Grotesque Beauty

This year’s Site Santa Fe Biennial is notable for its focus on art that is, well, decidedly ugly or disturbing. “The intent is to make a case that what is grotesque can also be beautiful, if viewed from the proper perspective. There’s nothing really new or even strange about that concept. The grotesque is just a fuzzy catchall for what might also be called anticlassicism. It encompasses distortions of the body, hopped-up colors, cartooning, horror, the gothic, camp, burlesque — all forms of envelope-pushing, convention-busting expressionism, with its implicit strain of dark comedy. It has been around forever.”