The Whitney Biennial aims high – to profile “relevant and important” American art. As you might expect, it can’t satisfy everyone. Increased diversity of artists represented gets applause. From there, complaints. For one “There’s a lot to like … but there’s not a lot to love.” Another laments an absence of “the irresponsible joy of aesthetic experience”. Images are here.
With his family wealth, Porter could afford to be contrary. New York was agog with boisterous abstraction but, having seen a Bonnard show in Chicago, Porter chose figuration. Landscapes and interiors best showcased his colourist abilities. One interior, a “low key visual symphony” seems to celebrate paint itself; maybe he was “a covert abstractionist after all”.
The obituaries might have one think Pei’s success was inevitable. Not so – modernism was not always an easy sell. His great skill was to find an accommodation between elegant design and local context. Of his Louvre entrance – “there’s more than one way to show deference to history. Instead of competing with the surrounding buildings, the diaphanous pyramid accentuated their age and beauty.”