Loneliness is Reproducible
Tiia Salo AAD Dissertation Studio 8 2020–21
Extracts from Tiia Salo, Loneliness is Reproducible
Dissertation Studio 8 Speak, Form Tutor: Andrew Hewish
School of Art, Architecture and Design London Metropolitan University 2021
CHAPTER 1 1.5 Feeling the inanimate “Devotees believe, for instance, that the idol into whose eyes they gaze also looks at them, just as one can say, and see, that a camera looks at something without claiming that it is alive. That is, idolatry can be understood if a distinction is made between the attribution of human characteristics to an animate object and the belief that the object is alive in the biological sense.”1 KAWS’ Companions undeniably resemble human anatomy in the way they have been built (Figure 7), and this gives a clear indication to the viewer that the art piece in question relates to humanity. But his works do not just discuss our existence in a replicating way, showing us an imitation of ourselves like a reflection, but instead a manifestation of our feelings which resemblances us for the sake of emotional discovery. This would mean that the humane characteristics of artworks play a key role in how we feel about art. “So, if animacy does not need to be defined in biological terms, what is the mysterious capacity worshippers believe the cult objects possesses? How do they reconcile their awareness that the objects of their devotion are dead matter, but at the same time their belief that they can act, listen and see?”2
Figure 1
1
Caroline van Eck,(2010), Alfred Gell’s Living Statues: Art and Agency, Living Presence Response, Association of art historians 2 Caroline van Eck,(2010), Alfred Gell’s Living Statues: Art and Agency, Living Presence Response, Association of art historians
Humans are known to feel more towards objects which resemble us. We seek to find characteristics similar to our own in objects that are new to us, and we empathize more with pieces from which we can find our emotions reflected. The gruesome early Greek sculptures can make us feel the pain of the soldiers who waged wars a long time ago, almost as if those characters were alive once again through their animate features, which we can relate ourselves to. Alfred Gell wrote in his theory of art and agency, that to explain why this is possible, something being alive yet not have any biological capacities to be so, we must consider these objects having agency, a power to act on its users which does not require biological life. “Gell’s idea provides a theoretical framework with global scope for how art can act on people, one that offers an explanation for the paradox that people believe inanimate objects share qualities with living being when they are perfectly aware of the difference between dead matter and living being in the biological sense.”3 Gell’s theory helps us to look at the distinction between how we feel towards another human being and a sculpture of a human being and how those emotions are born differently. Gell explains that this affect of art is something being done to us, through agency or an agent. An agent simply is one who 'causes events to happen' in their vicinity.4 With this he looks at especially how objects have social agency, further explaining that no object is a self-sufficient agent, but a secondary one, reliant on its human associates. KAWS’ Companions are objects such as this, they cause events to aspire on their own but in doing so also rely on their creator for the initial spark, further proving that the figurines hold the artists meaning in them as well. In this way he explains art to be a sort of a technology which “fascinates the viewer because it is the result of barely comprehensible virtuosity which exemplifies an ideal or magical efficacy that people try hard to achieve in other domains.”5 This means that the agency of the material object, is based on its technical abilities in which it was created and the virtuosity is shows, but Gell focuses more on this through the handling of the material, whereas Caroline Van Eck points out that there are other variety of this kind of technical refinement such as vivid life likeliness, which is the main focus here. KAWS figurines do not realistically appear very human, yet in very distinct ways alert us of their humane features, having a torso, a head, hands 3
Caroline van Eck,(2010), Alfred Gell’s Living Statues: Art and Agency, Living Presence Response, Association of art historians 4 Alfred Gell, (1998), Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory, Clarendon Press, Oxford 5 Caroline van Eck,(2010), Alfred Gell’s Living Statues: Art and Agency, Living Presence Response, Association of art historians
and feet. But it is more so with what has been done with those features, what poses they have been put in, that really make us feel a sense of experience from these characters. ”As Gell puts it, ‘whoever allows his or her attention to be attracted to an index, and submits to its power, appeal, or fascination, is a patient, responding to the agency inherent in the index. This agency may be physical, spiritual, political, an index, and submits to its power, appeal, or fascination, is a patient, responding spectatorship” Gell separates those who feel the agency into patients and believes that one cannot exist without the other. Something is an agent as long as someone is a patient, meaning that an art piece doesn’t expel any context unless its agency is felt by someone. But this is not all, as he also believes that the agent and patient relationship can momentarily be swapped when changes in momentum happen. A car is an agent for its owner who is the patient, in love with their new vehicle, but if the car were to break down and the owner in anger was to hit and damage the car, it would become the momentarily patient. Patient does not always have to be a human, like an agent doesn't always have to be an object. In this way Gell has tried to explain just how the relationship between human emotions and inanimate objects works. It is an ongoing reaction from one to the other, and it would serve to explain yet another way in which art is emotionally impactful to us. When an artist reflects their emotions on a surface, they work as an agent, creating causes which manifest the patient as art. When art is then perceived by others, the patient takes what it has learned from the agent, and becomes an agent itself, causing the same effect in other patients, this time the viewers. If looked at KAWS influence in such a way, reproducing the message of loneliness through his Companions, becomes more effective when commodified.
CHAPTER 2 2.1 Repetition in art “The crux is, he has never really moved on from this. The vast bulk of his work consists of cartoon figures with crosses for eyes–Snoopy, Mickey Mouse, the Cookie Monster have all been sullied by the same treatment. KAWS’s collectibles have boosted his cult following in Asia, but they should not be considered art.”6 In this article for The Art News Paper, Anny Shaw suggests that it is Donnelly’s repetitions of the same like characters that demolishes the value of his work. Although there are many artists who are known for appropriation in their work, especially in the pop era, such as Andy Warhol, who rose to become a known name in the industry, it seems hard to extinguish where the border between good and bad appropriation lies. For Shaw, the difference lies within the repetition of the same, although it seems contradicting as most works of appropriation are exactly that. Repetition is what in most cases builds an artist's career. It is hypocritical to say that repetition would be the cause of an artist's demise, as in most art schools students are being taught to learn their own style, to find the attribute which makes one's work recognisable to others. In fact, this idea of repetition as a negative attribute didn’t come to be until the modern aesthetic, in which repetition was connected with the commercial, and pleasurable experiences such as novels, movies and comics among many others, weren’t counted as art anymore, but were separated as crafts. ‘’Modern aesthetics frequently forgot that the classical theory of art, from ancient Greece to the Middle Ages, was not so eager to stress a distinction between arts and crafts. The same term (techne, ars) was used to designate both the performance of a barber or a ship-builder, the work of a painter or a poet.’’7 Mass media resulted in repetition becoming serial, which soon started to be considered unheard of in artistic inventions, which led to our current situation regarding art and its status, making it normal for many to not consider certain artistic paths as art. “Furthermore, this excess of pleasurability, repetition, lack of innovation, was felt as a commercial trick (the product had to meet the expectations of its audience), not as the 6
Anny Shaw, (2019), Why KAWS is not a great artist, The art newspaper Eco Umberto, (1985), Innovation and Repetition: Between Modern and Post-Modern Aesthetics, Daedalus (2005) 7
provocative proposal of a new (and difficult to accept) world vision.”8 KAWS repetition as such is a wakeup call towards a better understanding of art so that through its status it can be rendered to become more helpful as a tool and not just an object. The reason why his work is reproduced and sold in bigger quantities than most artists' is because his mission is to keep art relatable to the people. “Democracy is the basis for modern society. But does this mean that the art of modern society is also democratic? Can any good art be ‘democratic’? Art, like democracy, is about freedom of expression, open choice, and diversity of representation – surely art is the best expression of democracy?”9 It is a risk that art is too often about the individual. The truth is that most of the art pieces that exist are anything but democratic. Many artists choose to charge a lot for their main pieces of art, still indicating that their target audiences are rich people who often are the market within high art. This is a strategy to make money, but it often leaves artists waiting for opportunities to come to them, feeding of the scraps until better luck comes by, scraps meaning things such as merchandise. Whether it is logo t-shirts or tote bags, they are meant for the average consumer who wants to support an artist, but cannot afford the actual pieces, indicating that the currently arts place in everyday life is still second hand. “Kenneth Clark came to the conclusion that art was ‘incurably aristocratic’, and (more controversially), ‘an outstanding example of the rule of the many by the few”10 It is the market in which artists are made to participate in that makes art so aristocratic. And due to this artists, regardless of their great philosophies and ideas, are often forced to cater democratic ideals to elitists. But against what Kenneth Clark wrote about this being an incurable situation, one could beg to differ. This argument leans on the idea that artists control their creations through an individual vision. Artists indeed are benign despots,11 deciding themselves how to create artwork to impose their view of the world, in such clearly taking a dictator method on creating art, but who is to say that art cannot be free from its creator and have a voice of its own which reflects the needs and wants of the many who view it. This is where repetition of art and inserting it to everyday life, making it more accessible to wider and less elitist audiences can help art become even more 8
Eco Umberto, (1985), Innovation and Repetition: Between Modern and Post-Modern Aesthetics, Daedalus (2005) 9 John-Paul Stonard, (2018), Opinion Art and Democracy: A response to Ai Weiwei’s quotation on art’s relation to Democracy, Tate Modern 10 Stonard, (2018) 11 Stonard, (2018)
democratic, which is why it is important in KAWS work. “Repetition—even in its most mechanical, quotidian, habitual, stereotypical forms—has a place within art . . . For the only esthetic problem is how to insert art into everyday life.’’12 Repetition is what leads art to become more about the everyday, but it is the difference which makes art standout from it. In other words, too much of the same thing is as bad as too many different things. And the reason why KAWS’ Companions manage to echo the current state of our society so efficiently is solely due to the fact that Mickey Mouse exists in the way he does. So although Mickey Mouse's existence in the modern day could be counted as over glamourizing modern society and its problems, its existence is paramount to where we stand now, as otherwise KAWS’ Companions would have less of an emotional effect. And some might have seen this coming early on. “Benjamin identifies Mickey Mouse as an empowering figure, capable of making the collective dream of new and utopian uses for technology, as well as providing the energy that people lack in reality and which could be channelled for his project of collective innervation.”13 Walter Benjamin is a known figure for being against the bourgeois culture, which this essay refers to as elitism. He believed that Mickey Mouse was in the centre of what he said to be the end of the elitist culture, and the birth of a positive type of barbarism, a new culture that has to “...break with tradition and develop new art forms that both reflect on and transform the technologically saturated environment of the time.” In his destruction of the elite, he creates the ‘destructive character’. This idea he introduces, asks the question that what if KAWS figures are not effective due to their purpose of trying to bring light into people's life as directly and evidently as Mickey Mouse, but instead use a more indirect way which relies on the darkness of the message. “The destructive character lives from the feeling not that life is worth living, but that suicide is not worth the trouble.”14 This sentence could as well be used when looking at loneliness as it stems not far from depression to begin with, but the main point of it is to describe that part of the fantasy of the form as we know it, is the destruction we recognize from it.
12
James Williams, (2013), Gilles Deleuze's Difference and Repetition: A Critical Introduction and Guide, Edinburgh University Press 13 Daniel Mourenza, (2020), Mickey Mouse: Utopian and Barbarian. In Walter Benjamin and the Aesthetics of Film (pp. 195-234). Amsterdam University Press 14 Mourenza, (2020)
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