“This makes me embarrassed to be an American,” the megacurator of an extremely well-known U.S. art museum groaned to me. We were standing in front of what was truly a spectacle of American proportions. Directly in front of the American Pavilion in the beautiful Giardini, main site of the Venice Biennale — which opens on Saturday — the artists Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla have placed a 60-ton Army tank. It’s a real one, shipped from England at who knows what expense, turned upside-fucking-down, turret and gun barrel on the ground, steel treads to the sky. Atop this warlord wedding cake, they’ve installed a treadmill where a world-class runner works out for fifteen minutes of every hour. It’s the health club from Hell, Afghanistan in Venice, and it makes a humongous racket that can be heard all around the Giardini. I looked back at the curator and said, “I think being embarrassed to be an American is partly what this is about.”
It was Tanks “R” Us: We Americans are making this incredible noise, flexing our might, playing police force to the world, entertaining ourselves and anyone who’ll watch, being grandiose and goony and needy, all the while trying to stay fit. (The pyramid structure has a runner on top, just where another culture might put a figure of winged victory or a gargoyle.) Yet this monumental Babel-like totem pole in this place at this time — while obnoxious, ostentatious, clamorous, and gross in its implications — is, like a lot of art, also an amazing strange fact.
Allora and Calzadilla have found a way to encapsulate, possibly exorcise, summon, and certainly give visual form to the freaked-out way the world sees the United States. It’s about what people think before they set foot in the American pavilion (just as they, and we, come into the pavilions of Germany, France, Korea, and other countries with entirely different preconceived notions). It’s ever-present but always invisible content, left over from centuries or piled up in only decades. As I walked away from this infernal piece I said to the curator, “Now, that’s America.”
Well written Jerry..but I suspect that if you were from the midwest..this would be right up your street…(a preconceived European notion that the brains reside on the East coast of the US..the good looks on the West coast..and the overweight ignorant some where in between…and Alaska)
Well written is right, and as usual, non committal. Infernal? It is not America it is f-g money talking.
It’s certainly a “must see it”piece of work. I’ts only too similar to those quizzes played at the experimental psicology institute. I’ll go see it.
Track and Field by Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla is no more idiotic than most of the other art at the Venice Biennale. The United States certainly doesn’t have a monopoly on stupid art.
The Tank is Dead
Oh dear….as a Brit that’s now lived in the states for 6yrs I can say that things don’t surprise me anymore….
why only one treadmill/runner?
AE11
If they really wanted to make the point, the person on the treadmill wouldn’t be some fit guy, it would be some overweight, middle-aged woman sweating through her pink spandex. The ideals we are supposedly going to war for are nothing like the reality of American life; feeling entitled to use military force so we can use more consumption to try and rectify our sins of over-consumption.
Feeling that my worc in undah rated
no sales in a very long time and practically
dead last in this new heat of voting
deserve to show at 1st class event
lice roy litchenstein or francis bacon
seeing the paintingz in real life would be much
bettah so we will see this summah how my solo
show goes all fossil fuel companys
are obsolete and thincing fine art is bettah than
cars
This kind of statement is oversized and overpriced just to get it organized must have cost several 100,000′s $ and just to say “America today”. Okay, now let’s move on and see the other artworks that are more worked… are they any at the Venice Biennale ? or is it just the country’s selection that have not the time to get it done correctly. These ‘famous’ artists have agendas like popstars and they just can not produce it all the time 100% spot on. They’ll do 5 decent works a years at best the rest is fill in… my humble opinion.
A must see piece of work???
more like a must see piece of organized waste of everything. Where is the artist in this. Or is it a think tank full stop! you take the tank i’ll take the small Van Gogh.
Artwork…or industrial scale operation of moving army equipment. Bring art back fast or it will dwindle down to Lady Gaga levels and reality show rubbish.
Good morning! It did “dwindle” down to Lady Gaga levels and reality show rubbish long before reality shows and long before Lady Gaga was born. Way, way before and way, way below any levels….Sad? No, just evolution of nonsense that finally hit the evolutionary end, as any degenerate species will do…Now, or soon, humans can start looking for new ways to express themselves, if anybody gives a damn! Do we finally see clearly the Emperor New Clothes? I don’t think so, not just yet. Because as long as there are sheep, there will be plenty of wool. Perfect fit, even the Emperor didn’t expect that…
Useful art once shown it can be moved with ease and a lot of money to some offshore location such as Afghanistan and put into true American art – the Art of constant war… where it’s shells will propel eternal America dreams of death and destruction ordered by the very same money movers.
~ Genuine, Gold-LeaF? Trash Can.
quote from Jerry Saltz article above “”is, like a lot of art,”"
But it is not art.
It is a gimmick or a publicity stunt just the same as someon paying an actor to dress up as a giant hotdog and hand out leaflets for a hot dog stand outside a football game or in a shopping mall.
It is designed to bring attention to the two artists whoever they are and good ol Jerry just brings them the publicity they want by his article.
Pity Jerry couldn’t have picked some art at the biennial to write about instead of an advertising stunt.
If it is art I would love to see them sell it to a collector along with the guy running on the treadmill.
Oh sorry the runner doesn’t come with the dead tank and treadmill, he is merely demonstrating how dead tank treadmill can tone your calves and glutes.
Art , no, Advertising gimmick, yes.
In my opinion, but there again I aint no art critic.
Heavy amour, lightweight concept.
Oh, by the way. It’s a British tank.
Jerry does not know it but we know it : is not art.What it is however is a very expensive way of criticizing American Militarism.If these people knew how to draw they could have made that point with some biting satirical drawing, but than who would have noticed it and write of it?
Henryk Fantazos, You should be in the Venice Biennial. Good to read something from an
NC. artist. My take on this tank piece was totally different from most. The tank is turned upside down and is unusable for it’s original purpose. Perhaps we can regain our health by walking away from so much making of war,
All it needs is a British Prime Minister bringing up the rear
gucci gucci goo
I don’t know if it’s art. I don’t want to look at it much, but it makes me think more than I want to think.
As for being embarrassed to be American, join the club. We are all about excess, after all.
If “fucking” is the most apt term this young kid can come up with to describe this tank…. he needs to go back to school. It no longer has any shock value… Besides
the word was worn-out in the eighties apparently along with this kid!
yes this embarrassing…..if this what this mega-curator considers the best of American art, he, mr. saltz & mr .gagosian should get a room….& stay there.
Is Jerry Saltz standing next to a cardboard cutout of Bill Clinton?
This is a classic European idiocy, a mental pornography, a “degenerative art” (does it ring a bell, anyone?)… Such so called artist belong to mental institution. Poor Venice… Poor Europe. Poor That England. (btw, I’m European too, and ashamed to be on…) Goya painted those freaks in his Caprichos. Nothing really changed, isn’t it?
No Serge, nothing has changed, unfortunately. Sadly, we have nobody even close to do new Caprichos…. Exposing these mediocre snake oil sellers in new Caprichos? O’ boy, I would like to see that!
Isn’t it’s “upside-fucking-down”-ness more the point? Like a giant beetle on it’s back, it’s a perfect metaphor for our rapidly disappearing status as a super power. This point surely must mitigate some of the eye rolling at the “American-ness” of such a spectacle as it is clearly demonstrating that we are not fit or powerful. We’re SO over. Literally.
If an American did this i’d call it brilliant. Europeans doing it, i call it penis envy.
That’s OK Kathleen. What you wrote is just your signature, like the piss the female dog leaves when it passes the trees. Leaving your sent by the trees is one thing, and you are doing it well, but…commenting on American-European relations using banal Freudian stereotype is totally different. Keep pissing at the base of every tree you pass, keep doing what you know…but stay out of the things you do not understand….
i like the “leaving your sent (sic)” reference. That summed up my comment pretty well.
“stay out of the things you do not understand….”
Oh, but i do understand. If an American authored this piece, it would be a great act of self-deprecation. I for one would respect the piece if only for that fact. But Europeans? South Americans? Anyone’s? Too easy, too cheap albeit that it wasn’t (easy or cheap).
Thank you
to say more would make no scents.
I am sorry Katleen, I was out of line with my comment, thank you for not getting angry.
But my comment was more addressed to this heavy, expensive imbecility and absurdity. I don’t think that nationality of those mediocre, half-witted individuals who came up with this concept would change anything in this worthless absurdity. The only tragedy in all this comedy is that this was paid for, submitted and officially accepted by the Venice curators as a *high* art. This whole ridiculous Venice gathering of untalented, mediocre individuals waving national flags in their national pavilions is so 19th century. The absurdity is that we still take this base, raw exploiting of the imbecility, the vanity and cupidity of the contemporary mob for what is not and for what it cannot be: Art.
PS I apologize again for my previous comment. I should definitely start writing comments in the afternoons instead late at night
To ( Kathleen ) .
It’s that type of mentality that is destroying what was once a country that made us Europeans dream ( ie 1950′s) . The USA today doesn’t make anyone dream , it is just a country who is fighting like hell to try and keep it’s N°1 commercial position by the means of invasions and war. Using religion as an excuse.
It can do this because the great majority of the US population are ignorant of anything outside Alsaka or New Jersey let alone Oklahoma..
The future doesn’t look bright at all for the USA. As it’s population will eventually all be obese , an even more ignorant and redneck philosophy will prevail infront of fox news and with a bud in the hand. As goes for penis size , well stating that proves my point.
This “overtness” that is a bi-product of the economically driven export culture, that
consumes and vomits on the rest of the world.. I must however confess to like the conceptually strong image…Art is the exception, and America should express itself!
However ,
This piece of ‘art’ has it’s point. It definitely has a strong message. I don’t criticise that , I try and give my opinion for what it’s worth .
Personally , it is very honest for the two US artists to have done this 60 ton statement.
It actually is a honest depiction of what the US is portraying at present over the world.
It,s beautiful much better then Picasso painting of women bagel with
hair around.
What all the critics are missing is the expense of the piece which also represents the cost in lives of the men and women of the United States, and the financial burden and strain it puts on us because other countries expect America to pick up the tab to protect their assets.
Maybe what the runner really represents is “Other countries need to get off their asses and pull their own weight.”
When most other countries were dealing with the issues that America is dealing with now America was always there to help. But when America is dealing with the same issues there isn’t a friend to be found with the exception of a few countries. Keep something in mind…We never forget who our friends are.
It appears that the more we try to become friends the more enemies we make.
John, I like your comment. So much European criticism for the United States.
Maybe we have picked up the tab for too long. We are upside down and getting nowhere. Someone should make an art piece about the US rebuilding Europe twice after they themselves tore it apart.
By the way, there is not a country that appreciates its allies more than we do. And if I could I would thank them personally for being there when we needed you most. Italy, England, Spain, Japan, Poland and a few others who decided that after 50 years of watching American’s get killed, beheaded, maimed and disabled 9/11 was the culmination of us remaining restrained.
I really thought i wouldn`t be back in here but had to clarify an error in thought..i just realized that the two artists of this piece ARE American. Which makes me slap myself upside the head. One, for leaping without looking (Cane, you were right..my bad). Second, because i am even more convinced this piece is genius. That Americans would go to this length to make their statement, which is far from obvious beyond what is immediately obvious is so very reassuring to me. Reassuring because it shows we still think, we still beat ourselves up, we are still acutely aware of our pr in the rest of the world, we still care. There are so many conclusions we can draw from this piece. Many are already discussed here by those better and brighter than myself. It`s complex, leaves us fuming, anxious, miffed, perplexed, excited. Brilliant!
Now, to John Fronza: Oh dear, what to say about your petulant flag-waving? mm..well, you are a US vet pimping for bank business. The US banks have gotten the world into one helluva mess that we are ALL trying to survive. And the military? I`d better not go there.
Liam Porisse..what the US was in the 50`s made them a US dream? The US was a big plastic fake Ozzie and Harriet show in the 50`s. More like a nightmare than a dream. Not all Americans are ignorant, obese rednecks staring at Fox News with a beer in their hand. That`s a stereotype perpetuated by the ignorant.
To everyone else, i leave this final comment…and from the 70`s, no less. Kind of the moral equivalent of this piece of art:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrKYCsE48Lc
best, all..time to make some art..
Kathleen:
You have obviously missed the point completely, and your propensity for trying to come off as some intellectual is lacking in one thing…intelligence.
You do not know me, you have no idea who I am, and your ability to criticise ones opinions is only out done by your ignorance of facts. Oh, by the way, yes I am a Vet and very proud of it. It is a brotherhood you will never understand or come to appreciate.
It was people like you standing outside the main gates of military bases all over the United States in the 60′s and 70′s telling everyone how they were going to change the world. Educated individuals either trying to dodge the draft, or getting a free ride on their parents money for an education. Well, all those pseudo-intellectuals changed it alright, and it isn’t pretty. And I am not saying that to justify anything about Vietnam.
I am also far from being an obese redneck who watches FOX news and drinks beer. Actually my taste gravitate towards Dom, a good Cuban cigar (If and when I can get it), I am a liberal, and I also cook gourmet Italian. So the next time you decide, in your infinite wisdom, to start sizing people up you may want to make sure you know what the hell you are talking about.
I love you people who can not stand us military types until your asses are in need of us. Then it’s okay for us to die, deny ourselves from having a family, raise children, maybe have a few grand kids and pursue our dreams. But that is okay isn’t it? Just as long as you can pursue yours.
Like so much contemporary ‘art’, this piece is more an academic political statement, conceptually driven, topical, and with no intrinsic qualities which can possibly elevate it to the status of artistic expression. That it appears prominently at the Venice Biennale speaks more to the influence and agenda of curators than to serious contemporary artistic production.
John, we are commenting on something else here. I understand your indignation, but this monologue of yours has nothing to do with what that installation in Venice is. And that pile of crap is what it is: a cheap, humorless one line joke, heavy, expensive, meaningless, pretentious, absurd, nihilistic piece of idiocy put together by untalented, mediocre individuals with professional help and money coming from somewhere and somebody else. In short, it represents neither more nor less of what is expected of so called “high art” today.
But that doesn’t mean I agree with what you wrote, because I don’t. I don’t want to initiate some sort of discussion with you about it either, because it is a long story and this is not a place to discuss it. But a have to say, briefly: We have bigger military budget than the rest of the world combined, we have hundreds of thousand of our soldiers in every damn corner of the earth, and average of six to seven contractors for each. We go around the world to “free” and “protect” people who didn’t ask us for it, by bombing and killing them. We managed to throw a wrench in just about every country including the space around the earth, we go around destroying infrastructure of third world countries that cannot defend themselves from us. And than we are spending our tax money fixing it while vomiting all over about justice, patriotism, freedom and democracy. And yes, we do forget our “friends” very easy, not to mention that we have today very few friends anywhere to “forget,” if any.
The Military Industrial Corporation complex is eating internal organs and sucking the very blood of this country by wasting trillions of dollars, while at the same time we can’t fix our roads and bridges or manufacture anything worth a sh….t unless it is a bomb or some expensive military hardware. We use two billion a peace stealth airplanes to bomb countries with two billion dollars GNP, with no air force and with marginal, useless or nonexistent AAA to protect themselves. We are letting teachers go unemployed, we closed factories, we rase taxes to patch up the holes left everywhere in order to feed monstrous Industrial Military Corporation that is getting out of control. And than we go around blaming Medicare, Social Security, unions and union pensions for eating tax money that we no longer have.
We are in dozen trillion dollars deficit hole and nobody is ringing a wake up call. To believe in the American dream today, you have to be sleeping in stupor. And If you or anybody else made a choice and sign a contract to work as a professional solder, that’s fine but it doesn’t make anybody automatically a better American or bigger patriot, who supposedly is sacrificing everything to protect “our asses” while throwing moral and ethical lessons around.
Please don’t sacrifice anything for the sake of my ass. And if some bad, dark force attacks America, we’ll be all together to defend her. We did it before, we’ll do it again, together.
And don’t smoke Cubans, they are still illegal in this country….
Hey Cane, for someone who didn’t want to comment on the content of my statements that was a nice piece of dialogue. Just kidding.
But to your comment about the work itself. You may just be able to call it art when it starts a debate such as this.
And maybe I do sound a little defensive, but truthfully, a lot of Veteran’s, including myself, are tired of thinking they have to apologize to anyone including our own citizens or the rest of the world for that matter for what we did.
The piece itself, whether you are correct or not, has every right to be shown considering some the other garbage that is passed off as being art today. Make the right connections, market yourself, be shown by the right people, and it appears that anyone can be elevated to a stature of being considered a genius in the arts or a darling of the circuit.
It has been proven time and time again that you can take mediocre talent and make them a star if you package the product correctly, and know how to promote it.
I am glad to see a site like Saatchi because it allows anyone to show their abilities. And if you like the work you may consider buying it whether the person who created it is known or unknown.
Who knows, this tank may end up in someone’s living room in Beverly Hills or as a paper weight for Donald Trump. And if the artist makes a million on it more power to them. In today’s world you never know what anyone is going to like.
I am just glad that people can get the exposure and maybe be discovered not by the snobs, but by the people who matter. The ones who either like the work or do not.
Cane, just so you know, I believe a lot about what you say. Yes we do have problems. And maybe the reason we have some of those problems is because too many countries are allowed to sit back and watch while America is held responsible for absorbing the cost, and risking the lives, to defend what they should be helping to protect.
Contrary to popular belief the world isn’t as pretty a place as some people think it is. Like they say; The world was a great place until God decided to put people in it.
John,
This or any other piece of art, or something that claims the right to be called art, is to be exhibited, that is granted and goes without saying. I believe in and defend this fundamental, essential right. Freedom of expression and thought however, includes also my freedom to like or not to like some expressions and thoughts.
I just have a slight contempt for those professional dissimulators we see and hear in all the biennials and triennials and similar gatherings of such kind, who’s explanations of contemporary art are in most cases more creative and imaginative than the art itself.
Almost entire concept of modern art, or “modernism” and a ton of “ism’s” invented since early 20th century looks more and more like a monumental, genial hoax. Today, last evolutionary stage of what modern art has became is nothing but a base, raw, meaningless entertainment.
Entertainment in a full swing of the last degenerative phase and made purposely and specifically for detached, estranged, lost, unhappy but well fed, well dressed and bored to death postmodern man who lives in artificial, postmodern liberal capitalist lands of plenty. And for all the others, the poor, hungry people of the rest of the world who want to join the club of never ending entertainment in the lands of plenty….
This thank, which has the strange and terrible beauty of it’s own, is just a small circus peace of that entertainment circus called Venice Biennial.
For a long time all that comedy was (and still is)! fraudulently called or defined as art. And it is not art because it’s quintessence consists base, humorless, lame one line jokes, absurd puzzles, scandalous rebuses, nihilistic emptiness and strange, peculiar absence of talent of any kind. It cannot be called art because there is a terrible void of essence, exaltation, passion, talent, human warmth or any thought.
Army of professional sophisticates, professional distillers of quintessence are hard on the job to make all that credible and to comfort refined, rich and unoccupied who already spent billions of dollars investing in one of the most sophisticated frauds in the history of the civilized world.
And there is so much more but sorry, I couldn’t make it shorter than this.
As for wars, it’s has been and it still is a good business for America The Beautiful. We have covert wars, we don’t declare wars anymore nor we think that congress has anything to do with wars. We bomb “rebels” in one country and the “government” in another, and we do it at the same time, simultaneously! Of course, in order to protect civilians and bring the freedom and democracy…. Why do we do it? Because it’s a good business!
As for other countries, they better not get in our territory, because war is our job! As for duty, well… Duty is something that is always expected from somebody else…
And world today…well, I think the planet is just fine, couldn’t be better. However, people are f….ed!!!
Seems the arted farted started quite a debate
My favorite exhibit at the Bienniale was the two Italians in the Gondola.
The smoothness of the water and the shiny black suggested berlusconis hair transplant on his smooth talking head.
The ripples in the water gave the impression of the ripples in his political life.
Considering the artists who exhibit in venice, then it is more a game of creating some exhibit to attract media attention for themselves a sthey are competing for attention with other exhibitors.
These artists are given far too much credibility and they feel that they have to pull something clever out of the bag for these events to get attention and ofet it falls flat on its face like this tank has.
Um, and now for something completely different…..
I hope that Bally Total Fitness is listed among the sponsors? Thing is this whole machine might crash one day by Chinese hands and Indian minds and this thinking of possible imperial death is more about art than that they did just to air such promo for America. Just like the President said. Of course what art would you expect to see paid in full and delivered to Venice? Nice tank, is this still made in USA?… Okay okay be optimistic, Jerry, it’s about your work, Jerry Saltz. This is all paid, right. Someone might even fall for it. How fucking creative – take a tank what is already big and an athlete who is already beautiful. And let’s call it art today or life is art is life or life is already life and what is great art we totally forgot.
“”"“This makes me embarrassed to be an American,” the megacurator of an extremely well-known U.S. art museum groaned to me.”"”
Megacurator, Saving the art world one painting at a time
coming to a cinema near you soon.