Human Interest:

Mira Dayal
May 2016

Portraits from the Whitney’s Collection attempts to go beyond mere investigations of formal representations. Instead, the works within the show answer a series of questions about the subjects, alluding to intimacy, experimentation, and reconciliation:

Could they pass in drag?
Robert Mapplethorpe, Self Portrait (1980)

What would six inches of their knee look like if extended to six feet?
Bruce Nauman, Six inches of my knee extended to six feet (1967)

Who do they wear?
Charles Ray, All My Clothes (1973)

Where do they sleep, cook, eat, and dress? How small could their place really be?
Andrea Sittel, A to Z 1993 Living Unit (1993)

Which museums do they prefer, and in which countries? Why is their work hung in the museum they most despise?
Sean Landers, I’m Not Usually This Angry (1992)

Where did they go to school? Did they read Foucault there? How do they locate trauma?
Mike Kelley, Educational Complex (1995)

How would it feel to stand in their presence if they were enlarged and cast in wax, not precisely but instead with a caved-in head and paint-smeared white smocks?
Urs Fischer, Standing Julian (2015)

How did she look after her first day as a carnival stripper?
Susan Meiselas, Lena’s First Day, Turnbridge, Vermont (1974)

What would they look like as an artificially tanned bodybuilder, crack-abusing bulimic skank with budget silicone implants, or beer-bellied, tattooed, middle-aged, shit-food-eating, Jesus-and-weed-loving man? How close can we get to their depictions on wood before noticing how exactly they have been hung so that their groins fall at eye-level?
Ashley Bickerton, All That I Can Be: Triple Self-Portrait (1996)

What do the fine wrinkle lines of their aging skin look like, as treated by moneyed hands and lathered with foundation to fill the facial cracks, then dusted with blush to appear dignified for a night out, despite the fatigue evidenced by eyes rimmed with too-pink skin?
Cindy Sherman, Untitled (2008)

How would she look lying naked in bed next to her  husband with her ringed right index finger resting near the crease of left leg meeting crotch, with that same leg folded onto his chest just inches below the bottom line of his thick chest hair? How perfectly could the fleshy shapes of their thighs and chests dissolve into plump triangles and rectangles?
Joan Semmel, Touch (1975)

What does a vulnerable, dignified celebrity look like, with his eyes closed and scarred chest bare, seated with hands folded delicately at his knees, corset bracing his ambushed torso, the couch disappearing under his fragile weight?
Alice Neel, Andy Warhol (1970)

Which color most closely matches their skin tone, within a spectrum of skin tones of successful artists and friends?
Byron Kim, Synecdoche (1991)

How tall are they relative to the others, as measured by the police, when their heads hover in the grey space between thick black lines of paint on the wall, as they are subjected to the white flash of the camera? Are the brands of their sneakers the only commonality? Without their bodies here, what traces do we have? Where are their bodies now, and why are they absent from this space of the museum?
Gary Simmons, Lineup (1993)