THEORY NOW

Critical Fragments: Narrative

2009-12-01T15:37:00.003-05:00

“[…] the image no longer contains the terms of its past – understood as the terms of the problem to which it is seen to be a response. Rather, both the past and the problem are felt to reside outside it, and access to them can only be achieved by a long chain of explanation which characteristically takes the form of narrative.”(1)

Rosalind Krauss wrote these words about Frank Stella and his decision to work in series in 1971. By that time Stella’s best work was possibly behind him as he abandoned his flat series to move into shaped canvasses and the “Protractor” series. Krauss’s focus on Stella’s paintings became a measure of how the then-as-yet-unnamed “postmodern” painting might proceed and how it would deal with its position in art history. Her visionary grasp of the simple fact that any “meaning” attributed to a work of art comes from “outside it” is doubly impressive in retrospect. Moreover, her thoughts prompt further reflection concerning another take on the idea of “narrative” itself, particularly with respect to the painting’s “frame”.

The narrative of cinema unfolds within the frame of a camera lens. A diegesis, or fictional world, takes place inside that rectangular space that is the “look” of the camera.(2) Everything that we “see” is bounded by that framing device. Cinematic “meaning” is expressed through the diegesis which follows a narrative arc to a determinate end.

Film directors often articulate their vision through obsessive concern with every object and actor within the camera’s frame. This auteur of cinematic narrative (Kubrick, Hitchcock, Welles, Fellini) truly relies on the framing device of the camera to represent their “vision.” In this regard, these directors are often compared with old master painters in their ability to exact such power from each square foot of celluloid.

Photographic narrative is not diegetic. Indeed, it cannot be, given that a unique photograph is but a “moment” and does not follow the sequencing of film. As a result, photographic “meaning” is often supplemented by textuality exterior to the photograph. Narrative readings of photographs are thus suspect as any “story” presumed from a photograph requires interpretive textual embellishment from without.

Historically, narrative interpretations of photography were based on established traditions of how paintings were interpreted; relating part to part within the frame to deduce a story. Figures, settings, events were usually of mythic or historic importance and meant to impart knowledge to the populace, many of which were illiterate. Readings of photography have been misinformed by this relational logic. After painting had fully renounced realism by the start of the 20th Century, these relational elements became formalist. Yet modernist painting still relied on the idea of part-to-part relationships to emphasize the modern artists’ new concerns with formal elements over realism.

Narrative in abstract painting has nothing to do with a “story.” Certainly there are arguments that relationships happen between the formal elements of a painting that “tell” a story, i.e., this line relates to that line, this color balances that color. But these have become less and less important since the emphasis placed on the frame.

Narrative in abstract painting has less to do with the formal elements than it has with the frame. The frame defines the time; shows us how to look, where to begin. Narrative painting can address this linearity only through the frame.

Like the humble march of words in a sentence, moving inexorably to an ending and coherence, linear movement within a painting’s frame is yet another way to approach the narrative. Unlike cinema, photography or realist painting, abstract painting must convey the temporality of its linear process through tactility and the measurably perceptible. Without “looks” or “story,” abstract painting constructs an altogether different version of the narrative that neither deals with its status as an object nor rejects it.

_________________________________________________________

1. Krauss, Rosalind. “Problems of Criticism, X: Pictorial Space and the Question of Documentary,” Artforum, November 1971, 69.

2. An idea expressed about still photography in Victor Burgin’s essay “Looking at Photographs” and about cinematography in Laura Mulvey’s essay “Visual Pleasure in Narrative Cinema.” Burgin suggests four “looks” of the photograph while Mulvey prefers three.

At Stake

2009-11-14T19:16:00.007-05:00

In 1977 I set some small wood stakes in the front yard of the house I rented on Mariposa Street near downtown Los Angeles and stretched yellow twine between them, forming two large X’s on either side of the walkway leading up to our front door. The piece was called I Stake A Claim In LA and had the supplemental component of a want-ad I ran in the Los Angeles Times for the duration of the week the piece existed.

As initial announcement of my arrival in Los Angeles, the stake piece served as my address of Southern California conceptual art and my figurative insertion into its history. Here in the city of John Baldessari, Ed Ruscha, Chris Burden, Robert Irwin, Billy Al Bengston and Ed Keinholz, I felt there might be possibilities to explore. What was "at stake” in LA was my cross-country move from St. Louis and my intellectual engagement with those forces of time-based, informational, ephemeral, process-driven work emanating from LA's concrete wasteland of movie stars and endless cars.

I Stake A Claim In LA bears the mythology of prospecting, gambling for a “strike,” working with available resources to tap infinite wealth. There was guerilla-based, outlaw consciousness at work here, ignoring what was permissible in art and expected of tenants. It was downbeat, off-the-tracks and under the radar; I expected no real notice from either the “art press” or the neighborhood locals who strolled by those two yellow-twine X’s. What was important to me was to fashion an anonymous marker that would distinguish my “site” as a theoretical positioning of my practice. The time had come for me to “be” in LA and this was the coming-out ritual.

My time in LA ran twenty years. Before those years came to an end, I wrote bout how obscurism creates “aart,” did street performances “dangerously ventur[ing] into heavy traffic,” played punk rock, founded an alternative art space, toured with Nina Hagen and taught film noir and “Outlaw Culture” at the Pasadena Art Center.

Every minute of my years there I was aware of my position in LA’s “alternative” art community being measured. My understanding of the broader aspects of my contributions as “cultural producer” now rests on that obscure, marginalized, yet recorded history.

This marks the 32nd year of my involvement with conceptual art, music and art theory. For the remainder of 2009, I will post a series of documents, works and texts as a record of my first conceptual works of '77-'79. These posts will serve two purposes. First, to foreground my continuing art practice and future direction in visuality. Additionally, I want to acknowledge and honor my past so as to better comprehend the depth of my personal commitment to this history.

Images: “I Stake A Claim In LA” (1977); twine and wood stakes; 40 feet square; destroyed; © Copyright 1977-2009 by Mark Cameron Boyd.

Close(r)

2009-11-07T10:56:00.005-05:00

“Hello,
I am new to art and the theory of art and reading your Theory Now blog is a big help. I'm also reading Tom Wolfe's ‘The Painted Word’ and Kirk Varnedoe's ‘Pictures of Nothing.’ Both of these books are interesting and illuminating. I recently watched a documentary about Chuck Close, which was fantastic. I have a question for you, regarding a comment Chuck Close made in the film. He said Andy Warhol, Philip Pearlstein and Alex Katz ‘kicked the door open for the kind of intelligent figuration...’ What does he mean by ‘intelligent figuration?’ It sounds impressive and interesting, but what does it mean? ‘Intelligent figuration.’

Thank you for your time.

Cheers,
Curtis [D. Thomson]”

Hello Curtis,
Many thanks for your kind words and welcome to my blog. I want to respond to your query on “intelligent figuration” in this post. I have done this before and it might initiate further discussion on the topic with other readers.

I thought about your question related to Chuck Close and “intelligent figuration” and searched YouTube for the documentary. Although I could not find film or video, I did find the conversation Close had with Isca Greenfield-Sanders on January 17, 2006. I think it important to give the context in which the phrase was used before I speculate on its “meaning” or pursue any critical thoughts about it.

Greenfield-Sanders is also an artist and they were discussing the use of photographs as sources of “information” for their paintings. Greenfield-Sanders stated that photography “gets you to a point very quickly” and Close said:

“I don’t know why everyone doesn’t work from a photograph because it gives you a way to make shapes you have never made before, use colors you have never used before, make edges that you haven’t dreamed of. I remember Philip Pearlstein wrote in the New York Times years ago ‘I get my highs from using my eyes’ which was an indictment of people who worked from photographs. And in essence he was saying that if you worked from photographs that you weren’t looking. If you are working from life you are seeing and if you are working from photographs you are just mindlessly copying. I thought, so, if you are looking at a photograph you aren’t looking? What shuts down? It just doesn’t make any sense to me.”(1)

Greenfield-Sanders replied that “paintings that got painted before I was painting allowed my work to short hand those changes in attitude without having to restate the givens.” And then Close said:

“For me, people who kicked open the door that I breezed right through were trying to make intelligent, modernist figuration instead of going back and breathing new life into nineteenth century notions of figuration. It was really important, absolutely critical. I think as a matter of fact that one could make the case that modernist painting is entirely what it is because of the invention of photography. If you think about photography in the 1940’s, it was black and white. Painting immediately became much more colorful. Early on, photography was static because of the long exposure times so everything in painting began to move and shift -- and we got futurism and two views from cubism. Photography was incredibly detailed so the impressionists broke up everything in view. In a way, photography drove painting each step of the way. It wasn’t until the 1950’s and 60’s that there became an antagonism between photography and painting -- although painters were the first people to embrace photography.”

When we understand that they were discussing photography and its use as a “tool” for painting it affects our understanding of Close’s comment on “intelligent, modernist figuration.” Clearly, he does not believe Pearlstein “kicked open the door” as Close views Pearlstein’s comment as “an indictment of people who worked from photographs.” Pearlstein prefers to use his own visual perception to paint, not photographs.

Close does not mention Alex Katz in the Greenfield-Sanders conversation; perhaps you are confusing it with another interview or documentary. Close does mention Warhol briefly as someone “making paintings with silk screens that were one gesture, one squeegee stroke.” It seems logical that Close considers Warhol to be innovative or his silk screens to be “intelligent” because they appear to deny traditional methodologies of painting. However, I do not view Warhol’s work as “intelligent” figurative painting; Warhol is really an expanded yet shallower version of Duchampian ideas.

Recently, I have been reading David Carrier’s excellent book, Rosalind Krauss and American Philosophical Art Criticism. In Carrier’s consideration of Krauss, he refers to her break from Clement Greenberg’s belief that modernist painting began with Manet. Krauss felt that “modernism began with Rodin” because his sculpture did not “present a visual narrative.”(2) Sculpture prior to Rodin represented the expressiveness of the figure through the physicality of the material and conveyed a sense of narrative. Krauss has pointed out that Rodin did not relate the exterior appearance of the figure to its anatomical “inner structure” and, thus, he “produced an art intensely hostile to rationalism.”(3)

This denial of narrative in relation to figurative representation by Rodin is theorized by Krauss as the advent of modernism. I believe her theory can be brought to bear on a discussion of Close and this idea of “intelligent figuration.” One of the reasons I think Close uses photography as a source material or “information” to paint from is the possibilities it offers him to achieve what he has referred to as an “abstract reading of space.” Ironic as this sounds, Close is able to make “abstract” paintings by working from photographs. His method is much discussed in other conversations which I found on-line and have to do with his ability to represent a realistic image through careful construction of seemingly abstract paint marks that, when viewed from afar, “read” as figurative:

“I wanted to deal in a non-relational way with the imagery. Like, we know the space of the head because we know heads […] I wanted to arrive at a potentially abstract reading of space, independent from the iconography due to the visual clues.”(4)

I believe this is why Close’s use of photography can be thought of as “intelligent figuration.” Close has “breezed right through” those doors opened up by Rodin by denying the inherent narrative within a photographic image. Close uses the raw information of the photograph to work within a gridding system to construct a non-narrative image. It is simply a process but it has “intelligence” because of the freedom now allowed in figurative painting. Paintings generated by photography do not have to be “representational” but can instead be “read” as information systems.

Regards,
MCB

Image: Lucas (1986 - 1987) and detail of eye; oil and pencil on canvas; Metropolitan Museum of Art; © Copyright by Chuck Close.
_________________________________________________________

1. This and the second quote are taken from “A Conversation, Chuck Close and Isca Greenfield-Sanders” on Isca Greenfield-Sanders’ web site.

2. Carrier, David. Rosalind Krauss and American Philosophical Art Criticism, Westport, 2002, 34.

3. Krauss, Rosalind. Passages in Modern Sculpture, New York, 1977, 9.

4. Inside New York’s Art World Chuck Close, 1978.

Remember the 5th

2009-11-05T10:25:00.003-05:00

"Protesters calling for Parliamentary reform in the wake of the MPs’ expenses scandal are using Guy Fawkes day today to float an effigy up the Thames to the Houses of Parliament.

The campaigners are setting off from an East London wharf pulling a 10ft high duck house to dock at the Palace of Westminster while they claim MPs are busy plotting to overturn Sir Christopher Kelly’s recommendations on claiming for mortgages and employing relatives."

Source: East London Advertiser; 05 November 2009.

Critic Wags the Dog

2009-10-20T13:21:00.008-04:00

In a rather superficial critique of conceptual art, Denis Dutton cites Damien Hirst in his recent New York Times op-ed piece and uses Hirst’s medicine cabinets to draw a distinction between the “technical skill” of representational art and the “lack of craftsmanship” in contemporary conceptual art. The implication being that conceptual art that demonstrates little more than “skill in playing inventively with ideas” has less aesthetic “value” than a traditional art of “painstakingly developed artistic technique.”(1)

Dutton bemoans the continued adulation of “conceptual artists” like Hirst and was dreading an Oct. 16th Christie’s sale of “Post-War and Contemporary Art” that featured Hirst’s medicine cabinet on the auctioneer’s block.

Glancing through the various lots that were sold last week-end at Christie’s yielded interesting bits of news: several Richard Prince “photos” (appropriated) did not sell; while Vanessa Beecroft is still getting $17,000 USD for her ancient “VB-35” soft-core prints. Meanwhile, it helps to be dead, as usual: Martin Kippenberger selling from $1.7 to $3.7 million USD; Jorg Immendorf at $99,000; Jack Goldstein at $80,000.

So we can say that some of the “conceptualists” at least have an exchange value if not an aesthetic one. The Hirst cabinet, by the way, subsequently sold for $187,627.

In his opinion piece, Dutton expresses distaste for the “tradition of conceptual art” that is “admire(d) not for skillful hands-on execution by the artist, but for the artist’s creative concept.” Yet rather than critique the truly “creative” ideas born of 1960s conceptualism, Dutton focuses on a couple of contemporary sham purveyors (Hirst and Jeff Koons) who bungled one of the better “ideas” in the Duchampian oeuvre – appropriation.(2)

Instead of discussing any of the resilient and potent theories and ideas inherent in conceptual art, Dutton seems content to go after the one methodology initiated by Duchamp that metamorphosed throughout the 20th Century to become photo-appropriation (see Prince and Sherrie Levine) or worse still, second-tier copyists (see almost all of the yBa's).

Appropriation is a tough theory; difficult to apprehend and hard to teach. The general public often reacts negatively to works that are “borrowed” because of a knee-jerk response to art that is obviously not “original.” It’s a fair point and instigates impassioned debates on authenticity, simulacra and the authorial imperative that was so ingrained in visual art before Duchamp.(3)

Clearly though, Dutton’s intent was to draw readers in with a superficial attack on a "tricky" idea of conceptualism so he could meander off on his real topic: to speculate on whether prehistoric hand-axes were possibly the first works of art since their blades indicate they were unused. I will not pursue the logic of Dutton’s assumption that disuse equates with preciousness and, thus, that those axes are artworks. What I will do is point out some other ideas that came out of conceptualism that he missed and that continue as strong work by the best postconceptual artists.

Conceptual art questioned the traditional role of the art object as the conveyer of meaning. By exploring the elusive “art object” and its contested importance as a precious, well-crafted thing, conceptual art (and postconceptualism) accomplished its subsequent “dematerialization.” Art “objects” began to be “made” from impermanent materials (string, dirt, inert gases). Artists documented ephemeral experiences occurring in specific places over specific durations of time (spatio-temporality). Information became “art” and the “form” an object took was the result of a process. Conceptualists also made work that was participatory and incorporated the actions of others and even the viewing public.

But these ideas are harder to critique so Dutton went after the easy mark, appropriation. He does not seem to fully comprehend appropriation as a “concept” either, because he mistakenly includes Joseph Kosuth’s “One and Three Chairs” in his attack – Kosuth photographs the objects himself at the site where the object and its dictionary definition will sit.

Undoubtedly, the kind of weak attack Dutton mounted in the New York Times surfaces periodically about contemporary art that is challenging, and certainly the most challenging art these days bears an allegiance to conceptualism. Those visual theories and ideas that were originally posited by some artists of the 1960’s approached significant new ways of dealing with visuality. It is my belief that there are still a few who are extending these ideas to continue its impact as postconceptualism.

______________________________________________________

1. This and all subsequent quotes by Dutton are from “Has Conceptual Art Jumped the Shark Tank?”

2. The only reason I show Hirst’s shark and Koons’s vacuum to my theory students is to emphasize the debt they both owe Duchamp.

3. I have posted frequently on appropriation here and my students have written about it, too. However, my response to Dutton’s piece – indeed, to any attack on conceptual art – is to remind all and sundry that there are more ideas in conceptualism than shopping at the hardware store.

1 or 2 Images

2009-10-16T13:18:00.006-04:00

"Most artists only have one or two good images in them. Maybe four. My images come from a process - they are created by the process. The images are unimportant - the process is.

Unfortunately, artists who become successful at it try to make it a career - this means that their images eventually degrade, or weaken. Like Stella. Or Kosuth. Or Bob Morris. Find some other way to survive - teach - play music - but after the best images come, it's time to quit."

Notebook entry on 12/25/08.

Curatorial Missteps

2009-10-07T09:04:00.003-04:00

Poor judgment in curatorial practice abounds but occasionally an error in curatorial decision-making becomes so glaringly obvious that it must be pointed out so that other curators can avoid the same mistake. Such is the case with the Chicago Art Institute’s poor choice of situating Bruce Nauman’s “Clown Torture” video installation 20 feet from Robert Ryman’s “The Elliott Room (Charter Series)” and sharing Gallery 295B in the Modern Wing.

The Rymans are gorgeous “oils” in his characteristic fetish whites on anodized aluminum panels, some as large as eight feet. The installation itself is clearly about one’s perceptual encounter with the panels; experiencing the pristine and exacting beauty of minimal art. Presumably a viewer could spend some quality time with these panels as the Art Institute has thoughtfully provided a large bench squarely in the center of the Ryman room.

This is where I seated myself in a recent visit to the Art Institute, to commune a bit with the Rymans. However, it was immediately apparent that my visual interaction with the wide expanse of luscious whites would not be peaceful, for the audio cacophony of Nauman’s “Clown Torture” spills over into the Ryman space. And when I say “spill” I do not mean just a trickle of sound.

“Clown Torture” is a disturbing work by any estimation, consisting of six channels running Nauman’s video:
The monitors play four narrative sequences in perpetual loops, each chronicling an absurd misadventure of a clown, who is played to brilliant effect by the actor Walter Stevens. According to the artist, distinctions may be made among the clown protagonists; one is the “Emmett Kelly dumb clown; one is the old French Baroque clown; one is a sort of traditional polka-dot, red-haired, oversized show clown; and one is a jester.” In “No, No, No, No (Walter),” the clown incessantly screams “No!” while jumping, kicking, or lying down; in “Clown with Goldfish,” he struggles to balance a fish bowl on the ceiling with the handle of a broom; in “Clown with Water Bucket,” he repeatedly opens a door that is booby-trapped with a bucket of water, which falls on his head; and finally, in “Pete and Repeat,” he succumbs to the terror of a seemingly inescapable nursery rhyme: “Pete and Repeat are sitting on a fence. Pete falls off. Who’s left? Repeat.”

I can appreciate the absurdity, the unhinged madness of Nauman’s work. Certainly it is as much a perceptual experience, albeit a more disturbing one, as the Ryman room just around the corner. But why would the curators place these works in such close proximity to one another? Surely they had a trial run with the Nauman video to check and establish sound levels and video quality. Wouldn’t someone, even an intern, have noted then that the sound from the Nauman installation, which the museum describes as “an assault on viewers’ aural and visual perception,” invades and disrupts the ostensibly contemplative experience of the Ryman paintings in the next room?

Surely it was not the intention of the Art Institute for my contemplation of the Rymans to have the unintentional “soundtrack” of Walter Stevens screaming at the top of his lungs, “No, no, no!”

But then again, stranger things have occurred in museums of late. Perhaps the curators were after some kind of ironic intervention to mock the idea of “contemplation.” If they wanted to pair the subdued minimalist beauty of the Rymans with distracting noise they should have rented storefront space down on Wabash under “The El.” There the viewer’s appreciation of those Ryman “whites” would have been as effectively destroyed by the randomly thundering rattle of the train overhead.

SSTI: 3

2009-09-27T18:09:00.012-04:00

In typically focused and detailed analyses, the 2009 Stone Summer Theory Institute wrapped its final day of closed seminars with Jim Elkins leading us through both “The Concept of the MFA” and “The Concept of the PhD in Studio Art.” His introductory summation of existing Master of Fine Arts models (aptly and ironically referred to as a “terminal degree” in studio art) was that the same influences of the “First Year Program” were mutually historic sources for the MFA – the “Academy,” subjectivity, rudiments, 2D-3D, Bauhaus, etc. Evidential documents such as the 1977 College of Art Association definition of “Standards for the MFA” reinforce that fact with wording that “the profession demands from the recipient of the MFA a certifiable level of technical proficiency and the ability to make art.” The 2009 CAA document also refers to a “mastery of medium.”(1)

The ensuing discussions touched again on the issue of “skills.” Jonathan Dronsfield, Director of Postgraduate Studies in Fine Art at University of Reading (Great Britain), spoke to the necessity of “project-based curricula.” As the acquisition of skills is (obviously) not tied to the MFA as a way to “pass on” skills, Dronsfield insists that “skills” would be about what is best for bringing visual projects to fruition.

Stephan Schmidt-Wulffen, Rector of the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, offered his view that “skill is a language – the discipline embodies a type of thinking. Painting is not producing this or that – you are thinking in a very practical way. When you talk about ‘de-skilling’ it’s not to abolish it.”

The conversation moved on to issues of student-professor relationships. Marta Edling, Senior Research Fellow in Education, Culture and Media at Uppsala University (Sweden), recounted Howard Singerman’s observations(2) about how student-professor interactions involve an identification process and that they can be cruel, and also argued that they are “gendered.” Marta had shared a clip from You Tube where Getrud Sandqvist of the Malmo Art Academy discusses the policy of the school and was an example of the kind of argument Marta had in mind.

Jonathan pointed out that this situation is “patriarchal as such, that is regardless of whether the professor is a man or a woman.”

Marta: “Yes – and this situation can be negative.”

Stephan: “The second part of that is professors say ‘We have to mistreat the student so that he will react to us – first, the moment of admiration [of student for the professor], then the ‘hammering’ – to provoke the moment that student begins to fight.”

Jim: “This contradicts the ‘Academy model’ of a ‘master-student’ relationship.”

The oppositional definitions of “deskilling” are capable of obtaining at least two results. On the one hand, if an art student’s skills are perceived as problematic, i.e., “Academic” (with a capital “A”), then the responsible professors are charged with de-emphasizing that nature, to “abolish” the skill set associated with an older model to foster access of contemporary media and practices. On the other hand as Stephan expressed, “de-skilling” might be better approached with a view to understanding the potentialities of the “language” of visuality. That is, how students might be encouraged to use (or not use) skills such as drawing or painting to embody their individual “expressions” or “ideas” within the visual language. I believe this can be referenced to Stephan’s earlier comment that “technique constructs identity” and to which I suggest the addition of the word “helps” to clarify the position: technique helps construct the identity of an artist through its use, dis-use or abuse.(3)

In the latter part of the day, after five days of closed seminars, we were finally able to address the concept of PhDs in studio art. Jim’s topic introduction expressed his hope that we would particularly address the relationships of the dissertation and “research” to the artwork, and vice versa. Mention was made of Victor Burgin’s essay which was in the preparatory readings for SSTI, “Thoughts On ‘Research’ Degrees in Visual Arts Departments.” Burgin says there is already a history of research in art programs in agreement with acknowledged definitions of research as “scientific or scholarly investigation.”(4)

Jim wanted to know whether these words make a difference. Do we need to define what “research” is in studio-based PhD practice? There was general agreement among the faculty and fellows that PhD art programs have been re-defining research to make it independent of “the Sciences.”

Christopher Frayling views this as a “thorny” issue “where the thinking is, so to speak, embodied in the artifact, where the goal is not primarily communicable knowledge in the sense of verbal communication, but in the sense of visual or iconic or imagistic communication.”(5)

Perhaps then, as Jim suggests, PhDs in studio art might involve research within its embodiment of “New Knowledge.”(6) However, as he has previously written, “[...] for most studio artists, the operative words research and new knowledge are an awkward fit. These [new, proposed PhD] programs deserve better: they deserve a language that is at once full, capable, accurate, and not borrowed from other disciplines.”(7)

2009 STONE SUMMER THEORY INSTITUTE
FACULTY:
James Elkins, Professor of Theory and Criticism, Visual and Critical Studies, New Art Journalism, School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC)
Frances Whitehead, Professor, Department of Sculpture; founder of Knowledge Lab (KLab) at SAIC
Christopher Frayling, Former Rector of Royal College of Art, London
Stephan Schmidt-Wulffen, Rector of Rector of the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, Austria
Roy Sorensen, Professor of Philosophy, Washington University, St. Louis.

FELLOWS:
Hilde Van Gelder, Associate Professor, Art History Department, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
Ciarán Benson, School of Psychology, University College Dublin
Frank Vigneron, Associate Professor, Fine Arts Department, Chinese University of Hong Kong
Barbara Jaffee, Associate Professor of Art History; Faculty Associate, Center for Women’s Studies; Faculty Associate, Museum Studies; Northern Illinois University
Doug Harvey, professional artist, critic, curator, educator in Los Angeles
Miguel González Virgin, Chairman, Digital Art and New Media Business Program, Centro de Estudios de Diseño de Monterrey, Mexico
Daniel Palmer, Senior Lecturer, Department of Theory, Faculty of Art and Design, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
Marta Edling, Senior Research Fellow in Education, Culture and Media at Uppsala University, Sweden
William Marotti, Department of History, UCLA
Jonathan Dronsfield, Director of Postgraduate Studies in Fine Art at University of Reading, Great Britain
Christopher Csikszentmihályi, Director, Computing Culture Group and Director, Center for Future Civic Media, MIT
Areti Adamopoulou, Assistant Professor of Art History, Department of Plastic Arts and the Sciences of Art, University of Ioannina, Greece
Ann Sobiech Munson, Assistant Professor, Architecture/Art and Design and Director, Core Design Program, Iowa State University
P. Elaine Sharpe, PhD Candidate (ABD), Media Philosophy, European Graduate School, Saas-Fee, Switzerland and Course Director at York University, Toronto
Saul Ostrow, Environmental Chair, Visual Arts and Technologies and Head of Painting, Cleveland Institute of Art

AUDITORS
Elena Ubeda Fernandez, Fulbright/MICINN/FECYT Postdoctoral Research Scholar, SAIC
Keith Brown, Department of Art Education, SAIC
Mark Cameron Boyd, Professor of Art Theory, Corcoran College of Art + Design, Washington, D.C.
Fernando Uhia, Universidad de los Andes, Bogota, Columbia

SAIC GRADUATE STUDENTS:
Andrew Blackley
Rebecca Gordon

ASSISTANTS/CO-ORGANIZERS:
Kristi McGuire
Linlin Chen

SSTI SPONSORS:
Howard and Donna Stone, Chicago.

Image: Harold Washington Library, Chicago; cell-phone photograph by MCB; © copyright 2009.
____________________________________________________

1. It was suggested that “these are effectively empty documents.” In response to a query of whether the CAA documents actually “have teeth” with accreditation boards such as NASAD, the apparent answer was no. “[The MFA] is a license to practice.”

2. See Singerman's “Toward a Theory of the MFA” in Art Subjects: Making Artists in the American University, Berkeley, 1999, 187-213.

3. It may prove helpful for further definitions of “de-skilling” if we include an analysis of the critical evaluation of conceptual artists of the 1960’s whose photographs were viewed as “de-skilled.” These artists use photography only to document work that was often time-based or situational and therefore not “embodied.” Thus, in critically evaluating these photographic documents after the fact, theorists suggest that the de-skilled “look” of those photos projected a lackadaisical approach and disdain for photographic “technique” that affected the reception of conceptual art.

4. Burgin, Victor. “Thoughts On ‘Research’ Degrees in Visual Arts Departments” in Artists with PhDs: On the new Doctoral Degree in Studio Art (James Elkins, ed.), Washington, DC, 2009, 72.

5. Frayling, Christopher. “Research in Art and Design,” Royal College of Art Research Papers Vol. 1, No. 1, 1993-94, London, 5.

6. See Frayling’s ideas on the “contributions to knowledge” issue and my speculation on what that might entail here.

7. Elkins, James. “On Beyond Research and New Knowledge” in Artists with PhDs: On the new Doctoral Degree in Studio Art, Washington, DC, 2009, 116.

SSTI: 2

2009-09-23T01:35:00.010-04:00

On day two of the Stone Summer Theory Institute conference, Stephan Schmidt-Wulffen gave his presentation on art education in Europe and the “Bologna Accords.” The Bologna process is a endeavor to unify art education curricula in Europe, to gain consensus among all of the European countries on what comprises education in the visual arts.

In his detailed analysis, Stephan pointed out some of the major issues of the Bologna process. For instance, art degrees should be uniform throughout Europe. Currently there is little comparative relationships between colleges; French BA's are three years, other countries’ are four, etc.

Not surprisingly, some European art schools have resisted the process, saying art training should be individualized, without modules, or courses, or even rules. Just complete freedom – no theory – and no professors telling you what to do. The skeptics say: “We need to keep an open space – it is impossible to compare student A to student B!”

To establish a standard educational norm in Europe, qualifications of Bachelors degrees under the Bologna process have been focused on “artistic practice,” “judgment” and “social context.” Stephan then shared his ideas of what these qualifications should be and they are much different:

First, artists must learn to work alone but also in collaboration with a team. Second, they should learn how to work with the public, i.e., be able to change their personal standpoint to meet the public’s expectations. Third, artists must be trained to reflect upon and be able to evaluate both their own artwork as well as the works of others. Lastly, artists would learn how to be “inventive in a systemic way” through both practices and methods.

One of the resources that Stephan has drawn from is Thierry de Duve and his infamous “When Form Has Become Attitude – and Beyond.” De Duve’s scheme develops a “trilogy” that explicates the history of art education something this: First, the “Academic” model of teaching art concentrated on talent, métier (technique) and imitation. Later, the Bauhaus School’s initiative decides art education is about creativity, medium and invention. The implication that these oppositional strategies merely reject the other’s contentions is both chronologically and ideologically clear.

I have a particular fondness for this Duve essay as I have taught it in my advanced theory classes for a few years now. I began introducing it to Corcoran College of Art + Design undergraduates as a way to begin a dialogue about their perceptions and thoughts on “how” they were being taught art. But the best part of the essay as pedagogical tool for me was its revelation that the final methodology of the “triology” Duve proposed, heavily influenced by continental theory of the 1970’s, would also function surreptitiously as a way to introduce some of the ideas associated with postmodernism; those three categories Duve used as evidence of the new plot in art education, i.e., attitude, practice and deconstruction.

To paraphrase Stephan’s remarks from my notes from today: practice denotes an abstraction from the object, from “form” and is a result of dematerialization. Instead of creativity, Duve’s “attitude” is a product of social conditions. It re-thinks the role of the artist.

In the discussion that followed, Jim Elkins expressed his feeling that Duve’s “third” module's categories were polemic, that Duve has admitted this, and that the use of these “magic words” like “creativity” are in need of more explanation. Christopher Frayling supports the inherent possibilities of an “attitude” that can be analytical or a sociological concept. His preferred categories: “Normative, critical and expressive.”

As Stephan concluded, “We [artists] are trained to research ourselves.”

Image: Renzo Piano's Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Stone Summer Theory Institute: 1

2009-09-20T12:03:00.005-04:00

Later today, School of the Art Institute of Chicago professor James Elkins will give a lecture on “What Do Artists Know?” and launch a week of discourse concerning the imminent (some say over-due) arrival of “studio-based” doctorates in the United States. Prof. Elkins’ talk is first on the agenda for the 2009 Stone Summer Theory Institute conference; seven days of seminars, lectures and round-tables, featuring Sir Christopher Frayling, expert on PhD research and author of a frequently cited essay on “research into, through and for art and design,” and Roy Sorensen, professor of philosophy at Washington University.(1)

I am here because I occasionally reference Prof. Elkins’ scholarship in my essays and admire his critical writing. I discovered SSTI last year; the 2008 conference topic was “What is an Image?” and featured a diverse selection of seminars and readings. When I learned that this year’s conference topic was going to be “What Do Artists Know?” I decided that I must attend.(2)

Ostensibly, the conference will busy itself with debate over the necessity of such advanced degrees in studio arts. The MFA has long been the terminal degree for practicing artists – those who make art – in the United States. Doctorates are traditionally given here for art history and though there are some art schools and universities where PhD’s in studio art are possible (Virginia Commonwealth in Richmond and UC San Diego, for example) studio-based doctorates are rare stateside. Not so in Great Britain, where PhD’s in studio art have been around since 1976.(3)

To begin a conference on the efficacy of PhD’s in studio art with a lecture on “what we know” is an interesting tack. Granted, we want to educate artists thoroughly in both practice and theory yet it seems as if graduate-level programs in studio art suffer from a paucity of actual research. The possibility of extensive and continued research in one’s field (studio-based practice) would hopefully provide the doctoral-candidate with the ability to use that research to expand our knowledge about art (studio-based theory).

Assuming the SSTI conference attendees and faculty can agree on what “knowledge” is then we may move on to how to structure proposed studio-based doctorate programs. However, I expect that the entrenched animosity towards the perceived threat of studio PhD’s will surface quickly, if not today then probably at tomorrow’s roundtable.

The idea of a PhD in studio art is threatening to some art educators. Various reasons have been cited: it’s an unnecessary “waste of time” for artists to extend their study; art students “can barely write a short Masters thesis” let alone a “50,000 word dissertation” and artists don’t do “research like scientists.”(4) But Prof. Elkins feels that we better get ready for it because “it is best to try to understand something that is coming.”(5)

One viewpoint that caught my eye already in the readings was a point Sir Christopher made that the results of one’s doctoral research should “make a recognisable (sic) and communicable contribution to knowledge and understanding in the field of study concerned.”(6)

It occurs to me that this has the undeniable potential to invigorate debate over studio-based doctorates in a number of ways. If we allow that studio-based doctoral candidates might actually extend the knowledge about art then there is a real possibility the practice of art might be lifted from its current marginalized social position. Artists with PhD’s would be perceived as leaders in their field, inaugurating new ground in visuality and discovering “new piece(s) of information.”(7)

Studio-based research would have both practical and theoretical components and it would actually have a measurable and quantifiable goal of making contributions in art that would be unique. This would make advocacy of studio-based doctorates essential, not just for what it is that we “know” but for what it is that we “do.”

Image: School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

_____________________________________________________________

1. Prof. Elkins has provided the SSTI participants with extensive readings in preparation for this week’s conference - 900 pages worth. I will be quoting from various selections from those readings during my week in Chicago but am not able to share the SSTI links with readers of this blog. Prof. Elkins has said “do not disseminate this list: most of this material is copyrighted, and is available here only for the private use of the Seminar.”

2. I applied for and received a faculty development grant from Corcoran College of Art + Design where I have taught art theory since 2004. With their generosity and support, I am attending this year’s SSTI.

3. See Judith Mottram’s essay “Researching Research in Art and Design” in Artists with PhDs: On the new Doctoral Degree in Studio Art (James Elkins, ed.), Washington, DC, 2009, 3-30.

4. Elkins, James. Artists with PhDs: On the new Doctoral Degree in Studio Art, Washington, DC, 2009, viii.

5. Ibid., ix.

6. Frayling, Christopher. “Research in and through the arts: what’s the problem?” (Conference at Guildhall School, London), SSTI documents, 2009, 13.

7. Op. cit.

Critical Fragments: Autonomy

2009-09-10T16:26:00.007-04:00

“Instead of assuming responsibility for culture in concert with the producers of culture, the state and its political functionaries, citing a strained culture budget, have delegated that responsibility to an antiquated patronage system (which, to make things worse, is often confused with sponsoring). Offensive or aggressive art-sponsoring campaigns, which bring tax benefits, offer a cost-effective means of exploiting artistic production to which many institutions and artists now find themselves compelled to resort. […] My concern relates rather to the fact that we need to identify the circumstances that surround this situation and to make the complex relationships involved transparent to students engaged in art studies, in order to encourage reflection about the circumstances in which we operate under the influence of such developments.”(1)

Artistic autonomy, hard-won since the nineteenth century, has undergone continual erosion in recent years. With the advent of these art-sponsorships, museums have partnered, at times covertly, with international conglomerates to mount large-scale exhibitions. The idealism of the Modernist era - artists free to succumb to their “inward gaze,” to take “ownership” of their work, to make art for themselves, not Church or State – has disintegrated rapidly as artists of the postmodern era have formed uneasy alliances with the capitalist enterprise.

This enterprise itself is an ironic confluence of disparate power structures, all operating under the vague mission of cultural “production” and “education.” Bourdieu’s take on this is well-documented as evidence that culture is “not a democratizing force, and individual artistic expression is condemned to play a part in the field of artistic production in terms of buyers, sellers and critics.”(2)

Thus, autonomy becomes another critical element for practicing artists to re-consider. In essence, we do have permission and freedom to explore whatever we want, to engage in a wide and ever-expanding range of practices made even more accessible with our “pluralistic” fascination.

The nature of autonomy in the arts suggests that artists have such freedoms. Yet as art is wholly enmeshed within the “art world” and art-making involves “product,” it is easy to see that we can never be free of the art world’s context, i.e., buying, selling, sponsoring artworks.(3)

Perhaps a pedestrian alternative, one that smacks of that dreaded project called Socialism, can be one possibility for re-gaining true autonomy within the realm of art practice. As artists generally and almost universally make objects, why not create a league or union of art-workers that trade objects for services? Many within the art community hold second jobs; often highly-skilled and professional jobs that provide specific services in dentistry, construction or software design. These artist-service providers could trade their skills for artworks. Art collectors could also be invited to join this league as collector-barterers, offering their skills and services in exchange for works of art. As this network of artist-barterers is paired with equivalent collector-barterers then artworks might be traded for services needed.

This admittedly would not free us entirely from the “commodity” world of the art market, but it may prove to be a fruitful way for artists to “make a living” without having to “match” their work to a commercial gallery. Freeing one’s production from the necessity for establishing its “exchange value” may be the only way to regain true autonomy.

_______________________________________________________

1. Bauer, Ute Meta. “Education, Information, Entertainment,” Current Approaches on Higher Artistic Education, Vienna, 2001, 34-35.

2. Grenfell, Michael; and Hardy, Cheryl. Art Rules: Pierre Bourdieu and the Visual Arts, Oxford, 2007, 177.

3. Ibid.

Derivation & Originality

2009-09-05T20:10:00.008-04:00

Administrator's note: Earlier this week a young artist sent me some images of recent work and asked if I would critique them. My reply was not brief as I spent some time viewing the images and considering my thoughts about them. I share it here because it does provoke an interesting possibility for further discussion about those old puzzles of "originality" and "derivative work."

Without revealing too much about the artist or the nature of the work, I can safely tell you that the artwork critiqued is text-based. More to the point, text is both "subject matter" and/or "content." Still, to be discrete I have substituted certain words within brackets (like [words]) and eliminated two short phrases by inserting [...] to maintain complete anonymity. Even without knowing who the artist is or specifics about the art I believe readers can access the gist of my argument. Indeed, by removing these critical thoughts and questions from the exacting particulars of a specific critique, to place them in an abstracted context, we might delve into a deeper inquiry of what it means to be "original."

"Interesting work! I'm honored that you are showing it to me and seek my critique. [...] In any case, I'm happy to share some thoughts. I believe I know you well enough to feel you can take frank criticism - so here it is:

First, I hesitate to tell you this but you should go here: [URL link to well-known artist's web-site.]

I realize there are differences between your work and [the artist, who works similarly] but one must be aware of what's occurred before, particularly with specific actions that [use similar materials]. Why? Because actions that appear similar to other artists' work 'in the canon' may either be mistakenly critiqued along similar lines or worse are termed as 'derivative.'

My text work has been judged as derivative by one DC gallery director and although I know he was off the mark it lead me to realize that we're subject to superficial perceptions by those who 'know too much.' Which is perhaps where my own view of your actions with text comes from: I might know too much, have seen too much, or otherwise project my own subjective associations on your work with 'what has come before.'

That said, I have some questions for you. I'm curious as to how you came to the decision to create [work like this]. What are your intentions? Is this, again, 'play' with the abstraction of [...] language? What are the relationships with the [foreign] language that are revealed in these actions? The placement of your [text] in the one installation seemed arbitrary to me: Was there an attempt to block one's access to the space? If so, why? What other methods could generate the same action(s)?

Finally, I think that works you placed out-of-doors will be unfortunately overlooked. Their fragility in the 'big, wide world' makes them seem somewhat trivial; passersby will miss them. Also, the [works arranged like bouquets] become 'precious' objects and I think it lessens their impact.

I'll be going to Chicago for a conference on PhD programs in art practice later this month and will miss various [...] functions. But let me know your thoughts. I hope to see you later this Fall.

All the best,
MCB"

Thrill Value

2009-08-16T11:48:00.006-04:00

“Whether and under what conditions a thing is useful to me, whether and under what conditions it is a good, whether and under what conditions it is an economic good, whether and under what conditions it possesses value for me and how large the measure of this value is for me, whether and under what conditions an economic exchange of goods will take place between two economizing individuals, and the limits within which a price can be established if an exchange does occur—these and many other matters are fully as independent of my will as any law of chemistry is of the will of the practicing chemist. […] For economic theory is concerned, not with practical rules for economic activity, but with the conditions under which men engage in provident activity directed to the satisfaction of their needs.”(1)

Without engaging the endless, age-old debate concerning subjective values, it recently became remarkably evident to me that the relative exchange value of art is directly proportional to one’s investment of time. That this insight came to me while standing on-line for a “thrill ride” in Hersheypark is significant for the fact that I began to reflect on the actual amount of time that I would “own” the thrill that I had “purchased.” As Menger says, both the use value and the exchange value of this thrill that I “needed” to experience were “independent of my will.” However, what struck me as unique about the experience was its relationship to art.

The thrill of a rollercoaster ride is comparable to the accessible and repeatable experience one has with art, whether through the contemplative viewing of an object, or interaction with an installation, or watching a performance. The intangibility of the “art” itself is always exterior to the object, installation or performance as the thrill value of art is momentary and ephemeral.

The thrill is repeatable because each time you stand in front of a painting you can again access the experience.(2) The thrill of a rollercoaster is also repeatable, of course, and another point of comparison can be drawn to the “economic activity” of art collecting. If time is money, then art collectors do indeed exchange their time for art, not only as a quantifiable amount of money traded for the art but time as well (hopefully) invested in learning about the art they decide to buy.

The investment of time one stands on line to access that rollercoaster thrill is also an “economic activity” and it may certainly be noteworthy that it is disproportional to the measurable moment of that thrill.(3) Amusement park planners shrewdly separate the money exchange for park entrance ostensibly to distract one from comparing time invested with actual thrill value.

On a final note, it has been said that the thrills offered up by rollercoasters approach the sublime in that we know that this experience is of no physical danger to us. This is why people flock to horror films. Notwithstanding the engineering expertise and safety design of amusement park “thrill rides,” there is the very real danger that one might die during the experience. Far from being a sublime experience then, like looking at the vast, dark night sky studded with millions of stars, the thrill of a rollercoaster ride is equivalent to a simple yet measurable economic exchange. Like art, it is a provident activity that gives temporary respite from mortality as we seek the thrill value to access experiences outside of our quotidian lives.

Image: Thrill seekers ride through one of several inverted loops of "Fahrenheit" in Hersheypark, PA; photograph © copyright 2009 by MCB.
_____________________________________________________

1. Menger, Carl. “Principles of Economics”, (Dingwall, J., Hoselitz, B.F., trans.), New York, 1950, 50.

2. Performance art and time-based works escape these criteria somewhat as they are not “objects” per se; are not static.

3. Patrons at Hersheypark sometimes wait 1 hour and 30 minutes to ride the “Fahrenheit” rollercoaster which runs about 45 seconds.

Punk Memorial

2009-07-24T10:41:00.015-04:00

Conceptual Art Idea #29:

Two battery-powered CD players buried under separate dirt piles; one playing loop of The Ramones' "Beat On The Brat"(1975) & one playing loop of Sex Pistols' "EMI"(1978). (For Sam Durant.)

One Blogger to Another

2009-07-07T11:04:00.007-04:00

“Hello!? I'd like to take this opportunity to introduce myself.? I am a blogger and I have recently started a new blog called "Concerning Art".? Its focus is on the arts in their many forms; visual arts, film, literature, etc., as well as being sort of a Los Angeles centric blog, simply due to the fact that I live and work in LA.? I am an aspiring writer and hopefully art history grad student whose always been interested in viewing art and popular culture for an analytical perspective.? I was looking at your blog and was very impressed with its layout and content, as well as its visual appeal.? Please do take a look at my blog, and if you like what you see I would be very happy to do a link exchange with you.? If you do decide to exchange links please also be sure to send me the exact url address you would like me to link to, meaning your blog(s) &/or your website.? Also, if you like my writing style and would like me to quest on your blog or if you would like me to do a blog post about your art/projects I would be happy to oblige.? I should let you know that I'm very new to the art of blogging and if I have committed some sort of faux pas please forgive me.? I do hope you like my writing and hope that I'll be hearing back from you soon.? Thank you in advance.

Blog Address:? http://concerningart.blogspot.com

Cordially,
Martina.”

Hello Martina,

Many thanks for your kind words and welcome to the undetermined world of art blogging. I say “undetermined” because at this early stage in your art blogging experience it is imperative for you to understand we do not yet know what it is that art blogs are supposed to do or write about, or what, if any, “style” they should emulate, or what function they can provide to the larger (read “Real”) art world.

I should mention that when I first began Theory Now in 2005 it never occurred to me that it would eventually embody much more than a personal outlet for my opinions. As you have no doubt noted, my infrequent but regular posts (apparently I average a new post every 10 days) do significantly convey my subjective views on art theory and practice. However, I take pride in the fact that Theory Now is rare among art blogs in its academic approach to art theory and practice. I believe that regular readers of this blog are distinctly aware of its unique character and understand that what I post here are essentially essays. Being essays, I generally provide footnotes and citations concerning the topics that I address and with which it has always been my hope that the reader may continue their individual approach to further explorations.

Having said all that, I urge you to carefully consider the role that your writing might play in the virtual world of Internet art blogging. I offer only my own suggestions here, for it is your blog after all, but there are two points that I want to touch upon.

Art criticism is currently in a crisis of sorts. To put it bluntly, we have drifted into ennui and egalitarianism with the pluralist vision that was launched about 25 years ago in the art world. It is difficult to find many art critics (much less art bloggers) willing to state a position that surmounts those “judgments of taste” that prevail in today’s critical views. Therefore, I challenge you to take a stand but voice your opinions within the strength of the critical hierarchy that exists. Obviously, this will require a little outside reading and education, and should you embark upon that art history trajectory you will be well-fortified with texts of criticism and theory. This is what is missing from the art bloggers: an awareness of where art has been and what has been established about art within art criticism.

If you choose not to write critically about art but merely wish to document what you see that interests you, what others are making or doing, then at least take the time to provide context. Again, this will involve some research, reading and looking, but is absolutely essential, yet mostly neglected, in order to rise above the “studied ignorance” that is currently evident in both art practice and art criticism.

I would be glad to link to Concerning Art and wish you good luck. You may link to this URL: http://theorynow.blogspot.com. Please also visit my artwork site at http://www.markcameronboyd.com and link to it as well.

I congratulate you on beginning your art writing endeavor and hope my words provide some direction if not inspiration.

Cheers!
MCB

Critical Fragments: Documentation

2009-06-30T11:37:00.005-04:00

“Since the mid-1960s, conceptual artists have denied any interest in photography per se. To hear the artists tell it, photography was only useful or interesting to them insofar as it was instrumental in conveying or recording their ideas. Time and again artists describe the photographs themselves as either brute information or uninflected documentation.”(1)

As ironic as it was necessary, the photographic archiving of conceptual art provides a test case for documentation as a separate and relevant critical issue. When conceptual artists began to consider what it is that artists do, their consequential investigations lead to exercises in information theory and epistemology, measurements and statistics, actions and situations. All this knowledge produced “documents” that embodied the art but not the “art” itself. This premise would become a conceptual dictum of such pervasive and evidentiary power that few academic overviews of conceptual art do much more than re-state this mantra of “art is the idea not the object.”

Within its limited aesthetic, object production was a low priority for conceptual artists. However, some conceptualists realized that other than following Fluxist maneuvers of indexical, momentary events that may or may not be witnessed, their documentation of staged actions and situations would be easily photographed to provide documentation. This gave rise to a term known in art theory as “de-skilled” photography. This early photographic documentation of conceptual art, without aesthetic pretense or intention, has been lifted from its down-played status through an elegant sleight-of-hand by museums and curatorial practice. Museums have manipulated these conceptual art photographic documents as “fine art” in their own right, and represent it through accepted formalist language previously established in the appreciation of “high art” photography.

In a cobbled-together exhibition currently at the Whitney Museum, we see the “greatest hits” of “Photoconceptualism” as represented in work by Bruce Nauman, Gordon Matta-Clark, Robert Smithson, Mel Bochner, Dan Graham and others. Apparently the curators propose that these photos yield a double-appreciation as photographs that may be superficially pleasing as objects as well as manifesting a concept. Matta-Clark, Smithson and Bochner can be eliminated from such a theory, as their photos clearly represent first order documentation of other work, i.e., a “cut,” a “Mirror Displacement” and a book about photography.(2)

Nauman and Graham fare better as “photoconceptualism” since their work really has little to do with formalistic issues such as framing or tonality. Graham’s selection, in fact, has been excised from his well-known “Homes For America” and loses all potency of context. Nauman’s multiple examples either visually document his fascination with pun (“Waxing Hot”) or dead-pan actions (“Burning Small Fires”). They provide an expanded methodology of “documentation” as we simultaneously view them as conveyance of the idea and address how documentation may function critically and not aesthetically.

Image: “Burning Small Fires” (1968); artist book; © Copyright 2006-2009 Bruce Nauman / Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York; Courtesy UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.

____________________________________________________

1. Soutter, Lucy. “The Photographic Idea: Reconsidering Conceptual Photography”, Afterimage, March-April, 1999.

2. Charming as it is, the questionable inclusion of Bochner’s book demonstrates the curatorial haste of this show; notes about photography by famous people are not exactly photographs: “Bochner’s handwritten quotes on the power of photography are attributed to such indisputable sources as Marcel Proust, Mao Tse-tung, Marcel Duchamp, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and the Encyclopedia Britannica. It turns out that Bochner has made up three of the quotes, although he never reveals which ones.” “Persuasive Images: Selected Works from the Art Collections at the University at Albany”, University Art Museum, Albany, 2000, 12.

Critical Fragments: Anonymity

2009-06-20T10:37:00.004-04:00

“In all respects the traditional artist devotes himself to the good of the work to be done. The operation is a rite, the celebrant neither intentionally nor even consciously expressing himself … [W]orks of traditional art, whether Christian, Oriental or folk art, are hardly ever signed: the artist is anonymous, or if a name has survived, we know little or nothing of the man. This is true as much for literary as for plastic artifacts. In traditional arts it is never Who said? but only What was said?”(1)

The necessity of establishing a relationship between an artist and artwork became significantly more focused when paintings became portable. The advent of easel painting signaled the beginning of artworks traded as a commodity that was readily identifiable with an artist. Thus, the identification of individual artists with an artwork recognizable by a subjective style helped solidify the ready exchange of paintings.

Clearly the seduction of fame stoked the exchange value of art. Coomaraswamy notwithstanding, we would be unworthy lovers of art if we were not able to rattle off names of major artists by gazing mere seconds at the referent paintings or sculptures.

Like many institutions during the 1970s, the art world was given a brutal critique. Having undergone over one hundred years of excessively focused attention on the mystique of the artist - whose guise was often paired conveniently with “movements” by critics, i.e., Fauvist, Impressionist, Bohemian – it was understandable that young practitioners took a dim view of the commercial aspects of art marketing. These conceptual artists eliminated the making of objects as their concepts began to designate what medium or form would become the carrier or conveyor of the idea.

It is remarkable to consider now that conceptual art was once persona non grata in the commercial art world. Eventually, with increased critical support through essays and lectures by art theorists (and artists themselves – a welcome attitudinal change from the AB-Ex position of “the work speaks for itself”) commercial galleries would acquiesce to critical pressure and begin showing these text-based works, de-skilled photographs and sometimes even anti-aesthetic objects.

The possible use of anonymity as an additional way to address issues of fame as a capitalist construct was side-stepped by most conceptualists; given the opportunity to pair their name with a gallery was a nice substitution for having a recognizable “style.”

One artist in particular who purposely sabotaged his “stardom” was Christopher D’Arcangelo. In the late 1970s, D’Arcangelo used “utilitarian carpentry” as his art practice, making “works” characterized by the “input of labor and materials rather than by any phenomenal aspect they might possess.”(2) In “Thirty Days Work”, D’Arcangelo built an anonymous wood stud and sheetrock wall for a 1979 show at 84 West Broadway, New York. This otherwise nondescript wall was not identified as his.(3)

The practice of making art ought to bear no allegiance to one’s subjective ego. In its emphasis of concept over object, conceptual art may have re-introduced this egalitarian fascination with anonymity. What better way to heighten the theoretical focus than to eliminate the putative “self” behind the work. The conception then becomes more an ethereal thought that floats in the minds of both artist and viewers; “artworks” as ideas that launch discourse through intellection.

Image: “A Brief History of Art”; from Suicide Blonde.
_______________________________________________________

1. Coomaraswamy, Ananda. Christian and Oriental Philosophy of Art, New York, 1956, 39-40.

2. Crow, Thomas. “Unwritten Histories of Conceptual Art” in Art After conceptual Art (A. Alberro, S. Buchmann: eds.), Vienna, 2006, 62.

3. Ibid., 62 [D’Arcangelo’s willful anonymity was earlier evidenced by his “contribution” to a 1978 exhibition at Artist’s Space where he merely removed his name from the installation, catalogue and from all publicity about the show.]

Critical Fragments: Content

2009-06-11T12:51:00.003-04:00

“The seemingly strict separation of the photographic series – buildings not people, or individuals in private not public spaces – thus belies [Thomas] Struth’s larger project of separation. By dissociating the various elements of knowledge produced within each archive and reassociating them in a newly formed complex matrix structure, Struth’s matrix multiplies the important piece of information within each image. Multiplied, those bits of information that had once been used to define the subject of the archive can now be reassembled and contradicted to form other constructs of knowledge. This process of reassociation exposes the inseparability of these constructs both within and between images and archives, questioning the archival categories themselves. […] Acted out by the museum and defined and depicted by these photographs are the operations of archive construction and collecting themselves, and with them, the complex mechanisms behind the construction of knowledge, boundaries, and spaces.”(1)

In contemporary art practice, at least since the pioneering directions of conceptualism and minimal art, there has been a shift in content. Rather than the content being about what is visible or visually obvious in images, sculptural objects or installations, the locus of meaning of an artwork now lies outside these images and objects and instead concerns the social and cultural construction of art. Moreover, the content of a work of art becomes a cipher, a riddle that requires deducing through exterior, supplemental materials and research.

This is the unavoidable conclusion drawn by Nana Last in her astute assessment of Thomas Struth’s photographic practice. The surface content of Struth’s photographs manifest multiple “bits of information” which occupy a position of temporary visual observation. This contemporary avoidance of simple aesthetic pursuits has precedence in conceptual art’s insistence that an artwork’s meaning exists independently of the object and, indeed, even the objects themselves are secondary to the content.

This poses intriguing problems for art criticism. Discernment now is summoned through an understanding of contemporary art history and theory, plus a particular comprehension of the various social and cultural constructions that govern the making and address of art. Apt critics approach images and objects carefully, with a view to their placement within the dominant sociological and cultural narratives. More importantly, critical readings of artworks are influenced by the visual first, yet critics must be wary of the fact that the superficial, surface aspects of the work might misdirect their interpretation. The potential for misapprehension is especially challenging in photography where the “look” of the camera purports to not only embody the “eye” of the artist but to encourage the passivity of the viewing subject. The object photographed can never be assumed to be its content.(2)

Last’s perception of Struth’s “matrix” correctly reads the content of Struth’s art to extend beyond those objects and figures contained with the photographic frame. The essence of his ultimate content remains outside the image but is manifested textually by the information within each of the photographs. Struth’s body of work becomes less about the documentation, less about the archives, than it is about his grasp of the manipulation of visual, archival knowledge by the caretakers of our social and cultural world, the museums. Thus, control of the address of art, how it is presented and represented institutionally, is paramount to its ultimate reception, to its historic validation, and positions it for successful marketing to determine its value, both artistically and commercially.

I would propose that all of the best art encourages a self-reflexivity by both artist and viewing public to consider its presentation and to critique its control by those institutions of visual address. That the nature of contemporary art practice has evolved outside of the image to encompass investigations of art’s construction within the social and cultural spheres is a testament to the issues and concerns of conceptualism.

Image: “Musée du Louvre IV, Paris” (1989); © Copyright by Thomas Struth.

_____________________________________________________

1. Last, Nana. “Thomas Struth: From Image to Archive to Matrix,” Praxis 7, 2005, 86.

2. “The characteristics of the photographic apparatus position the subject in such a way that the object photographed serves to conceal the textuality of the photograph itself – substituting passive receptivity for active (critical) reading.” From Victor Burgin’s “Looking at Photographs”, in Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art, Berkeley, 1996, 856.

Critical Fragments: Style

2009-05-27T14:18:00.002-04:00

“In every work of art, style is a promise. In being absorbed through style into the dominant form of universality, into the current musical, pictorial, or verbal idiom, what is expressed seeks to be reconciled with the idea of the true universal. This promise of the work of art to create truth by impressing its unique contours on the socially transmitted forms is as necessary as it is hypocritical. By claiming to anticipate fulfillment through their aesthetic derivatives, it posits the real forms of the existing order as absolute. To this extent the claims of art are always also ideology. Yet it is only in its struggle with tradition, a struggle precipitated in style, that art can find expression for suffering. The moment in the work of art by which it transcends reality cannot, indeed, be severed from style; that moment, however, does not consist in achieved harmony, in the questionable unity of form and content, inner and outer, individual and society, but in those traits in which the discrepancy emerges, in the necessary failure of the passionate striving for identity. Instead of exposing itself to this failure, in which the style of the great work of art has always negated itself, the inferior work has relied on its similarity to others, the surrogate of identity. The culture industry has finally posited this imitation as absolute. Being nothing other than style, it divulges style’s secret: obedience to the social hierarchy.”(1)

Whether this is “social hierarchy” or critical hierarchy remains to be seen. Nevertheless, the casting of style as the great secret of visuality is seductive. The absorption of art by the dominant discourse (the mainstream) is what Adorno and Horkheimer speak of as a “promise,” a teasing dream of capitalist fulfillment, supported through the culture industry’s use of the ideology of style.

The existent order (the art world) retains its power through a calculated dispensation of success (financial, critical, historical) that is further bolstered by the misapprehension within the ranks of the culture producers (visual artists) that art is measured by “harmony” or “unity of form and content.” It is these kinds of aesthetic quests that will result in inferior art that desires only a “similarity to others.”

To negate these traditional conceptions is to deny the damages that are inherent in the search for a “style.” To reject style altogether is to embrace failure on many levels; chiefly those attributed to financial success but certainly encompassing the nature of creation itself with the ever present possibility that risks taken become failures realized.

The necessity of re-positioning art practice as capable of revealing these kinds of “truths” remains the single most worthy endeavor of the producer of culture. Absolute allegiance to imitative style, however sanctioned as a certainty for financial success within our embattled art market, risks much more than a simple loss measured in capital.

___________________________________________

1. Adorno, Theodor / Horkheimer, Max. Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, (Translator: E. Jephcott), Stanford, 2002, 103-104.

Collage: the Stuff of PoMo

2009-05-13T07:21:00.008-04:00

Administrator's Note: One of my Corcoran College undergraduates wrote the following essay on collage as “the reproduction and recontextualization of signs.” The student has requested me to list the author's name as “Yon Zois.”

I asked Zois for permission to post the paper here because of its fascinating theories on visual art expressed as “message” and a novel (if somewhat brutally cynical) depiction of the malevolent inclination of that message. The assaultive aspects of representation are too often critically neglected and Zois suggests interesting possibilities for further investigation of the “dominant discourse” of media communication. For within the verbal structure of semiotics lies an implicit coercion that Zois reveals to be a profound interpretive mode for considering visual art as postmodern address.
__________________________________________________________

“[Collage is] an organization of already organized elements.” - Damien Hirst

Quoting others’ words in one’s own writing is in tune with the current western system of communication (a system that creates systems). Why say it in your own words if someone else has already said it more concisely, more elegantly, and above all—first. Enter Postmodernism. The gaseous, multi-generational sensibility called an “era,” in which its inhabitants can no longer look up toward a brighter future because they finally realized that they’ve been standing on what they’ve been smelling—the enormous mound of shit called civilization.

Arguably realized anywhere between 1965 and 1985, postmodernity, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is “characterized by a return to traditional materials and forms (as in architecture) or by ironic self-reference and absurdity (as in literature),” or it can be “of, relating to, or being a theory that involves a radical reappraisal of modern assumptions about culture, identity, history, or language.” Postmodernism is, more importantly, a rejection of the specialization and elitism that defined the Modernist culture of the earlier part of the twentieth century, abandoning its hierarchical and polar (i.e., black and white) characteristics across the board of life (from politics, to art, to philosophy, etc). With more grey area came more complexity and nuance, more nooks and crannies, more niches and places for social deviants and outsiders to camp out and oftentimes institutionalize themselves, creating both alternatives and contributions to the mainstream cultural milieu. Postmodernity’s primary visual mode is that of appropriation, sampling and referencing, visually constituting the praxis of collage, décollage, in its three-dimensional form: assemblage, and in its most refined form: bricolage.(1) This paper will be exploring postmodernity, using collage (as metonym for our larger collective sensibility or outlook in today’s world) as its vehicle, complete with 4-wheel-drive and fuzzy dice hanging from the extra-large rear view mirror.

A bitter alcoholic named Guy Debord once wrote:
“The theft of large refrigerators by people with no electricity, or with their electricity cut off, gives the best possible metaphor for the life of affluence transformed into a truth in play. Once it is no longer bought, the commodity lies open to criticism and modification, and this under whichever of its forms it may appear. Only so long as it is paid for with money, as a status symbol of survival, can it be worshipped fetishistically. […] The Los Angeles rebellion is the first in history able to justify itself by the argument that there was no air conditioning during a heatwave.”(2)

He was speaking about the 1965 Watts riots in LA. Three years after that, 1968 erupted in uprisings all over the world that amounted in a shift in the consciousness of an entire generation of people. It proposed a severe and total threat to traditional top-down structures of all kinds, though the world still had its lines in the sand, (like the cold war) it amounted to nothing less than the beginning of a new era in cultural production and theory. The appropriation and recontextualization Debord was writing about was the realization of the theoretical tenants of collage; theft as a bi-product, and more importantly a reversal of the effects of the “society of the spectacle.” He was very receptive in finding the art in the everyday (or in this case its antonym).

The “yBa’s,” decades later, knowingly played into the very same spectacular economic system in which their choice of media (collage, assemblage/ready-mades, and appropriative art) was a critique of. Damien Hirst bypassed the antiquated authority of the art critic toward “popularist mediation” in which everyone was their own critic.

James Gaywood breaks down the mechanics of the act of “collage” (or the reproduction and recontextualization of signs) as used by the “yBa’s” as such:
“[…I]n the context of postmodernism, art production invokes the cultural superimposition of reproductions, where what is signified can only refer to a sign itself (in essence Baudrillard’s ‘simulacrum’), disengaging the object from any historical precedent, engendering the justification for a multi-variety of surface interpretation.[…] Since transgression is confused in postmodern situations where the abolition of the subject renders a ‘sense of loss’ rather than an access to structural cohesion apocalyptic rather than generative the appropriation of signs engenders postmodern pastiche: ‘art as a complete imitation of objects incurring the loss of its (structural) sign function.’”(3)

To approach this from a societal standpoint, this process is undoubtedly intertwined with issues of identity. An indicator of this dilemma is illustrated by the proliferation of graffiti and illegal public art. Because of its illegality, the participants of the culture(4) oftentimes use self-ascribed nicknames as their nom de plumes creating a persona based on artistic skill and risk taken to write these names on appropriated spaces. The format of these names originally imitated that of the signage of commodities/advertisements, with high contrasted colors and other techniques to be easily noticed by the untrained eye (though evolved from there into its own coded signage). By imitating the language of advertisements for self-promotion, the result incurs “the loss of its (structural) sign function.”

All appropriative acts presuppose hierarchical systems of ownership based on class and/or social status (which in most countries is often based on race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexuality, physical ability, etc), or more specifically habitus as referred to in the Gaywood article. But to delve deeper into the intricacies of the visual language of collage, we must examine it in terms of a verbal language.

Roman Jakobson, a linguistic semiotician, dissected the process of communication and came up with six necessary parts of a speech event. [Editor's note: see Jakobson's Communication Model.] A mugging is a good example we can use to illustrate Jakobson’s six communicative functions due to the dynamic nature of the coercive speech event (the elementary modus operandi for modern societal control).

Jakobson defines the addresser as the member of the speech event who sends “a MESSAGE to the ADDRESSEE” (the artist). For example, the addresser might make the threat/offer “give me your money or your life,” implying that choosing neither is a non-choice. The addresser’s proposition is not enough to determine whether or not a statement is coercive; we need some account of the addresser’s emotional state as well.

The addressee is the recipient of the message in the coercive speech event (the viewer).

The message in the speech event is the particular content delivered from the addresser to the addressee. In the case of coercion, the message can be literal and spelled out, as in the case of “Give me your money or I will kill you,” or it can play upon the poetics of language.

Context may be understood as the socio-cultural and spatio-temporal “referred to” in the speech event.(5) The spatio-temporal context in a coercive statement may be important if the speech event takes place in a threatening environment where no one is around to intervene or there are limited means of escape from the addresser. Further, the meaning of the harms delivered in the message from the addresser and their interpretation, as potential harms by the addressee are dependent on context (for example how wealthy or physically fit the addressee is).

Jakobson defines contact as “a physical channel and psychological connection between addresser and addressee.”(6) The contact between them might add a particular nuance to the coercive message not visible in the verbal. If the addresser brandished a knife and grabbed the arm of the addressee, for example, she might not need to verbalize the complete imperative choice. She might verbalize the words “give me your money,” while implying “(if you do not give me your money, I will cut you with this knife).” Similarly, if the coercive message were delivered over the phone, the addressee might not feel as restricted by the conative function of the coercive proposition, as they may be in a more secure environment or a great distance from the would-be coercer.

The final function we may use in analyzing a speech event is code. Jakobson defines code as a patterned shared system of language that during a speech event is “fully, or at least partially, common to the addresser and addressee.”(7) Codes may be broadly understood as “a group or set of signs” that give individual signs values or meanings through relational properties.(8)

Jakobson’s six communicative functions offer us insight into the intricacies of communicating signs and symbols. It’s a dissection of that unseen layer of the process toward meaning, and consequently the processes of appropriation and recuperation (both methods of redefining signs). Collage is merely the experimentation and examination of the effects of context of images, signs, symbols, and in a non-art sense: of people and ideas.

_______________________________________________________________

1. Bricolage, in this writer’s opinion, amounts to a more “refined” (conceptually, not always aesthetically) postmodernist mode because of its emphasis on context and place when choosing materials, instead of the more retinal criteria used for classic collage like that of Picasso or Schwitters.

2. Debord, Guy. The Decline & Fall of the Spectacle-Commodity Economy, Paris: Internationale Situationniste, 1966, 99-100.

3. Gaywood, James. “yBa As Critique, from Theory in Contemporary Art since 1985, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005, 93.

4. Yes, cultures sprout even around the senseless act of spraying ridiculous nicknames on things that don’t belong to you… ah, postmodernism.

5. Jakobson, Roman. Selected Writings: Linguistics and Poetics, 1990, 73.

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid.

8. Leeds-Hurwitz, Wendy. Semiotics and Communication: Signs, Codes, Cultures, 1993, 51.

Malleable Objects

2009-05-03T09:41:00.015-04:00

Methodologies and ideas about art-making have progressed remarkably since the early years at the beginning of minimal and conceptual art. With respect to its increased visibility and critically regarded prevalence in our burgeoning global art world, postconceptualism, as I have termed it, is in need of theoretical de-acceleration so that we may assess the various substantive theories behind the objects and practices before the dizzying pace of production and the concomitant media valorization would catapult us into empty spectacularization.(1)

In my gathering of 21st Century practitioners of Postconceptualism, I have attempted a winnowing of key issues and ideas established earlier in conceptual art. The best of these ideas remain potent enough to generate cultural production that not only emulates the original concept but sometimes (perhaps not often enough) extends and magnifies it in ways that truly focus our criticality. All 17 of the artists selected for the exhibit are worthy of note but I wish to quite briefly discuss three who address the object in quite different ways but whose consideration of the object foregrounds the theoretical promise of postconceptualism.

Breht O’Hearn shows such promise not only with a sophisticated understanding of mass as form but in his introduction of the idea that the work might reflect a self-awareness about sculpture’s history. Sculpture was closely wedded to modernist theory in terms of its dismissal of the pedestal to champion the idea of sitelessness.(2) No longer bound to a pedestal, sculpture was freed of its relation to place and began to expand its exploration of abstraction.

O’Hearn’s monolithic object, itself an elegant reference to Carl Andre’s early totems, engages a subdued critique of pedestal angst through actual destruction. The prized verticality, the solidity of the upright beam, is marred by obsessive drilling to produce a wound approximately two feet off the floor. One would think the resultant loss of mass would collapse the beam yet it remains impossibly erect.

O’Heran’s skillful attack pokes fun at the nagging theoretical distinctions between Modernist sculpture that first abolished the pedestal (site) and later sculpture that would occupy specific sites. Ironically, the removal of wood from the beam creates a kind of pedestal itself through the separation provided by the removal of mass, and provides our talking points: a symbolic attack upon sculpture itself literalizes the distinctions of place and object, and the residual sawdust reads as the resultant discursivity about sites and sculpture, which temptingly threatens to (again) bury the pedestal issue.

In her refined sutured table, Amber Landis does much more than blur the divisions between the art object and furniture. Current fascination with “art as design” have produced a number of purveyors yet the obvious theoretical challenges of this melding reside in its reception in the critical arena. The championing of Jorge Pardo’s lamps, preceded by earlier critical support of Franz West’s “post-sculptural” objects, opened the gates for the current practitioners of hip, fine art furniture. The jury is still out whether much of these makers are “artists.”

There is more at stake in Landis’s table. “Making” versus “taking” becomes a contested issue in her work as her table in fact was not made by her but was appropriated from the many in production. We might mention Duchamp when speaking about Landis’s act of shifting this object from “use” to “exhibition” value through the context of an art show. However, she additionally applied parchment paper to all surfaces of the table (top, drawer and legs) and obsessively stitched every edge with surgical sutures. In and of itself, this is a clever association of craft with function, but decorative functionality is also not her ultimate focus.

There is a point at which these associations of furniture, craft, functionality, art and object become lost amid a psychology of the object. The imprint of the quotidian form of “table” is remarkably strong and a viewer of this object tends to read it well before gaining a closer proximity to the piece. There we see the evidence of the artist’s hand upon the appropriated object and we get this revelation accompanied by its frisson of shocking recognition. This play with furniture as psychological object has a renowned history within conceptual art but is seldom deployed with such strength. The vulgarity of the urinal has been replaced by the subtlety of Landis’s sutured objects. As assisted readymades they continue the tradition with great respect and potential.

Although his work might be regarded as “painting,” Ken Weathersby also addresses missed theoretical opportunities inherent in object-making. The most unyielding of his works, “164”, indeed revels in its enhancement of painting's objecthood, composed as it is of two small stretched canvasses turned face-to-face. With the work's larger canvas facing out from the wall and its smaller companion canvas facing in, we view what Weathersby calls “the disregarded space”(3) of the reverse of the smaller painting. Obviously a space we are unfamiliar with, the reverse side gives us little visual information, forcing us to consider the painting as an object that is constructed of wood and canvas. Weathersby does partially expose the obverse of the larger painting upon which we note a tightly-rendered checkerboard patterning. This immediately addresses the visual methodology of painting and strikes up the conversation between the work's two theoretical positions: painting as illusion versus painting as object.

As explored fully by Frank Stella in his earlier black stripe paintings, the idea was that a painting could assert its status as object through the actions of the brushwork. Weathersby revisits these theories of “painting as object” through an act that is at once more sculptural and more conceptual. Viewing the possible actions a “painter” might take as “terms in a lexicon,” he rejects certain elements of the lexicon that focus our attention on their reduction. Here Weathersby has chosen to “eliminate a term that seems central” - surface - to focus our attention on its reduction as a malleable condition of painting. We know that paintings are objects, obviously, but what has perhaps not been substantively unpacked is to what degree the theoretical appreciation of a painting's objecthood has yet to be unearthed.

Images (top to bottom):
“Untitled” (2009); wood and sawdust; © Copyright by Breht O'Hearn
“Untitled” (2009); table, paper and sutures; © Copyright by Amber Landis
“164” (2009); acrylic and graphite on canvas; © Copyright by Ken Weathersby

___________________________________________________________________

1. “The spectacle cannot be understood as a mere visual excess produced by mass-media technologies. It is a worldview that has actually been materialized, a view of a world that has become objective.” - Guy Debord.

2. Carson, Juli. “1989” in Theory in Contemporary Art since 1985, Oxford, 2005, 334. [“…an inherent sitelessness, one that in the hands of Brancusi, for example, made claims to being functionally placeless and self-referential, as base and sculpture were subsumed into a single transportable form.”]

3. All quotes from Ken Weathersby taken from a Jan. 26, 2009 statement.

Curatorial Experience

2009-04-23T14:10:00.004-04:00

In seven days Postconceptualism opens.

I plan to post running commentary about my immersion in the curatorial experience on Twitter. If readers of this blog care to monitor my random and rambling thoughts on the various events, dilemmas, insights, confessions and revelations that may occur, my username is profmcb.

I will be writing more about the show soon. However, given the labor-intensive week that lies ahead it will have to be when the show is hung and my head has cleared after the opening receptions; check back then.

Image: 1939 12th Street NW; photograph via cellphone by MCB.

Postconceptualism

2009-04-11T13:47:00.007-04:00

Postconceptualism addresses art theories as posed by the original conceptual artists in a selection of contemporary artists. Artists selected for this show individually approach many significant issues of conceptualism, albeit through their own unique visions. 12 of the 16 artists in Postconceptualism have studied art theory with Mark Cameron Boyd at Corcoran College of Art + Design and many have exhibited work with Fernando Batista. Together, Boyd and Batista believe this exhibition presents 21st Century artists whose work extends conceptual art and continues its impact as Postconceptualism.

Conceptual art questioned the traditional role of the art object as conveyer of meaning. The subsequent dematerialization of the object results in artists exploring impermanent media and creating ephemeral experiences in time and space. Mooskoo addresses intangibility by making fragile works that reduce concepts of “painting as object” to the fragility of paint minus its support. Ken Weathersby’s paintings reveal “the disregarded space” behind a painting’s support in two-sided paintings which “require(s) a deciphering experience” to perceive them. Reuben Breslar’s photographs of previous installations comment “on the residue of the process of conceptualism” by circumventing the spatio-temporal context of the original experience. Valerie Molnar works with yarn to make large formalist abstractions, “stripping away form, function, gratuitous yarn textures, ulterior fancy stitchery” to escape knitting’s history as functional craft. Amber Landis blurs the distinctions between fine art and utilitarian function further with her sculptural furniture.

When not avoiding object-making, conceptual art emphasizes repetition and process as non-traditional, anti-compositional ways to manifest the form of a work of art. The drawing by William Brovelli is a fragment of his on-going “Timeline” series about “the deterministic element of art making” that encompasses hundreds of thousands of hand-drawn figures that “serve as reference material for the neurological mapping of the brain's response to repetition within a narrowed format.”

Conceptual art is particularly suspicious of art works becoming commercial “product” and frequently disrupts this commodification in subversive ways. David Williams re-contextualizes the “commercial artifice” of product containers in his “paintings” of recycled soda cans and “places the viewer in the ironic position of appreciating the beauty of objects that were originally used to psychologically entice her or him to purchase and consume.”

Questioning authorship through collaborative art making also opens up participatory practice. Cat Manolis offers us her interactive sculpture that will envelop one-at-a-time participants in an experience of anxious self-reflexivity.

Conceptual artists venture into other fields of knowledge like psychoanalysis and anthropology to address identity issues and socio-cultural studies. Patricia Correa investigates “self-portraiture” and the social construction of female identity through medical statistics, specifically gynecological data that “represent(s) the life of a woman in terms of her menstrual cycles.” Rachel Fick’s narrative video ostensibly documents a generic American family but instead reveals the possibilities of “slippage between the manifested character and the participant's real self."

Language holds a specific (and humorous) fascination for conceptual art as semiotics opened possibilities for the work of art as text. Leah Frankel “replaces(s) text with imagery” through her transformation of a shelf of paperback books visually; Diane Blackwell searches “the basics of language and sculpture: letters and wood” for the elusive meaning among “definitions of work and play;” while Andrej Ujhazy offers “a silly post-conceptual wall drawing about a couple of words.”

Humor is also used in conceptual art’s critique on art history itself and conceptualists often comment on their peers with great wit. Breht O’Hearn’s ironic twist on the totemic in modernist sculpture skillfully pokes fun at the pedestal. Andrew Brown critiques minimalism with his “Tara Donovan reduction experience” and a small monochrome that claims “it's better when you’re not here.” Coincidentally, two Postconceptualism artists have used humor to address differing issues through the same object: a fire hydrant. John James Anderson exhibits a mapping project of bad fire hydrants in the District of Columbia, while Nicholas Carr has created a hydrant “fountain.” Anderson’s work clearly evokes social responsibility given his intent to prod city government into action by “document(ing) the broken hydrants, and later document the walk via a Google Map and an essay.” Nicholas Carr wittily refers to both Marcel Duchamp and Bruce Nauman with his hydrant that confronts creativity as a “state of emergency.”

Postconceptualism opens with a Public Reception on Friday, May 1, and continues through May 9, 2009. The exhibition site is located at 1939 12th Street NW, Washington, D.C.

Image: “Child's Play”; © Copyright 2009 by Diane Blackwell.

Of Durational Context

2009-03-29T15:23:00.002-04:00

The creation of art encompasses procedural, perceptual and contextual stages. The procedural stage is the move from conception to action, through both intellectual and physical processes, to “make” art. An object may not materialize, however, and immateriality returns focus to the concept. Yet even the most conceptual of art often includes instructions, supplements and wall text that are a result of the thought process.

Whether one begins with a concept or not, thoughts occur that move one to action. One’s initial stage of procedure and process may also include improvisation as a working method. Beginning with no idea is an idea in and of itself; improvisation can also be conceptual. In improvisational methodology the artist is cognizant of his actions, as the work at hand changes rapidly through chance, accident and randomness. Improvisational work thus engages in a hybridization of perceptual aspects within its procedures.

It is arguable whether “art” occurs during its making. Some hold that art is only truly experienced in the later perceptual stage. Duchamp said that perception of the art work by the spectator was most significant, as “the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualification and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.”

Recent work in participatory art conflates the procedural and perceptual stages as the “art” occurs literally through processes involving spectators’ participation and perception. The art “site” – the locus as installation – becomes another stage whereby access to the “art” is mediated through context; the contextual stage of negotiation with both intellectual and physical properties of the site.

In the contextual stage, the “work” may become evaporative and ephemeral as the site is relieved of its importance as an “art object” and instead allows for the experience of the “art.” The site may be further modified conceptually to allow for a spatio-temporal enhancement of its immateriality. Installations or “works” that are temporary with time-based duration become truly immaterial as they come to an end. As the installation is dismantled – or consumed – or destroyed – the contextual stage is also “erased” as the physical site evolves to the immaterial. Perceptual experience of this immateriality is relevant to art’s transcendence from objects and further evidence of the dominance of concept.

Video: A Contextual Stage (2009); installation at Hamiltonian Gallery, Washington, D.C; © Copyright 2009 by Mark Cameron Boyd.

Further Discourse on the Hollow

2009-03-23T09:22:00.009-04:00

Administrator's Note: Given that blog comments are sometimes overlooked, I wanted to post this one by Diane Blackwell for her insights and further discourse on last week's essay on The Hallowed Hollow.

Your article touches on two subjects, minimalist theory and the debate between art and artifact. It is stating that Robert Kusmirowski’s sculptural version of Ted Kaczynski’s, (a.k.a. the Unabomber) cabin is a minimalist sculpture because the viewer is denied an understanding of the inside and can only understand the piece “through its obdurate wholeness.” If the artistic cabin were to be considered a minimalist sculpture, it would have to be read objectively as a large cube in the form of a boarded up cabin and the interior would be merely the space formed to support the exterior walls. The viewer would be pleased for the opportunity to have the experience of an abstracted, self-explanatory, in this case cubed object. Its wholeness would be in its solidarity.

The wholeness of Kusmirowski’s exterior form is not sufficient to read his work. By referencing the artifact, Kusmirowski has asked the viewer to use a subjective approach. We cannot fully understand the piece without evaluating the meaning of the denied interior. The artist has opened the viewer’s imagination by boarding up this cabin. The viewer must assign personal experience, reach an opinion, and pass judgment about the “hallowed hollow.” The artist asks the viewer to set aside the initial abhorrence of the place, the home of a murderer, submit to natural curiosities, and ask what it’s really like to get inside. The artist is not asking us to look through the eyes of a murderer but he is challenging the viewer to acknowledge a culpability of wanting a voyeuristic look inside the cabin for a close encounter with the mindset of a murderer. The interior of the cabin and its inferences play a major part in understanding the piece whether we see the inside or not. Both the physical exterior and the personal interior are critical to understanding this work of art.

When comparing different styles, I think of two other boxes: Maya Lin's "Blue Lake Pass" sculpture that is included in the traveling exhibition, "Systematic Landscapes" currently at the Corcoran Gallery of Art and Edward Kienholz's "State Hospital." Both use space to intimidate.

Lin's sculpture uses space and form to define her intent. “Blue Lake Pass” has interior space only as a result of the topography she presents. Understanding the interior space is not intrinsic to the work's meaning. It is merely a result of the theme she is presenting. Her use of exterior space does contribute to the understanding of her landscape. “Blue Lake Pass” is a large model of shapes found in nature that impede on our personal space. They ask, “What is out of place - landscapes recreated in a museum or our presence within nature?” The placement of her boxes creates an environment that can be read as topography that can be experienced. The viewer can walk the resulting passageways and become part of the rolling scene. Those same boxes though are placed close enough to give an overwhelmingly physical presence of nature. It is the distance she leaves between her sections of topography that creates a sense of infringement.

Kienholz’s sculpture uses space and concept to get his point across. “State Hospital” has a padlocked, interior space similar to the “Unicabine” in that what’s going on inside defines the piece. The viewer experiences the same sensations of revulsion and voyeurism. Where the artists differ is in intent. “State Hospital” is a social commentary about the complacency of Americans to address society’s treatment of the insane. Unlike Kusmirowski’s piece, Kienholz’s box encourages access. The viewer can enter by peeking through a barred window or by walking around the box. The “rear” exterior wall has been removed so that the viewer can gawk at a world filled with terror and isolation. We are challenged to justify this interior’s existence for we find enough to suggest that a similar room of confinement could exist. The “Unicabine” on the other hand provides a more objective commentary. No where is the viewer asked to engage in a communal sense of responsibility that as a society we could create such a monster. This room documents an environment that does not require any intervention on the part of a society. The viewer is encouraged to fantasize about a murderous madman as if watching a spectacle.

What remains constant among these artists is their use of space to create art. The box has proven versatile enough to stand alone, to offer support, or to suggest an environment. Its universality allows the viewer to accept the shape, bond with it, and move on to a larger understanding of the work - to paraphrase Morris. The artists have used the box well. It is up to the viewer to comprehend and accept the wholeness of their works of art.

Image: Blue Lake Pass (2006); © Copyright by Maya Lin.