Word: americanizing
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...this struggle for the soul of American art is mapped in all its fitful chaos in the Whitney Museum's mammoth, frenetic show, "The American Century: Art and Culture 1950-2000," part two of a yearlong survey, on view through Feb. 13. The first installment of the retrospective, covering 1900 to 1950, was all about American artists striving to find their identity in the shadow of European masters--and finally making the leap with the figure-breaking canvases of Pollock. The sequel shows the rampantly imaginative shattering of that identity from Pollock onward, shuttling at high speed between the spiritually...
There was no lack of experiment and soul searching in these years. While Warhol was spinning out his sops to celebrities in sycophantic portraits and the swooning talkfests that filled his gossip sheet Interview, much of American art seemed largely earnest--as if it were a vast machine spitting out proof after proof of the solution to what art should mean as war, protest, the surge of feminism and the pulse of disco played themselves out on the nation's stage...
...telling that none of them are in this show. Lisa Phillips, curator of the exhibition, manages to mimic the raucous energy of a half-century of American art in these overstuffed rooms (and frequently to confusing effect), yet it's clear who she thinks won the struggle for the soul of that art. Despite a token gallery or two thrown in at the end of the show that seem little more than a grab bag of hot names in the '90s, the real finale to the Whitney's survey comes just before these rooms...
That is the landscape contemporary artists navigate, at least on Phillips' map of the American century. But just to make sure the point is numbingly clear, she leaves one last reminder, one last relic of the exhibition's patron saint, by the elevators that take visitors down to the street. There, lined up neatly, is a group of 10 small Warhol silkscreens. In neon-bright inks on contrasting fields, a familiar symbol is emblazoned again and again. Dollar signs...
...know a mother and teenage daughter who went to a studio recently to get matching ankle designs. Parents who don't approve, however, are now getting some help from laws in 30 states that prohibit studios from tattooing minors without parental consent. Nineteen ban under-age piercing. The American Academy of Dermatology urges that artists be trained, regulated and licensed in precautions having to do with "sanitation, sterilization, cutaneous anatomy, infections, universal body-fluid precautions, biologic waste disposal, and wound care." Tattoos, the ADA reminds us, are permanent. Removing them? It really hurts. Dermatologists and responsible tattoo artists also stress...