There's nothing quite like hearing Benjamin Buchloh growl the word "Rauschenberg". So I'm sorry that I missed his lecture on Saturday morning during the "Issues of Content: Museums of Modern and Contemporary Art Today" conference at the Phillips Collection—if not merely for more opportunities to hear him speak. Following his presentation, speakers made glancing references to Buchloh's presentation, which, by all accounts, was maximalist and incendiary, so in addition I'm sorry I didn't have the chance to listen to his lecture.
Buchloh's topic: "Museums, Formerly of the Public Sphere, Now of Spectacle." That shouldn't have come as any surprise to a roomful of people who follow his writing, right? The recap I heard from an art historian covered all the familiar topics: Art suffers from the dilapidation of the tripartite, antagonistic system between critical, historical, and museum functions that, in tandem, serve to keep art honest. The breakdown of this system has resulted in a "competency of judgment crisis". That's as best as I can say, gleaned from secondhand sources and conversational references—familiar stuff.
Jeff Koonz, Blue Diamond, 2005.
The next speaker to present a paper was psychoanalyst, critic, and curator, Suely Rolnik (“Lygia calling"). I didn't think we were doing the whole Semiotext(e) thing any more, and I was predisposed to take a dim view of what she had to say. It was certainly a broader presentation on Lygia Clark's work specifically and Neo-Concretism generally than I'd been exposed to; and notwithstanding a few mentions of the benefits of psychoanalysis in art criticism, it was not so offensive as I would have expected from a lecture on the "therapeutic" value of Clark's work. Here, Rolnik means something other than the generic value for this notion, "therapeutic": If I understand her correctly (probably don't), she means for a post facto understanding of the subjective relationship between artist and work and also between work and viewer, after the fact of art's "instrumentalization" by the market. Working from memory and scratchy notes, I take it that she means that there was this subjective potential meaning between Clark's work and the audience, but that was "neutralized" by the interference of the market, which codifies both spaces and conditions under which art can be experienced and categorized.
A bellowed "so what?" might have derailed her presentation. She laments the loss of the therapeutic, clinical value of art in the marketplace. Is that essential to the experience of art? It would seem not, as her answer in the case of Clark is to provide thorough documentation of her performances ("proposals") alongside whatever artifacts remain. I don't understand how this evades rather than accedes to the trappings of the market. But she never establishes what this clinical value is supposed to impart, except a vague sense of political well-being.
The art market being what it is, Rolnik asked (and I paraphrase), how is it possible to convey work that is ephemeral but renewable? (She meant it as a rhetorical question, but really, someone's already answered that: Félix Gonzáles-Torres.)
One concrete bit of information Rolnik extended that I will in turn pass onto you, fortunate reader, is that Lygia Clark resisted the Tropicalia movement as a category for her own work, and Neo-Concretism should be rightly considered divorced from Tropicalia altogether (though I don't know why). Labor under your illusions no longer!
Left: Abdel Abdessemed, Real Time, 2003. Right: Abdel Abdessemed, Birth of Love, 2003.
Manolo Borja ("What To Do?") presented a more optimistic paper than his hand-wringing title suggests. He began with a graph comparing the modern museum with the postmodern museum (please imagine some triangles in there somewhere):
Modern Museum
After a tangent on the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art that detailed some of these problems, he offered his prescription: Museums should reevaluate the property-centric nature of collections in favor of an "archive" format, in which orality and micronarratives are encouraged. I don't believe he clearly explained the nature of this new decentered art, but he gave as examples some guerrilla stuff, some reproducible stuff.
In short: Hakim Bey, ontological anarchy, Temporary Autonomous Zones, that sort of thing.
Hans Haacke, Condensation Cube, 1963.
The final segment featured a panel of museum directors—a gang of four, really, who almost to a one bucked his canned statement in order to respond to Buchloh. The panel: Bruce Altschuler (NYU museum studies), Neal Benezra (SFMOMA), Jay Gates (Phillips Collection), Kathy Halbreich (Walker Art Center, exiting director), Lisa Phillips (New Museum). More on that later.
Posted by Kriston at September 19, 2007 12:57 PMRegarding Suely Rolnik's question, which you answered with Felix Gonzales-Torres, it sounds like her question was about the distinction between an artwork and its artifacts. Until very recently the artwork was itself the artifact. But now the artwork is a performance, a film, a happening, or a concept. Either Matt Barney hires actors to dance around his art, or he makes movies and sells their props and filmstills. Pick the more lucrative answer.
Anyway, pomo art is intended specifically for public interaction. One cannot own the work, one can only own an exclusive right to portray it. A sale of such work becomes like a book auction, where lots are sold not to be possessed, but to be published. A Felix Gonzales-Torres work will never be stolen by a drug lord to hang on his wall as a trophy.
About Manolo Borja's question: How can we distinguish a "pomo museum" from a kunsthal(le)? If a pre-pomo museum ("mo museum") is a fixed place intended to generate a specific museum-going experience, and if the pomo experience is not supposed to be so fixed, because each pomo work of art is supposed to generate its own special experience, then isn't the pomomu ("nomo museum") just a big empty space that can be reconfigured upon demand, then filled however the artist and curator desires, with writhing, sweating ... um ... artworks?
We build ersatz monasteries to display 15th century icons, and we emulate Georgian and Victorian salons when we display art of those eras, so if we want to display pomo artworks in their natural habitat, maybe museums need to start building separate project spaces and calling them their "pomo wing".
Posted by: Henry at September 20, 2007 1:13 PM