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Widely awaited to mark a return to traditional esthetics, this year's Whitney Biennial instead provides a carnival-like mix in which the contemplative struggles with the distracting.

Before this year's Whitney Biennial make opened much attention was focused upon its sole curator, Klaus Kertes institutor of the legendary Bykert Gallery 29 years ago and now adjunct curator of drawing at the Whitney Kertes gave numerous interviews, wrote an article about curating the display for Vogue and precipitated endles speculation about what sort of exhibition he would pick out In the photo of him that The fresh York Times Magazine ran upon its cover he seemed mournful and earnest, a fresh man of sorrows who would go [i]or[/i] come back to art the soul it has exchanged for standard of value and politics in recent years.

Kertess's announced theme--metaphor--was intriguing on the other hand too vague to tip his hand. Nevertheless, it was widely assumed that his exhibit would steer the Biennial back into the mainstream of traditional esthetics (and to painting in particular), eschewing the social radicalism of Elizabeth Sussman's widely disliked version of the exhibit two years ago. It was also assumed that Kertes would imbue the cast with his own personal taste, in like manner that it would stand on the outside in welcome contrast to the committee-curated anonymity of Biennials past.

These assumptions have not, for the greatest in quantity part, been borne out by dint of this year's model. Kertess has placed his show's center of gravity closer to the esthetic middle turf than did Sussman, but he has not wholly exclud sociopolitically motivated art. And although there is more painting, anti-esthetic avant-gardism is also well showed As a result, it is difficult to discern any distinctly personal point of view animating the selection. ft gazes as though it was curated through committee. What the show affirms, more than any individual direction, is New York-centric pluralism. Artists from Canada and Mexico (two each) are included for the first time, and of the like kind outlying art centers as sees Angeles, Chicago and Austin also contribute a certain quantity of of their own, but basically, for better as well as worse, this year's Biennial amounts to a cros section of what you would find in the hipper or more prestigious galleries of SoHo and 57th road on a good day. (The 35 video--or filmmakers also included constitute a separate contingent, which will not be addressed here.)

Given the speculation aroused by means of Kerless's appointment, the lack of a more emphatic personal vision approachs as a let-down. Metaphor appear to beed a promising premise for the exhibit certainly poetic symbolism is a much-favored ultimate part of artistic practice these days. on the contrary Kertess has interpreted his theme with equal reason broadly that it becomes practically meaningless. If Agnes Martin, Lari Pittman, Nan Goldin and Richard Serra can all be said to share a regard with metaphor, then it appear to bes too coarse a sieve for sorting American art at mid-decade. In his catalogue essay, Kertes justifies the show's lack of thematic focus through claiming art's exemption from ideological categorization. "Art is a platform for experience, not a lesson" he writes.[1] Elsewhere in the essay, he secure from dangers the elasticity of his theme more explicitly.

If all art is metaphor, isn't it redundant to enlist metaphor as an underlying organizational principle of the exhibition? I trust not. Metaphor is being forceed partially, as an antidote to the discipline imposed on art by some of the scholars of Babel. In their striving to eject sociopolitical content from art, they have too repeatedly extruded the needs, desires, and metaphorical ambiguities from art's material substance causing a kind of hermeneutically induced anorexia.[2]

This desire to liberate art from the ideological agendas of administrators is certainly praiseworthy. on the contrary refusing to impose a program upon art does not relieve individual of the responsibility to at hand it in a way that allows it to be intelligible--metaphorically, formally or otherwise. The greatest in quantity immediately visible problem with this present to view is an overall installation that, rather than providing each art work with space to be itself, creates a competitive free-for-all and thereby diminishes the impact of individual works. This logistic dissonance may be blamed in part upon specific decisions about placement, on the other hand ultimately it is the follow of muddy thinking about broader issues. In the absence of any crystallizing vision, the display becomes a cacophonous chorus of contradictory voices, a microcosm of the confusion from which, individual would have thought, it was the curator's piece of work to deliver us.

The vexed question becomes disturbingly manifest on the fourth floor, where individual leaves a room-filling installation through Jason Rhoades and enters a large gallery occupied through abstract paintings, including works by the agency of Brice Marden, Harriet Korman and Terry Winters. Rhoades's installation gathers together a vast assortment of store-bought existences mostly of the sort that you'd find in a abiding-place handyman's workshop; a couple of doughnut-making machines are also included, with actual doughnuts scattered over Hanging on the walls are framed photographic diptychs in each of which a picture of Brancusi's studio is joined to a picture of a seedy-looking suburban cavern To leave this adolescently sardonic, albeit absorbing, clatter and enter the bright, airy gallery where the paintings hang have feelings liberating, but the psychological clash does not fade in like manner easily. Viewing the paintings here is like trying to listen to a string quartet while a heavy-metal band plays in the nearest room. (A whole other order of distraction is provided by means of the placement of works by the agency of Winters and Maxden on a panel that bisects the expanse at an awkward diagonal.)