» NORTHWESTERN/ART/REVIEW
(Inter)Action
issue
4
spring
2010
nureview.org
NORTHWESTERN/ART/REVIEW
KARI RAYNER publisher
karirayner2007@u.northwestern.edu
MARGARET WHITESIDES editor-in-chief margaretwhitesides2011@u.northwestern.edu
YANNELL SELMAN director of programming yannellselman2012@u.northwestern.edu
BETSEY FEUERSTEIN director of communications
betsyfeuerstein2012@u.northwestern.edu
CAROL KIM director of finance carol.kim@u.northwestern.edu
» (Inter)Action
EDITORIAL STAFF
ABIGAIL CURRY, Featured Artist Editor abigailcurry2007@u.northwestern.edu CAITLIN KEARNEY caitlinkearney2007@u.northwestern.edu ELEANOR FISHER eleanorfisher2012@u.northwestern.edu MADELINE AMOS madelineamos2013@u.northwestern.edu MORGAN KREHBIEL morgankrehbiel2012@u.northwestern.edu CAMILLE REYES camillereyes@aol.com MATTHEW KLUK matthewkluk2012@northwestern.edu
DESIGN
CHRISTOPHER ADAMSON christopher@polymathicmedia.com MARCY CAPRON, web marcy@polymathicmedia.com
honorary faculty board members
PROFESSOR CLAUDIA SWAN PROFESSOR CHRISTINA KIAER PROFESSOR HANNAH FELDMAN
NAR is a non-commercial journal published by students at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Images are copyright their respective owners, and from ARTstor. org and used within their Terms and Conditions. Written material is © 2010, all rights reserved. Reproduction without permission is prohibited.
from the editor he relationship between subject, object and viewer can always be defined by the physicality of the interaction. Shifting focus to the physical nature of interaction between art and viewer opens strains of discourse regarding the nature of art as commodity, and its agency within economic matrices of power. While a definitive conclusion about the subject-object nature of art may never be reached, as Undergraduate Art Historians we aim to actively engage in discussion that deconstructs our understanding of subject, object, art and commodity. It is with great pleasure that I introduce the Spring 2010 issue of Northwestern Art Review. Each of the four pieces selected contribute to the discourse of subject-object interaction, and art’s agency within an
T
economy of understanding built eron Henderson, as well as that on these nuanced relationships. of the former executive board Each of these essays exhibits an throughout the transition. Addiadvanced and critical under- tionally, I would like to express standing of this relationship, my thanks for Kari Rayner, our and sheds light on a unique current publisher, as well as aspect of the subject-object- Caitlin Kearney, Eleanor Fisher, space relationship. Madeline Amos, Morgan Kreh I would like to thank the biel, Camille Reyes and Matthew Northwestern University Art Kluk, without whom this publiHistory Department, especially cation would not be possible. the Director of Undergraduate Their endless hours of work and Studies, Christina Kiaer. North- dedication are the pulse of this western Art Review would also dynamic publication. like to thank the Mary and Leigh Finally, I would like to thank Block Museum of Art at North- the students who submitted work western University for its con- to Northwestern Art Review. tinual support. No issue would I continue to be impressed and be complete without the help of engaged by the essays offered, our graphic designer, Christo- and cannot wait to read the subpher Adamson and that of our missions for the 2010 Fall issue. webmaster Marcy Capron. As the new Editor-In-Chief, — I cannot adequately express my Margaret M. C. Whitesides thanks for the guidance and sup- May 2010 port of Elliot Reichert and Cam- Evanston, IL
table of contents 1»
allan mccollum’s collection of ten plaster surrogates:
signing painting by Alexandra Perloff-Giles
2» conceptual art and the problems of presentation: p r i m a r i e s / secondaries by Gabriel Perri Silberblatt 3» still life with fruit: economies of exchange and power by Jun Nakamura 4»
eugene emmanuel viollet-le-duc’s influence on victor horta’s maison du peuple:
The Promotion of Glassbyand Iron Travis Olson
Allan McCollum's
collection of ten plaster surrogates »
signing painting by Alexandra Perloff-Giles harvard university
llan McCollum’s Plaster Surrogates, made between 1982 and 1991, look at first glance like framed monochromatic paintings. With their gray “frames,” off-white “mats,” and black centers, the Surrogates each seem to contain all the necessary elements of a painting.
A
»
— Allan McCollum 1982-1991
plaster surrogates
— Allan McCollum 1982-1984
When one looks more closely, however, it becomes apparent that the objects hanging on the wall are not in fact framed canvases, but rather plaster casts in the conventional shape of framed easel paintings. Thus the plaster reliefs operate, as the title of the work suggests, as surrogates 8
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or signs for painting. Moreover, that the plaster reliefs hang on the wall of the museum gallery, where a painting would normally hang, emphasizes the fact that they are stand-ins for something else, as if art was a neutral category of objects in which any one exemplar is replaceable by any
other. Where we expect a spontaneous expression of the artist’s subjectivity in the tradition of the modernist painting, McCollum offers us instead an endlessly replicable series of generic signs. Mechanically produced and potentially infinitely multipliable yet nevertheless differentiated, the Plaster Surrogates
allan mccollum’s collection of ten plaster surrogates:
signing paintings
can be seen as a reflection both of and on capitalist production. Aligning himself in the current of post-structuralist institutional critique, McCollum forces the viewer to consider the commodification of art and the role of the museum in contemporary consumer culture. Made of enamel on hydrostone, the Plaster Surrogates are imitation-paintings, arranged in rows or in a dense cluster on the wall. That the works are stacked on top of each other as in eighteenth and nineteenth century Salons arouses the viewer’s desire to look at painting. But in place of offering the viewer an opening into another world, McCollum’s Plaster Surrogates deny us entry. Each of the Surrogates has a blank, monochromatic black center, defying interpretive associations and creating a sense of negation or lack. The black surfaces, which appear shiny and reflective when seen from certain angles, call to mind
an undeveloped photograph.1 Our expectations of looking at a painting are frustrated as McCollum refuses our desire for an image. The black centers are recessed in an off-white “mat,” which itself is recessed in a grey frame. The frame and the framed are therefore combined into a single pictorial field. In fact, before embarking on his Plaster Surrogates, McCollum made a series of Surrogate Paintings, similar to the Plaster Surrogates but made of wood and museum board. The problem McCollum encountered with these was that people were mistaking them for monochrome paintings, not recognizing that the frame and the mat were equally part of the work.2 This realization led McCollum in 1982 to make molds from the Surrogate Paintings to cast the Plaster Surrogates. The use of plaster molds eliminated the question of whether the frame was part of the work and enabled McCollum to increase the volume
of his production. McCollum’s emphasis on the framed object being considered in its totality makes clear his goal of shifting the interest from the particular painted surface to painting as a generic type indicated by the presence of certain signifiers. A painting, McCollum suggests, is simply that which possesses the features we expect paintings to possess—“the frame, the mat, a window in the mat, and something flat and rectangular and anonymous inside the window.”3 It is significant that McCollum resorted to using a different medium in order to represent painting, thereby parodying the notion of medium-specificity. By positing sculpture as a substitute for painting, McCollum engages with the classic art historical paragone debate, that is, the contest between visual art forms for artistic supremacy. More significantly, however, McCollum questions the claim of modernists like Clement Greenberg that
the essential quality of painting is the two-dimensionality of its support, as here McCollum offers us the essence of painting in three-dimensional form. The objects mounted on the wall look and act like easel paintings mounted on the wall, though they are actually sculptural reliefs. As Yve-Alain Bois and Rosalind Krauss argue, “McCollum’s work becomes an ironic rewriting of modernist art’s own attempts to reduce individual media…to their very essence as genres, or aesthetic norms.”4 So although McCollum’s “paintings,” with their non-hierarchical non-illusionistic monochromatic black center fulfill certain tenets of modernism, the very fact that they are not paintings and masquerade as an art form other than what they are constitutes an important assault on the modernist creed of medium-specificity. If medium-specificity is one characteristic feature of modernist painting that McCollum’s work disavows, singularity is an10
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allan mccollum’s collection of ten plaster surrogates:
signing paintings
— Allan McCollum 1988
other. The modernist canvas was construed as the site wherein the artist asserts his subjectivity through spontaneous gestural expression. McCollum’s Plaster Surrogates, with their absence of an original, are post-modern denials of the subject’s ability to define himself through the indexical mark of his own subjective subconscious. For McCollum, the artistic subject is the product not of internal subconscious impulses but of external cultural influences. The form of his paintings is, in a sense, readymade, pre-determined by the conventional format of paintings in our culture. Moreover, the decision to render the centers of the plaster casts blank and imageless was derived from a phenomenon McCollum witnessed in his daily life. Looking out of the window at faraway buildings, McCollum saw things in apartments that he knew to be artworks by their general outline, though he could not make out any details.5 Hence
the voided-out centers, in which no distinct forms take shape, are a citation from the world of McCollum’s everyday experience. Just as the blank appearance of the centers can be seen as an appropriation of a pre-existing image from everyday life, so too the material with which the Surrogates are made, usually employed in an industrial context, invokes the manufactured object and the readymade. Made from a mold, McCollum’s cast plaster forms are infinitely replicable. There is no original among the reliefs, only generic types. The fact that the casts were made from Surrogate Paintings means that the Plaster Surrogates are not only copies, but copies of copies, further distancing them from any kind of original artistic act. Moreover, the use of hydrostone—an especially hard and durable form of plaster made by adding a small amount of cement—means that the casts cannot be carved or scraped after hardening, excluding the 12
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hand of the sculptor. Thus, while the blackness of the central, recessed areas of the casts may at first call to mind one modernist tradition, that of the monochrome, it is another modernist tradition, the readymade, that is signaled through the dismantling of authorial authority. While all the individual Surrogates in a Plaster Surrogate work share the same basic form, no two of them are exactly alike. The Surrogates generally have a portrait rather than a landscape orientation, but some are very narrow while others are closer to square. Just as the sizes of the center, frame, and mat vary among the casts in an individual work, so too do the colors of the grey frames and the mats, which range from pure white to cream. McCollum’s deliberate differentiation of the casts, coupled with the use of a medium that lends itself to mass production, complicates the traditional distinction between the unique and the multiple.
Furthermore, the Surrogates are visibly hand-painted. The up-and-down brushstrokes are noticeable in the black centers, resembling the grain of wood, and the paint is slightly thicker in places on the frames and mats where McCollum evidently started a new stroke after dipping his brush in the enamel paint. The fact that the surfaces of the plaster casts remain slightly rough rather than perfectly polished gives an impression of craftsmanship to their otherwise mechanically-produced appearance. In fact, the Plaster Surrogates were not industrially produced. McCollum maintains a workshop in the traditional sense, in which every step in the fabrication process, from the making to the mold to the painting, are done by the artist himself with the help of his assistants. Thus, McCollum’s work is, to quote Lilian Tone, a “handmade readymade,” oscillating between industrial and artisanal production, between the mass produced commodity and the artistic original.6
allan mccollum’s collection of ten plaster surrogates:
signing paintings
It is not just the plaster casts in an individual collection, however, which are at once multiplied and differentiated. It is also the Plaster Surrogates series itself, which consists of different numbers and arrangements of casts. McCollum has created about 20 different sizes of Plaster Surrogates, painted with approximately 140 different frame colors and 12 different mat colors. Combining these different variables has allowed McCollum to produce more than 2000 unique Plaster Surrogates, which he then groups into collections of varying numbers. McCollum’s creation of objects at once multiplied and differentiated parallels the strategies of commodity culture. Consumer capitalism with its fetishism of brand names depends upon a similar proliferation of approximately repeated but slightly differentiated objects. Rather than the differentiation of the plaster casts affirm-
ing the continued possibility of artistic originality, then, it only reinforces the association with consumer goods. In the Plaster Surrogates, the blank vacancy of the black centers denies the viewer the kind of transcendent aesthetic experience that usually disguises the art object’s status as a commodity. The Surrogates offer no pretense of autonomous meaning but simply proclaim their belonging to the generic category of art, their status as simple “tokens of exchange.”7 Indeed, McCollum does not hesitate to acknowledge the resemblances between his work and any other object of our everyday experience. Like most consumer commodities, the Surrogates are polished and pleasing. “I make my work smooth and shiny, with many coats of enamel,” McCollum said. “They’re small, they’re nice and solid. One can carry them around, one can put them in a purse, one can wash them.”8 The artist explains that he began
by imagining “a continuum of paint being applied to a surface” with a fire hydrant at one end and a de Kooning at the other, and asking himself where we draw the line between what is and is not an artwork. The Surrogates are his answer to that question, offering up a definition of artwork as simply that which “fits in a categorical place where we expect to find artworks.”9 They function as signs-for-painting that “represent nothing more than the identity of painting in the world of other objects,” McCollum insisted.10 Painting, his work suggests, is not a privileged domain of spirituality or aesthetic transcendence, but simply another category in the taxonomical classification scheme of objects. By equating the art object and the consumer product, McCollum brings to the fore the usually repressed issue of art’s position within the capitalist market system. In order to underline the commercial dimen-
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allan mccollum’s collection of ten plaster surrogates:
signing paintings
sion of art, McCollum has even devised a sliding scale of discounts for his works if they are purchased in large quantities—a marketing tactic directly taken from consumer capitalism. Thus, the Plaster Surrogates destroy the illusion that art is somehow above the commodity or separate from the mass cultural apparatus. By suggesting that art is subject to the same forces of control and ownership as any other object, McCollum aligns himself with other artists of his period engaged in institutional critique.11 The museum, by choosing what works to exhibit, is deeply involved in defining what our culture recognizes as art, rendering absurd our perception that art is an expression of subjectivity and an escape from the culture industry. “Our so-called ‘unconscious’ is conventionalized, and artists reproduce museum-type art all over the country, if not all over the world,” McCollum said
in an interview. “We produce our own handmade copies.”12 McCollum’s Surrogates function as art props, transforming the space into a kind of stage set of a gallery in which his commentary on the museum is enacted.13 By implicating the institutions of art, and in particular, the museum, McCollum’s work situates itself in opposition to the modernist conception of the painting as a self-contained site of meaning inscribed within the dimensions of the support. As we have seen, McCollum’s Plaster Surrogates challenge the modernist tradition in a variety of ways, notably in terms of their parody of medium-specificity, their explosion of the myth of originality, and their rejection of the idea of art as an autonomous sphere, set apart from the world of our everyday experience. Calling into question the modernist notion of the canvas as the site of self-expression, McCollum
posits a definition of art as “a distinctly non-transcendent activity,” to quote David Robbins.14 Fusing European post-structuralism with a critique of commodity fetishism, McCollum’s endlessly repeatable Plaster Surrogates puncture the illusion of the heroic artist genius. Yet— and this is perhaps the greatest irony of McCollum’s work—the identity of the artist does not get lost behind the blankness and anonymity of his work. Even if McCollum’s Plaster Surrogates are intended to be purely generic signs of painting, voided of any signification or distinction, they are at the same time instantly recognizable as being works of art by Allan McCollum. Far from multiplicity destroying the aura, as Benjamin predicted, the aura seems to remain intact, repositioned as a kind of “brand” associated with a particular artist or series—McCollum as McCollum. » nar
Conceptual Art
and the problems of presentation Âť
Primaries/ Secondaries by Gabriel Perri Silberblatt carleton college
n many ways, the advent of conceptual thinking in art by the late 1960s marked the onset of several liberations. For the artist and their art, surely, this was a period of felled limitations and fertile growth; but to a nearly unprecedented extent, it was also a liberation of the public art viewer and collector. 1 In beginning to embrace institutions of mass communication
I
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Untitled (Figurative)
— Dan Graham 1968
for the circulation of their work, young conceptual artists and their dealers were redefining roles, especially those of art and its viewership. Use of the postal network to exhibit by mail was one of the most important developments of the growing interest in the public communication of art. Two prominent models of this new mode of presentation for conceptual art were international mail exhibitions (as initially conceived by Seth Siegelaub), and serial gallery bulletins (most famously used by Art & Project in Amsterdam). By considering the rise of both these conceptual art forums, and eventually, a work by the Dutch artist Jan Dibbets (b. 1941) which will serve to connect the two exhibition “spaces,” we may begin to expose some of the crucial problems surrounding the presentation and communication of conceptual artworks.
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I. “Art that imposes conditions—human or otherwise—on the receiver for its appreciation in my eyes constitutes aesthetic fascism.” — Lawrence Weiner, 1972
When Lucy Lippard wrote in 1968 about a “dematerialization of art,” it was in response to several urgent new trends in artistic theorizing and practice. Her rhetoric in this seminal essay, either by artists’ and critics’ public adherence to, or rejection of it, helped give shape to what was an otherwise “chaotic network of ideas in the air” after 1966.2 By her own admission, Lippard’s often quoted term “dematerialization” does not adequately cover the full range of ideas and implications of conceptual art even in its infancy. By the late 60s it was already clear that the physical “dematerialization” of the art object was coextensive with the erosion of several other logics of Modern art. For one, the inter-
nalization or conceptualizing of art indicated an abandonment of the entire aesthetic value system that had heretofore supervised artistic practice—one simply cannot visually evaluate an idea. Less obvious, though equally significant, was the movement to jettison the experiential value of art that Minimalism had insisted upon—i.e. art’s spatial and phenomenological import. Indeed, in 1969 Joseph Kosuth argued vehemently that “a work of art [is an] analytic proposition,” which is defined “a priori,” that is, its “viability is not connected to the presentation of visual (or other) kinds of experience.”3 The implications of this kind of reevaluation of art are, of course, crucially important and extraordinarily far-reaching. With the rejection of the aesthetic, spatial and experiential values of art, it followed necessarily to challenge the traditional means and institutions of viewership. Just as the individual had lost the authority to evaluate the work based on their personal experience of it, so too had
conceptual art and the problems of presentation:
primaries/secondaries
July/August Exhibition — Jan Dibbets 1970
the art gallery or museum been deprived of any control over the work’s presentation. Seth Siegelaub, an art dealer and writer best known for his promotion of conceptual art in the 60s and 70s, elaborated on this new system of “accessibility:” “…you [no longer] have to go to a museum to see a piece of sculpture. The idea that somebody will be able to hear about something [i.e. a conceptual piece] and think
about it in their home and still take it in as art without having to go somewhere. That’s obviously the implications of such a work.”4 It is this tendency in conceptual art toward the removal of access codes or restrictions on art, of the impositions or barriers to the appreciation of art, which Weiner was referring to 1972. This kind of democratic dissemination, Siegelaub insisted even further, is intrinsic to conceptual art, “it
has to do with the internal need of the art itself.”5
II. “The work is there. It doesn’t need a space, I mean a space as we know a gallery space. The world becomes its space…” — Seth Siegelaub, 1969
Latent in this anxiety concerning art and its receivership is what
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conceptual art and the problems of presentation:
primaries/secondaries
Alexander Alberro refers to as, “the problem of presentation.” The problem arises, Alberro summarizes, from the splitting of conceptual art’s “primary and secondary information.” In other words, the “essence or ideational” aspect of the work (its primary information) could no longer be considered the same thing as the “material information by which one becomes aware of the piece” (its secondary information).6 Prior to this theoretical shift, the work and its material information were a single entity—a Jackson Pollock canvas is ‘the essence’ and ‘presentation’ simultaneously. With the conceptual severing of primary and secondary information, however, Siegelaub recognized the obsolescence of the gallery space as a presentation forum for this kind of art condition. A new medium for the presentation and dissemination of art would need to be adopted—one that was sufficiently de-materialized and de-
aestheticized, but also one that did not favor a particular spatial or phenomenological setting. Additionally, and this was critically important, the medium would have to embrace conceptual art’s “internal need” for “pubic accessibility” by, in the famous words of Walter Benjamin, “meeting the beholder halfway.”7 For both European and American conceptual artists of this period, the inclination to adopt and adapt preexisting forms of mass communication for the dissemination of their art was strong.8 Some artists, namely Jan Dibbets, inserted artworks into the regularly scheduled broadcast of cable television.9 Meanwhile, many others turned to print media as an outlet. Kosuth and Dan Graham, for example, took out “advertisements” in widely circulated, non-art magazines like Newsweek and Harper’s Bazaar. Graham’s Untitled (Figurative), from March of 1968 is a photographic reproduction of
an ill-printed grocery receipt alongside the words “Figurative by Dan Graham.” This “intervention” by the artist within the fabric of the magazine was at once de-materialized by virtue of its existing in hundreds of multiples simultaneously, while its poor reproduction and plain lettering in a non-art context seemed to deny any aesthetic judgment of the work ‘as art’.10 Most importantly, however, Graham’s work signaled a growing interest in the use of the international mail system as a medium for conceptual art. For the rest of the decade and throughout the 1970s, mail art in the form of self-contained, mobile magazine exhibitions and gallery pamphlet bulletins served as types of secondary information that were indeed separate, but firmly aligned with the needs of the primary art information they contained.
III.
May 19, 1969—Mobile Exhibitions: major conceptual artists show at Simon Fraser
One of Siegelaub’s first experiments in exhibiting by mail came in the form of the “Simon Fraser Exhibition” at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver in the summer of 1969. Here, in a Canadian show, major American and European conceptual artists would be showing together, some for the first time.11 While still under the auspices of the SFU gallery, it is clear from Siegelaub’s proposed outline of the show that the distinction between primary and secondary information was centrally important:
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— L awrence Weiner 1970
A rubber ball thrown on the se catalogue of the exhibition
actions “performed” by the art(“what has happened”) will be ists, such as Weiner’s A Rubber The exhibition will have no tiBall Thrown at the Sea. printed and distributed…12 tle…The overall plan: 1. Print Alberro is right to point out the The first section of Siege1000 copies of the enclosed profound “equivalence” this de- laub’s Simon Fraser catalogue poster before the exhibition scription “posits between the provides basic information, titles opens, and distribute. 2. Dur- work and its publicity.”13 In this and dates, of the works from the ing 19 May and 19 June the case, the distributed exhibi- show. In the second section, entiwork of each artist will be tion catalogue served as the tled “Presentation,” information introduced to the community only lasting presentation of the regarding how each piece was to at Simon Fraser. 3. (Towards) “works” from the show, which be communicated during the exthe end of the exhibition a were predominantly ephemeral hibition appeared. Interestingly, for A Rubber Ball Thrown at the
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ea
conceptual art and the problems of presentation:
primaries/secondaries
Sea, a description of the artist’s execution of the piece is given:
separate but vital aspect of the original pieces.15
On 23 May 1969 the words ‘a rubber ball thrown at the sea’ were typed in block letters immediately above the artist’s name on an 81/2 x 11-inch sheet of white paper, photocopied, and distributed in the mailboxes of all students and faculty members and mailed out to all interested parties.14
This statement concerning the artist’s work provides us with crucial information for understanding the status of Siegelaub’s catalogue. While at first it might appear that Siegelaub’s extant mailings are merely “fetishistic substitutes for the ‘lost objects’ ” of the show, as Alberro suggests, it is clear that the means of Siegelaub’s presentation and dissemination (i.e. distribution of the catalogue by mail) actually mirror quite closely that of the artists in the show, and so must be considered a kind of
IV. September 19, 1968—In & Out of Amsterdam: Art & Project opens its doors and begins publishing and distributing bulletins
When Geert van Beijeren and Adriaan van Ravesteijn founded Art & Project in a quiet suburb of Amsterdam, the contemporary art scene took notice. Though situated in an out of the way location far removed from the cultural center of the city, Art & Project was one of Amsterdam’s only galleries devoted exclusively to contemporary art.16 That van Beijeren and van Ravesteijn left off the word “gallery” in naming their joint venture was deliberate—like Siegelaub in America, Art & Project wished to distance itself physically and conceptually from the “gallery” context of fine arts institutions of major cities.
Initially, Art & Project’s bulletins served as exhibition guides and announcements for their shows, but before long they were also operating as fully autonomous artworks designed by the particular artist currently showing at the gallery.17 In terms of their distribution, about eight hundred copies of the bulletin were distributed to an open international mailing list of artists, collectors, and dealers, though they were also freely handed out to visitors of the gallery. The general layout of the bulletins was consistent throughout their twenty-one year run (19281989). Printed on roughly 11x17inch sheets of paper, the mailings were folded lengthwise into a basic reading format (front cover, interior spread, back cover) and then two more times in the opposite direction to match a standard envelope size. All the text of the bulletins, appearing in both Dutch and English, was typed in lowercase, sans serif font to
convey an objective but informal sensibility—the goal was the uninhibited transmission of the artist’s primary information.18 Of course, the most notable characteristic of the bulletins was their mobility. Like Siegelaub’s catalogue exhibitions, and conceptual art more generally, the Art & Project bulletins were not restricted to a specific time or place—these movable galleries provided a growing network of conceptual artists a space for the rapid and public presentation that their artwork required.
these two parts are also closely dependent on one another. The art idea indeed exists a priori to its presentation, as Kosuth maintained; however, it appears that one of the implicit needs of this new art is for a widely public and expedient form of dissemination. Perhaps in no place is the fact of this complicated relationship more clear, or more relevant to the exhibition forums that have been discussed, than in a work conceived by Jan Dibbets in 1969. For the extraordinary number of issues that Dibbet’s project raises, its premise is quite straightforward. The “piece” Mapping Networks: Jan Dibbets exists in two distinct stages. and the July/August Exhibition, Dibbet’s initial proposition for 1970 it appeared in the fifteenth edition of the Art & Project Bulletin While it has been stated that con- (November 1969). The mailing ceptual art required a kind of in- consisted of a folded 11X17-inch ternal ‘splitting’ to acknowledge piece of paper with the following the unique entities of its ideation- instructions in both Dutch and al (primary) and presentational English: “Send the right page of (secondary) information, it has this bulletin by return post to Art also started to become clear that & Project. Each returned bulle-
V.
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tin will be marked on the world map by a straight line from your home to Amsterdam. Thank you for your cooperation.” With the collected responses to his Art & Project mailing, Dibbets recorded the names and geographic locations of the responders in a list and then plotted them onto four maps (one of Amsterdam, one of the Benelux region of the Netherlands, one of Europe, and one of the World). In the second stage, these records (the list and the maps) were then published as Dibbets’s four-page entry to Seth Sieglaub’s international catalogue show, the “July/August Exhibition” in 1970.19 In order to discuss Dibbet’s form of material presentation and its relation to the rest of the work, it is necessary to first define what we mean by its primary information. Like the majority of conceptual artworks, the essence of Dibbet’s piece lies in its ideational state of pre-actualization. As with Lawrence Weiner’s ball or spray paint propositions, for example, the primary information is the idea of a rubber
conceptual art and the problems of presentation:
July/August Exhibition ball hurled into the sea or the contents of a can of spray paint emptied onto the floor, and not the literal act of performing or describing these ideas. So in this case, what is primary to Dibbet’s work is the idea for the project outlined above in its “pre-fact” form as opposed to any “postfact” representation.20 As such, it follows that no one specific visualization or re-presentation of Dibbet’s idea can be the best or “most accurate.” However, this being said, Dibbet’s piece seems to call strongly for a specific kind of presentation, and deliberately
primaries/secondaries — Jan Dibbets 1970
blurs distinctions between this form of the art’s secondary information and its ideational primary information. To this end, we might consider Dibbet’s initial proposition in the Art & Project bulletin. It bears noting that from the very outset, Dibbet’s art idea, or “analytic proposition,” is tethered to the issue of public engagement and mass communication via mail. Unlike Weiner or Graham’s conceptual propositions, which more or less begin and end with our hearing or thinking about them, a complete understanding of Dibbet’s idea may not be attained without the active responses of an engaged network of receivers. That is to say, if nobody were to respond to Dibbet’s request for bulletins, the artist’s idea would remain uncompleted. If these concepts are hard to grasp or understand, it is for good reason—Dibbet’s has already begun to problematize an easy distinction between which aspects of his work constitute the a priori idea and which refer to its communication or 26
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presentation. With this in mind we may consider the second half of Dibbets’s project. Having utilized arguably the most prominent and influential of alternative mediums for the presentation of conceptual art in Europe, Dibbets turned to its American counterpart: Siegelaub’s international mail exhibitions. In the “July/ August Exhibition” of 1970, Dibbets’s work was seen in one of the most important conceptual art journals (Studio International) alongside major names in the field, and so, unlike Graham’s Newsweek interventions, the artist’s project was clearly situated within an established art context. It is important to note the effect of paging through the catalogue exhibition—on page after page the reader/viewer is confronted by a wide variety of selfproclaimed conceptual artworks. There are text and language pieces, photo reproductions and montages, and Xeroxed drawings, each attempting to present
an artist’s primary information. So by the time one gets to Dibbets’s maps on page forty-three of the catalogue, there is a certain expectation of what one will find. But instead of providing esoteric collections of photos or drawings of some activity the artist has performed, or even text outlining a hypothetical or proposed activity, Dibbets’s maps lay bare the entire organization of his now-completed conceptual artwork. Every line radiating out of Amsterdam on each map denotes the direct participation of an individual who received a mailing just like the exhibition catalogue itself. Instead of alienating or confusing the observer, Dibbets’s piece brilliantly reveals that he or she is already inherently implicated in the artist’s primary idea just by virtue of their involvement in the mass international network for the presentation of conceptual art.
conceptual art and the problems of presentation:
primaries/secondaries
thereof were suddenly fully autonomous entities. I have hoped Conclusions to demonstrate that the status of the presentation and communiReturning to Joseph Kosuth’s cation of conceptual artworks famously unequivocal essay, we moves well beyond that of an are perhaps apprehensive of one inoperative vestigial organ; and of his dictums: “From this, it is rather, that the relationship of easy to realize that art’s viability primary to secondary informais not connected to the presenta- tion is a dynamic and codepention of visual (or other) kinds of dent one. As is evidenced by the experience.”21 Conceivably, the strong impulse to adopt various artist was too young, or more new forms for presentation and likely, it was too soon in the sum- dissemination in the late-60s mer of 1969, to be providing cat- and 70s, and more importantly, egorical answers to problems in by the self-conscious use of these conceptual art that are not whol- mediums in the very creation of ly resolved today. Granted, one conceptual artworks, it is clear underlying premise of Kosuth’s that Kosuth ought to be revised. argument can be maintained— The implications of Kothe separation of ‘Art’ from the suth’s misreading are many, but presentation of its visual experi- perhaps the most important ence was theoretically valid. But is linked to a larger misunderthe issue here is around this no- standing of conceptual art on the tion of “viability.” It is as if to say whole. It seems likely that from that having found themselves the kind of ‘autonomous idea’ no longer made from the same Kosuth proposes, one might becloth, Art and the presentation gin to embrace certain clichés
VI.
ascribed to the artistic conceptualism of the 60s and 70s—those being, its profound esotericism, rampant intellectual elitism, and general indifference toward the viewing public. These kinds of pronouncements though, for the most part, are largely misinformed and unfair. We must only consider the genuine concern and anxiety so intrinsic to conceptual art regarding its means of presentation, communication, and receivership, to dispel such myths. Among other things, it is this concern which conceptual art’s adoption and manipulation of mass media forums points to—a concern, not for privileged, self-interested, intellectualism of the elite, but for democratic, or even socialist, access and availability. In other words, nothing short of a utopian vision for art, one best not lost to the cynics. » nar
Economies of Exchange and Power still life with fruit Âť
by Jun Nakamura washington university in st. louis
he 17th century saw the rise of a new economic superpower, Holland. The commercial successes of the Dutch during the 17th century were unparalleled in Europe; Dutch boats traveled all around the world and brought back goods from far off lands only to export them all over Europe.
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Still Life with Fruit, Globe, Lute
— Jan II Janszoon de Heem 1691
The primacy of Dutch trade in the 17th Century is an easy thing to forget and overlook when looking at still life and genre paintings of the time, but its importance is inherent in their very existence. The rise of the merchant middle class was the very thing that made such a large percentage of the population able to purchase paintings. A new class of patron had emerged, and more and more artists were needed to accommodate them. So when looking at any of the Dutch art from the time, it is imperative that the context of Dutch commercial supremacy is always kept in mind, especially when examining still life. The commodification of goods during the reign of Dutch trade is crucial to the understanding of still life painting simply because the paintings depict the very objects of that commodification. Jan Jansz de Heem II was the son of Jan Davidsz de Heem, “the most highly acclaimed master of seventeenth century still life.”1 He trained under his father and 30
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as a result their styles are nearly identical. Many of his paintings have previously been attributed to Jan Davidsz, due not only to their aesthetic similarities but also to their namesake, which has resulted in some confusion. Jan Jansz.’s painting Still Life with Fruit, Globe, Lute of 1691 can be looked at as an apex in the pronk2 still life genre, or at least an extravagant example of it. As is evident by now by the earlier discussion of trade, perception and context are extremely important to the understanding – or misunderstanding – of Dutch 17th century still lifes. When talking about the Still Life with Fruit by Jan Jansz., it is important to note that there is more than one perspective to examine it from, and there are multiple interpretations – all of which are plausible and not necessarily mutually exclusive. Therefore, Still Life with Fruit can be looked at many different ways: as prideful representations of the prosperity of Dutch trade, as a moralistic
commentary on the means of the acquisition of goods, as symbols of the Eucharist or other Christian symbols, as emphasizing contemplation of the passage of time, as representing the common theme of vanitas, and as a simple trompe l’oeil or realistic representation designed to fool the eye, showing off the skill of the artist. Perhaps the simplest way to look at the still life – and how most people who know nothing about the cultural climate of the 17th century or about art in general look at it – is as a strict representation of an actual scene. However, when more is revealed about still lifes and art in general, it is obvious that just like any other kind of painting the still life is actually a carefully orchestrated construction. This is manifest in a number of ways. In general, the items in the Still Life with Fruit would not be found together; musical instruments at a table lavishly covered with exotic fruits, dishware, and textiles – topped off with a Moor, a monkey, and parrots. These are
still life with fruit:
economies of exchange and power
all further distanced from a real scene by the precarious stacking of plates, fruits, and musical instruments. These constructions are not exclusive to this still life; though often not as obvious as in this pronk still life, they are
pervasive throughout Dutch still life. While commenting on the extreme difficulties of actually recreating these still lifes in reality, Ingvar Bergstrom remarks “Placement, form, and lighting in Dutch still lifes are contrived
with the greatest care.”3 This is not to say that what we may call the “perspective of naiveté” is invalid. It is – to the contrary – perfectly valid because of the fact that the paintings were made to fool the viewer
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still life with fruit:
economies of exchange and power into believing the space, regardless of content. In most still lifes, a plate or knife will hang off the edge of the table, pushing the objects out of the picture plane into the space of the viewer. In Jan Jansz.’s Still Life with Fruit, plates, fruits, and a ribbon all precariously hang off of the table in order to engage the space. Furthermore, Jan Jansz. employs complicated spatial devices creating a clear foreground, middle ground, and background to create a more realistic sense of depth and space. There is also the perspective of looking at the still life through the filter of Christian symbols. Although this painting in particular has little indication of being made for the purpose of a Christian interpretation, there are some indications of it. In some contexts, the lobster can be seen as an allusion to the resurrection. The wine and grapes are obviously both representative of the Eucharist, and the
fruits could represent original sin. However, in The Rhetoric of Perspetive Grootenboer warns against “over-interpretation… especially with banquet pieces.”4 Another way to see this painting is through the common theme of the passage of time. This idea is inherent in all still lifes because it is a depiction of a frozen moment in time of objects – such as food and flowers – that will never last. In Jan Jansz.’s Still Life with Fruit it is further emphasized by the presence of a small pocket watch sitting in front of the lobster. The presence of the animals and a slave complicate the matter because they remove it from the genre of still life and move it towards something else.5 The issue of time, however, is part of a larger theme of the vanitas, or the idea of “the transience and vanity of all earthly endeavours.”6 The vanitas is a theme that is present in all still life in varying degrees of subtle-
ty. In still lifes by Jan Jansz.’s father Jan Davidsz de Heem, such as Skull with Books and Other Objects on a Table, the vanitas theme is much more overt, including a skull as a reminder of death. In Still Life with Fruit the idea of vanity is apparent in the collection of these exotic and expensive goods, as well as in the inclusion of a secondary still life in the bottom right of musical instruments and books – the earthly pursuits. The juxtaposition of the celestial globe could
be interpreted as a reminder of the viewer’s mortality, reminding them of the larger scheme of things. Conversely, the globe could also be an indication of the tools of the seamen upon whom the whole of Dutch trade is dependent.7 On the other side of this perspective is the idea that still lifes were a way to show Dutch pride.8 Dutch still lifes from the early 1600s consisted mainly of domestic commodities such as cheese, butter, herring, and do-
mestic beers, the pride of Dutch trade early on.9 As far as I can tell, Jan Jansz.’s Still Life with Fruit in all of its excess does not have a single one of the domestic products that the Dutch built their wealth on. Instead, in his extravagant still life Jan Jansz. represents all the exotic, strange, and foreign items he can muster. Rather than domestic beer, Jan Jansz. chooses wines imported from Spain and Italy; rather than Herring, he paints Lobster; rather than cheese and butter,
Skull with books and other objects on a table
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— Jan Davidsz de Heem 17 th cen.
still life with fruit:
economies of exchange and power he presents exotic fruits from all over; rather than a domestic white textile, a Persian import; and on top of all this he adds the monkey, the parrots, and the African slave. This alternate approach is showing off a new Dutch pride: a pride in trade, and a pride in commercial success unparalleled in the world. The idea of a national pride is compelling because, at least in Still Life with Fruit, there is an overt boastfulness in the presentation of all of the commodities simply because it is exactly that, a presentation. The merchant middle class commissioned and bought still lifes because they wanted to show off the means of their wealth – trade. One can almost imagine a tagline accompanying the painting that reads “look at all these amazing, expensive, and exotic things trade has given us!”10 This raises questions about the role that the African slave is
playing in this particular image. The fact that the slave is off to the side, and hidden behind the column may reflect a moralizing aspect in the painting. Perhaps the Moor represents the hidden dark aspects of Dutch trade. This is backed up by the fact that many of the other still lifes of the time that included slaves had them centered and occupying a much more obedient role, holding a platter or something similar. In Jan Jansz.’s painting, the slave seems to have his own will and his own character. However, regardless of placement and action, it is easy to see how the very presence of a slave in a still life leads the viewer to see them as simply another commodity amongst commodities. Hochstrasser points out that “the servant’s status as a costly foreign import, even the very basis of trading profits of the West India Company, would have been immediately evident
to Dutch viewers.”11 Jan Jan Jansz. de Heems’s Still Life with Fruit, like all still lifes, has multiple dialogues taking place behind the scenes. Though there may be no clear narrative within the painting itself, once the painting is contextualized into 17th century Holland, many narratives present themselves. The complexity of still life is evidenced by the multitude of readings derived from Still Life with Fruit. All of the interpretations may not have been the intention of the artist, but what we are trying to establish are the perspectives of an audience of the 17th century, and how their perceptions of the painting affected their interpretations of it. Through these investigations, we can see how the primacy of Dutch trade during the 17th century greatly affected not only the content and the interpretation, but also the very medium of the still life. » nar
Eugene Emmanuel Viollet-Le-Duc’s
influence on victor horta’s maison du peuple »
The Promotion of Glass and Iron by Travis Olson university of wisconsin
ugene Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, an architect and theorist, was active during a period of great social unrest and upheaval. In his lifetime the monarchy was struggling to retain its control over France and the industrial revolution was changing the way that the world thought about production. It is only appropriate
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— Victor Horta 1896-1898
maison du peuple
that he proposed adopting some of the upheaval present in society to renovate the field of architecture. However, Viollet-le-Duc was more of a theorist than an architect. His greatest contributions to architecture appear not in his restoration projects or his designed buildings, but rather in his Entretiens sur l’Architecture. It was through these writings that his architectural theories modified the course of architecture and set a path for the avant garde and the modern movements of the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The period that most evidently shows Viollet-le-Duc’s contribution to architecture is the earliest of these movements—l’Art Nouveau of France and Belgium. Many of the architects building in this style were either taught by or influenced directly by Viollet-le-Duc’s writings. By tracing the history of the use of iron and glass in construction—especially through the examination of Victor Horta’s Maison du Peuple as 38
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well as the evidence provided that these architects were strongly influenced by Viollet-le-Duc’s theories—Viollet-le-Duc’s influences can be made clear and his contribution to architecture can be substantiated. Viollet-Le-Duc was not the first to promote iron as a suitable building material. It had already been employed as a building material in the United States, Britain and France. However, iron was not respected or as well accepted as stone. As early as 1847 in France, iron had been utilized in the construction of Victor Baltard’s Les Halles. Baltard used glass and iron to build massive structures to protect Parisian marketplaces from the weather without sacrificing sunlight. Further employment of iron appeared in the work of Henri Labrouste. By using iron at the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève and the salle des imprimes at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France Labrouste was able to utilize the structure of the building to allow — Victor Baltard late 19th cen.
Les Hall Narbon
les de nne
eugene emmanuel viollet-le-duc’s influence on victor horta’s maison du peuple
the promotion of glass and iron
for complete functionality. Even the bookshelves of Labrouste’s library were determined by the iron structural supports of the building. Labrouste’s work is still admired for the attractiveness and restraint of its decoration and for the sensitive use of exposed iron structural elements. Other architects like Louis Auguste Boileau, his son Louis Charles, and Gustav Eiffel replaced heavy stone structures with iron in their designs. However, all of these designers were utilizing this material merely in place of stone or wood. By the time Viollet-le-Duc started teaching at the Ecole des BeauxArts he had established himself as a restorer who strongly believed in the French Gothic as the greatest style yet established because he believed it was a style that expressed the truth of construction most eloquently. He believed that every part of a proper French Gothic cathedral was essential to its construction from
the buttresses to the moldings. He wrote “you might remove a pillar from a Roman concrete structure without endangering the building, whereas you could not remove a single stone from the arch of a flying buttress of a Gothic nave without insuring its ruin…each member is necessary—indispensable because the structure is more perfect.”1 While he advocated the use of new materials like iron and glass, he felt as if the architects of nineteenth century Europe were misusing them. He wrote that architects were “intent, however, on continuing forms of art which are in harmony neither with [their] materials nor [their] present methods of using them.”2 He stated that “iron [was] destined to play a more important part” in building and criticized architects of the time for underestimating its potential.3 During his lifetime he knew of buildings that were made entirely of iron and glass like the Crystal Palace in London
Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève 40
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— Henri L abrouste 1843-50 and the Halles Centrales of Paris. Of these buildings he wrote that “while edifices [had] been erected in which metal play[ed] the principal part, as in the Halles Centrales…nowhere [had] been attempted with intelligence the simultaneous employment of metal and masonry.”4 His reference to “intelligent attempts” may refer to skyscraper construction in the United States. Viollet-le-Duc abhorred the notion of hiding the construction of a building, and while American skyscrapers were at the time being constructed using iron as the skeletal component, he wrote that “casing cast-iron columns with cylinders of brick or coatings of stucco, or building iron supports into masonry….is not the result either of calculation or of an effort of imagination…no disguise of the means employed can lead to new forms.”5 Instead, Viollet-le-Duc called for a new construction that was no longer focused in combin-
eugene emmanuel viollet-le-duc’s influence on victor horta’s maison du peuple
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ing or mimicking styles of the past, as was common practice in France at the time. In his twelfth discourse he claimed that it was time for architects “to think of the future…to work to invent like [their] ancestors, and to regard what [had] been accomplished in the past as only a series of advances by which [they] should profit…in order to advance still further.”6 The only architecture that he would deem to be commendable would be an architecture fully representative of its time utilizing the materials and technologies available to their fullest potential. He applauded the Jules Saulnier’s Chocolat Menier Factory of 1871 because in this design iron was utilized to its fullest potential while masonry was used merely as a curtain to fill in the gaps between the iron skeleton, but by the time of his death in 1879 the new architecture that he had called for had yet to be seen. L’Art Nouveau was first and
foremost a logical, rational approach to architecture. It was conceptual rather than accessible. It was a conscientious approach to the way materials could be used truthfully that stemmed from underlying ideas of how design should work—ideals that had been propagated by Violletle-Duc. It was an architectural movement that was rooted in technological advances and the availability of new materials. It was a rejection of historicism in that “metal construction… contrasts with the aesthetics of Classical and Gothic architecture [thus belonging] to the ‘Modern era.’7 As has been demonstrated, the technological advances through feats of iron construction had prepared the way for L’Art Nouveau, but iron was up to this period “shunned in the building of houses and was concentrated instead in galleries, exhibition halls and stations—buildings whose use was temporary.”8
ictor Horta, a Belgian architect, aimed to apply this new material in harmony with masonry in private dwellings as well as civic structures, and he became the first to achieve an extensive use of iron in domestic architecture. He was born in 1861 in Ghent, Belgium where he also studied art and architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts. Horta recognized the contributions Gothic architecture and the Gothic Revival had to the field—principally through the realm of ideas and construction methods rather than specific forms.9 He applied the understanding of the importance of each individual element to the construction as a whole as well as the principles of verticality that he learned from Gothic Architecture into his own structures. He believed, as Viollet-leDuc had taught, in the dialogue between materials. He utilized materials for their individual properties and in his architecture each material reacted to the
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others. He understood that the materials in art were not interchangeable. He understood Viollet-le-Duc when he wrote in his twelfth discourse “we may adopt the principle, but while adopting it, since the material is changed, we should change the form.”10 From this and the illustrations in Viollet-le-Duc’s Entretiens sur l’Architecture, the influences of William Morris in Britain, and his own fascination with the structures of nature and natural order he developed new forms for architecture. While Horta worked mainly on townhouses for the wealthy, the most stunning example of his work was a civic center called the Maison du Peuple that housed the Belgian Worker’s Party built from 1896-1898. “In some respects, one could view the Maison du Peuple as the actualization and results of “Viollet-inspired building logic.11 It was in this building that he fully expressed the two honesties of architecture expressed
by Viollet-le-Duc: honesty to the conditions facing the designer (i.e. time and space) and honesty to building technique and materials. Horta’s experiments with the tensility of iron and the harmony of materials culminated in this building; he used iron to its fullest capacity. The structure was designed to sit on a very irregularly-shaped lot—an obstacle which Horta took full advantage of in his designs. This structure was intricately planned and resulted in 3.3 square miles of drawings. The exterior of the building was a testament to the honesty of materials, and the vast majority of the exterior wall was composed of a visible skeleton of iron with solid masonry sections anchoring both ends and the entrance bay. “Brickwork consistently modulated and molded to receive stone, and stone being dressed to receive iron and glass.”12 The resulting building was oddly-shaped and unattractive, yet structurally honest. The building had achieved a literality of Viollet-le-Duc’s principles and a truthfulness to materials
eugene emmanuel viollet-le-duc’s influence on victor horta’s maison du peuple
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balcony
— Victor Horta 1896-1898
that anticipated what would be achieved in Modernism—thirty years ahead of its time. Horta had achieved his goal of creating a space which was infused with lightness and air so typically missing from the working class slums. The interior of the building is described as a place “in which walls seem to have been eliminated.13 The building housed conference rooms, a coffee house and a grand auditorium on the top level. Massive iron supports ran through the building to allow open spaces within. The coffee house was 65 feet deep and 52 feet wide with no interior supports to break up the space. In this space iron beams leaned against stone consoles that were part of the building’s sandstone base creating “one of the most vigorous examples of the meeting of iron and stone.”14 On the opposing side of the coffee house the iron beams went through the ground floor into the basement. As was true in all of his other
winding stairs
— Victor Horta 1896-1898
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projects since the Hotel Tassel, iron posts clutched or leaned against the stone, stone received iron, and iron was specially designed to show that it was receiving or transferring the load of the building. Just as was described in Viollet-le-Duc’s discourses, the size of the rooms dictated the size and shape of the rooms and the façade of the building; Horta was completely able to transpose his architectural concept from the interior to the exterior. Through the application of Viollet-le-Duc’s principles he was able to turn the rhythm of the construction on an irregular lot into “an intangible music reaching to the sky.”15 However, the crowning achievement of this building is seen in the great hall located on the top floor. This hall was 177 feet long, 54 feet wide and 36 feet high—seating 1,500 people. The only ornamentation in this hall was the arrangement of the hammer-beam system of iron beams that exposed the true structure of the building and cradled the ceiling, thus “the integration of
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material, structure and expressive intentions was even more successful in the interior.”16 The auditorium was enclosed only by glass or very thin panels held by the metal structure. This foreshadowed this practice of incorporating “curtain-walls” that were ubiquitous in designs of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It was in this way that Victor Horta created an example of what he saw for the future: a transparent city. A city in which iron and glass are utilized in more than temporary fixtures like exhibition buildings—cities in which iron and glass were the primary building materials and stone and masonry was used for casing these buildings. However, this building was met with continuing criticism
until its demolition in 1965. It was seen as an eyesore. While it was a pure expression of the abilities of its materials, these materials spoke of stress and strain. Iron was seen as a proletarian, vulgar and shoddy material. The great hall was condemned due to its poor acoustics. Ultimately the building was not seen for its craftsmanship and artistry of design, but instead attacked for its loss of functionally over the course of time. Viollet-le-Duc’s influence as an architect was immense after his death in 1879. However, he is often merely remembered for his restoration work and his failure during his brief teaching stint at the École des Beaux-Arts over the misunderstanding that he was trying to propagate the Gothic
revival as the replacement for neoclassical trends of the nineteenth century in France. His real contributions, and the ones he should be remembered for, are his Entretiens sur l’Architecture and the ideas he laid out within. “If Viollet-le-Duc’s forms did little to solve the problem of a modern architecture, his ideas live on and were destined to have a major influence upon the ‘pioneers’ of modern architecture[, like Horta,] who came to maturity in the decades either side of 1900.”17 It is from these ideas that the prevailing notion of architecture over the last century has been in structural honesty and the utilization of materials. » nar
notes 1» signing painting 1. The gesture toward photography is interesting both because it introduces another artistic medium into the classic sculpture-painting dichotomy and because photography, the medium of reproduction par excellence which can produce a potentially endless number of prints, lacks an original in a similar manner to McCollum’s plaster casts. 2. “One problem I had during this period was getting people to recognize that the frame and mat were parts of the work. It was almost impossible for people to understand that; they would point to the center and say, ‘Oh, this is the work here.’ At first I tried to counteract that by making the whole object monochrome, but in the end I had to come up with a technical solution.” Judith Olch Richards, 46
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ed., “Allan McCollum,” Inside the Studio: Two Decades of Talks with Artists in New York (New York: Independent Curators International, 2004), 96. 3. Ibid. 4. Yve-Alain Bois and Rosalind Krauss, “A User’s Guide to Entropy,” October Vol. 78 (Autumn 1996), 75. 5. “During this period I had a job as an office cleaner uptown. Every night while I was cleaning the offices I would look out the windows and notice things in apartments in the faraway buildings that I immediately knew were artworks on the walls, but they were so distant I couldn’t see any details beyond that.” Richards, Richards, Inside the Studio, 95-96. 6. Lilian Tone, “Dimensions of the Real,” MoMA Vol. 3, No.7 (October 2000), 6. 7. David Robbins, “Interview with Allan McCollum” in The Velvet Grind: Selected Essays,
Interviews, Satires (1983-2005), eds. Lionel Bovier and Fabrice Stroun (Zurich: JRP Ringier, 2006), 78. 8. Ibid., 83-84. 9. Richards, Inside the studio, 95. 10. Robbins, “Interview with Allan McCollum”, 81. 11. As Bonnie Clearwater points out, there are two ways in which artists in the 70s and 80s responded to the legacy of modernism. The first was neoexpressionism, represented in the States by Julian Schnabel and David Salle, which clung to a belief in the individual artist as source of original production. The second was poststructuralism, which grouped together artists like Barbara Kruger, Sherrie Levine, Christopher Wool and Allan McCollum. The work of the poststructuralist artists often involved an element of institutional critique, exposing the ways in which the art world reinforced certain racial and gender biases, systems
of power, and acts of exclusion. Clearwater, Bonnie. Mythic Proportions: Painting in the 1980s. North Miami, FL: Museum of Contemporary Art, 2001. 47. 12. Robbins, “Interview with Allan McCollum”, 89. 13. Allan McCollum interview with Thomas Lawson, Allan McCollum (Los Angeles: A.R.T. Press, 1996), 2.
178.915-917 (1969). Print. 136137. 4. Seth Siegelaub in Norvell, Patricia, and Alexander Alberro, eds. Recording Conceptual Art. 5. Ibid. 6. Alberro, Alexander. Conceptual Art and the Politics of Publicity. New York: The MIT, 2003. 56.
2» Primaries/Secondaries
7. Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Ed. Hannah Arendt. Illuminations (1969): 217-51. Print.
1. Cherix, Christophe. “Greetings from Amsterdam.” Ed. Christophe Cherix. In & Out of Amsterdam. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2009. Print. 15.
8. Wye, Deborah, and Wendy Weitman. Eye on Europe: Prints, Books and Multiples 1960 to Now. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2006. Print. 20.
2. Lippard, Lucy R. Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972. New York: Praeger, 1973. Print. 5.
9. For one work, entitled TV as a Fireplace, each evening for a week in December 1969, Dibbets showed a 24-minute film of a fireplace being lit, blazing, and dying down on West German television. There was no explanatory text or voice recording.
14. Robbins, “Interview with Allan McCollum,” 81.
3. Kosuth, Joseph. “Art After Philosphy.” Studio International
Dibbets comically noted that anyone watching television that week had ‘a Dibbets’ in their living room. 10. Godfrey, Tony. Conceptual Art. London: Phaidon, 1998. Print. 11. Terry Atkinson, Michael Baldwin, Jan Dibbets, Joseph Kosuth, Robert Barry, Sol LeWitt, Lawrence Weiner, and Douglas Heubler were involved with the exhibition. 12. Seth Siegelaub, letter to James W. Feltner, 15 April 1969, in The Seth Siegelaub Archives, Box 4, File 73. 13. Alberro, Conceptual Art and the Politics of Publicity, 156. 14. May 19—June 19, 1969, Exhibition Catalogue (Vancouver: Simon Fraser University, 1969). 15. Alberro, Conceptual Art and the Politics of Publicity, 156. 16. Dippel, Rini. “Art & Project: The Early Years,” In & Out of Amsterdam. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2009.
notes cont. Print. 25. 17. Richard, Sophie. Unconcealed: The International Network of Conceptual Artists 1967 1977 - Dealers, Exhibitions and Public Collections. Ridinghouse, 2009. Print. 78-79. 18. Dippel, “Art & Project: The Early Years,” 27. Ironically, this “pared down,” objective style has subsequently been described as an ‘aesthetic’ of conceptual artists of the period. 19. In the catalogue Dibbets included a Xeroxed copy of the Art & Project bulletin with his original proposition, giving the new reader/viewer all the background information they would need to understand the diagrams that followed. 20. LeWitt, Sol. “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art.” Ed. Paul Wood and Charles Harrison. Art in Theory 1900-2000: An Anthol48
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ogy of Changing Ideas. New York: Blackwell, 2002. 846-49. Print. 847. Sol LeWitt uses the terms “pre-fact” and “postfact” to describe the distinction between conceptual and perceptual arts. 21. Kosuth, Art After Philosophy, 137.
3» economies of exchange and power 1. Hochstrasser, Julie Berger. Still Life and Trade in the Dutch Golden Age. New York: Yale UP, 2007, 2. 2. According to Bergstrom, Ingvar. Still lifes of the golden age : northern European paintings from the Heinz family collection / catalogue entries; edited by Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr. Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1989, 110, pronk pieces are “banquet paintings containing luxurious objects”. 3. Bergstrom, Still lifes of the golden age, 37.
4. Grootenboer, Hanneke. The Rhetoric of Perspective : Realism and Illusionism in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Still-Life Painting. New York: University of Chicago Press, 2005, 93. 5. Still Life with Fruit is still considered a still life rather than anything else because the still life takes precedence, and the animals and slave are added as objects more than as characters. Many other paintings employ still lifes in as compliments to the image as a whole, such as de Heem’s Student in His Study from 1628. 6. Slive, Seymour, and Jakob Rosenberg. Dutch Painting, 1600-1800. New York: Yale UP, 1995. 282. 7. Hochstrasser, Julie Berger. Still Life and Trade in the Dutch Golden Age. New York: Yale UP, 2007, 272. 8. In Still Life and Trade in the Dutch Golden Age, Hochstrasser makes a very good case for this likely being the more prominent and obvious inter-
pretation to viewers at the time of the production of these still lifes. She also supports it with contemporaneous literature.
1875, 74.
9. Hochstrasser and Julie Berger, 2.
4. Ibid., 55.
10. However, Grootenboer talks about “a balance between moderation and excess” (Grootenboer 93) in interpretation. He mentions that “[Jan Davidsz. de Heem’s paintings] teach the moral message of moderation, a warning against gluttony, lust and sensual indulgence” (Grootenboer 90). Now the question is could Jan Jansz. have made these paintings to be both explicit in their pride in commodities while simultaneously denouncing the excess of it. 11. Hochstrasser and Julie Berger, 273.
4» The Promotion of Glass and Iron 1. Viollet-Le-Duc, Eugene Emmanuel. Discourses on Architecture. Vol. 2, Lecture 12. Boston: J.R. Osgood and Company,
2. Ibid., 53. 3. Ibid., 56.
5. Ibid., 65. 6. Ibid., 87. 7. Vandenbreeden, Jos. “Floor Plans and Spatial Structure: Toward a Virtual Transparency of Space,” Horta: Art Nouveau to Modernism. trans. Alayne Pullen, ed. Francoise Aubry and Jos Vandenbreeden. Ghent, Belgium: Ludion Press, 1996, 41. 8. Cauter, Lieven de. “The Birth of Pleinairism from the Spirit of the Interior: Walter Benjamin on Art Nouveau,” Horta: Art Nouveau to Modernism. trans. Alayne Pullen, ed. Francoise Aubry and Jos Vandenbreeden. Ghent, Belgium: Ludion Press, 1996, 15. 9. For more information, see Frampton, Kenneth. “Structural Rationalism and the Influence of Viollet-le-Duc: Gaudi, Horta,
Guimard and Berlage 18801910,” Modern Architecture: A Critical History, 4th ed. London: Thames and Hudson Ltd., 2007 and Greenhalgh, Paul. “Alternate Histories,” Art Nouveau: 1890-1914. ed. Paul Greenhalgh. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2000. pp. 36-53. 10. Greenhalgh, “Alternate Histories”, 54. 11. Ibid., 46. 12. Frampton, “Structural Rationalism”, 69. 13. Sembach, Klaus-Jurgen. Art Nouveau. Koln: Taschen GmbH, 48. 14. Borsi, Franco and Portoghesi, Paolo. Victor Horta. trans. Marie-Helene Agueros. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 1991, 72. 15. Ibid., 73. 16. Cauter, “The Birth of Pleinairism”, 56. 17. Ibid., 28.
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