7.02.2007
Anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism at the Venice Biennale, part II
[Posted 11:09 AM by James Panero]
I notice that Tyler Green has blogged about my article on the Venice Biennale that appeared in last week’s Wall Street Journal. Here he singles out one line in my piece as “too shocking to go unmentioned,” “cowardly,” and “certainly not the paper’s finest moment — nor Panero’s.” The line in question is my charge that “One can only imagine that anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism are the natural extensions of Mr. [Rob] Storr’s understanding of avant-garde art.”
I am glad that Tyler brings this up. Because I’m willing to take all the abuse he wants to hurl at me to bring the repulsiveness of this year’s Biennale to public attention.
When it comes to political art, of course anti-Americanism is par for the course. If political art isn’t somehow anti-American and out to “subvert the dominant paradign,” there’s very little point in it.
So let’s move on to the anti-Semitism. Here the artwork in question is Raymond Pettibon’s screed that appears in a room of the Italy Pavilion of the Giardini, part of the international group show of this year’s Biennale called “Think with the Senses, Feel with the Mind,” under the direction of Robert Storr of the Yale School of Art (just so you know, the group show has nothing to do with Italy or the new Italian Pavilion, elsewhere in the Biennale).
Tyler accuses me of making my charge of anti-Semitism despite a “total lack of evidence.” I am going to assume that Tyler missed the previous line in my piece. Here I wrote that “Raymond Pettibon has graffitied up a room with a diatribe against American politics. ’America loves (adores) Israel,’ ’Hillary Clinton, Hillary Kristol, Hillary Kramer: Post-op or same person’ and ’Alan Dershowitz, David Horowitz’ are scrawled besides images of the Star of David.”
Now, this is a pretty blatant, and pretty obvious, “neocon-Israelobby-Jewishconspiracy” harangue, wouldn’t you say? To Pettibon’s credit, as an artist working in the antisemitic genre, he slathers on the antisemitism pretty well, in fact.
Last week in this space, I put up some photographs I took of Pettibon’s handiwork. Click through and judge for yourself.
In the WSJ, I wrote that “One can only imagine that anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism are the natural extensions of Mr. Storr’s understanding of avant-garde art.” I wrote this because I can’t imagine any other reason for Storr to include Pettibon’s piece in the Biennale. In saying this, I give both Storr and Pettibon the benefit of the doubt that they are not themselves anti-Semitic, but merely enjoy working in the medium of Jew-hatred.
The decision process that got this piece to the Biennale, the intellectual contortions one makes to embrace ’difficult art,’ really mean very little to me here. What matters is that this work is in Venice for all the world to see, without explanation.
It’s inclusion in an international art show: that’s what should be “too shocking to mention” and “cowardly.”