Folding Frames

Folding frames Marcella Arruda

The beauty of art has so much more to do with the frame than the artwork itself.

Chuck Palahniuk, ​Choke​.

Beauty is strictly related to value, and therefore, to a distance established towards things: to the understandment and measurement of its qualities. The origin of the notion of beauty was based on comparison: the real world should mimic the ideal one, divine and abstract. After humanism, the ideal world was replaced by the elevation of man: the white, conqueror, noble and european. Making a jump to globalized world, the pattern of beauty starts to be dictated by the mass media: brands that establish a model to be followed, in which the consumers need to fit in. As the Situationists would put, during the 20th century pulsates the Society of the Spectacle: individuals are alienated, mere followers, non thinkers or creators. It is in the contempory society that the distance between art and life, creator and spectator, is blurred, if not broken. The frame that used to establish value and delimitate this distance is now stretched through artworks: the boundary is not visible anymore, but the tension can be felt.

The brief timeline presented above, beyond pointing out the trajectory of beauty, also illustrates the shift of power in social relations.

Since Renassaince art, beauty was appreciated through distance: what was inside the frame had value per se, in relation to the spectator. It’s aim was to establish a strong identity of the ones portrayed: nobleman that reasserted their power and importance through art, conveying value also to the court artists who painted them. The idea of God and the religious moral, or the abstract world of the theory of forms by Plato1 , are then replaced by an exaltation of the man and the establishment of another role model to be followed. There was still a idealization of how things should be done and how life should be lived, which mere citizens should obbey to. The techniques implied and the figures’ posture also contributed to create status, and therefore, a notion of beauty and admiration towards both painter and painted.

During the 15th century, economy and art were strictly related: artists depended on patrons to foster their activity and, thus, the supporters used their benefits from trading economy to reveal their nobleness also throughout art. That was the case of Giovanni II Bentivoglio, the tyrant of Bologna, in Italy. The signore was portrayed with his wife Ginevra by Ercole de’ Roberti, in 1480, right after he fought in service to Florence, Milan and Naples. The 1

http://www.theologicalstudies.org/resource­library/philosophy­dictionary/158­platos­theory­of­forms

aesthetical value at the time was related to symmetry and had a strong classical influence, mainly to affirm the value of the painter, once the worth of the craftsmanship at the time was related to technichal domain of the classical beauty standart.

By recreating classical beauty, the Renaissance artist was not only aiming to impress and flatter his patrons, he was also striving to enhance his own reputation, as well as elevating his discipline compared with the other artistic professions.2

The portraits of oil on canvas illustrate the royal couple in a closed environment, looking at their territory beyond the curtains. Giovanni and Ginevra are positioned in profile, in perfect symmetry of two paintings, facing each other across the frames and leaving an empty space in­between. Their posture and look can be considered as blase, keeping a guard of their posession; too sophisticated for the poor mundane citizens of Bologna on the background (and probably the spectators at the time). The colour of gold can be seen on the clothes of the nobles but also on the frames of the portraits: another aspect that reinforces the distance

2

http://sirl.stanford.edu/~bob/teaching/pdf/arth202/Haughton_Renaissance_beauty_JCosmeticDermatolo gy04.pdf

between the royal members and the paltry spectators who would revere the work of art. The work of Ercole de’ Roberti exemplifies the notion of status, wealth and power attached to the ideal of beauty pursued and the art production in Renassaince.

However, the way it is still presented in the current times contributes to reinforce this unilateral discourse and hierarchy in relations: exhibited in Rijks Museum, in Amsterdam, the work still legitimates the hegemony of the white­male­noble­european narrative and builds up a gap between art creation and appreciation. The separation is also clear by the display of the artwork, with a string that delimitates until where the spectator can get close to the artwork. A notion of beauty imposed, untouchable and immutable: the artwork framed inside of a frame.

This frame and distance between work of art and spectator is deconstructed in Tino Sehgal’s work; he creates situations that expose social refrains existing in the context of museums and inside of people’s minds.

We intend to create situations, new situations, breaking the laws that prevent the development of meaningful ventures in life and culture.

Constant, Another City For Another Life.

The artist reveals the distance hidden in the spectator behaviour inside of this kind of traditional and established environment, aiming to trigger a more conscious and active enrollment of the “audience”. In the work ​Instead of allowing some thing to rise up to your face dancing bruce and dan and other things (2000) a girl, wearing regular clothes, is turning around on a room’s floor of the museum. People walk by, look, try to understand

what is happening: she looks like another visitor from the museum, besides the out of place behaviour. For some, this might be understood as a hint or provocation: the start of a dialogue, the invitation to interact. The boundaries and distance between work and spectator, art and life, shatter for a fragment of second: the reference and the context gets lost. But in the following moment, people see the label on the wall: this is a work of art.

In Sehgal’s practice, we are told, "a visitor is no longer only a passive spectator, but one who bears a responsibility to shape and even to contribute to the actual realization of the piece. (...) The work may ask visitors what they think, but, more importantly, it underscores an individual’s own agency in the museum environment."3

The automatic response of most of the spectators is to get the telephone out of the pocket and take a picture of the now staged “work of art”. However, some decide to play the game.

The way the work is presented breaks and consists in the frame itself: being displayed inside of the institution of the museum, people already establish a distance towards it, put it in the pedestal. Although, the friction that it might expose is: why this distance or specific social behaviour is expected from people inside of these environments? Besides the label, what would be the difference between this situation and a spontaneous one, performed by any passerby?

Man is condemned to be free.

Sartre.

3

http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/reviews/davis/tino­sehgal1­7­10.asp

Modernity brought with the emptiness of freedom and autonomy the responsability for individuals to create their own meaning: People are now empowered: the space has no barriers, the separation is in people’s mind: it is their choice to go beyond their confort zone, to engage and become part of the work or not. Although, this new situation requires no comparison. It is about sensing the moment itself: it is much less rational and more intuitive, not about applying the rules, but being able to manipulate it in different contexts, becoming aware of it and deconstructing it. The crack on the chain is there, the field is open; now it depends on individuals to play with it. The frame is now malleable: a flexible border, that instead of separating, becomes an element to connect and create dialogue.

A behavior is always to be taken transactionally: ie., never as of the organism alone, any more than of the environment alone, but always as of the organic­environmental situation, with organisms and environmental objects taken as equally its aspect.

Dewey and Bentley, 1949.

The difference is in the context: the space and how people expect to behave inside of it.

However, if there is no traditional environment of the museum, if art is placed in quotidian spaces, without any formal separation, would people perceive its value? Would people pay attention to it, fold the frame and create worth by themselves? If the action (work) is placed in a specific environment, exposing its limitations or going against the acceptable social behavior in it, people notice the tension that is created. The strenght of a work is in it’s capacity to uncode and recode specific social rules, making people attribute a different meaning and, therefore, value to it:

a practice of "endowing things with living meaning". Creative preservation is the practice of "renewing" our investment in the meaning of things. Though it functions in support of our "longing" for a "settled, safe, affirmative, and bounded identity," creative preservation also serves to inspire a dynamic cultivation of identity, which in turn contributes to promoting an affirmative yet "fluid and shifting" context for living.

James Tuedio, Thinking about home.

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