Taussig Michael, The Language of Flowers, Walter Benjamins Grave, The University of Chicago Press, 2006 pp. 189-218
Michael Taussig has a PHD. in anthropology from the London School of Economics and is a professor at Columbia University. He is best known for his engagement with Marx’s idea of commodity fetishism especially in the work of Walter Benjamin.
The Language of Flowers is a wide ranging piece that discusses the history of botanical fetishes such as the mandrake, associations with the Acephale group, the myth of The Little Gallows Man and a discussion on hanging and sexual pleasure. This background is used to discuss Columbian artist Juan Manuel Echavarria and his series Corte de Florero - photographic works of human bones in flower like arrangements commenting on the history of state violence in Columbia.
As an overview of the state of nature and violence of the state, Taussig reminds us that Walter Benjamin said capital punishment was a re-enactment of the state’s founding violence. The inherent violence of humans is noted as he wraps up by returning to animator Chuck Jones who had commented ‘it’s easier to humanize animals than humanize humans’. (p189)
Echavarria is humanizing flowers in his use of human bones. But I am not sure if Chuck Jones’ comments are correct that it is easier to humanize animals. Bugs Bunny and Road Runner although treated with violence in his cartoons never die and never suffer. Is suffering only a human condition?
While reading this article I was caught by Echavarria’s purpose of creating something so beautiful that people would be attracted to it and then once they realised what it was something would click in the viewers head. (p190) This of course is a commonly used technique of film-makers and writers , especially when presenting topics that may have a degree of compassion fatigue(1).
It particularly made me think of J.M Coetzee’s novel Disgrace(2), and the subsequent film. Disgrace presents the conundrum of violence in Africa, post pre and post apatite. Woven into this story is a refuge for dogs in which the main character humanely puts down the many abandoned and mistreated dogs. He finds a kind of solace in this work. It is worth noting because this is something not normally featured in movies, that animals suffer because of human treatment. Coetzee is a dedicated vegetarian, his small book The Lives of Animals(3) tells the story of a lecturer, Elizabeth Costello who uses the various academic speaking engagements to talk about the suffering of animals. This was born of Coetzee himself wanting to talk about animal rights at the Tanner Lectures in Princeton and wanting to engage rather than shame his audience. He now reads the book at such lectures, because it is a story and read as a story representing the thoughts of Elizabeth it is not a ‘lecture’.
In the book Elizabeth’s son dreads the moment when his mother is asked what made her become a vegetarian as the response is always the same. ‘ You ask me why I refuse to eat flesh, I for my part, am astonished that you can put in your mouth the corpse of a dead animal, astonished that you do not find it nasty to chew hacked flesh and swallow the juices of death wounds’ (p38) (4).
In this way Coetzee cleverly introduces a controversial topic in a conversational way. Elizabeth can also afford to insert an intellectual element into the discussion, on animal consciousness . .’No awareness as far as we can make out of a self with a history. What I mind is what tends to come next. They have no consciousness – therefore-. Therefore what? Therefore we are free to use them for our own ends? Therefore we are free to kill them? Why? What is so special about the form of consciousness we recognise that makes killing a bearer of it a crime while killing an animal goes unpublished?’
1. Moeller, Susan D. Compassion Fatigue, How the Media sells Disease Famine War and Death. Routeledge, 1999.
2. Coetzee, J.M. Disgrace. Secker & Warburg 1999.
3. Coetzee, J.M. The Lives of Animals. Princeton University Press 2001.
4. These quote originally come from Plutarch, c. 46 – 120 AD, a Greek historian, biographer and essayist.
Friday, June 4, 2010
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Reading 4
Castelells Manuel, “Communication, Power and Counter power in the Network Society”, International Journal of Communication 1 (2007), pp238-266.
Manuel Castelells is a sociologist especially associated with information society and communications research.
I am interested in the premise of interplays between communications and power relationships that Manuel Castelells explores in this piece. He argues that the media has become the social space where power is decided. Is this still the case in 2010? Or has this power been fragmented or further expanded?
I need to own up here to having a political interest; I work in a voluntary capacity on the Marketing Committee for the Green Party with a specific overview on brand and design.
The Green Party, like all parties are continuously researching means to establish the best ways to communicate with both members and potential voters.
The Obama campaign which occurred after this piece was written, is often mentioned as a turning point in election campaigns as it exemplified how best to harness social networks and digital communications to political gain. This is a change from Castelells noting TV as the number one political communication channel (p240). One of clever parts of the Obama campaign was how the Scott Thomas as design director clearly understood the divergent abilities inherent in the many new channels, identifying four main areas of image approach as 1. Campaign 2. Instant / Vintage 3. Timeless 4. Supporters. Using these as different storytelling motifs of the brand. This u-tube clip explains: http://the99percent.com/videos/5821/scott-thomas-designing-the-obama-campaign
This does confirm Castelells surmation that the value of the media is image based ‘The language of the media has its rules. It is largely built around images, not necessarily visual, but images’ (p242). The Obama campaign pitched the image in many ways reinforced with a visual component.
So we have got cleverer at selling a particular political brand to many audiences, in the way that audience wants to perceive it. This does confirm an active fragmentation or multiple ways of selling the same message over a broader type of media, which may now also deliberately include the low-tech (e.g oversize supporters buttons) and much as twitter feeds and digital sign-up mediums.
The English 2010 election, also strongly media driven, with a televised political debate being seen as the unexpected driver to change voter behaviour. The debate after much media discussion had 321,000 u-tube views.
The media also used the election to reinforce their own brands. The Independent newspaper produced a u-tube clip, which said in their own words: ‘Too much news is not news – it is spin and PR. Under an unapologetic, liberal banner, we will bring you the facts that many would rather you simply did not read’. This covered proportional representation, financial contributions and media involvement in the election. See the clip at: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/press/the-independent-truth-matters-1949116.html
I would suggest that media power has been fragmented by the use of public zones such as u-tube, which for the moment at least are outside direct media control, even if they are being used by the media in increasingly clever ways.
Manuel Castelells is a sociologist especially associated with information society and communications research.
I am interested in the premise of interplays between communications and power relationships that Manuel Castelells explores in this piece. He argues that the media has become the social space where power is decided. Is this still the case in 2010? Or has this power been fragmented or further expanded?
I need to own up here to having a political interest; I work in a voluntary capacity on the Marketing Committee for the Green Party with a specific overview on brand and design.
The Green Party, like all parties are continuously researching means to establish the best ways to communicate with both members and potential voters.
The Obama campaign which occurred after this piece was written, is often mentioned as a turning point in election campaigns as it exemplified how best to harness social networks and digital communications to political gain. This is a change from Castelells noting TV as the number one political communication channel (p240). One of clever parts of the Obama campaign was how the Scott Thomas as design director clearly understood the divergent abilities inherent in the many new channels, identifying four main areas of image approach as 1. Campaign 2. Instant / Vintage 3. Timeless 4. Supporters. Using these as different storytelling motifs of the brand. This u-tube clip explains: http://the99percent.com/videos/5821/scott-thomas-designing-the-obama-campaign
This does confirm Castelells surmation that the value of the media is image based ‘The language of the media has its rules. It is largely built around images, not necessarily visual, but images’ (p242). The Obama campaign pitched the image in many ways reinforced with a visual component.
So we have got cleverer at selling a particular political brand to many audiences, in the way that audience wants to perceive it. This does confirm an active fragmentation or multiple ways of selling the same message over a broader type of media, which may now also deliberately include the low-tech (e.g oversize supporters buttons) and much as twitter feeds and digital sign-up mediums.
The English 2010 election, also strongly media driven, with a televised political debate being seen as the unexpected driver to change voter behaviour. The debate after much media discussion had 321,000 u-tube views.
The media also used the election to reinforce their own brands. The Independent newspaper produced a u-tube clip, which said in their own words: ‘Too much news is not news – it is spin and PR. Under an unapologetic, liberal banner, we will bring you the facts that many would rather you simply did not read’. This covered proportional representation, financial contributions and media involvement in the election. See the clip at: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/press/the-independent-truth-matters-1949116.html
I would suggest that media power has been fragmented by the use of public zones such as u-tube, which for the moment at least are outside direct media control, even if they are being used by the media in increasingly clever ways.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Reading 3
Craig, David. “Taranaki Gothic and the Political Economy of New Zealand Narrative and Sensibility”
New Zealand Sociology Volume 20 Number 2 2005
David Craig is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Auckland University.
The article written for the New Zealand Sociology publication compares the notion of Taranaki Gothic to influences upon the social and political economy of New Zealand.
I am interested in the question of what IS Taranaki Gothic, and is the provincial still influencing New Zealand’s wider view.
The term Taranaki Gothic was coined in reference to Ronald Morrieson, a Taranaki local and novelist of Came a Hot Friday, Predicament and Pallet on the Floor which “using Hawera as a backdrop for scandalous literary characters, usually shallow, casual bizarre sexual adventures and crime” [1] relate to the modern interpretations of Gothic writing. This genre has also been called Taranaki Gothic Horror. [2]
Gothicness has been applied to much of New Zealand’s creative spheres, fashion, filmmaking and architecture being common examples. Craig has also written on gothic contemporary photography. [3]
Craig has also used this term before, referring to Taranaki Gothic in an exhibition catalogue piece for artist Michael Stevenson in The Seppelt Contemporary Art Award, 1997. He refers to the definition provided by Nick Parry in The Dominion of Signs, 1994 “a slapstick style progressively undercut by a growing sense of desperation and heightened sense of threat.” Stevenson is himself from Taranaki. Craig explores in this piece the relationship of provincial to the wider world, using Michael Stevenson’s work to illustrate the ‘stalker’ mentality of the provincial artist when creating art derivative of offshore art they have seen only in reproduced form. “ . . . . so much provincial art is that a choked access to the living springs of metropolitan aesthetic authority produces a grotesque provincial reading of what the provincial artist believes is currently the case in New York”.[4]
In Craig’s 2005 piece he mentions exporting and how NZ has responded to global pressures. I think it is worthwhile to examine how NZ represents itself to the world in this context and to ponder if we are still as a country in 2010 in a very similar position to the provincial artist. The desire to reinterpret ourselves as a knowledge economy over and above an agricultural producer has meant a shift in visual language and symbols, but how much of this is catch-up with world views rather than inventing our own? The offshore questioning of our use of the 100% Pure branding is only beginning to resonate in NZ. Whereas Europe has been sustainability savvy for some years, business and tourism operators have been slow in recognizing this.
In 2002 NZ decided to promote itself as “technologically advanced, savvy, and a good place to work” – images that are important to the projected economic development of identified key enabling sectors in the economy of biotechnology, ICT and creative. [5] This dichotomy of trying to appear as a green, clean, adventurous tourist destination while also selling ourselves as a place of product innovation and economic development is possibly our downfall. Like the provincial artist we see the reproductions from offshore (countries booming like Ireland) and desire to be them and copy them. Of course Ireland has recently busted, but we still believe we can be an economic banking hub. Our growing sense of desperation and heightened sense of threat to economic pressure have made us schizophrenic to our future, a real life gothic horror.
[1] Bartle Rhonda. “A Bulky Man of Large Enthusiasms – Ronald H Morrieson”. www.pekeariki.com/research/TaranakiStories
[2] Bartle, Rhonda. “Taranaki Gothic Horror”. www.pekeariki.com/research/TaranakiStories
[3] Craig, David. “Gothic Inversions and Displacements: Ruins, Madness and Domesticated Modernism”. Gothic New Zealand. ed Kavka, M. Lawn, J. Paul, M. Otago University Press 2006.
[4] Craig, David. “Taranaki Gothic: stalking the grotesque in provincial art”. The Seppelt Contemporary Art Award 1997
[5] Guy, Natalie. "Brand segmentation and imagery in New Zealand’s national branding". 2006
New Zealand Sociology Volume 20 Number 2 2005
David Craig is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Auckland University.
The article written for the New Zealand Sociology publication compares the notion of Taranaki Gothic to influences upon the social and political economy of New Zealand.
I am interested in the question of what IS Taranaki Gothic, and is the provincial still influencing New Zealand’s wider view.
The term Taranaki Gothic was coined in reference to Ronald Morrieson, a Taranaki local and novelist of Came a Hot Friday, Predicament and Pallet on the Floor which “using Hawera as a backdrop for scandalous literary characters, usually shallow, casual bizarre sexual adventures and crime” [1] relate to the modern interpretations of Gothic writing. This genre has also been called Taranaki Gothic Horror. [2]
Gothicness has been applied to much of New Zealand’s creative spheres, fashion, filmmaking and architecture being common examples. Craig has also written on gothic contemporary photography. [3]
Craig has also used this term before, referring to Taranaki Gothic in an exhibition catalogue piece for artist Michael Stevenson in The Seppelt Contemporary Art Award, 1997. He refers to the definition provided by Nick Parry in The Dominion of Signs, 1994 “a slapstick style progressively undercut by a growing sense of desperation and heightened sense of threat.” Stevenson is himself from Taranaki. Craig explores in this piece the relationship of provincial to the wider world, using Michael Stevenson’s work to illustrate the ‘stalker’ mentality of the provincial artist when creating art derivative of offshore art they have seen only in reproduced form. “ . . . . so much provincial art is that a choked access to the living springs of metropolitan aesthetic authority produces a grotesque provincial reading of what the provincial artist believes is currently the case in New York”.[4]
In Craig’s 2005 piece he mentions exporting and how NZ has responded to global pressures. I think it is worthwhile to examine how NZ represents itself to the world in this context and to ponder if we are still as a country in 2010 in a very similar position to the provincial artist. The desire to reinterpret ourselves as a knowledge economy over and above an agricultural producer has meant a shift in visual language and symbols, but how much of this is catch-up with world views rather than inventing our own? The offshore questioning of our use of the 100% Pure branding is only beginning to resonate in NZ. Whereas Europe has been sustainability savvy for some years, business and tourism operators have been slow in recognizing this.
In 2002 NZ decided to promote itself as “technologically advanced, savvy, and a good place to work” – images that are important to the projected economic development of identified key enabling sectors in the economy of biotechnology, ICT and creative. [5] This dichotomy of trying to appear as a green, clean, adventurous tourist destination while also selling ourselves as a place of product innovation and economic development is possibly our downfall. Like the provincial artist we see the reproductions from offshore (countries booming like Ireland) and desire to be them and copy them. Of course Ireland has recently busted, but we still believe we can be an economic banking hub. Our growing sense of desperation and heightened sense of threat to economic pressure have made us schizophrenic to our future, a real life gothic horror.
[1] Bartle Rhonda. “A Bulky Man of Large Enthusiasms – Ronald H Morrieson”. www.pekeariki.com/research/TaranakiStories
[2] Bartle, Rhonda. “Taranaki Gothic Horror”. www.pekeariki.com/research/TaranakiStories
[3] Craig, David. “Gothic Inversions and Displacements: Ruins, Madness and Domesticated Modernism”. Gothic New Zealand. ed Kavka, M. Lawn, J. Paul, M. Otago University Press 2006.
[4] Craig, David. “Taranaki Gothic: stalking the grotesque in provincial art”. The Seppelt Contemporary Art Award 1997
[5] Guy, Natalie. "Brand segmentation and imagery in New Zealand’s national branding". 2006
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Reading 2
Buchmann, Sabeth. “Under the Sign of Labor. Art after conceptualism. 2006: 179-195. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. & London.
Cuauhtemoc, Medina. “Contemp(t)orary: Eleven Theses”. e-flux journal, #12 01/2010: 1-7. 17/2/2010. http://www.e-flux.com/journal/view/103.
The texts; by Sabeth Buchmann an art critic and historian and Medina Cuauhtemoc; art critic and curator surmise on the role of conceptual art to current art practice.
I am interested in the question raised by both authors that conceptual/contemporary art failed to meet idealistic goals in relation to a new social and political discourse and the role of institutions/audience to this today.
Bachmann’s premise that the goal of conceptual art to “free production from the logic of the marketplace and anchor it within a non-institutional, non commercial public sphere”(179) was she states not achieved. Cuauhtemoc thinks the term contemporary art, once loaded with meanings of change and possible alternatives “the new”(1) failed to live up to its utopian expectation of social and political realisation.
Where it did achieve, according to Buchmann, was in the way the value of art was recalibrated as a “form of communication that generates publicness” (179) and incorporated into new spheres such as urban space, social movements, mass media and technologies. The freeing from craft-based production methods, with their inherent labour quota, led to a redefining of what could be “exhibited in the realm of the public” (180). Cuauhtémoc argues that the public institutions took this and ran with it, being now the “last refuge of political and intellectual radicalism” (6).
Matthew Collings' writing in Modern Painters March 2010 thinks the promise of modernism has become debased because “as a society we want the good and the new to be already happening; we don’t so much want to do the hard work of making it happen” (27). He thinks this could be caused by consumerism or something bad and political, and that this was aided by the notion of attacking elitism under the guise of accessibility, that the institutions simply “suck up to the new spirit of carnival populism that gives them their jobs" (27).
In New Zealand at least, it is hard to find examples of institutions being bastions of radicalism nor has the conceptual and political met and flourished. Although art-going is clearly a popular activity in NZ, with nearly 50% of the population attending and participating (Creative NZ media release 2009), so presumably publicness is being reached. The intent of what is being shown however is not always clear, yes conceptual/contemporary art is accessible but is this just a manifestation of the desire to be part of the global art calendar? This is also debated among practioners in NZ, especially when we represent our most contemporary face abroad, as exemplified in the ongoing ARTbash blog 1. on the merit of our Venice Biennial/offshore promotions.
It seems to me that Buchmann, Cuauhtemoc and Collings, like the ARTbash bloggers, are noting confusion, a loss, an unease with the direction of art practice and the part that institutions play in these relationships. Utopia has not been protected. Maybe the view now needs to be directed to the past rather than to a moribund present or fervent focus on the new, to as Collings says reconnect with the power and sincerity of arts traditional meanings and instead renew them for a new age (27).
Notes
1. Examples of comments from ARTBash
Sooty 12 May 2007 1:25 pm
People have often remarked that you've got to be seen in Venice, it's where the real art connections are made. The exhibitions themselves often seem incidental to the ferocious networking which goes on. Catalogues are pressed into unwilling hands, desparate curators from the colonies determined to swing jobs overseas introduce themselves to all and sundry, nationals hang about in sad little clumps trying to catch the eye of the important people. I do think its worthy of note that for whatever reason, NZ has decided to dispense with the art completely this time and just go for the networking. If that's the real point of it all, it must be a much cheaper strategy than bothering with the art.
nznancy 12 May 2007 2:29 pm
For the record, I am not advocating bickering as an occupation, but I think that open argument from various points of view is enlivening. Anyway, Sarah Quigley happens to have a piece in The Press today, "If this is art, I want books", which is rather sceptical of (relatively unidentified) art works, and visitors, in (also unidentified) galleries - in Berlin. Despite the difficulty of speaking about this in NZ, perhaps an airy response (to the paper or by some other public channel) from someone is called for. If such things are ignored publicly, but gossiped over, nothing is advanced.
Works Cited
1. Buchmann, Sabeth. “Under the Sign of Labor. Art after conceptualism. 2006: 179-195. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. & London.
2. Cuauhtemoc, Medina. “Contemp(t)orary: Eleven Theses”. e-flux journal, #12 01/2010: 1-7. 17/2/2010. http://www.e-flux.com/journal/view/103
3. Collings, Matthew. “Why Do Paintings Look Nice?”. Modern Painters, March, 2010: 24-27
4. “Arts Are Part of Life For New Zealanders”. Creative NZ Media Release. APRIL 2009. http://www.creativenz.govt.nz/who_we_are/news/articletype/articleview/articleid/144
5. http://www.artbash.co.nz/article.asp?id=998&p=3#comments
Cuauhtemoc, Medina. “Contemp(t)orary: Eleven Theses”. e-flux journal, #12 01/2010: 1-7. 17/2/2010. http://www.e-flux.com/journal/view/103.
The texts; by Sabeth Buchmann an art critic and historian and Medina Cuauhtemoc; art critic and curator surmise on the role of conceptual art to current art practice.
I am interested in the question raised by both authors that conceptual/contemporary art failed to meet idealistic goals in relation to a new social and political discourse and the role of institutions/audience to this today.
Bachmann’s premise that the goal of conceptual art to “free production from the logic of the marketplace and anchor it within a non-institutional, non commercial public sphere”(179) was she states not achieved. Cuauhtemoc thinks the term contemporary art, once loaded with meanings of change and possible alternatives “the new”(1) failed to live up to its utopian expectation of social and political realisation.
Where it did achieve, according to Buchmann, was in the way the value of art was recalibrated as a “form of communication that generates publicness” (179) and incorporated into new spheres such as urban space, social movements, mass media and technologies. The freeing from craft-based production methods, with their inherent labour quota, led to a redefining of what could be “exhibited in the realm of the public” (180). Cuauhtémoc argues that the public institutions took this and ran with it, being now the “last refuge of political and intellectual radicalism” (6).
Matthew Collings' writing in Modern Painters March 2010 thinks the promise of modernism has become debased because “as a society we want the good and the new to be already happening; we don’t so much want to do the hard work of making it happen” (27). He thinks this could be caused by consumerism or something bad and political, and that this was aided by the notion of attacking elitism under the guise of accessibility, that the institutions simply “suck up to the new spirit of carnival populism that gives them their jobs" (27).
In New Zealand at least, it is hard to find examples of institutions being bastions of radicalism nor has the conceptual and political met and flourished. Although art-going is clearly a popular activity in NZ, with nearly 50% of the population attending and participating (Creative NZ media release 2009), so presumably publicness is being reached. The intent of what is being shown however is not always clear, yes conceptual/contemporary art is accessible but is this just a manifestation of the desire to be part of the global art calendar? This is also debated among practioners in NZ, especially when we represent our most contemporary face abroad, as exemplified in the ongoing ARTbash blog 1. on the merit of our Venice Biennial/offshore promotions.
It seems to me that Buchmann, Cuauhtemoc and Collings, like the ARTbash bloggers, are noting confusion, a loss, an unease with the direction of art practice and the part that institutions play in these relationships. Utopia has not been protected. Maybe the view now needs to be directed to the past rather than to a moribund present or fervent focus on the new, to as Collings says reconnect with the power and sincerity of arts traditional meanings and instead renew them for a new age (27).
Notes
1. Examples of comments from ARTBash
Sooty 12 May 2007 1:25 pm
People have often remarked that you've got to be seen in Venice, it's where the real art connections are made. The exhibitions themselves often seem incidental to the ferocious networking which goes on. Catalogues are pressed into unwilling hands, desparate curators from the colonies determined to swing jobs overseas introduce themselves to all and sundry, nationals hang about in sad little clumps trying to catch the eye of the important people. I do think its worthy of note that for whatever reason, NZ has decided to dispense with the art completely this time and just go for the networking. If that's the real point of it all, it must be a much cheaper strategy than bothering with the art.
nznancy 12 May 2007 2:29 pm
For the record, I am not advocating bickering as an occupation, but I think that open argument from various points of view is enlivening. Anyway, Sarah Quigley happens to have a piece in The Press today, "If this is art, I want books", which is rather sceptical of (relatively unidentified) art works, and visitors, in (also unidentified) galleries - in Berlin. Despite the difficulty of speaking about this in NZ, perhaps an airy response (to the paper or by some other public channel) from someone is called for. If such things are ignored publicly, but gossiped over, nothing is advanced.
Works Cited
1. Buchmann, Sabeth. “Under the Sign of Labor. Art after conceptualism. 2006: 179-195. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. & London.
2. Cuauhtemoc, Medina. “Contemp(t)orary: Eleven Theses”. e-flux journal, #12 01/2010: 1-7. 17/2/2010. http://www.e-flux.com/journal/view/103
3. Collings, Matthew. “Why Do Paintings Look Nice?”. Modern Painters, March, 2010: 24-27
4. “Arts Are Part of Life For New Zealanders”. Creative NZ Media Release. APRIL 2009. http://www.creativenz.govt.nz/who_we_are/news/articletype/articleview/articleid/144
5. http://www.artbash.co.nz/article.asp?id=998&p=3#comments
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Reading 1.
Theory and practise: What does it mean to work with theoretical material as a creative practitioner?
Garrett, Craig. “Thomas Hirschhorn: Philosophical Battery”, Flash Art no.238. October, 2004, pp. 90-93
Jones, Amelia “Meaning, Identity, Embodiment: the uses of Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology in Art History”, Art and Thought, Ed.s Arnold, Dana and Iverson, Marhearet. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003, pp.71-90.
The texts; one written by an editor and writer for a contemporary art magazine, Craig Garrett, the other by art historian, critic and author, Amelia Jones, concern seemingly differing subjects.
Jones’ work, explores the way meaning is reached using the philosophical viewpoint of Merleau-Ponty’s, between the subjective nature of the interpreter and the possibility of non-subjective judgement. This argues for ‘a reciprocal interrelation between the viewer and the subject who is identified as its maker’. The idea that the spectator (critic) is more than involved with the view, because of their own subjectivity - as termed by Foucault the ‘author function’- is worth examining in respect to Garretts piece on the artist Hirschhorn which focuses on the controversy surrounding his use of ‘lofty subjects’ (of whom Foucault ironically is one).
As one critic espouses ‘(Hirschhorn) has dragged these writings out from the gold standard vault and mixed them with the dross of material reality in an act of supreme irreverence’. This reaction seems to concur with Jones’ ‘the contingent nature of subjective existence in the world’ - we only exist in relation to others.
Interestingly Hirschhorn is aware of this, when in answer to the statement that ‘he incorporates these historical thinkers in a parasitic fashion’ , he identifies that misunderstanding, incomprehension and inattention is unavoidable.
Artists work whose subject matter or ‘meaning’ is argued over are many, examples like those of photographer Diane Arbus, that she photographed "freaks" or, worse, made freaks of those she photographed , or Robert Mapplethorpe ‘reducing blacks and gays to objects of desire’ .
The nature of the controversy often comes to overshadow the artist. Garrett is pointedly more interested in the critical debate about Hirschhorns’s employment of philosophy, Jones’ in the arguments between thinkers and critics on Merleau-Ponty’s ideas.
Jones’ notes the impact of controversial criticism of the 1993 Whitney Biennial Exhibition, which she states ‘exemplify the tendency within the more conservative art critical establishment to paint those who address identity as somehow betraying the true meaning of the works . . . ‘
Charles Wright also on the 1993 Whitney said, ‘Popular media critics recognised the enemy and that enemy was themselves, a mythologically constructed ‘straight, white male’ – the pre-eminent protector of culture’.
One might argue in the case of Hirschhorn that little has changed.
Jones, Amelia. p. 73
Garrett, Craig. p. 90
supra p. 92
Jones, Amelia. p. 83
Garrett, Craig. p. 92
Baker, Kenneth, The Chronicle, October 19, 2003, http://articles.sfgate.com/2003-10-19/entertainment/17514404_1_elisabeth-sussman-guest-curator-first-modern-art
Haber, John. Attitude Adjustment, 1993. http://www.haberarts.com/whitny93.htm
Jones, Amelia. Notes p. 89
Wright, Charles A. “The Mythology of Difference: Vulgar Identity Politics at the Whitney”. Art, Activism and Oppositionality. Essays from Afterimage. Ed. Kester, Grant H. United States of America. Duke University Press. 1998. P 79.
Garrett, Craig. “Thomas Hirschhorn: Philosophical Battery”, Flash Art no.238. October, 2004, pp. 90-93
Jones, Amelia “Meaning, Identity, Embodiment: the uses of Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology in Art History”, Art and Thought, Ed.s Arnold, Dana and Iverson, Marhearet. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003, pp.71-90.
The texts; one written by an editor and writer for a contemporary art magazine, Craig Garrett, the other by art historian, critic and author, Amelia Jones, concern seemingly differing subjects.
Jones’ work, explores the way meaning is reached using the philosophical viewpoint of Merleau-Ponty’s, between the subjective nature of the interpreter and the possibility of non-subjective judgement. This argues for ‘a reciprocal interrelation between the viewer and the subject who is identified as its maker’. The idea that the spectator (critic) is more than involved with the view, because of their own subjectivity - as termed by Foucault the ‘author function’- is worth examining in respect to Garretts piece on the artist Hirschhorn which focuses on the controversy surrounding his use of ‘lofty subjects’ (of whom Foucault ironically is one).
As one critic espouses ‘(Hirschhorn) has dragged these writings out from the gold standard vault and mixed them with the dross of material reality in an act of supreme irreverence’. This reaction seems to concur with Jones’ ‘the contingent nature of subjective existence in the world’ - we only exist in relation to others.
Interestingly Hirschhorn is aware of this, when in answer to the statement that ‘he incorporates these historical thinkers in a parasitic fashion’ , he identifies that misunderstanding, incomprehension and inattention is unavoidable.
Artists work whose subject matter or ‘meaning’ is argued over are many, examples like those of photographer Diane Arbus, that she photographed "freaks" or, worse, made freaks of those she photographed , or Robert Mapplethorpe ‘reducing blacks and gays to objects of desire’ .
The nature of the controversy often comes to overshadow the artist. Garrett is pointedly more interested in the critical debate about Hirschhorns’s employment of philosophy, Jones’ in the arguments between thinkers and critics on Merleau-Ponty’s ideas.
Jones’ notes the impact of controversial criticism of the 1993 Whitney Biennial Exhibition, which she states ‘exemplify the tendency within the more conservative art critical establishment to paint those who address identity as somehow betraying the true meaning of the works . . . ‘
Charles Wright also on the 1993 Whitney said, ‘Popular media critics recognised the enemy and that enemy was themselves, a mythologically constructed ‘straight, white male’ – the pre-eminent protector of culture’.
One might argue in the case of Hirschhorn that little has changed.
Jones, Amelia. p. 73
Garrett, Craig. p. 90
supra p. 92
Jones, Amelia. p. 83
Garrett, Craig. p. 92
Baker, Kenneth, The Chronicle, October 19, 2003, http://articles.sfgate.com/2003-10-19/entertainment/17514404_1_elisabeth-sussman-guest-curator-first-modern-art
Haber, John. Attitude Adjustment, 1993. http://www.haberarts.com/whitny93.htm
Jones, Amelia. Notes p. 89
Wright, Charles A. “The Mythology of Difference: Vulgar Identity Politics at the Whitney”. Art, Activism and Oppositionality. Essays from Afterimage. Ed. Kester, Grant H. United States of America. Duke University Press. 1998. P 79.
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