Here’s New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl talking about the Whitney Biennial, which I saw on Saturday. It’s a curious take: He calls it underwhelming but concludes by saying that you’ll be glad to have seen it. I’d err a touch more on the side of underwhelming.

(Full disclosure: Your dog knows more about modern art than I do.)

There were two exhibits in particular that struck me as powerful, but in the context of the Whitney, borderline offensive. One was the work of photographer Stephanie Sinclair, who documented Afghan women who’d set themselves on fire to protest abuse from their husbands and/or families. It’s heartbreaking.

But even more so is the work of photographer Nina Berman, whose pictures you may have seen reported on in the New York Times. In “Marine Wedding,” Berman chronicles the story of an American soldier whose face was blown off by an IED in Iraq (I think). You can see some of the photos here—they’re not for the faint of heart; the visage of this man challenges our conception of humanity. Berman’s story is of the man’s return to civilian life and subsequent marriage to his high school sweetheart. It’s powerful and tragic and inspiring and devastating all at once. I found it overwhelming.

But is it art? That question bothered me when considering both Sinclair’s and Berman’s work. Somehow even to discuss such photojournalism in artistic terms seemed trivializing, offensive. Berman’s work was shown on the walls of a room which also contained a couch made of papier mache on top of which sat two urns—some random piece of artwork whose meaning was utterly lost on me. At one point a guide leading a group of visitors entered the room and began talking about the couch, and I just thought, really, who gives a fuck about the couch? Was it supposed to make some glib statement about domesticity amidst the horror of war? I don’t know. Even the idea appalled me. And the idea that the curators might have been going for just that shock value appalled me further. Real-life horror overwhelmed art, relegated it to a trivial place, made the curators seem like gerbils scurrying on a wheel that never moved.

Put those photos in a museum of photography, or in the Newseum in Washington. Put them in a cemetery or a church. Put them in Arlington. Put them in the Smithsonian. Create from them a memorial. Tell people what war is really like, what it does to us, what it steals from us.

Just don’t put them in a museum of modern art on the Upper East Side of New York City.