“The Ritz”
It was fitting that the dilapidated ruin chosen for the site of this collaborative attack on the current administration is called the Ritz; this derelict hotel not only picks up on the present government’s nostalgic Hollywood/tuxedo fantasies, but in its miserable fall from the pretensions of its name effects the same contrast of reality with false promises that the name Reagan does for the artists here.
The show’s location was also effective. Near the F.B.I. offices, within walking distance of the Capitol, one felt that government would almost hear the racket it set up. Like the Times Square Show of a few years ago, this project, sponsored by the Washington Project for the Arts and New York’s Collaborative Projects, Inc., was noteworthy for its energy level: every millimeter of flaking plaster and rotting board was smothered with spray, stencil, or scribble. Wigs were hung around a window like scalps on a politico’s belt; newspapers were stacked archivally, debris was arranged to call attention to itself; neon lit the edge of a landing over an abyss, a missing staircase. The everywhere-dramatized danger was of course meant to say more about the times than about the building.
The only way to deal with a show like this, where so many of the contributors remain spiritedly anonymous and where the sentiment is so unanimous, is to do some inventory. A tableau of shrouded bodies in rubble was covered in dusty pink, proving how little rose-colored glasses alter devastation scenes. Portraits of the presidents on Popsicle sticks (implication: they make suckers of us?) lined the baseboards. A baby moved in a basket of vipers. A taped phrase, “So I will not ask you to try to balance the budget,” stuck on the last word until it began to sound like “botch it.” A dog barked endlessly and menacingly. Support for our leaders was offered by crocheted jockstraps. The general mood was summed up by a clock face with flaming numbers and an angel (of destruction) in the place of the 12.
It must be that so much political art is installational and mixed-media because making connections is the essence of the political, and once connections are made it’s no longer possible to keep things inside a frame. Unfortunately, even in such a dedicatedly populist effort as this, there was still a whiff of elitism. The better-known artists got recognition because they have signature images, something they may not be entirely responsible for; but at the Ritz, they also tended to commandeer the positions of highest visibility. A number of “names” were concentrated close to the entrance on the first floor—no sense risking being overlooked in the third-floor bathroom. What was interesting was how their work gained from the surroundings rather than vice versa: in particular, Gene Davis’ black, gap-mouthed profile, which was modest in scale and did pop up in other unexpected places, took on an even stronger resonance here than it had in his last show, especially when he crossed it out with a graphic bar, applying the international sign for “forbidden” to the exercise of individual protest.
—Jeanne Silverthorne
