen Kilimnik, Lorna Simpson, Sue Williams, and Fred Wilson. Each of them explores how our identities are shaped by culture as much as by birth, and how categories like race and gender depend on the complicated interaction between how we see and present ourselves and how others see us.

Nearly all of the works here focus on the body as a site of contest, ideology, desire, or disgust. Lorna Simpson and Catherine Opie turn their backs to the camera, challenging our gaze and our ability to classify them as either individuals or types. David Hammons’s use of black hair is both literal and symbolic, while Fred Wilson’s Guarded View confronts us with black figures that serve institutional power but are usually meant to go unseen. Other works dissect how common objects and images inform our sense of self, whether Mike Kelley’s manic accumulation of dolls or Karen Kilimnik’s do-it-yourself take on teenage fandom and feminine power and allure. As critics of the 1993 Biennial lamented the loss of traditional aesthetics at the hands of “political correctness,” these artists forged new and lasting understandings of beauty in relation to both bodies and art.

Below is a selection of works from this chapter.

An installation view of artworks in a gallery.

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America Is Hard to See

Guarded View

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Artists

Explore works from this exhibition in the Whitney's collection

Explore works from this exhibition
in the Whitney's collection