Older than 100 years, still educating narrow minds

Editor’s note: This is the first of a five-part series on the 2004-05 Carnegie… Editor’s note: This is the first of a five-part series on the 2004-05 Carnegie International. Biweekly pieces will appear leading up to the exhibition opening on October 9.

This year will mark the start of the 54th Carnegie International, one of the longest-running exhibitions of contemporary art in the world. Why do you care? Because it’s an important part of Pittsburgh, and has been for more than 100 years. The International has included some artists you might have heard of (there’s this Spanish guy named Picasso), and, maybe even more importantly, it’s a huge part of the artistic identity of the city. Not to mention, it’s a terrific date idea and even a menial knowledge of art can be really impressive at parties. Plus, if you keep reading this, you’ll find out what that huge metal thing at the corner of Forbes Avenue and Craig Street is.

The International began as a brainchild of — who else? — Andrew Carnegie, who founded the Carnegie Institute in 1895. He set it out to be an exhibition which finds and acquires the “old masters of tomorrow,” similar to the mission of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, which was started in 1929, at least partially in response to the forward-thinking things that Pittsburgh — yes, Pittsburgh — was doing with art.

In the first International, the Carnegie acquired the first painting in the United States by James A. McNeill Whistler, whom art buffs will recognize as a major name in post-impressionist portrait painting. Over the next 100 years, they also acquired some other big names, such as Mary Cassatt, Willem de Kooning, Camille Pissarro, John Singer Sargent and Edward Hopper.

The International has had several identity crises throughout its history. It was annual for a while, and suspended during World War I, and biennial in 1950, then triennial in 1955. In the 1970s, when everything else in the world was weird (disco music, platform shoes, etc.), someone had the idea to make the International one- and two-artist exhibitions (de Kooning had one in 1979). It wasn’t actually called the International until 1982, though, when it went back to the original format.

After the late 1920s, when modern art was finally recognized in the exhibit, the International really became a major source of avant-garde material. It exhibited work by some no-names like Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, which won the juried prize for the exhibit. Of course, Pittsburgh, which has always had anxieties about doing anything too funky, had its own issues with being one of the most forward-thinking art towns every so often. The juries, audiences, trustees and directors of the museum had their ups and downs with modern and contemporary art, including a directive from World Ware II-era Carnegie Institute President James Bovard not to include “that communist” — he was speaking of Picasso — in the International.

The prize itself has had some history, with the jurors often being as renowned, if not more so, than the artists in the exhibition. The prize was not awarded for a while, as objectivity became less emphasized and the format kept switching around, then re-instituted in 1985. The winners were modern-art giants Anselm Kiefer and Richard Serra, whose work “Carnegie” is the large metal rectangular sculpture outside of the Carnegie Museum of Art, next to the fountain. The 1999 International also included Chris Ofili, whom you may remember as the man who almost got the Brooklyn Museum shut down by Rudy Giuliani for his painting of a Virgin Mary (he also uses elephant dung in pictures — some people got offended).

Once in a blue moon — literally — the Carnegie Museum of Art becomes a focus of the contemporary art world for a short time. To live in this city for that period of time and not even walk two blocks to see an undertaking that has been four years in the making is apathy unbefitting even the laziest of college students. Keep reading, and I’ll keep writing about the exhibit that, success or failure, every educated person in the city will be talking about come October.