To ‘shine’ means to shine upon something, to make that upon which the light falls appear. Hans Georg Gadamer
T h e
K e y
I s s u e s
C o n c e r n i n g
Contem porar y
Art
Philosophy, politics and popular culture in the context of contemporary cultural practice.
Gary Willis
Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of the 'Doctor of Philosophy' by dissertation and creative work. May 2007
School of Culture and Communication
University of Melbourne
THE KEY ISSUES CONCERNING CONTEMPORARY ART
Abstract
It seems the boundaries between art and life were over-run sometime back during the hundred-year campaign of the Avant-garde.
The
supernova that was art must have collapsed into a black hole in the late 20th century.
Whilst art’s memes have been sent hurtling out into the furthest
reaches of the universe, art, in the specific sense, has become a dark matter. Everything identifies as art now, everyone an artist of some sort or another, but the burnt-out nucleus that was art seems to have become the final taboo. In becoming everything, art has become a no-thing. Whilst some critics argue its irrelevance, others pronounce its death. The mission of this project has been to track the trace elements of the art meme through the stellar system and evaluate its abstract structure and ask: What is art now? What was art originally? What value is our concept of art? This thesis interrogates the issues facing contemporary art from a broad range of perspectives; art history, popular culture, politics and philosophy. It differentiates these perspectives in terms of four key issues: The Issue Concerning Art, The Issue Concerning the Artist, The Issue Concerning the Artist’s Subject, and The Issue Concerning the Artist’s Language. It concludes that art is essentially a knowledge-driven project, which operates on a very different logic to other epistemologies. This understanding could be useful to artists and art education because it clears the confusion, which has arisen at the end of the 20th century, where historical conceptions of art have been rendered redundant in face of the exponential expansion into new media, science, technology, popular culture and politics.
In the context of arts expanded popularity, artists face increased
institutional rationalisation. What is left of 20th century concepts of art have been superseded. We witness this already happening as the study of art is absorbed into broader disciplines such as ‘Creative Industries’, ‘Visual Culture’ and ‘New Media’ studies etcetera. The question facing the study of art now becomes: ‘Is art a useful concept?’
ii
THE KEY ISSUES CONCERNING CONTEMPORARY ART This research maintains a post-conceptual perspective; concluding that art is best understood as a viral production, which engenders a meme capable of reproducing itself within the host system and re-booting the operating
system.
It
argues
that
the
post-medium
discourses
have
underestimated the significance of language, semiotic social code, to art production.
The value of this reading is to be understood in terms of two
perspectives.
Firstly, art seeks to impact upon the structure of social
knowledge, which it can only do when its code enters the matrix of language. Secondly, art is nothing but the production of semiotic code, which stands between ‘Being’ and the matrix of social knowledge as a mode of language. On both counts, art is understood as language, which seeks to impact upon social knowledge structures.
In this respect, art is to be understood as an
epistemology, bound by the usual protocols of language (no contribution to knowledge without contribution to language) but one, which utilises a unique methodology. Art as epistemology is a concept easily understood within the discourses of the ‘New Avant-garde’, where art is instrumentalised to contribute to the epistemological project of re-mapping global conditions. Within these highly politicised circuits creative production is quantified in terms of its ability to contribute to the greater epistemological endeavour and the distinction between ‘art’ and ‘not-art’ has become porous and ‘art’ an optional extra. However, post-art conceptions of cultural production as another instrument in the political toolbox, represents only one side of my argument for art as an epistemological practice. More significantly, my argument derives its logic from art’s deepest etymological origins. Unlike the evolutionary conception of art inherited from the 20th century canon, wherein art reads as a linear narrative toward its own inevitable disintegration, philosophy maintains an enduring conception of art’s place in the lexicon of knowledge and offers a clear and consistent overview of its dynamic.
Where philosophy’s model of art differs from the rational
expectations of a more objective approach to knowledge production is in terms of its methodology. From a philosophic perspective art is also understood as an epistemology, but one which functions in terms of a subjective methodology. Art’s objective is not to be confused with that of the social sciences, the iii
THE KEY ISSUES CONCERNING CONTEMPORARY ART weighing up of evidence and the drawing of balanced and objective conclusions.
Art is driven by an instinctive imperative and an existential
epistemology, which speaks directly to the becoming of Beings. From the philosophic perspective, art springs from subjective demands for the artist’s ontology to come into its own shining.
However,
despite the fact that art is essentially a performative action, art manifests in terms of a semiotic code, which generates a gestalt to confront logic of the known with an ‘other’. In this model, art instinctively springs from the gap in the matrix of knowledge to illuminate the conditions of its own ‘knowing’ as code, which demands translation into common language. Art’s objective is viral, to impact on the structure of language and to install the logic of its gestalt into the matrix of knowledge. In terms of both its material manifestation and its memetic objectives, art presents as cultural code, but one determined in alignment with poiêtic insight.
Significantly, from the philosophical perspective, poiêsis is
understood as the origin of all philosophic knowledge.
From an artist’s
perspective, the institution of poiêtic insight is contingent upon the artist’s fluency with semiotic cultural code. This conception of art as cultural code is important because within the post-medium conditions of contemporary art, the implications of art’s relationship with language, semiotic code, have been underestimated. In times when 20th century conceptions of art prove unstable platforms for study and contemporary art appears to have lost any definitive connection with the concept of art, it is the resilience of philosophy’s model of art, which comments it to my attention. However, more importantly it is the conflation of the philosophy’s conception of art’s role and the most contemporary expectations of art’s responsibility that commends it for public scrutiny. Although this proposition might not save the idea of art from its adversaries, it does offer to clarify the concept of art. Art is semiotic cultural code, formed in alignment with poiêtic insight, which sets up a subjective intervention in the structure of cultural knowledge to bring an existential truth to light.
Art's function is to keep culture open to existential experience and
generational change. At a time when historical conceptions of art have begun to fail and artists are being ushered toward more reliable epistemologies, this iv
THE KEY ISSUES CONCERNING CONTEMPORARY ART model of arts dynamic methodology could prove useful to a wide range of conceptual producers. The questions that this research has attempted to address have been three fold: What constitutes contemporary art? What was art originally? Is art a useful concept?
v
THE KEY ISSUES CONCERNING CONTEMPORARY ART
Ta b l e o f C o n t e n t s
Acknowledgements
i
Abstract
ii
Table of Contents
vi
List of Illustrations
viii
Introduction
1
0.1 The aim 0.2 The proposition 0.3 The problem 0.4 The scope 0.5 The overview The Issue Concerning Art The Issue Concerning the Artist The Issue Concerning the Artist’s Subject The Issue Concerning the Artist's Language
The Issue Concerning Art 1.01 Introduction 1.02 The state of art 1.03 Ethics vs. aesthetics 1.04 Art's most archaic etymology 1.05 Conclusions
The Issue Concerning the Artist
1
2
3
7
10
11
12
14
15
19
19
26
39
50
65
71
2.01 Introduction 2.02 The artist's political context 2.03 The artist's popular context 2.04 The artist's original methodology 2.05 Conclusions
71
75
90
105
121
The Issue Concerning the Artist's Subject
127
3.01 Introduction 3.02 Three régimes of imaging 3.03 The aesthetics of modernism 3.04 The politics of post-colonialism 3.05 Conclusions
127
133
146
157
175
The Issue Concerning the Artist's Language 4.01 Introduction 4.02 The limits of knowledge 4.03 The post-medium problem 4.04 The axis between the artist and the world 4.05 Conclusions
vi
181
181
186
197
213
223
THE KEY ISSUES CONCERNING CONTEMPORARY ART
Conclusions
229
230
234
238
5.1 The conditions of contemporary art. 5.2 What art is 5.3 The significance of this model.
Bibliography
243
Index
253
vii
THE KEY ISSUES CONCERNING CONTEMPORARY ART
List of Illustrations
Cover image
Deng Yifu ‘Diplomatic History’ Lazer cut book and Perspex, 2003. Courtesy - China Art Projects, Hong Kong
Introduction
Neo Rauch ‘Quiz’ 250 X 210 cms Oil on canvas, 2002. Courtesy - David Zwirner Gallery, New York.
Chapter #1
Mario Sorrenti ‘Thou who Cans’t Not’ Photograph, 2004. Courtesy - Art Partners, New York.
Chapter #2
Leigh Bowery Untitled Costume and performance, 1993/4 Photograph Michael Fazakerley, London/New York.
Chapter #3
Aernout Mik ‘Scapegoats’ Video/Installation, 2006. Courtesy - Carlier I Gebauer Gallery, Berlin.
Chapter #4
Deng Yifu ‘Diplomatic History’ Lazer cut book and Perspex, 2003. Courtesy - China Art Projects, Hong Kong
Conclusions
Micheal Landy ‘Scrapheap Services’ Performance, 1996. Courtesy - Thomas Dane Gallery, London.
viii
Neo Rauch, 'Quiz', oil on canvas, 2002 Courtesy David Zwirner Gallery, New York.
Introduction SAMO © AS AN ESCAPE CLAUSE. Jean-Michel Basquiat, graffiti, New York, 1978.1
0.1 The aim The aim of this dissertation has been to clarify the artist’s role at a time when there is considerable confusion regarding contemporary art’s defining parameters. This question becomes more complex when we recognise, as the contemporary Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben points out, the art world appears to have aligned itself with ‘not art’ in the ‘art — not art’ dichotomy.2
1 Dick Hebdige, "Welcome to the Terrordome; Jean-Michel Basquiat and the Dark Side of Hybridity.," in Jean-Michel Basquiat, ed. Richard Marshall (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1993). 60. 2 Giorgio Agamben, The Man Without Content (Stanford, Los Angeles: Stanford University Press, 1999). 48.
1
INTRODUCTION The
research
reveals
the
conceptual
platform,
which
once
underpinned art practice has been destabilised. Art now exudes from every quarter of our culture, contemporary art can take any form, an artist can work with any material, medium or technology, use any process, tradition, methodology or discipline, including none at all. In this context we recognise curators now face a glut of artists and artistic practices.3 However despite art's ‘anything goes’ popular profile, arts historical trajectory is becoming a politically determined teleology. This thesis considers a wide range of perspectives on the conditions determining contemporary artistic practice through the interrogation of four key issues. These are, The Issue Concerning Art, The Issue Concerning the Artist, The Issue Concerning the Artist’s Subject and The Issue Concerning the Artist's Language. The questions that this research has attempted to unravel have been three fold: What constitutes contemporary art? What was art in the first place? Is art a useful concept?
0.2 The proposition This thesis argues that the most reliable conception of art derives from philosophy where, as the American aesthetic philosopher Arthur Danto puts it, ‘not one step has been taken since Aristotle’.4
Most importantly, it
recognises philosophy’s concept of art stands in a curious alignment with the most contemporary demands for art as an epistemological practice. However, where contemporary notions of art have no boundaries and regularly sacrifice the concept of art to social science and/or politics, philosophy’s conception of art delineates a clear axis on which art defines itself. This axis differentiates art’s methodology from all other productive disciplines.
3 Rosalind Krauss Hal Foster, Yve Alain Bois, Benjamin Buchloh, Art since 1900 (London: Thames and Hudson, 2004). 678. 4
Arthur C. Danto, The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art (1986). 104.
2
INTRODUCTION
In philosophy’s model, art is driven by the impulse to poeticising, which philosophers define as the originating institution of all profound philosophic knowledge. Unfettered by any culturally specific notions of tradition, language, genre, medium or technology, philosophy’s model of art pivots on a mimêtic/poiêtic axis to provoke a cultural gestalt, which engenders an existential truth, one compulsively overlooked by social morés. Importantly, at a time when most 20th century conceptions of art have been eclipsed by epistemological demands for ethical cultural production, philosophy’s concept of art stands in curious alignment with calls for a publically accountable art. As the study of art practice is drawn deeper into the academic rigours of higher education, art’s basic platform faces further scrutiny, this time in terms of the ‘contribution to knowledge’ clause, fundamental to all academic funding. Within the deregulated context of contemporary art, where ‘anything goes’, we recognise many within arts institutions are turning to more reliable epistemologies to facilitate the knowledge-driven demands of public funding. In this context, most 20th century notions of art are rendered redundant. The profound stability of philosophy’s model of art’s dynamic commends it for closer examination, but it is the shared epistemological expectations between post-art modes of contemporary cultural production and philosophy’s model of art, that make this argument worthy of examination. They are both concerned with the illumination of the gap in the knowledge, both strive to transform social space and both seek to institute their contribution to knowledge through the production of new structures of social code capable of impacting on the language conventions of popular culture.
In this regard I
believe philosophy’s conception of art is worthy of closer scrutiny.
0.3 The problem Let us imagine that a friend has come to you for advice.
Their
daughter or son wants to become an artist. What would you recommend? Of course, you would first ask after their son or daughter’s preferences. You might then evaluate the reputations of some of the local art 3
INTRODUCTION schools, however, if you did a little research you might find that the study of art, in the historical sense, is no longer essential to contemporary art practice — and that might give you pause to think. Would your friend’s son or daughter be better advised to study political philosophy, physics, fashion, popular culture, documentary filmmaking or urban planning, even? Certainly there is precedent for all of these activities to be presented as art. However, if we were to suggest that artists based in these broader disciplines could be more worthy of attention from the arts industry, than artists steeped in 20th century conceptions of art, we must surely question the value of ‘art’ as a study. To put a frame around this problem consider the following statements from some of the major curators of the early 21st century. Saskia Bos, ex-director of De Appel Foundation in Amsterdam and the director of the 2nd Berlin Biennale insists 'we must detonate the idea of the artist as genius working away in their studio creating works of great expression’.5
Okwui
Enwezor, the director of the 2002 Documenta 11, says there is no point in looking to art history for answers now, ‘we must look to contemporary politics and the global issues of post-colonial culture.’6 Isabel Carlos, the director of the 2004 Sydney Biennale, agrees with Enwezor, ‘it is better not to know about historic artistic production’; Isabel recommends a background in science for any future curator.7
Jean Christophe Armann, the ex-director of the Frankfurt
Museum für Kunst Moderne, believes ‘art has lost its relevance to the broader culture. The cutting edge of contemporary creativity is to be found in world of advertising, fashion and photography’.8 Bluntly put, the study of art is facing a crisis. Over the last hundred years, the Avant-garde transgressed every boundary in their bid to arrest our
5
www.berlinbienanale.de
6 Okwui Enwezor, "What Is the Avant-Garde Today," in Documenta 11 (Ostfilfern-Ruit: Hatje-Cantz, 2002). 45. 7
Miguel Armado, "Isabel Carlos," Contemporary Art 2005. 38.
8 Bruce James, "Contemporary Art Is Dead," in Arts Today (Australia: Radio National, 2001).
4
INTRODUCTION
attention and change the way we see the world. Today the world has changed and we are all obliged to be more creative in our thinking. Given the advent of globalism, the exponential growth of population, the rise of the creative classes and the glut of creative practices now presenting for public consideration, many artists have taken the project of the Avant-garde up to the next level, claiming art’s institutional infrastructures as the instrumental medium for changing the way we see the world. Answers to the problems facing art practice are no longer to be found within art’s historical methodologies. This situation represents the nexus of the problem facing the prospective art student. This is not just the decree of the radical Avant-garde; this is the pronouncement of many leading artists, curators, theorists and institutions alike. Whether individual artists accept the complexity of the predicament they now face or not, the ground swell of doubt regarding art's basic premise is on the rise. Bound by the pressures of neoliberal economics, commodity culture and global politics, art’s institutional networks now consider art’s role in light of socio-economic obligations to good governance and economic opportunity. This means there are major changes in how artistic practices are rationalised and how art is quantified. Whilst a creative education is never a loss, an education in historical conceptions of art’ might not prove be an advantage for an artist of the future. Given the collapse of boundaries between ‘art’ and ‘not art’, which have ensued since the ‘60s; given the fact that commerce has appropriated art strategies in their to appeal to ‘art savvy’ markets, given the political obligations on contemporary art to address social problems currently facing the globe, it should come as no surprise to find that the issue of whether some project is art or not, is irrelevant to many curators and arts administrators. Arts infrastructures and funding resources, once committed to art, in the specific sense, have since expanded their horizons to embrace the broadest spectrum of social, scientific, technological, environmental, popular and political approaches to pressing social concerns. Art’s traditional disciplines and classical practices now face difficulties in competing for funding within public circuits where the default 5
INTRODUCTION preferences are set to privilege predetermined technological, social and political agendas.
Despite the generic ‘excellence’ clause, all cultural, creative and
artistic activities face rationalisation in face of politically predetermined issues. Once upon a time, perhaps back in the late 19th century, the student of art could take confidence in the stability of their discipline; today art’s historical disciplines prove irrelevant to contemporary art practice. While the study of art was once integral to the network of institutional infrastructures, held in place by the arts and education ministry, today the question, which looms large has become; does art actually have a defining discipline? Learning to think is not exclusive to the school of art, ditto digital media and new technology. It is in this context that we recognise that the visual arts are being subsumed into the broader discipline of visual literacy, where mass media technologies, and alternative promotional strategies are generic to a wide range of disciplines; film, fashion, design and marketing to name but a few. Further, as the school of art is brought under the academic umbrella of the higher education system, where all disciplines are rationalised in terms of contribution to knowledge, the school of art is faces a major question; does art have a discipline worthy of sustaining? While this thesis acknowledges the fact that many 20th century conceptions of art practice are irrelevant to contemporary cultural demands, it disagrees with the idea that art has come to its end. More importantly it argues that the concept of art has a very well defined parameter, one worthy of further investigation. Conceptually, art retains its leverage exactly because society is defined by a predicably stable parameter; its compulsive drive toward the future, determined by its preoccupations with security, opportunity and social advantage. The subjective production, which defines both the artist and work of art, is persistently marginalised within the social paradigm. That having been said, art’s strength is its ability to intervene in the social preoccupations with future security and social advantage and usher subjective insight into the public arena.
Although art cannot be defined simply as communication, the
performative act of art is identifiable as an act of language but one, which speaks to the truth of Being itself.
6
INTRODUCTION
This conception of art as an act of language has been at odds with the formalist discourses of 20th century Modernism and underestimated by the post-medium discourses of Postmodernism.
At a time when modernist
conceptions of art have been deemed redundant and post-medium conceptions of art have lead many artists to, what the French arts philosopher Thierry De Duve calls, the ‘anything whatever problem’; hopping from one idea to another only to find their practices eclipsed by more pragmatic epistemologies, this thesis offers a way forward. The philosophic conception of art under consideration in this thesis returns art's discourse to the issues of epistemology and methodology through the production of language, without forsaking the concept of art. I believe this reading offers a stable platform for the concept of art, worthy of consideration at a time when many 21st century conceptions of art prove either unreliable or not to be concerned with art at all.
0.4 The scope This dissertation is atypical of a fine arts research thesis. Rather than concentrating on the consistencies of any neatly defined period, it swings wildly between conflicting extremes. It exemplifies the extraordinary range of possibilities, which have confronted the practicing artist ever since the late ‘60s when art broke all its boundaries and extended the concept of art into the widest fields of innovative practice. For many theorists, curators and artists alike, the differentiation of disciplines is not worth discussing. Contemporary artists are free to construct practices from the broadest spectrum of creative endeavour and sophisticated modes of artistic practice now exude from the every quarter of society. However it is this rapid expansion of the concept of art has lead to a crisis for the study of art, in the specific sense. The curatorial roundtable discussions featured in Art Forum magazine have raised many issues, which I have pursued through the work of key curators and theorists, such as Catherine David, Robert Storr, Abdou Maliq Simone, James Elkins, Arthur Danto, Molly Nesbit, Nicholas Bourriaud, and Mark Nash to name but a few. 7
INTRODUCTION Knowing that so much contemporary art is ephemeral and thus dates quickly, I have tended toward examples, which might resist the decay of time. Given the extraordinary diversity of contemporary visual arts practices, I have sampled from a broad sweep of creative activities to present a series of loosely grouped case studies. These range from the most political to the most popular, in a bid to exemplify the discursive trajectory of contemporary art practice. However, there remain many practices inadequately represented. A short list could begin with painting, performance and popism, and end with biochemistry, cosmetic surgery and robotics. Given the limits, it has not been possible to cover all contingencies. Besides, this thesis is not concerned with charting art's projection into other disciplines. Art beyond boundaries is already a well-documented phenomenon. Rather, this thesis is concerned with art's centralising concerns. In this respect, this thesis turns to aesthetic philosophy in a bid to locate the linguistic axis on which art founds its nominal rights. This research has extended from pre-Socratic myths to the work of Plato and Aristotle through to Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Gadamer, Derrida, Agamben, Rancière and Badiou. It remains a worthy project to extend this interrogation, into the stability of this model, through the work of a wider range of classical and post-modern philosophers. These could include Henri Bergson, Edmund Husserl, Jean-Paul Sartre, Rudiger Bubner, Emmanuel Levinas, Paul Ricoeur, Hannah Arendt, Umberto Eco, Jean Baudrillard, Francois Lyotard, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Elizabeth Grosz and others. However, given the limits of time and word count, this project remains just that — a project worthy of future research. Some might feel that I have not given traditional practices their due or dealt with the specific ‘isms’ of the 20th century Modernism in sufficient detail. This is because they no longer represent the cutting edge of contemporary art. As Storr, senior curator of the 2006 Venice Biennale explains, ‘the issue is no longer about painting’, which is not to suggest that a painter may not have a
8
INTRODUCTION
place in art’s future.9 Despite my personal interest in painting in general and the painting’s of Neo Rauch specifically, I have not attempted to nominate ‘best’ practices or advocate personal favourites; such preferences are irrelevant to this project.
It is impossible to chart every contingency within the discursive arena
of political and/or popular arts. Rather, I have exemplified the issues facing art in carefully selected series of case studies. These exemplars serve to represent a broad spectrum of socio-economic considerations, which determine what is presented for public attention within contemporary arts circuits. Although there are many curatorial preferences within contemporary art, clearly they are not all equal. Contemporary preferences are considered in light of the implications of the developing significance of the biennale circuits. Unfortunately, my word count has not enabled me to address the diversity of all models on offer. Thus, I have privileged a close reading of Enwezor's 2002 Documenta 11 and his collaborative curatorial claims for the broader project of the ‘New Avant-garde’. This collaborative post-colonial curatorial project offers one template for visual(?) art’s role in the future. The significance of Enwezor’s curatorial concerns were underlined at the Empires, Ruins and Networks conference held in honour of his work and presented by the Australia Council for the Arts in 2004.10 In my readings of 20th century art I have not tried to retrace the development of every ‘ism’ through the reactive ‘endgame’ of 20th century Modernism.
This extensive history has been summarised by any number of
historians and theorists. I have chosen Hal Foster, Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois and Benjamin Buchloh's Art Since 1900, Charles Harrison and Paul Wood’s Art in Theory 1900-2000, Bernard Smith’s Modernismʼs History and Ernst
9 Robert Storr, "Thick and Thin; a Roundtable Discussion," Art Forum, April 2003. 175. 10 Nikos Papastergiardis, "Empires, Ruins and Networks - Local Clusters and Trans-National Networks" (ACMI, 2004).
9
INTRODUCTION Gombrich’s The Preference for the Primitive to overview this period.11 Smith argues the politically articulate modes of early Modernism were marginalised in the 20th century drift toward high-formalism. In this regard the theoretical work of Clement Greenberg has warranted special attention.
More critically, the
tactical work of Marcel Duchamp is pivotal in any discussion of the post-medium conditions of contemporary art. Despite the significance of the concept of language in the production of poiêtic and post-colonial knowledge, any concern with the specifics of language, medium or genre-specific issues, such as the grammar of poetry, the material parameters of painting, the software limits of digital media arts or the corporeal constraints of body art prove beyond the scope of this thesis. The objective has been to locate a conceptual foundation for the practice of art without dwelling on the medium-specific discourses common to many 20th century practices.
0.5 The overview This dissertation addresses the key questions concerning the practice of contemporary art through a series of critical frameworks, namely; The Issue Concerning Art; The Issue Concerning the Artist; The Issue Concerning the Artist's Subject; and The Issue concerning the Artist's Language. The structure of each of these four chapters differs only slightly; each chapter divides into three sections.
Each chapter doubles back and forth,
between political and popular conceptions of contemporary art practice in a bid to plot the parameters, which determine art’s public profile.
While some
chapters interrogate individual production, others digress into broader historical
11
Hal Foster, Art since 1900.
Art in Theory, ed. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood (Malden MA: Blackwell Publishing, 1990). Bernard Smith, Modernism's History (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 1998). Ernst Gombrich, The Preference for the Primitive (London: Phaidon, 2002).
10
INTRODUCTION
accounts of the developments and evolution of the theoretical and political conditions, which have precipitated these shifts in a bid to locate fault lines and gaps in the knowledge. All chapters devote one third of their discourse to the ongoing consideration of the philosophic questions concerning art's function and methodology. Broadly, they are as follows.
The Issue Concerning Art What is art now? How has growth of arts infrastructures and the expansion of the creative classes affected our concepts of art? How has the curatorial canon shifted in the transition from the 20th century to the 21st century? What is the current state of the Avant-garde? What do arts political policy-makers expect of art now?
What was art before?
What is art’s
etymology? This chapter begins by examining the institutional conditions determining contemporary art.
The art world is witnessing the exponential
growth in its infrastructures and range of art practices. However this radical expansion appears to be concurrent with the sociopolitical rationalisation of the arts. The
significance
of
these
developments
are
perhaps
best
exemplified in terms of the growth and influence of the biennale circuits, which not only serve specific sociopolitical agendas but also establish the public profiles of the artists within in art’s global networks. Many theorists within these circuits argue that concepts of art are irrelevant to the public production that arts institutions are now called upon to serve; aesthetic preoccupations of the previous century have been displaced by the ethical concerns of post-colonial politics.
These shifts in contemporary art's political focus appear to be
underpinned by changes in public funding priorities, initiated by government arts policies. In this regard this chapter looks closely at the curatorial preferences of Documenta 11, one of the most significant curatorial signifiers of the times. 11
INTRODUCTION Enwezor proposes a collaborative curatorial model for the 'New Avant-garde', who's objective he defines in terms of three key agendas: 1/. Engaging art in direct political action, 2/. Developing a realistic model of the current state of global
conditions,
3/.
Changing
arts
funding
preferences
to
support
sociopolitical strategies and knowledge-based-production. The question, which rises in this context becomes, what does the concept of art have to offer the New Avant-garde, if anything? Here we locate the crux of the problem facing the study of art practice. Does art actually have a definable discipline? In this context we turn back, like Hegel, Danto and Thierry De Duve before, to ask 'what was art?'12 This question leads us to reconsider art’s most archaic origins through the work of Hegel, Nietzsche and Heidegger, all keen scholars of the ancient Greeks. Nietzsche argues the duty of art falls to the last god — Dionysius. In this context art is revealed is a mode of social protest, where the role of art is defined in direct contrast to the hegemonic compulsions of culture. Obvious parallels are drawn between Enwezor's political objectives for post-colonial cultural production and philosophy’s conception of art as a mode of social protest.
The Issue Concerning the Artist What constitutes a contemporary art practice? How do popular and political artists function? Is the collaborative network of contemporary art any different to other corporate networks, such as a promotional agency, urban renewal project or a military operation?
What social and financial networks
support the contemporary artist? Why? Is there such a thing as an ‘artistic’ way of doing things? What is philosophy’s conception of artistic practice?
12 Arthur C. Danto, The Philosophic Disenfranchisement of Art (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), Danto, The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art. Thierry de Duve, Kant after Duchamp (Cambridge Mass. USA: October Books, 1996).
12
INTRODUCTION
In 1964, George Dickie presented a paper entitled The Myth of Aesthetic Attitude, which argued, the only way we can understand art is by paying close attention to arts permanently changing landscape. This chapter considers the dynamic role of the contemporary artist through a number of carefully selected examples.
Many of the exemplified practices are hybrid,
developed in response to political and popular opportunities; some generate their own opportunities. These examples serve to bring our attention to the economic conditions determining the artists’ public profile.13 Just as Pop Art appropriated commercial art, commercial art has since appropriated contemporary art and today the distinction between different modes of creative practice has become negligible, some suggest hardly worth discussing. Many arts funding organisations, such as the Artangels in the U.K., or Nouveaux Commanditaires in France for example, draw no distinction between popular and political practices, rather they are interested in projects, which are 'capable of transforming the way we think and feel about the world’. The breadth of practices exemplified in this chapter, serve to illuminate some of the political strategies and social tactics now in effect with commercial and art modes of creative practice. Although 20th century art often has little relevance for these practices, significantly, Heidegger's model of the artist's performative dynamic retains its currency with a number of them. This chapter extends the reading of philosophy’s conception of art through a close reading of the work of Hans Georg Gadamer. What comes to light in Gadamer's seminal work, Truth and Method, is a profound rethinking of the hermeneutic significance of language in the performative act of art and the production of poiêtic knowledge. Art's defining trope emerges as the artist's rational and instinctive need to bring the truth of their own being into radiance
13 George Dickie, Art and the Aesthetic: An Institutional Analysis (NY: Ithaca:Cornell University Press, 1974). 34. Noel Carroll, "Reconsidering the Institutional Theory - Identifying Art," in Institutions of Art, ed. Robert J. Yanal (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994). Preface.
13
INTRODUCTION through a resistant act of language; one capable of transforming the artist’s relationship with the world at large and vice versa. The artist achieves this affect through the coupling of poiêsis and mimêsis.
What begins to emerge is a
consistency within philosophy’s model of art.
The Issue Concerning the Artist’s Subject Do artists have anything to say or is the ‘unsayable’ just that. Did art ever have a subject or was art’s subject always the prerogative of its patrons? The early 20th century Avant-garde seemed to be concerned with social change; but was it all just agit-prop? The mid-20th century Neo Avant-garde dismissed subject, privileging form over content; but what is line between art and décor? The New Avant-garde seems to be concerned with the production of a political overview of the world; what does the artist have to offer this production? This third chapter interrogates the question concerning the artist's subject in relation Rancière’s three historical models. These are what he calls 'the imaginative project of the true arts', 'the aesthetic regime of modernism', and 'the ethical régime of images'. In reconsidering the issues at stake in the aesthetic discourses of 20th century art, I have considered Rancière’s models through the critical overviews of the 20th century presented by Gombrich, Bernard Smith, Foster, Krauss, Bois and Buchloh.
Formalist conceptions of
artistic subject are contrasted with post-colonial conceptions of political content, which are brought to light through a re-examination of Enwezor's Documenta 11. What begins to become apparent is the profound difference between artistic, academic and political conceptions of content.
These
differences are exemplified in the differences between aesthetic and scientific epistemologies. Terry Smith characterises the critical differences between artistic and other modes of knowledge production in terms of the differences between subjective production of a ‘world-picture’ and the objective production of a ‘global-overview’. These terms have long been differentiated by philosophers, such as Hegel, Heidegger and Derrida, who insist that 'word-picture' does not refer to the geo-political nature of the planet.
The artist’s subject is
differentiated in terms of the distinction between ‘theory’, the research tool for 14
INTRODUCTION
the construction of totalising ideas about phenomena and experience and what the ancient Greeks called theoria, the production of knowledge 'about being'; the objective of theoria is to inspire 'being-for-itself'.
The Issue Concerning the Artist's Language Is there such a thing as an artistic relationship with language, medium or technology? What relevance do the medium-specific discourses of 20th century art have in relation to the new-media practices and political expectations of 21st century art?
What role does language play in the
production of knowledge? Does art actually produce knowledge? In a context where so many creative and research disciplines can be presented as art, what does art, in the specific sense, have to offer the broader cultural discourse? How can art contribute to the knowledge-based objectives of Post-colonialism? This chapter begins with a close reading of Gadamer’s hermeneutic understanding of the role that language plays in art's function. Gadamer's thesis bears resemblance to Ludwig Wittgenstein's conception of language, wherein every language system represents another view of the world; the limits of our understanding are signified by the limits of our language and vice versa. The centrality of language to Gadamer's argument about knowledge raises a question in relation to 'post-medium' art practices where, as Rosalind Krauss puts it, notions of medium 'have been buried like so much toxical waste' and the artist has 'walked away into lexical freedom'. For arts philosophers, such as Arthur Danto and Hans Belting, it is exactly this lexical freedom, which has given rise to the trivialisation of art practice and the philosophical disenfranchisement of art. Most critics blame Marcel Duchamp for liberating contemporary art into the ‘anything whatever’ conditions of post-conceptual art. In this chapter we interrogate the significance of Duchamp's tactical endgame in direct relation to the clandestine production of his classical masterpiece, ‘The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even’. Duchamp’s game emerges as a double-handed tactical conceit.
15
INTRODUCTION This chapter ends with a close reading of Giorgio Agamben’s treatise on the subject of art, The Man Without Content, drawing attention to the consistencies between Agamben’s model and those of the Greco-German lineage discussed in earlier chapters.
Although Agamben's treatise on the
socio-metric dynamics of art reinforces the significance of subjectivity in the impulse to art, like Rancière, Gadamer and Heidegger, Agamben acknowledges the objectivity of language is central to any philosophical concept of art practice. What emerges is model of art as a conceptual activity where fluency with the semiotic dynamics of social knowledge is essential; this model centralises the role of language within artistic production. The subjective act of art is reactive to the objective limits of language, implicit in any concept of knowledge. Art seeks to reveal the truth of Being itself, but this can only be achieved through an incisive act of language. I will spare you any more detail here, except to say this chapter is not concerned with the specific methodologies of any productive medium, technology or linguistic system.
At a time when 20th century art’s chequered history fails to offer a stable platform for the study of contemporary art practice, this thesis isolates the linguistic parameters of the philosophy’s concept of art and redefines the conceptual axis upon which art pivots. In drawing the parallel between art's philosophical objectives and the ethical expectations of contemporary art, this dissertation reveals a model of art that shares many of the social agendas common to contemporary art, but art achieves these ends through a profoundly different methodology to conventional epistemologies.
Amid post-art times,
art’s history is under critical scrutiny, this philosophic reading of art's subjective epistemology could prove useful to both artists and arts educators alike. This isolation of the rational and instinctive call to ‘the becoming of Being’, might even prove interesting to those concerned with more objective disciplines.
16
Mario Sorrenti, 'Thou who cans't not', photograph, 2004.14 Courtesy of Art Partners, New York.
The Issue Concerning Art ‘The true work of art offers us the gift of poiêsis; the uncanny production of presence, where the past and the future are both at stake and the act of being-in-the-world claims its proper meaning.’ Giorgio Agamben15
1.01 Introduction This chapter argues there is a direct link between the sociopolitical criteria, which determine contemporary cultural production and the most ancient conceptions of art's social function; in both cases art's role is to contribute to cultural knowledge and engender new sociopolitical spaces.
14 330.
Mario Sorrenti, "Silent Scream," AnOther Magazine, Autumn/Winter 2004.
15.
Agamben, The Man Without Content. 101.
19
Michael Landy, 'Scrapheap Services', 1996 Courtesy Thomas Dane Gallery, London.
C o n cl u s i o n s ‘No amount of campaigning and conniving can make you popular. The willpower that might make you rich can’t make you charismatic. Social success and influence is bestowed by others.’ Rene Richard.469
What has come to light in this research project is that art, in the specific sense, is becoming an orphaned concept.
The legacy of late 20th
century art is a conceptually determined practice with no foundational discipline and an irrelevant history. Whilst anything is now possible within the context of the contemporary, art’s historical disciplines are no longer privileged within art’s highly politicised networks and publy funded circuits.
Rather arts traditional
disciplines compete for attention and funding with the broadest spectrum of
469
Rene Richard, "World Crown; Bodhisatva with Clenched Fist.," in JeanMichel Basquiat, ed. Richard Marshall (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art., 1993). 44.
229
CONCLUSIONS creative, social and technological practices, many of which have reliable methodologies, sound social outcomes and sustainable economies. As an institutional infrastructure, contemporary art offers a broad base capable of supporting the widest spectrum of cultural and epistemological practices within its highly politicised circuits.
In this context we recognise
contemporary art is becoming a politically instrumentalised project, subject to the same evaluative criterion as any publicly funded project, namely contribution to knowledge. That having been said, despite the late 20th century destabilisation of art’s historical platforms, philosophy’s conception of art’s dynamic remains stable, because the etymology of art is bound on all sides by clear linguistic parameters and is unable to shift its axis. Whilst this point is interesting and has implications for the study of art, which have been overlooked by poststructuralist conceptions of creative practice, the most significant development to come from this research is that the epistemological obligations facing contemporary art now stand in curious alignment with philosophy’s conceptions of art's most ancient function. However, there remain two profound differences between the destabilised expectations facing contemporary art and the etymological understanding of art’s philosophic function.
Firstly, philosophy places a
significant emphasis on the role of language in artistic production, one which post-object conceptions of late 20th century art appear to have overlooked. Secondly, whereas contemporary art regularly preferences the objective epistemologies common to the social sciences, philosophy delineates a profoundly subjective methodology for art. The understanding of these alignments and differences could prove valuable to both sides of the ‘art’ — ‘not-art’ dichotomy.
5.1 The conditions of contemporary art. At its highest levels contemporary art is an ethically determined production held in place by complex public funding networks, which endorse strategic curatorial initiatives for corporate and/or private funding support, while 230
CONCLUSIONS discreetly filtering out practices irrelevant to the publicly determined agendas. Contemporary curators face complex responsibilities and take an active role in nominating appropriate avatars and events to draw attention to the local and global issues facing their communities. The provenance of the artist’s work is established in terms of their prominence within these critical public circuits. Although currency within these circuits is no guarantee of commercial viability, an artist's credentials are established within these influential public circuits before speculative collectors take interest in their work. This represents an about-turn on earlier museum practices where public galleries represented collector trends after they had been established in the private networks. Contemporary art is evaluated beyond discipline specific concerns. After one hundred years of avant-garde action, we understand that art can take any form. What hangs on the art gallery’s walls, or sits in the museum’s cabinet, is not necessarily to be appreciated solely in terms of aesthetic merit. There are few limits placed on what can be presented as art now, however many contemporary artists engage mass audience strategies and stage ephemeral display effects, which often utilise new media. This is the production that YveAlain Bois identifies as 'the Esperanto of globalism'.
In this light we
acknowledge a subtle shift in the formats common to contemporary art, from art as a market-driven production, to art as a politically determined, audience driven event. Contemporary art is evaluated in terms of what it can do for the world; not what the art world can do for the artist.
Given its global scope,
contemporary art is becoming a collaborative social project, which gives voice to social issues of local, national and global significance.
In this light we
understand that within arts institutional networks there are a rising number of creative figures preferencing corporate collaborative models over the anti-social tactics of the old Avant-garde. Given the expansion of art’s territorial boundaries and the development of inter-disciplinary funding systems, historical conceptions of art are largely irrelevant to contemporary cultural production where a wide range of cultural content providers present work within appropriate promotional formats. 231
CONCLUSIONS A short list could include; social and environmental activism, various modes of design, architecture and urban planning, interactive digital video, photography, fashion, film, game-culture, popular culture, various modes of music, dance, theatre, sound sculpture, cultural theory, as well as the traditional arts and crafts. Given this plethora of creative production, contemporary art practice is evaluated in terms of the same criteria, that determines most public funding; i.e. art's ability to represent the gap in the knowledge, its capacity to generate new social spaces and contribute to knowledge. It is in this context that curatorial theorists recognise that cultural practices that are not linked to some form of political articulation become unsupportable.470 In this context we understand why so many contemporary theorists and curators, suggest there is little point in looking to art history for answers to arts future. Art history is virtually irrelevant to the role contemporary art is now called upon to perform.
Nineteenth century conventions of aesthetic
connoisseurship have been displaced by ethical criteria.
Art’s investment
networks now follow museum-lead interests and key curatorial initiatives. While the collector’s market for aesthetic objects remains active, art in these circuits is no different to any other commodity culture; market-share is no guarantee historical significance. Despite the plethora of artists at work today, as Okwui Enwezor reminds us, there is virtually no life for artists working outside the politically determined networks. Although Enwezor was speaking on behalf of artists marginalised by colonialist hegemonies of the 20th century, these conditions now apply to most practicing artists. As art education is ushered toward visual literacy and standardised epistemological processes, art in the specific sense, faces increased political, academic and curatorial rationalisation.
Under the evolutionary pressure of
contemporary culture, the study of art is being absorbed into broader crossdisciplinary programs, which represent issues common to all contemporary culture.
These include; creative industry, visual literacy, various modes of
design, culture, new media and communications programs, which all include
470
Hal Foster, Art since 1900. 673.
232
CONCLUSIONS some facet of art history, although the dominant research methodology within these programs belongs to social science, which can be summarised thus; 1/. Research needs and opportunities, 2/. Develop literature review, 3/. Locate the gap in the knowledge, 4/. Design and build proposed alternative model, 5/. Write up experiment exegesis, and 6/. Evaluate outcomes. This meta process can be applied to the problems of designing a bus route, just as easily as it could be used to design a piece of furniture or new brand of toothpaste.
Art, in the specific sense, has little to do with this
methodological process. Despite the exponential growth of the arts sector and the creative classes, historically determined artistic processes have been orphaned.
While the top students graduating from the elite art schools will
always find preference within the arts networks, these circuits are becoming porous, opening up to broader conceptions of critical cultural practice. This is not to suggest that historical modes of art practice can’t, don’t or won’t be presented within these circuits, but rather practices promoted through the arts networks and infrastructures will redefine our concept of art. This is the complexity of the problem implied in offering an answer to the question: 'What do I study in order to become an artist?' In truth there is no simple answer to such question. In this context we begin to understand why curators recommend the study of politics, science, or popular culture.
20th century Modernism with its revolutionary fervour,
reactive endgames and radical history of reinvention, has led to the expansion of art’s boundaries and the exponential growth of art's industries. However these developments have precipitated the destabilisation of historical concepts of art. In this context George Dickie’s Institutional Theory of Art remains the most reliable guide to understanding what art is now; art is whatever the art world says is art.
What constitutes contemporary art can only be understood by
closely following arts permanently changing landscape. Should the reader be
233
CONCLUSIONS curious to consider the terms of contemporary art they are advised to reread the following sub-chapters, 1.01 ‘The state of art’, 1.02 Ethics vs. aesthetics, 2.01 The artist’s political context, 2.02 The artist’s popular context, 3.02 Three regimes of imaging, 3.04 The politics of post-colonialism, 4.02 The limits of knowledge, 4.04 The axis between the artist and the world. In considering the conditions of contemporaneity the reader will have already noted that although arts infrastructures are ubiquitous, contemporary art has no stable discipline.
Arts historical practices have been superseded by
post-conceptual approaches to contemporary art, which default to the methodological processes detailed above, wherein ideation leads to the broadest spectrum of outcomes.
In this context the artist is in direct
competition for patronage and public funding with the broadest spectrum of creative practices, many of which are underpinned by reliable disciplines and produce quantifiable social and fiscal outcomes. In this context we recognise that the study of art, in the specific sense, is facing a serious problem: a lack of defining discipline. In this context we turned back, like Thierry De Duve, Arthur Danto and Georg Hegel to consider the philosophic question; ‘What was art?’
5.2 What art is In this deconstruction of the philosophy’s conception of art, we have traced its etymology from Jacques Derrida through Martin Heidegger to Friederich Nietzsche and Georg Hegel back to the pre-Socratic myths of the ancient Greeks. This inquiry has revealed the sociometric axis on which art came to claim the right to its own name.
234
CONCLUSIONS Equally we have tracked this conception of art forward into the present, through the work of Hans Georg Gadamer to more contemporary philosophers such as Arthur Danto, David Farrell Krell, Joseph Kocklemans, Giorgio Agamben, Gunter Figal, Alain Badiou and Jacques Rancière. Although more work remains to be done on this project, at this point it seems clear that philosophy has art’s sociometric dynamic pinned along the poiêtic/mimêtic axis. Although individual philosophers may diverge, digress and deliberate on their conclusions, evidence suggests they persistently reference the same terms in any discussion on the subject of art. The persistence of this model leads me to suggest that the fixity of philosophy’s conception of art is in direct contrast to the art world’s conception of art, which is in a perpetual state of flux and always open to radical reinvention.
In this respect it seems clear that, despite the artist’s need to
constantly reinvent the model for their own usage, and the art world’s need to renegotiate the terms of their lease of arts infrastructures, philosophy’s conception of art has held a finite position within the lexicon of knowledge for a very long time, perhaps 2,200 years. Most importantly this conceptual position is not easily reassigned. Given the confusion and lack of boundaries around the concept of art, I believe this position is worthy of greater articulation. What has emerged from this research is a radical but stable conception of art’s dynamic, which could be of value to the discourses concerning art practice at a time when most conceptions of art have been debunked or are in danger of defaulting to ratiocinatic epistemologies which stand in opposition to the profoundly subjective methodology of art. Despite the fact that philosophy’s conception of art is essentially European in origin, it is not bound by any conception of culture, tradition, language, medium or technology. Its value is that it offers a stabilising axis for the study of art at a time when the practice of art is in danger of being subsumed into the objective research methodologies, which belong to the social sciences. The poignancy of art’s subjective methodology may prove worthy of consideration from a broad spectrum of disciplines, specifically at a time when the objective methodologies of science appear to have become ubiquitous. The following is a brief recount of its dynamic.
235
CONCLUSIONS Art is the expression of rational human needs, which arise in direct relation to society’s compulsive fault line: control and order. The functionality of society inevitably demands the systematization of productivity and obliges an ongoing commitment to the project of its own future, with little regard for subjective specificity, much less sensuality or notions of the sacred. Art’s role is to unlock the social bond, which obliges Being into an unfulfilling projection of future, liberating the artist and those who recognise the implications of the work of art, into an existential relationship with the ‘becoming of Being’. In this regard we understand art is intrinsically bound to the production of philosophic insight. According to the ancients, art and philosophy share the same source: poiêsis. The insights of poiêsis arise from the primordial state that the ancient Greeks called alêtheia; the unconcealed provenance of Being. In the context of the everyday, where primordeal instincts shelter in concealment, the value of alêtheia is that it refreshes the becoming of Being, enabling it to begin again, at origin. Although art is essentially performative by nature, it manifests as semiotic social code embedded with poiêtic insight.
Art presents as a
conceptual structure, which demands to be decoded.
In full effect, art
generates a gestalt, which engenders a conceptual meme capable of reproducing itself and thus, impacting upon the matrix of knowledge. In action, art leads with a double-conceit, presenting first as a simulacrum of something which it is not, a mimêsis, which serves to reflect the ‘known’, which it then refracts into a poiêtic vision of an ‘other’. In this respect we understand art pivots on a mimêtic/poiêtic axis, to wedge open a gap within the hegemonic structure of the ‘all too familiar’ to institute its own conceptual structure into the matrix of social knowledge.
At heart, art represents a
transgression of hegemonic cultural protocols; it stands a symbolic act of resistance, a refusal, and offers an ‘about-turn’ on obligations to future, reorienting the focus of ‘Being’ in terms of an existential relationship with the way things are in the present. What is at stake in the ‘disconnect’ of art is neither a wilful assertion of ego, nor a simplistic antagonism of convention, but rather a surrender to the unconcealed provenance of an ontological truth; alêtheia. Art’s conception of truth is not to be confused with the everyday, which belongs to hegemonic nature of the ordinary. Rather art’s truth manifests as a temporal revelation derived from the rapture of reciprocal communication 236
CONCLUSIONS wherein individual will is vaporised in a state of wonderment, evoked by the conceptual implications contained by the semiotic structure of the work of art. Art engenders a gestalt, which offers a paradigm shift. Regardless of what form it takes, art is no arbitrary oddity. Art is an incisive act of language. Critical to this conception of art, is the artist’s instinctive fluency with the semiotics of social knowledge. In its mimêtic conceit, art wedges opens a gap in the knowledge as a point of leverage. However it would be a mistake to imagine that art is concerned with illuminating the gap in the knowledge, although it inevitably does. Art’s objective is to open a space for the truth of the artist's own ‘becoming’ to impact on the ‘Being of beings’ and thus the structure of knowledge. Despite its profoundly subjective methodology arts objective is to institute its conceptual meme into the matrix of public knowledge. As you can see from this précis, philosophy’s model of art is abstract and radical, it functions in terms of challenge and is ultimately concerned with change. However, despite the volatility of arts conceptual dynamic, this model offers the beginning of a stable foundation for study of art, at a time when most historical conceptions of art fail. In contemplating art’s dynamic poiêtic/mimêtic axis, we recognise three key points. 1/. Art springs from the unknown, casting light onto the gap in the knowledge. 2/. Art’s impulse is philosophic: its objective is to change the terms of ‘Being’ in the world. 3/. Finally art’s agenda is to institute its insights into the structural matrix of knowledge. Here we note the parallel between philosophy’s model of art’s dynamic and the sociopolitical expectations facing contemporary cultural production. Both are concerned with illuminating the gap in the knowledge. Both are concerned with changing the social structure of the world it inhabits. Both do this by impacting on the structure of knowledge, which can only be achieved through contribution to language. Ultimately both models function as epistemologies, however there is a profound difference of methodology. Art
237
CONCLUSIONS determines
its
instinctive
objectives
through
a
profoundly
subjective
methodology, whilst the epistemologies of science measure and weigh evidence in exactingly objective terms. According the ancients, art’s objective is to inspire “Being’ for itself. The way of art leads a ring cycle which gives rise to an inner truth. Art is not produced for the service of political, social, cultural, much less pedagogical agendas. Rather art inspires its institution into these circuits on the basis of its philosophic resonance and the truth of its poiêsis. The artist generates a new paradigm in accord with deeply subjective needs, inevitably the artistic project is met by an objective and disinterested audience. Art’s mission is to challenge and ultimately enlighten, and it is in this regard that art seeks to set up a gestalt. Finally, the artist’s objective is to institute a bridge between subjective knowledge and the objective matrix of social knowledge. The value of this conception of art is that, however abstract, it offers a way forward for the study of art in keeping with the epistemological demands of contemporary art, without sacrificing the concept of art to either the hegemony of politics or the objective perspective which belongs to science. Art is not beholden to the demands of the world, as Friederich Nietzsche puts it 'we posses art least we perish of the truth', art’s function is to begin Being afresh in its own terms; it cannot be conscripted into the war of the worlds.471
5.3 The significance of this model. Within the context of the contemporary art where political and promotional politics have shifted art’s preferences toward the ‘not-art’ end of the ‘art — not-art’ spectrum, artists now face an epistemological imperative wherein art, in the specific sense, has no defining discipline and an expendable history. Many artists in their bid to keep up with the times, now find themselves shifting from one project to another without any clear sense of direction, save survival,
471
Nietzsche, Will to Power in Art. 289 - §853.
238
CONCLUSIONS whilst their practice degenerates into the fate imagined for Duchamp, by his critics in the middle of 20th century, a ludic game of diminishing returns.472 Today, the art world has moved on, curators understand the imperative of knowledge-based practices and that creative cultural content providers can be found working in a wide range of epistemologies. However, while for many working within the arts industry, the distinction between ‘art — not-art’ is irrelevant, there remains a fundamental division between artistic and non-artistic methodologies, which defines the primary logic of the artist’s contribution to knowledge.
Art’s poiêtic instinct insists on its ontological
imperative exactly because of the hegemonic protocols of objective value systems. In the flight from art, which marks much early 21st century cultural theory, many have overlooked the significance of arts subjective methodology. It is this oversight, which Giorgio Agamben recognises, could lead to 'the eclipse of the concept of art'.473 Despite the post-modern emphasis on art as pure idea, what has been overlooked in the post-medium conceptions of art practice, is the epistemological significance of language. Regardless of what form that takes for an artist, there can be no contribution to knowledge without contribution to language. Within philosophy’s conception of art, we recognise the emphasis on the artists’ semiotic system. As Heidegger puts it in the epigram, which begins his treatise on The Origin of the Work of Art, 'Only the image formed keeps the vision: Yet the image formed rests in the poem'.474
It matters little what
medium, media, form or technology an artist chooses, or for that matter, if the artist switches between language systems and media. The important thing is that they develop a conceptual system capable of sustaining poiêtic insight. Further, that the artist continues developing the structural web of their semiotic system in light of their poiêsis, because the artist’s contribution to knowledge is not to be understood in terms of a technical or stylistic innovation, but the
472
Moffitt, Alchemist of the Avant-Garde. 182.
473
Agamben, The Man Without Content. 48.
474
Krell, Martin Heidegger; Basic Writings. 143.
239
CONCLUSIONS capacity of their practice to account for their ongoing poiêtic relationship with the world at large. In both the short and long term, an artist is evaluated in terms of their contribution to knowledge, which is inevitably quantified in terms of contribution to language. Life belongs to nature, where the only constant is change. However, knowledge about life is embedded with the structural systems of language, which develop relatively slowly.
The artist’s experience and values are in a
constant state of flux, however the artist’s semiotic system is constructed, it takes time to mature, is notoriously difficult to develop, and does so in direct relation to the world which the artist inhabits. Art is not a matter of developing a ‘signature style’, but rather a semiotic system capable of responding to the instinctive demands of poiêsis. At a time when many, both inside and outside the art world, have become confused about what constitutes art practice, ambivalent in face of any commitment to a productive language system and tempted toward more empirical methodologies, this argument for significance of the artist’s semiotic system as central to the artist’s productive discipline, could prove valuable. It has significance for both sides of the 'art — not art' divide. When understood in light of the methodology delineated by philosophy, art practice comes to light as a profound epistemology for the production of ontological knowledge and experiential social space. In its capacity to open a way forward in light of the becoming of Being, art offers an essential methodology, capable of sustaining itself in face of more pragmatic disciplines, which often overlook the existential significance of human concerns. In recognising the work of art as a piece of conceptual equipment for the production of Being, we identify art’s function as transmitting a conceptual shift in the relational field of experience.
In exchange for its demands for
hermeneutic interrogation, art offers a gestalt in line with the truth of the artist’s poiêsis. In this light we understand art as a self-replicating conceptual system, capable of downloading its software into your operating system and re-booting your hardware on the basis of the becoming of Being itself. This redefinition of art’s mission-statement continues art’s definition in terms of a conceptual lineage. However the subtle distinction between art as 240
CONCLUSIONS the poiêtic production of conceptual code and art in a post-medium condition, salvages art from what Thierry De Duve calls the ‘anything whatever’ mode of post-conceptual practice and redirects the artist to the ongoing development of semiotic structure. The point is that in order to account for theoria, totalising ideas about Being, the artist is no different to the scientist or the lawyer for that matter. Although the artist’s methodology remains profoundly different, arts conceptual structures must be capable of impacting on the matrix of knowledge. This can only be achieved when artists recognise the significance of their language systems. The virtue of this model is that it clears up the confusion currently facing the artist and art education alike.
By re-installing the
mimêtic/poiêtic axis as central to art practice, the artist is enabled to accept the challenge of developing complex cultural code, without compromising their primary discipline, poiêsis; the production of philosophic knowledge about Being in the world, and its becoming.
241
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251
Index
a wrong.................. 88, 145
Baudrillard, Jean ..............8
Abstraction93, 154, 158, 168
Bauer, Ute Meta .............44
Adorno, Theodore 160, 226
Bauhaus .................98, 157
Aesthetic régime of modernism .....134–47
Beat Generation ...........161
Agamben, Giorgio1, 8, 16, 76, 188–203, 207, 223, 243, 247
Beatles, The..................100
Agit-prop ............... 14, 157
Beecroft, Vanessa ..........94
alêtheia62, 66, 118, 230, 244
Belting, Hans16, 21, 24, 25, 127, 150–52, 190, 192, 203
Anderson, Laurie ......... 100
Bennett, Jill...166, 179, 181
Andre, Carl .................. 158
Bergson, Henri .................8
Anthroposophical Society155
Beuys, Joseph................40
Antipodean Manifesto . 141
Bhabha, Homi.......136, 165
Apollo .......56–61, 143, 225
Bickers, Patricia........95, 96
Aquinas, St Thomas .... 124
Bjørk 100–102
Araki, Nobuyoshi ......... 100
Black Audio Film Collective175
Arendt, Hannah ............... 8
Blavatsky, Madame ......155
Aristotle ..... 8, 55, 195, 197
Blow, Isabella .................95
Armani, Giorgio........ 95, 97
Bois, Yve-Alain10, 158, 159, 239
Armann, Jean Christophe4, 29, 30
Bolt, Barbara 224, 226, 227
Art Brut ........................ 157
Bonami, Francesco ..34, 47
Art Deco ........................ 98
Bos, Saskia...........4, 33, 34
Artangels ....14, 77–81, 104
Boulez, Pierre .................99
Artaud, Antonin...... 87, 198
Bourriaud, Nicholas8, 32, 86–92, 87, 91
Arts and Crafts Movement98
Bowery, Leigh73, 78, 102–7, 104
Avant-garde14, 41, 44, 49, 87, 89, 143, 153, 157, 158, 162, 172, 179, 180, See New Avant-garde
Boy George ..................104
Badiou, Alain8, 148, 202, 243 Bal, Mieke...................... 22 Balenciaga..................... 96 Barney, Mathew78, 100, 101 Barthes, Roland........... 158 Basualdo, Carlos ........... 44
Brancusi, Constantin ....155 Broodthaers, Marcel145, 190, 205, 206 Bubner, Rudiger ...............8 Buchloh, Benjamin10, 30, 51, 165 Buddhism .................62, 83 Buergel, Roger .........49, 50 Buren, Daniel ............86, 87 253
INDEX Butler, Rex ..................... 98 Campbell, Jon.............. 100 Canaday, John............. 208 Carlos, Isabel ................... 4 Carter, Michael .............. 24 Catalan, Maurizio ........... 33 Catherine the Great ....... 99 Célan, Paul................... 115 Célant, Germano 95, 96, 97 Chalayan, Hussein . 96, 100 Chanel, Coco ................. 96
De Duve, Thierry12, 22, 74, 143, 207, 216–19, 242, 249 De Stijl ........................... 98 Debord, Guy .... 51, 87, 160 Deleuze, Gilles ................. 8 Derrida, Jacques8, 25, 55, 133, 151, 165, 200, 228, 242 desublimation159, 160, 161, 226 Di Caprio, Leonardo ...... 94 Dickie, George13, 23, 92, 241 Diederichsen, Diedrich .. 93
Chapman, Jake and Dinos27
Dionysius13, 25, 56–62, 66, 80, 83, 85, 143, 225–28
Christo and Jeanne Claude42
Dior, Christian .......... 27, 96
Clark, Michael ........ 78, 104 Classicism.................... 112
Documenta 1115, 44–49, 85, 136, 166–79, 180
Cocteau, Jean.............. 100
Documenta V ............... 175
Coles, Alex..................... 98
Documenta X ........... 32, 74
Colonialism49, 85, 136, 168, 179
Documenta XII ....... 49, 180
Colourfield ................... 112
Drot, Jean-Marie.......... 214
Commes Des Garçons27, 98
Duchamp, Marcel10, 16, 97, 145, 146, 190, 192, 203–20
Conceptualism53, 152, 158, 159, 205 Constructivism47, 92, 98, 142, 151 Creed, Martin ............... 100 Cubism .. 99, 112, 156, 158 Cunningham, Chris ...... 100 D.J. Tricky.................... 100 Da Vinci, Leonardo ...... 100 Dada 152, 154, 168 Dali, Salvador................. 98 Damisch, Hubert.......... 147 Danto, Arthur2, 8, 12, 16, 21–25, 51–55, 69, 127, 153, 203, 242, 243
Dürer, Albrecht .... 190, 218 Dylan, Bob ................... 201 Eco, Umberto .................. 8 Elkins, James8, 22, 108, 145, 158 Elliot, T.S...................... 219 Ellis D. Fogg................... 42 Emin, Tracy.................... 98 Eno, Brian ...................... 81 Enwezor, Okwui4, 9, 23, 136, 162–81, 240 Ethical régime of images134–47, 169, 183 Fazakerley, Michael 73, 104
David, Catherine8, 32, 34, 74
Figal, Günter115, 123, 227, 229, 243
Davila, Juan ................. 146
Fisher, Jean ................... 44
De Cock, Jan ................. 98
Ford, Simon ................. 162 Ford, Tom ...................... 94
254
INDEX Formalesque................ 154
Hardt, Michael ..............163
formalism135, 141, 156, 158, 204, See Neo Avant-garde
Harrison, Charles............10
Foster, Hal ............. 10, 168 Foucault, Michel ...... 8, 109 Framis, Alicia ................. 34 Frank, Anne ................. 115 Freud, Lucien29, 103–5, 104 Freud, Sigmund ... 155, 160 Frieze ............................. 31 Futurist .................. 54, 210 Gadamer, Hans Georg8, 14, 75–77, 109– 26, 128–30, 133, 152, 160, 188–97, 203, 217, 228, 243
Hasan-Khan, Alia..........146 Hawke, Bob ....................37 Hegel, Georg8, 12, 22–26, 51–57, 117, 128, 133, 151, 201, 242 Heidegger, Martin8, 12, 25–26, 54–67, 105–7, 109–24, 128–29, 132–37, 139–52, 194–203, 219–35, 223, 242 Helen of Troy ..................62 Higgs, Matthew ............166 Hirst, Damian80, 94–97, 95, 97, 196 Holtzer, Jenny ..........78, 97 Husserl, Edmund ..............8
Galliano, John.............. 104
Igloolik Isuma ...............175
Geczy, Adam ................. 24
Institutional theory of art23, 241, See Dickie, George
Geer, Fergus................ 104 Geers, Kendall ..84–88, 146 General Idea ................ 100 Genet, Jean ........... 87, 198 Gibson, Ross ........... 43, 44 Gilbert and George .. 28, 42 Gilbert-Rolfe, Jeremy .... 24 Gioni, Massimiliano . 33, 34 Gombrich, Ernst10, 135, 153–57 Goya, Francisco ............ 26 Goys, Boris .................... 44 Graves, Robert ...56–63, 62 Green, Charles..........42–43 Greenberg, Clement10, 141–43, 157, 221 Greer, Fergus............... 102 Grosz, Elizabeth .............. 9 Gucci ....................... 94, 95 Gurdjieff ....................... 155 Haaning, Jens...........88–93 Hanru, Hou .................... 34
Jacquermin, Frederic37–40 James, Bruce .................29 Jarman, Derek ................78 Joselit, David ..208–12, 217 Jung, Carl .....................155 Kant, Immanual ....121, 156 Kawakubo, Rei ...............98 Keating, Paul ..................37 Kent, Sarah...............82, 84 Kerbal, Janice.................79 Kerkham, Ruth................86 King Pins, The ..............100 Klein, Calvin....................28 Klein, Yves......................84 Knight, Nick ..........100, 104 Kocklemans, Joseph230, 243 Komar and Melamid .......42 Koolhaas, Rem170–74, 182 Kosuth, Joseph 190, 205–7
Hard Edge ................... 113 255
INDEX Krauss, Rosalind10, 16, 21, 74, 94, 188, 190, 205–13, 221 Krell, David Farrell.. 61, 243 Krishnamurti................. 155 Kruger, Barbara ............. 93 Kusalwong, Surasi ......... 34 Landy, Michael78, 79–84, 114, 115, 237 Lang, Helmut ................. 97 Lapp, Axel.............. 34, 178 Lasker, Jonathan ........... 42 Léger, Fernand .... 151, 152 LeGrupo Amos............. 175 Leibowvitz, Annie......... 104 Levinas, Emmanuel.......... 8 Lichtenstein, Roy ........... 97
Miyake, Issey ................. 96 Moffitt, John ................ 215 Mutt, RichardSee Duchamp, Marcel Nash, Mark8, 23, 44, 136, 167–69 Negri, Antonio .............. 163 Neitzsche, Friederich ....... 8 Neo Avant-garde14, 157, 158, 168 Neo-liberal ................... 164 Nesbit, Molly .............. 8, 44 Nesbitt, Judith ............... 80 Nesbitt, Rebecca ..... 36, 37 New Avant-garde9, 14, 41, 47, 49, 136, 167, 168, 169, 177, 178, 179, 181, 182, See Neo Avant-garde and Avant-garde
Maenad.......................... 60
Nietzsche, Friederich12, 25, 26, 55–62, 66, 69, 83, 109–28, 139, 149, 197– 201, 225–28, 242
Maharaj, Sarat ............... 44
Noak, Ruth............... 49, 50
Marcuse, Herbert......... 160
Nollert, Angelika............. 44
Margaret of Austria ........ 99
Nouveau Réalisme....... 161
Marina Abramovic and Ulay .................. 42
Nouveaux Commanditaires79
Martin, Stewart ...... 172–78
Novalis ................... 40, 197
Massive Attack ............ 104
Obrist, Hans Ulrich ........ 34
McLaren, Malcolm ......... 56
Oedipus ................... 57, 87
McNeill, David.............. 135
Orientalism................... 164
McQueen, Alexander95–104
Orlan 43
Meese, Jonathan ......... 100
Ouspenski, P.D. ........... 155
meme ................... 140, 202
Ozbek, Rifat ......... 104, 106
Michelangelo ................. 92
Ozenfant, Amédée ....... 207
Midas ..................... 60, 105
Papastergiardis, Nikos41, 169
Mik, Aernout ........ 131, 176
Penny, Simon .......... 43–44
mimêsis134, 139, 146, 147, 183
Peterman, Dan ............... 34
mimêtic ........................ 132
Philips, Lisa.................... 97
Minichbauer, Raimund... 39
Picasso, Pablo ......... 93, 99
Minty 104
Pink Floyd ...................... 99
Mirzoeff, Nicholas .......... 22
Plato 8, 52, 139
Lyotard, Francois............. 8
256
INDEX poeticising73, 76, 114–25, 139, 189, 200
Sélavy, RroseSee Duchamp, Marcel
poiêsis19, 77, 119, 122, 134, 139, 140, 143, 146, 183, 202, 220, 223, 227, 228, 244
Sharp, Martin - The Yellow House .........42
poiêtic77, 116, 119, 125, 134, 149, 189, 193, 202, 217, 220, 228
Shonibare, Yinka ....32, 104 Silenus ..............60, 84, 105 Simone, Abdou Maliq8, 44, 173
Pop Art ............ 14, 99, 161
Sisyphus .........................57
Pop, Iggy ..................... 199
Situationalist Internationale87, 141, 159, 161, 179
Post-colonialism47, 136, 138, 162–81 Postmodernism52, 93, 135, 145, 158, 159 Prada ....................... 97, 98 Prometheus ................... 57 Punk 56, 161 Quant, Mary................... 97 Rancière, Jacques8, 15, 87, 134–47, 168, 174, 183, 204, 243 Rauch, Neo.................. 1, 9 rausch.... 59, 120, 144, 199 Ray, Man ..................... 211 Representative régime of art ..........134–47 Ricoeur, Paul ................... 8 Riley, Bridget ................. 97 Rimbaud, Arthur .... 87, 198 Rist, Pipilotti ................ 100 Rodin, August.............. 155 Rubens, Pieter Pauwel60, 100 Ruskin, John................ 195 Said, Edward ....... 136, 164 Saint-Laurent, Yves . 96, 97 Sartre, Jean-Paul............. 8 Satyr 60 Schelling, Friedrich115, 156 Schopenhauer, Arthur156, 197 Schwartz, Arturo.......... 215 Scriabin, Alexander ....... 99 Sednaoui, Stephanie ... 100 Seitz, William ............... 207
SKOR..............................79 Smith, Bernard10, 41, 135, 141, 154, 155, 156 Smith, Patti ...................198 Smith, Terry15, 131–35, 177 Socialist Realism ............92 Socrates .....25, 57, 59, 243 Sorlin, Sverker ................44 Sorrenti, Mario..........19, 27 Sosostris, Madame ......155 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty.........136, 165 sprachkristall77, 114–16, 123, 203, 217 St. Francis of Assisi ........81 Stallabrass, Julian ....47, 90 Starn Twins.....................42 Steinbach, Ham..............98 Steiner, Rudolph...........155 Stelarc ............................43 Stella, Frank..................158 Stifter, Adalbert ............115 Stockhausen, Karlein .....99 Storr, Robert...........8, 9, 33 Subaltern ..............136, 165 Subotnik, Ali ...................33 Surrealism ....154, 158, 168 Szakloczai, Arpad.........109 Taylor, Paul.....................23 The Harrison's ................42 257
INDEX The Myer Report ............ 37
Wearing, Gillian 79–81, 104
The Poirier's................... 43
Wertheim, Christine ....... 74
theoria............ 15, 195, 249
Westward, Vivienne ..... 104
Theosophical Society .. 155
Whiteread, Rachael . 78, 81
Thomas, Dylan ..... 198–202
Williams, William Carlos212
Timms, Peter.................. 98
Wittgenstein, Ludwig16, 193
Tompkins, Calvin ......... 216
Wood, Paul .................... 10
Townsend, Chris............ 97
world-picture15, 131–37, 147–58, 177, 195
Trojan........................... 104 Van Alphen, Ernst ........ 147 Van Gogh, Vincent ....... 102 Van Vliet, Jan ............... 100 Versace, Gianni........ 27, 97 Von Hargen, Gunter ..... 196 Von Triers, Lars............ 100 Warhol, Andy43, 93, 97–100, 99, 104
258
Yamamoto, Yohji ........... 27 yBa 79, 84, 95 Yifu, Deng .................... 187 Yippies ......................... 159 Zabel, Igor...................... 34 Zappa, Frank ................. 99
