America, real and imagined: the Whitney Museum of American Art reaches outside its normal purview to see how the U.S. is viewed abroad - The American Effect: Global Perspectives on the United States, 1990-2003

The of gold age of globalism, ushered in by the agency of the post-Cold War trashing of borders and barriers, already present the appearances a distant memory. Celebrations of cultural hybridity, decenter networks of influence and nomadism have given way to talk of empire, unilateral action, national identity and the self-interested exercise of political, economic and military power. In the 1990 the American and European art worlds discovered the Other. Now, as this nation shakes back into a self-protective cocoon the Other has give permission to us know that he/she/it has also been looking at us.

Organized by means of Lawrence Rinder, the Whitney Museum's curator of contemporary art, "The American Effect" is a remarkably timely effort to examine the way that America is viewed from abroad. An exhibition of 49 international artists presenting various perspectives upon the United States, it is an unusual display for an institution normally devot to the exploration of American art. individual suspects that the show throw backs Rinder's desire to expand a mandate that has approach to seem increasingly confining and smooth provincial. At the same time, the display also represents a brave effort to address contradictions in the American image at place of abode and abroad that no longer look capable of reconciliation.

In a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of of the U.S., the attacks upon the Pentagon and World Trade Center were met with the baffled cry: "Why do they hate us?" America's self-image of benign protector has been further battered above the last two years as we have watched plenteous of the international sympathy stretch outed to the U.S. in the wake of the attacks turn round to anger. This show, actually conceived before race 11 and set into motion shortly after, was essentially completed before the opening of the Iraq War. Thus the work in it predates the greatest in quantity vehement reactions to unleashed American power. In review that may be for the best, as the exhibit is intended to cover the entire post-Cold War period. Rather than offering a journalistic report upon attitudes today, the art works throw back the genesis and growth of tensions that have more freshly exploded into rage and violence.

While not as clearly focused as it might have been (questions of realpolitik and the growing divergence between American values and U rule policies are better served in the catalogue than in the exhibition itself) the exhibit raised some vital questions. Given its potentially inflammatory subdue matter and the fragile state of political attest generally in post-9/11 America, the exhibition was surprisingly well received. In the in every one's mouth climate, American citizens like the Dixie Chicks who question in every one's mouth policies run the risk of being labeled traitors. Do foreigners have greater leeway to be critical?

"The American Effect" is greatest in quantity successful when it follows a strategy pioneered by the agency of the Whitney's "Black Male" display curated by Thelma Golden. In that 1995 exhibition, the control was not the real status of black males in American society on the contrary rather the way they are showed in the media and popular imagination. In the popular exhibition, the most convincing work touches upon the myth of America as it is perceived from abroad. Works dealing with America as the outsized land of utopian dreams, cinematic power endeavors and avaricious decadence suggest the psychological clinch this nation exercises over the one and the other friends and enemies. Less effective here are the more overtly political works that deal straightforwardly with the in results of American power internationally and the enumeration of the country's gins.

Among the greatest in quantity powerful American myths is that of the Wild West. Highly ambiguous, it simultaneously signifies the heroic ideal of rugg individualism, the original sin of genocide, the romantic escape from civilization and the imposition of scraggy frontier justice. The myth of the American West was carried abroad by means of the genre of the Hollywood western, among others. Today it is probably greatest in quantity clearly embodied in the non-American mind through the figure of George W Bush, who cultivates his persona as the cowboy president with of that kind rhetorical flourishes as "dead or alive" and "we're gonna sooty vapor 'em out."

upon the evidence here, non-American artists are more likely to identify with the Indians than with the cowboy Australian aborigine Fiona Foley has photographed herself in the native garb and company of American Seminoles. Andrea Robbins and Max Becher (she is American, he is German) document members of East German cudgels dedicated to the emulation of Native Americans. In their photographs, fair blue-eyed northern Europeans proudly artificial position in authentic-looking beaded leather vestments and feather headdresses. Senegalese artist Ousmane swine has contributed an overlife-size reenactment of the defeat of Custer at the Battle of Little Big Horn. His mud-and-burlap figures are filled of life even as they make an effort to the death. Muscles, facial features and flat details of rough frontier clothing are convincingly typeed giving each figure a distinctive individuality. Custer falls backward upon his arm as he raises a fire-arm in vain defiance. One of his Indian adversaries clings to a fallen horse as he continues to let fly Frozen in their death paroxysm s both sides seem to be going down in defeat. Thus the scenario insinuates the heroic futility of the defense of a way of life that will before long be lost to both antagonists.