iTmEaXgTe by TOM TOM

The spirit of those questions expose a different kind of art exhibition. At the beginning of the 20th century the conceptual art was appeared. Conceptual Art comes to doubt the classical art, if it started by the Fountain in 1917 of Marcel Duchamp or creation of René Magritt’s “This is not a pipe”. .. but the exhibition focuse on even more internal field in Conceptual Art,in the form of advances on a timeline that begins with the founder of The “Art & Language” movment... Timeline sample who deals with the text in the artworks. In the intention to ask, how much the text holding the idea and the whole artwork?

IT IS LANGUAGE ITSELF THAT HAS THE ULTIMATE SIGNIFICANCE.

Introduction What is Conceptual Art?

I don’t believe in Jesus I don’t believe in Kennedy I don’t believe in Buddha ... I don’t believe in Elvis I don’t believe in Zimmerman I don’t believe in Beatl es I just believe in me John Lennon, ‘God’ from the Plastic Ono Band album, 1970 Imagine someone say: ‘But I know how tall I am!’ and laying his hand on top of his head to prove it. Imagine people who could only think aloud. (As there are people who can read aloud.) Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 1953 Conceptual art is not about forms or materials, but about ideas and meanings. It cannot be defined in terms of any medium or style, but rather by the way it questions what art is. In particular, Conceptual art challenges the traditional status of the art object as unique, collectable or saleable. Because the work does not take a traditional form it demands a more active response from the viewer, indeed it could be argued that the Conceptual work of art only truly exists in the viewer’s mental participation. This art can take a variety of forms: everyday objects, photographs, maps, videos, charts and especially language itself. Often there will be a combination of such forms. By offering a thorough critique of art, representation and the way that they are used, Conceptual art has had a determining effect on the thinking of most artists. Art in the twentieth century has been awarded the highest accolade as something that we should admire and respect. To question it, as Conceptual art has done, it

is therefore to question the inherent values of our culture and society. In recent years the art museum has taken on many of the aspects of the church or temple: the reverential hush, the fetishism with which it preserves and guards its sacred objects. This is something that Conceptual artists have seized on with glee, whether it be an outright denouncement of the institution as with Henry Flynt’s anti-museum campaign of 1963 , or in the more meticulous recent deconstructions of museum practices by such artists as Joseph Kosuth and Fred Wilson. Conceptual art can be said to have reached both its apogee and its crisis in the years 1966-72. The term first came into general use around 1967, but it can be argued that some form of Conceptual art has existed throughout the twentieth century. The earliest manifestations are often seen to be the so-called ‘readymades’ of the French artist Marcel Duchamp. The most notorious of these Fountain, a urinal placed on its back on a plinth and signed R Mutt, which Duchamp offered as a work of art to the 1917 exhibition of the Society of Independent artists in New York . Before Fountain people had rarely been made to think what art actually was, or how it could be manifested; they had just assumed that art would be either a painting or a sculpture. But very few could see Fountain as a sculpture. A work of art behaves as if it is a statement: ‘This is a sculpture of the Old Testament hero David by Michexlangelo’; or ‘This is a portrait of the Mona Lisa’. We may, of course, ask questions such as ‘Why has Michelangelo made David double life size?’ or ‘Who was this Mona Lisa?’, but these questions follow on from an acceptance of the initial statement that the artwork proposes. We accept it both as a representation and as being ipso facto art. In contrast the readymade is 7

presented not as a statement, ‘This is a urinal’, but as a question or challenge: ‘Could this urinal be an artwork? Imagine it as art!’ Or, of Duchamp’s L.H.O.O.Q : ‘try and imagine this reproduction of the Mona Lisa with a beard as an artwork, not just a defaced reproduction of an artwork, but an artwork in its own right.’Some of the questions raised by the Conceptual artists in the late 1960s had, therefore, been anticipated by Duchamp fifty years earlier, and to some extent they were also anticipated from 1916 onwards in the famous anti art gestures of Dada. They would be brought up again and extended by a whole range of artists, including the neo Dadaists and the Minimalists, in the twenty years after World War II. the issues were most fully developed and theorized by a generation of artists that emerged in the late 1960s, whose work must lie at the heart of any study of Conceptual art. Subsequently, many of them have continued to develop their work, while a new generation has adopted Conceptual strategies to elucidate their experience of the world. Whether we should see such work as late Conceptual, post-Conceptual or neo-Conceptual is as yet unresolved. Conceptual art was, and is, a truly international phenomenon. In the 1960s you were as likely to find it being made in San Diego, Prague and Buenos Aires as New York. As New York has been the centre Of art distribution and promotion in this period, the work made there has been the most heavily discussed. I would like, to some extent, to redress that whole balance. If it is not defined by medium or style, how can you recognize a piece of Conceptual art when you encounter it? Generally speaking, it may

be in one of four forms: a readymade, a term invented by Duchamp for an object from the outside world which is claimed or proposed as art, thus denying both the uniqueness of the art object and the necessity for the artist’s hand; an intervention, in which some image, text or thing is placed in an unexpected context, thus drawing attention to that context: eg the museum or the street; documentation, where the actual work, concept or action, can only be presented by the evidence of notes, most frequently, photographs; or words, where the concept, proposition or investigation is presented in the form of language. Duchamp’s Fountain is the most famous, or notorious, example of a readymade, but the strategy has been adopted and adapted by many artists. An example of intervention is the billboard project by the American artist Felix GonzalezTorres, where a photograph of an empty double bed with crumpled bedclothes was displayed on twenty-four billboards at various sites throughout New York. What did this mean? It had no words or legend attached. To the passer-by it could mean many things, depending on his or her own circumstances. It spoke of love and absence: double beds are normally for lovers to share. It is what many of us see before we leave for work in the morning. This was an unusually intimate image to display where all could see it and, of course, the setting or context in which it was seen became an intrinsic and crucial part of its meaning. Perhaps a few passers-by recognized that it was a work by Gonzalez-Tones and guessed that, for him, such an image would be of the bed he had shared with his lover Ross, who had recently died of AIDS. But that specific personal meaning is not prescriptive: the meaning is what we each discover in it.

Art & Text

Joseph Kosuth’s One and Three Chairs (s) is an example of documentation, where the ‘real’ work is the concept- ‘What is a chair?’ ‘How do we represent a chair?’ And hence ‘What is art?’ and ‘What is representation?’ It seems a tautology: a chair is a chair is a chair, much as he claimed that ‘art is art is art’ was tautologous. The three elements that we can actually see (a photograph of a chair, an actual chair and the definition of a chair) are ancillary to it. They are of no account in themselves: it is a very ordinary chair, the definition is photostatted from a dictionary and the photograph was not even taken by Kosuth it was untouched by the hand of the artist. The Californian artist Bruce Nauman’s One Hundred Live and Die is a clear example of art presented as words. The viewer, like a child learning to read, is asked to rehearse a set of paired terms, but these pairings become increasingly jarring and unsettling. It is constructed in neon, a medium that we associate with shop signs and which, used on this scale, fills the gallery with a disturbing hum. We must, however, be wary of typologies, something which Conceptual artists have regarded as anathema. It is the possible meanings of the four works above, which we will return to, that matter. Many Conceptual works will not fit any clear typology, just as many Conceptual artists resist any restrictive definition of what they do. One reason for their frequent opposition to the museum is its insistence on such categories: often with the most absurd consequences. When removing Kosuth’s One and Three Chairs from exhibition, the major museum that owned the piece was reputedly uncertain as to where it

should be stored, there being no department of ‘Conceptual art’, and hence no specific storage area. Eventually it was stored according to the logic of the museum: the chair was stored in the design department, the photograph of the chair in the photography department and the photocopy of the dictionary definition stored in the library! So in effect they could store the piece by destroying it. If a work of Conceptual art begins with the question ‘What is art?’, rather than a particular style or medium, one could argue that it is completed by the proposition ‘This could be art’: ‘this’ being presented as object, image, performance or idea revealed in some other way. Conceptual art is therefore ‘reflexive’: the object refers back to the subject, as in the phrase ‘I am thinking about how I think.’ It represents a state of continual self-critique.

The quotation that began this chapter comes from John Lennon’s song ‘God’, on his 1970 album, Plastic Ono Band, which was made just after he had broken from the Beatles and his guru the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. His negative credo, intoned against a simple piano accompaniment, begins with the enigmatic statement, ‘God is a concept by which we measure our pain’ and after a long list of things that he no longer believes in (Magic, I Ching, Bible, Tarot, Hitler, Jesus, Kennedy, Buddha, Mantra, Gita, Yoga, Kings, Elvis, Zimmerman, Beatles} ends ‘I just believe in Me I Yoko and me I and that’s reality ...’ Conceptual art begins with a similar negativity or doubt, but then moves beyond it by imagining, or making a proposition, much as Ludwig does in the second quotation. This two-fold operation of doubting and imagining underlies Conceptual art.

Symptomatically, there has never been a generally accepted definition of Conceptual art, though many have been proposed. The first widely acknowledged use of the term came in the artist Sol LeWitt’s ‘Paragraphs on Conceptual Art’, published in the magazine Artforum in 1967: ‘In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art.’ However this definition applies best to a way of working such as LeWitt’s. Soon he was having to make a distinction between conceptual art, which was what he did, and Conceptual art, which was what others did. Another early definition was given by Joseph Kosuth in his 1969 article ‘Art after Philosophy’, published in the magazine Studio International: ‘The “purest” definition of conceptual art would be that it is inquiry into the foundations of the concept “art”, as it has come to mean.’ Again, this is a definition of Kosuth’s own practice as an artist; as critic Lucy Lippard wryly remarked years later, there seemed to be as many definitions of Conceptual art as there were Conceptual artists. The spectre is raised of a ‘pure’ and, presumably therefore, an ‘impure’ Conceptual art, anticipating later disputes over ‘correct’ and ‘incorrect’ ways of working. Other Conceptual artists characterized what Kosuth made as ‘Theoretical art’, which they saw as tedious and self-indulgent. Lucy Lippard, a critic especially associated with Conceptual art in the late 1960s, emphasized the ‘dematerialization’ of the art object as a defining factor, but others rejected this as a chimera. By 1995, however, Lippard was offering a far more circumspect 10

definition, in the catalogue to the retrospective exhibition Reconsidering the Object of Art: 19651975: ‘Conceptual art, for me, means work in which the idea is paramount and the material is secondary, lightweight, ephemeral, cheap, unpretentious, and/or dematerialized.’ Kosuth too was, by 1996, offering a far less prescriptive definition: ‘Conceptual art, simply put, had as its basic tenet an understanding that artists work with meaning, not with shapes, colors, or materials.’ Art & Language, one of the most important collaborative groups of artists in the late 1960s, characterized Conceptual art as Modernism’s nervous breakdown. A nervous breakdown happens when we can no longer believe in all we have based our lives on: friends, family, job, beliefs. Conceptual artists could no longer believe in what art, or Modernist art, claimed to be, nor in the social institution it had become. Modernism as it developed from the mid-nineteenth century had sought to represent the new world of industrialization and mass media in new and more appropriate forms and styles. But by the 1960s the dominant strand of Modernism had become Formalism where attention was focused solely on these forms and styles. Progress in Formalism had nothing to do with explaining life in a rapidly changing world but everything to do with refining and purifying the medium as an end in itself. Conceptual art was a violent reaction against such Modernist notions of progress in the arts and against the art object’s status as a special kind of commodity. The purely retinal or visual nature of art, especially painting, was extolled by theorists and promoters of Modernism. This was anathema to Conceptual artists who emphasized instead the crucial

role oflanguage in all visual experience and understanding. Modernist art had become a refined and hermetic discourse: Conceptual art opened it up to philosophy, linguistics, language, typography the social sciences and popular culture. Conceptual art was made, it seems, in times of crisis, when authority both political and artistic came into question. Was Conceptual art, though, a symptom of a time of crisis or an attempted cure? Were the artists of the late 1960s political or apolitical? Did they have Utopian aspirations, or were they careerists? Why, if they were so politically motivated, is it direct reference in their work to the Vietnam War or the student riots in Paris in 1968?Much of the literature on Conceptual art in the 1960s has been partisan: there has been a depressing amount of squabbling over precedence, over who did what first. For example, Art & language dispute the dates that Kosuth gives to his early work, arguing that they were not exhibited that early. Kosuth, in reply, claims that Art & Language have constructed a purely fictional history of Conceptual art, with themselves

as heroes. Those who supported the most theoretical tendencies in Conceptual art have remained the most vocal, with the result that much that was poetic, witty or humorous has been, in comparison, underrated or neglected. Because of its high intellectual component the subject has seemed the natural province of academia. Conceptual art asks questions not only of the art object: ‘Why is this art? Who is the artist? What is the context?’- but also of the person who looks at it or reads about it: ‘Who are you? What do you represent?’ It draws viewers’ attention to themselves, making them self-conscious, as is illustrated by Annette Lemieux’s work Where am I. Conceptual art is not a style, nor can it be limited to a narrow period in time. It is, arguably, a tradition based on the critical spirit, although the use of the word ‘tradition’ is paradoxical given the opposition of much Conceptual art to the very notion of tradition. In the last resort you will have to decide what you believe, just as in engaging with any example of Conceptual art it is the response of you, the viewer, that defines the work.

Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m curious about your longtime interest in language. Were you always fascinated by words?

Interview by Susan Sollins

I was getting tired of hearing the complaint,

“ WE DON’T GET IT. WHAT’S MODERN ART? “ John Baldessari

Just an John Baldessari discusses language and communication, and how many years of teaching, from preschool to college level, influenced his work in the studio. [Interview]

I’m curious about your longtime

exactly how this happened—it seemed

words. That’s a description that seems

interest in language. Were you always

to me that a word could be an image

to make me feel comfortable. And I

fascinated by words? It might have

or an image could be a word. They

still have the idea that an image and

started back when I was painting, this

could be interchangeable. I couldn’t

a word could be interchangeable.How

idea, which wasn’t unique to me, that

in my mind prioritize one over the

do you feel about people applying the

language could also be art. I never

other. For a lot of early work, I would

term “conceptualism” to your work?

quite understood categories. Words

have files of photographs that I would

if you asked any artist that you might

are a way we communicate, images

take off TV and then I would have an

think of as conceptual now, if he or

are a way we communicate, and I

assistant attach on the back of the

she would use that term, the answer

couldn’t figure out why they had to be

image a word that she thought could

would be, “No, I’m not a conceptual

in different baskets. I was getting tired

be its surrogate. And then I played:

artist.” Once I said to Claes Oldenberg,

of hearing the complaint, “My kid could

I would make a sentence out of the

“You’re a pop artist.” He said, “No, I’m

do this,” and “We don’t get it. What’s

words. And then for that sentence, I

not; I’m an artist.” And Roy Lichtenstein

modern art? Blah, blah, blah.” And I

would use the images instead of the

said the same. I have the same feeling.

wondered what would really happen

actual words, kind of flip-flopping. In

Conceptualism doesn’t really describe

if you gave people what they wanted,

my multiple image pieces, I probably

what I do. If somebody wants to use

something they always look at. They

had the idea that there was a word

that term, it’s fine, but I’d prefer a word

look at magazines and newspapers,

behind them and I was building blocks

that’s broader and better. I’m really just

so why not give them photographs or

or frames. I don’t do this so much

an artist. Tell me about growing up in

text? That was the motivation and

anymore, but some parts of my work

a small town and moving back there

when I moved in that direction, thinking

are multiple frames that I’m probably

after college? I was going to Otis Art

about language—and I don’t know

building like a writer or poet builds with

Institute and I got tired of that after

Artist

I think I wanted to be a social worker. My father was Catholic and my mother was Lutheran. We went to a local Methodist church and I certainly got a love of literature reading the King James Version of the Bible. I got a real sense of moral obligation and I think that’s why I was a late starter in art because art didn’t seem to do anybody any good that I could see. It didn’t heal bones; it didn’t help people find shelter. Teaching juvenile delinquents was a real eye-opener for me, because they had a stronger need for art than I did. And they were criminals. We had no other shared values, but they cared more about art then I did. It dawned on me that it must provide some sort of spiritual nourishment—as terrible as that sounds—but it must.

two years of living in Los Angeles. I

aware of all of the art around me and I

San Diego Fine Arts Gallery. Then I

needed a job, so I started teaching

probably would have been laughed at.

got a job teaching in San Diego public

in San Diego public schools. That put

In fact, when I tried to show my work

high schools. And then I taught at the

me back in National City, where I was

around galleries in Los Angeles, that

La Jolla Museum for preschoolers,

born. At the time I felt pretty isolated,

was pretty much the result. I’m glad I

a program that was funded by Ted

but looking back on it, it was very

stayed in National City because I was

Geisel, Dr. Seuss. Then I taught junior

valuable. I had the idea that I would

able to find out what was bedrock for

high in a ghetto district. And I taught

just lead a normal life in National City.

me about art. So what was bedrock?

juvenile delinquents for the California

You know, I’d get married and have

That art making is essentially about

Youth Authority. I taught adult school

kids, paint on weekends, teach high

making a choice. I felt that was

and community college prior to

school, and that would be it. But my life

fundamental. My guess is that when

teaching at the University of California,

began to change after I moved back.

you were a teacher you did a lot of

San Diego. Then I was asked to teach

I thought no one was looking or

provoking, provoking students to

at CalArts. In the mid-1980s, I got

listening at that point, so I decided to

think and to look. What age groups

a Guggenheim grant and left for a

use text and never touch a canvas. I

did you work with? I’ve taught every

while. I started to miss teaching, so I

hired a sign painter to paint the text

level imaginable. I got my B.A. degree

called up friends at the University of

for me and I’d purposely say to the

at San Diego State University and I

California, Los Angeles and said, “I’ll

sign painter, “I don’t want it to look

began teaching right away because

teach half time.” They said, “Fine.” And

decorative in any way but more like

one of my instructors got ill and

I quit working there about four years

‘keep out’ or ‘no trespassing’ signs.”

asked me to take over his classes.

agocurriculum. Students about in the

I don’t think I could have gotten away

My second experience was teaching

classroom and vice versa and they’re

with it in Los Angeles, because I’d be

a Saturday life drawing class at the

interchangeable. work.

Interview by Susan Sollins at the artist’s studio in Los Angeles, California, July 2008. Published: June 2013. © Art21, Inc.

While teaching at a night school in the University of California, Baldessari came upon a sheet left in a classroom that dispensed advice to artists. It led to a number of works, of which Tips For Artists Who Want To Sell is an important example. Tips is one of his breakthrough works: it abandons familiar imagery, adopts language as its vehicle, and slyly suggests that behind some supposedly great art may be merely a series of cynical ploys. In 1970, he burned many of his early paintings as part of a work titled Cremation Project, but he saved works such as these, done after 1966, in which he offered satirical checklists of what to include in a painting if it is to sell. A clear stab at the art market, he uses humor to poke fun at the absurdity of traditional art and "how-to" art instruction manuals. Its comedy also derives from the contrast of his simple advice with the grandeur of the Abstract Expressionist painting that had recently dominated the American art market.

Commissioned Paintin, 1969. Acrylic and oil on canvas, 150.5 x 114.3 cm. The hard-edge painter Al Held is reported to have said that “Conceptual art is just pointing at things.” Taking this accusation literally, Baldessari decided to create a series of Commissioned Painting, hiring sign painters to paint photorealistic images of a hand pointing to an object. The act of pointing demands the viewer’s attention to be directed to a specific area, but the genius of the piece lies in the questions it leaves us with: why should we look here, and not elsewhere? Do images always direct us to one, and only one message? Although this painting includes the caption “A Painting By George Walker,” we also understand that the idea was Baldessari’s, hence we are led to questioning the artistic authorship.

Prima Facie (Second State), 2005. 2 parts, each 119.3x96.3 cm. At first glance, the phrase appears to explain the emotional content of the image, but the appearance of emotion may conflict with reality. While the photograph may suggest several different emotions, the association of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Word/sâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; changes the way the viewer perceives the image. The relationship between image and language examines the complexities between the two forms of expression.

DREAMY CLOUD

HEAVEN

CLOUDY SKY

GALAXY

COSMOS

ABYSS

Prima facie (fifth state): Dreamy Cloud/Heaven/Cloudy Sky/ Galaxy/Cosmos/Abyss. (2006) 232.2x292 cm

“When I was in high school and college, I worked in a building supply store that sold paints. I noticed that paint names began to have no connection to the colors. There’s a total disconnect between the name and the color. And I said, ‘That’s like literature.”

THE RELATIONSHIP OF TEXT AND MAGE IN JOHN BALDESSARIâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S WORK

The American conceptual artist John Baldessari became popular in the 1960s and has reached a broad influence on younger generations. His work is characterized by a wide variety of mediums including photography, video, painting, texts, prints, film, drawing and books. Baldessari is passionate about language that is reflected in his oeuvre.

His work shows an intensive interest in written and visual language that is expressed in compositions of text and image as equal elements. How does the artist use these two components and how are they connected to each other, are questions which shall be looked at in detail by discussing the relationship of text and image in John Baldessari’s work. The artist’s treatment of language and his text-image combinations is the subject of many researches, notably Russell Ferguson’s essay about Baldessari as the Unreliable narrator [1]. With reference to a selection of Baldessari’s artworks from the late 1960s to his recent pieces, I will examine the relation of text and image. An analysis will first be made of Baldessari’s early text and photo paintings from 1966 to 1968, and then examples from the 1980s onwards will be analysed in order to compare and discuss the function of text and image in John Baldessari’s work. In the late 1960s Baldessari neglected painting and started to use words as a compositional element as images. ‘A word can’t substitute for an image, but is equal to it’, explained the artist in an interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist and stated further: ‘You can build with words just like you can build with imagery.’ [2] He began to create artworks with pure painted text on canvas and

emulsions of photo and text. From 1966 to 1968 Baldessari produced a series of text-paintings consisting of statements about art and its concept. [3] He displayed quotations from known art critics and used formulaic instructions or definitions and comments from art manuals. [4] Thereby the artist transformed the influence of art theory and critics on artworks to the motif of his conceptual text-paintings. [5] As an artist of the conceptual art movement Baldessari’s aim was to produce art without using the conventional art praxis. Thus text as a new form and its rapport with images began to gain importance for Baldessari and artists like Joseph Kosuth and Ed Ruscha. [6] Although Baldessari chose text as the new media of representation, he still painted the words on canvas as a gesture of painting. Baldessari intended to ensure the artistic nature of these new works by using the canvas as an art signal. [7] In combining traditional components of painting, stretched canvas and paint, Baldessari sought to render the new art forms, namely text and photography acceptable as art and bring them into galleries and museums. [8] Russel Ferguson argues that Baldessari is not primarily concerned with text as a compositional element, but rather with the ‘ambiguity of the relationship between textual and visual components’ [9], which is the centre of attention in the artist’s work. Even if it seems that Baldessari uses the juxtapositions of text and image to create direct information for the audience, his artworks intend to arouse suspicion and doubt. The work Painting and Drawing pretends to deliver practical information for an art student on how to improve his work: “This painting contains all the information needed by the art student.” But the displayed text does not convey any useful information 35

about how to draw and paint at all. This painting consists of a text introduced with a caption about the expected content of the writing. It is even represented as a book page, text on blank white background. This creates the impression of a replacement of an extract of a writing, which is supposed to deliver practical knowledge but only transfers a confounding message. Baldessari thus acts as a misleading informant, who is literarily characterised by Ferguson as the “unreliable narrator”. As this piece exhibits, text often appears as simple information but turns out to be more unreliable than trustful. It is used to subvert what the artwork shows us. What is Baldessari’s message? There exists no definite conclusion; the artwork is ambivalent. Contrariwise other textpaintings such as Tips for artists who want to sell give us the supposed ‘straight information’ [10] as the caption promises. Here, by providing advice about colour, subjects and its matter, Baldessari tells us the best way, how to sell a painting. However, this statement about the content of pictures underlies a sophisticated impact of irony, and thereby again creates the previously mentioned notion of ambiguity. In Baldessari’s photocompositions, based on an experimental photoemulsion process, each image is accompanied by a single caption. Image and text interact, they elucidate and supplement each other. [11] For the series Wrong the artist matched photographs of himself with lucid statements in order to explain the right and wrong way of a photographical composition. [12] For example, one photograph shows Baldessari standing in front of a palm tree, which seems to grow out of his head. Regarding compositional correctness the picture demonstrates to the viewer an incorrect arrangement, which is underlined by the title “wrong”. The same idea forms the basis of The 36

spectator is compelled…, whose caption carries on: “…to look directly down the road and into the middle of the picture.” In this photograph Baldessari is looking down the road with his back turned to the viewer, standing at the place that is the focus of the viewer’s gaze. Once again, it is a wrong composition because the spectator’s eye is led directly into the middle of the photograph. Not only the artist’s early work rather his whole oeuvre is a reflection of his interest in linguistic theories. For Baldessari, text and image are equal vehicles of the same linguistic system to transfer information. Their encounters establish an indefinite number of different meanings. When one image and one word, two words or two images abut oneach other, a new meaning comes to light with every combination. The work Kiss/ Panic, consisting of a collage of photographs, provokes such multiple significations throughout the juxtaposition of several images.[13] Two central pictures that show contrasting settings: the upper one is a colour close up of an intimate kiss scene and the lower a crowded and chaotic place in black-and-white. They are surrounded by ten gray scale images of guns targeting outward. The imagery is dominated by a tension between the offered and converse feelings – panic and love. This artwork demonstrates how the meaning of an image can alter by hybridization with other images as vehicles of information, which function as tools of a larger system of language. In the same way words and text operate as part of Baldessari’s imagery. Meaning is exposed by their arrangements and through their surroundings. Baldessari’s treatment of language as a system of signs originates from the influence of Structuralism. [14] In particular Ferdinand de Saussure and Claude Lévi-Strauss’s theories were sources for his work. Saussure’s perception that

‘the idea or phonic substance that a sign contains is of less importance than the other signs that surround it’ [15] and Lévi-Strauss’ ‘practice of drawing structural connections between seemingly unconnected things’ [16] affected Baldessari’s work in the sense that it describes a process of syntactical combination and an intentional contrasting of words and images creating his ambiguous collages. In many artworks the relation of text and image is affected by interdependence between these two components. Baldessari’s Goya Series of the nineties and his more recent Prima Facie series reveal such interaction of written and visual language. For the Goya Series the artist returned to the text-and-image format of his earlier works. He juxtaposed black-and-white photographs of isolated banal modern and everyday objects, staged as still lifes with terse extracts derived from titles of Francisco de Goya’s disaster of war etching series, denouncing the horrors of violence. Some captions and their respective photographic items are, for instance: “And” combined with a paper clip; “There isn’t time” with a bouquet of flowers in a vase; and “Not so that you could tell it” with two balls. For this series Baldessari used Goya’s language in order to create his own imagery. In Goya’s series the captions understate his printed terrifying visions, yet, Baldessari established a balance between words and pictures: they possess the same equal value and importance. [17] In isolation both image and text are incomprehensible, but when combined they provoke the possibility of multiple readings. The text-word parity plays a significant role in Baldessari’s work: ‘I try to give equal weight to words and image, at least when they’re of equal importance to me.’ [18] So Baldessari created the series Prima Facie, which is Latin and means

“first evidence”. His first works for the series were diptychs, consisting of equal sized parts, on one side a word and on the other an image. Baldessari combined film stills, showing an actor’s facial expression, matched with a word. He sought to puzzle out what that person’s face might express and tried to find an appropriate word, which exactly describes that expression. The idea of this series was to detect a word as an equivalent for an image, to stress their equal weight. [19] Yet, Baldessari chose film stills and therefore acted emotions consciously. What we see is thus a faked emotion. By looking at someone’s face we may think we understand this person’s expression at the first glance, as the artwork is titled, but we could be entirely wrong. John Baldessari’s investigations run over the whole series of five exhibitions, following through several states until the facial expression is replaced with a square of just pure colour. In Fresh Cut Grass/Frogs Belly/ Lizard Green/Spinach colour comes into the pictures of the actors’ faces as a glaze over blackand-white photographs and is connected with pigmentary varieties arising from the earth. Warm Brownie/American Cheese/Carrot Stick/Black Bean Soup/Perky Peach/Leek is a combination of colours, which are chosen on the basis of food. After his semiotic games of interchangeable words and images, John Baldessari is more concerned with the relationship of colour and image in these artworks from middle 2005. Throughout Baldessari’s juxtapositions of text and image and their representation, the audience is committed to undertake the important role of interpreters. Baldessari makes an effort to give the audience a ‘bare amount of information that doesn’t asphyxiate the piece’ [20], i.e. just enough to activate the mind. As discussed earlier, Baldessari uses his combinations of picture and 37

image in order to transfer divers meanings and offer multiple interpretations. John Baldessari seeks to propel the readers’ associations and ideas, trying to obtain interaction between the artworks and his audience. John Baldessari invites the audience to take part throughout his artworks, as Weissman describes in an appropriate way: ‘These pictorial proposals, games and questions are begging for participation.’ [21] By analysing a selection of John Baldessari’s work from his early text-paintings, along with his Goya series of the nineties to his latest Prima Facie artworks, I have examined the usage of Baldessari’s juxtapositions of text and image and how they function. John Baldessari works with text and image as equal elements. Within the conceptual art movement during the sixties and seventies, text as a new media of representation began to play a decisive role. Baldessari combined the new, experimental form text, and also photography with conventional mediums as painting. Since then he has enjoyed to create a mixture of written and visual language to transfer divers meanings and multiple information. Text and image interact, they are able to elucidate, supplement or subvert each other. Baldessari is concerned with the effect of their combination and with the product of their mixture. ‘I’m not too

interested in this word or that word, but in what happens between those two words when they meet.’ [22] This quote reflects the artist’s interest in language as a system and the influence of structuralist thoughts of pioneers as de Saussure and Lévi-Strauss. His work possesses a semiotic structure, text and image are interchangeable vehicles of a larger linguistic system, and they propel multiple reading and interpretation of Baldessari’s work. The artist achieves to activate the audience’s associations and thoughts with the help of his juxtapositions of text and image. Baldessari’s work can literarily be described as a word-image game. As the ‘unreliable narrator’, he uses words and imagery, to mislead, to confuse, to surprise and to amuse his audience in order to provoke participation. In conclusion relationship of text and image in he’s work is divers. As I have mentioned before and as the artwork Prima Facie (Fifth State): Warm Brownie/American Cheese/Carrot Stick/Black Bean Soup/Perky Peach/Leek shows, colour and its relation to language is another subject of interest for John Baldessari. There are many artworks like Color Card Series: Five Oranges (with Foot) [23] and the film Six Colorful Inside Jobs [24] that express the artist’s examination of colour in his work and which could be a further research topic.

Bibliography

[1] Ferguson, Russell. ‘Unreliable

[14] Fuchs 2009, p. 244; Morgan, Jessica.

narrator,’ in John Baldessari: Pure Beauty,

‘Choosing (a game for two curators),’

eds. L. Jones and J. Morgan, pp. 87-94.

in John Baldessari: Pure Beauty, eds.

Ferguson, Russell. ‘Unreliable narrator,’

(exh. cat., Tate Modern). London, 2009.

L. Jones and J.Morgan, pp. 19-26. (exh.

in John Baldessari: Pure Beauty, eds.

cat., Tate Modern). London, 2009, p. 21.

L. Jones and J. Morgan, pp. 87-94. (exh.

[2] Quoted in Obrist, Hans Ulrich. John

[15] Saussure, de Ferdinand. Course in

cat., Tate Modern). London, 2009.

Baldessari. The Conversation Series 18.

General Linguistics, trans. Roy Harris.

Köln, 2009, p. 14.

Chicago, 1986, p. 118.

Fuchs, Rainer:

[3] Examples for the text-Paintings:

[16] Quoted in Fuchs 2009, p. 244.

– ‘Written paintings and photographed colors. Comments on John Baldessari,’ in

Clement Greenberg; Tips for artists who [17] Schjeldahl, Peter. Wonderful

John Baldessari. A different kind of order:

cynicism: John Baldessari, http://www.

Arbeiten 1962-1984, eds. R. Fuchs and

[4] Wood, Paul. Movements in Modern Art

artnet.com/magazine_pre2000/features/

Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig

– Conceptual Art. London, 2002, pp. 31.

schjeldahl/schjeldahl24-98.asp#5

Wien , pp. 15-46. Köln, 2005.

want to sell (both 1966-68).

(accessed: 5 January 2010). [5] Fuchs, Rainer. ‘Written paintings and

[18] Obrist, p. 72.

– ‘Uncovering the hidden’, in John Baldessari: Pure Beauty, eds. L. Jones

photographed colors. Comments on John Baldessari,’ in John Baldessari.

[19] Roth, Moira. Interview with John

and J.Morgan, pp. 239-246. (exh. cat.,

A different kind of order: Arbeiten

Baldessari (1973), http://xtraonline.org/

Tate Modern). London, 2009.

1962-1984, eds. R. Fuchs and Museum

past_articles.php?articleID=115#footnote

Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien ,

(accessed: 5 January 2010).

Jones, Leslie. ‘A rt Lesson: A narrative chronology of John Baldessari’s life and

pp. 15-46. Köln, 2005, p. 28. [20] Baldessari quoted in Fuchs 2009,

work,’ in John Baldessari: Pure Beauty,

[6] Quoted in Obrist, p. 14.

p. 246.

eds. L. Jones and J. Morgan, pp. 45-60.

[7] Baldessari quoted in Jones, Leslie.

[21] Weissman, Benjamin. ‘Men

‘A rt Lesson: A narrative chronology of

Swallowing Swords, Men Blowing Out

Morgan, Jessica. ‘Choosing (a game for

John Baldessari’s life and work,’ in John

Candles’ in Frieze Issue 126 (2009): p.

two curators),’ in John Baldessari: Pure

Baldessari: Pure Beauty, eds. L. Jones

165-169, p. 166.

Beauty, eds. L. Jones and J.Morgan, pp.

(exh. cat., Tate Modern). London, 2009.

19-26. (exh. cat., Tate Modern). London,

and J. Morgan, pp. 45-60. (exh. cat., Tate Modern). London, 2009, p. 49.

[22] Baldessari quoted in Morgan, p. 21.

2009.

[8] Quoted in Obrist, p. 9.

[23] 1975, Private Collection. Five colour

Obrist, Hans Ulrich. John Baldessari –

photographs on board. 11 x 13 ¾ in.

The Conversation Series 18. Köln, 2009.

[24] 1977, Courtesy of the artist and

Roth, Moira. Interview with John

Marian Goodman Gallery, New York and

Baldessari (1973), http://xtraonline.org/

Paris. 16mm film transferred to DVD,

past_articles.php?articleID=115#footnote

color, silent; 32 min., 53 sec.

(accessed: 5 January 2010).

[9] Ferguson, p. 89. [10] Ibid., p. 88. [11] Fuchs, Rainer. ‘Uncovering the hidden’, in John Baldessari: Pure Beauty, eds. L. Jones and J.Morgan, pp. 239-246.

Saussure, de Ferdinand. Course in

(exh. cat., Tate Modern). London, 2009,

General Linguistics, trans. Roy Harris.

p. 242.

Chicago, 1986.

[12] Roth, Moira. Interview with John

Schjeldahl, Peter. Wonderful cynicism:

Baldessari (1973), http://xtraonline.org/

John Baldessari, http://www.artnet.com/

past_articles.php?articleID=115#footnote

magazine_pre2000/features/schjeldahl/

(accessed: 5 January 2010).

schjeldahl24-98.asp#5 (accessed: 5

[13] Jones, p. 55.

January 2010). Weissman, Benjamin: ‘Men Swallowing Swords, Men Blowing Out Candles’ in Frieze Issue 126 (2009): pp. 165-169. Wood, Paul. Movements in Modern Art – Conceptual Art. London, 2002.

Joseph Kosuth is one of the pioneers of Conceptual art and installation art, initiating language-based works and appropriation strategies in the 1960s. His work has consistently explored the production and role of language and meaning within art. Born in 1945 in Toledo, Ohio, Kosuth attended the Toledo Museum School of Design from 1955 to 1962 and studied privately under the Belgian painter Line Bloom Draper. From 1963 to 1964, he was enrolled at the Cleveland Art Institute. In 1965 Kosuth moved to New York to attend the School of Visual Arts; he would later join the faculty. He soon abandoned painting and began making conceptual works, which were first shown in 1967 at the exhibition space he co-founded, known as the Museum of Normal Art. In 1969 Kosuth held his first solo exhibition at Leo Castelli Gallery, New York and in the same year became the American editor of the journal Art and Language. \\\From 1971-1972 he studied anthropology and philosophy at the New School for Social Research, New York. The philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, among others, influenced the development of his art from the late sixties to mid seventies. Kosuth’s work has consistently explored the production and role of language and meaning within art. His nearly forty year inquiry into the relation of language to art has taken the form of installations, museum exhibitions, public commissions and publications throughout Europe, the Americas and Asia, including Documenta V, VI, VII and IX (1972, 1978, 1982, 1992) and the Biennale di Venezia in 1976, 1993 and 1999. Recently, he exhibited Il Linguaggio dell’Equilibrio / The Language of Equilibrium at the Monastic Headquarters of the Mekhitarian Order on the island of San Lazzaro degli Armeni, Venice. This was presented concurrently with the 2007 Biennale di Venezia. Awards include the Brandeis Award, 1990, Frederick Weisman Award, 1991, the Menzione d’Onore at the Venice Biennale, 1993, and the Chevalier de l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the French government in 1993. He received a Cassandra Foundation Grant in 1968. In June 1999, a 3.00 franc postage stamp was issued by the French Government in honor of his work in Figeac. In February 2001 he received the Laurea Honoris Causa, doctorate in Philosophy and Letters from the University of Bologna, Italy. In October 2003 he received the Austrian Republic’s highest honour for accomplishments in science and culture, the Decoration of Honour in Gold for services to the Republic of Austria. In May 2012 he was inducted into the Royal Belgian Academy. 40

Joseph Kosuth

Art as Idea as Idea

Stuart Morgan: Your work is based on a critique, first of art, then of other disciplines: philosophy, anthropology, psychoanalysis… Joseph Kosuth: What is the nature of making art? If it is not simply about fashioning forms and colours, then it has to do with the production of meaning. My practice is based on that assumption. If you begin there you realize that potentially everything is material for art, because at some point it has to have an aspect of concretion and must be framed in relation to people’s lives. It does not need to illustrate or work with that, but it does need to have a connection to the community which produced it.

So art is about the making of meaning.

Yes, and that involves not only the assertion of meaning but also its cancellation, since one kind of meaning needs to be produced through cancellation or denial or erasure of a group of meanings.

Do you believe is not that putting something forward to say nothing? If you assume that you send a silver bullet of signification, yes. But within the context of lived lives, silence can also be meaningful. It is not necessarily a nihilistic act, like speaking in the wrong place; social and cultural context is important. Work like mine is concerned with an understanding of language which is pragmatized out of language. Certain artists who use words don‫׳‬t do so that point of view. You mean the words are used abstractly. They’re reified; they’re used as objects. Such work begs a larger context, but the work is not reflexive of the larger context, so it deals with neither one nor the other. The words simply hang there as the signature style of a particular artist. A long time ago when I was reading about the philosophy of science, I found the theory of models in the sciences interesting because, according to that, there were models which were tests and models which were illustrations. For me, an artwork must involve a test. Art that doesn’t work in this context consists of illustrations of what art might be. That work is best as a kind of product identification. You’re talking about work that denies concept art. Yes: first, second, third generation, whatever. Not neo-conceptualism; those are younger artists with another agenda and that work has its own authenticity. It’s the ‘adults’ who are to blame; they should know better.

Stuart Morgan frieze.com, May 1994

Kosuth also organized a series of five exhibitions entitled Zero and Not, culminating at the Freud Museum in Vienna in 1989. In each instance, he took a different paragraph from Freud’s writings, enlarged it onto huge sheets of paper and covered the walls with it. As though in an act of repression, Kosuth crossed the words out but then, as Freud points out, the repressed always returns. We can still read the words, though our reading is slower and perhaps more careful. It could be argued that this is, as Kosuth says, a Conceptual ‘architecture’, where the type acts like a structure. Language becomes explicit as a physical object here, just as the site-specific installation makes the ‘architecture’ of the building explicit. Critics would argue that the work is so baroque in design that one hardly thinks of reading, let alone critically engaging with the language.

‘Titled (Art as Idea as Idea)’ [Art], 120x120 cm.

Art’s only claim is for art. Art is the definition of art J. Kosuth, Art After Philosophy (1969)

“Being an artist now means to

art status and subsequent cultural

the enlarged photostat serves merely

question the nature of art,” Joseph

importance. Implementing a linguistic

as a means of exhibition. “I always

Kosuth argued on multiple occasions

approach, Kosuth began to examine

considered the Photostat the work’s

including in his seminal text “Art after

the ways that art-making was tied

form of presentation (or media);”

Philosophy.” “If one is questioning

to language to explore the social,

Kosuth explained, “but I never wanted

the nature of painting, one cannot

political, and economic contexts

anyone to think that I was presenting

be questioning the nature of art…

through which art was presented

a Photostat as a work of art, that’s

That’s because the word art is general

and in turn defined. Constructing an

why I made that separation and

and the word painting is specific.

uncompromisingly conceptual form

subtitled them as I did…The idea

Painting is a kind of art. If you make

of art, Kosuth displaced both image

with the photostat was that they could

paintings you are already accepting

and object with words. Marking his

be thrown away and then re-made,

(not questioning) the nature of art”

first study into linguistics, his series

if need be, as part of an irrelevant

(J. Kosuth, Art After Philosophy and

entitled Art as Idea as Idea is based

procedure connected with the form

After: Collected Writings, 1966-1990,

on definitions culled from dictionary

of presentation, but now with that

Cambridge, 1991, p. 18). Urging that

of words such as “water,” “chair,”

‘art’” (Ibid., p. 30-31). Resultantly, this

traditional art historical discourse

“meaning,” and the present more

manner of presentation represents

had finally reached its end in the

reflexive and affecting example,

the artist’s attempt to challenge the

late 1960s, Joseph Kosuth sought to

“art.” In this wholly deconstructive

preciousness of the unique art object,

investigate the true nature of art and

approach to art, Kosuth considers

and establish that the “art” component

more so to question the means by

the definition of his chosen word to

is not located in the object itself but

which objects achieved their high-

be the actual work of art, whereas

rather in the idea of the work.

‘Titled (Art as Idea as Idea)’ [Definition], 144.8x144.8 cm.

‘Titled (Art as Idea as Idea)’ [meaning], 119.4×119.4 cm.

‘Titled (Art as Idea as Idea)’ [Image], 120x120 cm.

‘Titled (Art as Idea as Idea)’ [Water], 140x140 cm.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART AF TER ‘ART AF TER PHILOSOPHY’ I

“What is the function of art, or the nature of art?” (A) Joseph Kosuth, Art After Philosophy, 1969 “A work of art is a kind of proposition presented within the context of art as comments on art… A work of art is a tautology in that it is a presentation of the artist’s intention… that a particular work of art is art, which means, is a definition of art. Thus, that it is art is true a priori.”(B) Kosuth, ibid. [1] For an artist to question the nature and function of fine art and fine art practice as Kosuth does in quote a) is to enter into a philosophical engagement where the accuracy and specificity of language is paramount. To translate this into text, as Kosuth did in 1969 with Art After Philosophy, and which I will attempt to do here in response to the question posed, first of all requires a clear demarcation of ground and a working definition of the terms that will be used. Clearly, to define such terms is also to reveal them for discussion, and so I will open this essay by exploring Art After Philosophy’s specific terminology together with its implications and the light which this sheds on Kosuth’s hypothesis. I will then use this terminology to make clear the shape of the argument which Kosuth excogitates within his text, while the second part of this essay will comprise a contextual account of the original work exploring it’s place within the art world of the time and asking a number of questions as to the wider social/historical context in which it was written. I will then conclude by considering the cultural significance of the ideas which have been raised. Within the essay, I will use inverted commas to suggest that a given term (e.g. ‘art’) is being used by Kosuth in a way that is particular to his argument or understanding.

To take the following statement as an example of this: Kosuth states that: “To look upon a cubist ‘masterwork’ now as art is nonsensical.” [2] When he uses the term “art” in this case, Kosuth is clearly not intending the reader to interpret it with recourse to the accepted dictionary definition as it occurs in the English language [3], but instead writes with reference to his own definitions and ideals, which this essay intends to discuss. In addressing the question of Kosuth’s definition of art, the most problematic term is arguably that of ‘art’ itself, which initially appears to struggle through Kosuth’s essay under the weight of a range of different meanings, as illustrated in quote b. However, the fact that Art After Philosophy does not reduce the term to an isolated state effectively means that the word retains its ability to exist as an idea of art as well as within a specific object or example. Indeed, Kosuth cannot define ‘art’ within this body because doing so would invalidate his suggestion (voiced within the quotation) that fine art should attempt only to question the nature of fine art. ‘Art’ in such a state of flux cannot be defined, as it must constantly reinvestigate its assumed definitions. Rather than pin down his vocabulary here then, Kosuth instead frames it by incorporating a series of quotations from a range of critical thinkers into the matter of his essay, and it is this framing which becomes important as we consider his terminology. To consider this Reinhardt quote from the 1962 essay ‘Art as Art’, which Kosuth uses near the beginning of his own text: “The one thing to say about art is that it is one thing. Art is art-as-art and everything else is everything else. Art is nothing but art. Art is not what is not art.” [4]

However, this statement effectively allows this discussion of the term ‘art’ to consider the difficulties inherent in the attempt to use any given state to understand that same state linguistically. The significance of the mechanics of this is paramount. As Reinhardt states elsewhere in ‘Art as Art’: “The one subject of a hundred years of modern art is that awareness of art of itself, of art preoccupied with its own process and means, with its own unique statement, art conscious of its own evolution and history and destiny, toward its own freedom, its own dignity, its own essence, its own reason, its own morality and its own conscience. Art needs no justification with ‘realism’ or ‘naturalism’, ‘regionalism’ or ‘nationalism,’ ‘individualism’ or ‘socialism’ or ‘mysticism’, or with any other ideas.” [5] Reinhardt describes, and Kosuth follows him in describing, a philosophical ideal wherein a given entity can be both subject and object of itself. ‘Art’ is here conducting a study of ‘art’ itself – implying that art must be able, in abstract terms, to divide itself in order that it may observe itself while at the same time being observed by itself. In 1890, William James in his ‘Principles of Psychology’[6] discussed this phenomena as the process occurring when a person thinks about themselves thinking; claiming that the identity observing and observed (in our case, Art) splits into two distinct states, which he terms the ‘I’ state (the self as ‘knower’) and the ‘me’ state (the self as ‘known’). In terms of Kosuth’s use of the word Art in this way, one significance is that the body of the artist is entirely removed from the equation, allowing the ‘art state’ to exist purely in and of itself. If we are to discuss Kosuth’s hypotheses in any way then this is a vital distinction to make as it forms the crux of his ability to define ‘art’ at all, implying 66

a singular united ‘identity’ for art – a whole which may be split [7]. Kosuth clarifies this distinction in Art After Philosophy by the additional use of the term ‘art condition’. This is applied to describe the point at which a work of art is functioning within an ‘art’ context to appropriately question the nature of ‘art’ through conceptual growth. It is the aspect of art, or art-related things (such as ideas, artists, practices etc.), which exists within ‘art’, without relation to things other than, or outside ‘art’. The isolation of the term ‘art condition’ must form the beginning of an explicit discussion of how (using the terms we have examined), Kosuth defines art as a proposition within the world, as his very identification of the existence of an ‘art condition’ is surely significant. Firstly, by identifying Marcel Duchamp’s Readymade as “giving art its own identity”, Kosuth suggests that this identity necessitates a shift from an art which addressed morphology, to ‘art’ which addresses function solely. It follows that all elements which are secondary to function should be removed, and, as Kosuth asserts that the function of ‘art’ is solely to address and question ‘art,’ this must include many aspects which he claims have previously been assumed or unquestioned [8]. By eliminating such extraneous aspects, Kosuth attains and elevates the ‘art condition’ which he then goes on to examine. The ‘art condition’, he claims, may be considered as a proposition in Kant’s terms, whereby a distinction is made between analytic and synthetic linguistic propositions. An analytic proposition is one where validity is determined internally, while a synthetic proposition, in contrast, may have empirical validity through comparison with external facts, states, or truths. As Kosuth argues: “Works of art are analytic propositions. That is, if viewed within their context – as art

they provide no information what-so-ever about any matter of fact.” [9] “ The validity of artistic propositions is not dependant on any empirical, much less any aesthetic, presupposition about the nature of things.” [10]

as Kosuth was not unique in his stance, nor was he unique in voicing his criticism. To establish a brief chronology and peer group wherein this essay can suggest the ‘nature and function’ of Joseph Kosuth’s attitudinal background, we should highlight a number of the artists working contemporaneously with Joseph Kosuth.

In the terms of this essay, Kosuth defines ‘art’ as a proposition wholly separate from the world. The world exists, certainly, but the degree of influence which ‘art’ takes from it, or is affected by it, should be minimal or negligible at most. It is clear, then, how easily any criticisms of Kosuth’s argument may be invalidated if there is an attempt to evaluate it empirically with recourse to information outside of its ‘art condition’ [11]. However, in order to address this essay appropriately we must tender a philosophical position outside of Kosuth’s own text in order to discuss the definition we have articulated above. This move could be validated in two ways: by allowing ourselves the exercise of discussing the text as a synthetic proposition; or by suggesting that, as artists, we exist within an ‘art condition’ ourselves and so can weight ourselves against his hypothesis in this manner. For the sake of analysis we will attempt to combine these approaches, firstly discussing Art After Philosophy in relation to the art movements at the time and Kosuth’s peers and contemporaries of the late 1960’s in particular, and secondly to propose a historical and social overview of the changing cultural climate within which art holds a place.

Art After Philosophy’s publication in 1969 coincided with that of Sol LeWitt’s ‘Sentences on Contemporary Art’, a distilled version of 1967’s ‘Paragraphs on Contemporary Art’. ‘Art and Language’ (an group comprising Terry Atkinson, Michael Baldwin, David Bainbridge and Harold Hurrell) had been formed the year before, in 1968, while Donald Judd wrote ‘Specific Objects’, a call for ‘three dimensional art’ which was “neither painting nor sculpture” [13], late in 1965. Although these artists (Weiner and Victor should also be mentioned here) were working towards similar ends at a similar time, it would nevertheless be wrong to perceive them as any kind of homogenous group. Kosuth himself states that: “I would like to make it clear that I intend to speak for no-one else. I arrived at these conclusions alone, and indeed, it is from this thinking that my art from 1966 evolved. Only recently did I realize after meeting Terry Atkinson that he and Michael Baldwin share similar, though certainly not identical, views to my own.” [14]

Joseph Kosuth constructed Art After Philosophy as an essay into the American intellectual art establishment as well as a way to explore the issues of the “avant-garde idea of ‘art as idea” [12] On its publication, the text effectively clarioned Kosuth’s position within the anti- Modernist debate encompassing America at that time, and

Similarly, LeWitt, though espousing similar beliefs to Kosuth’s [15] does so independently, although the ‘Sentences…’ were coincidently first published in the first edition of the Art-Language journal (of which Kosuth was later invited to act as editor). The catalyst that preceded this growing series of vocalisations may certainly be identified as

the process by which Modernism, relatively unassailable during the 1950’s, had begun to flounder. The reasons behind this change of state were complex and several, but during the 1960’s at least, Harrison and Wood argue[16] that Modernism’s hugely dominating influence rendered it too inflexible to deal with the critical challenges which were beginning to be voiced. Perhaps also significant were the social changes which were simultaneously occurring: the roots of Modernism may be found in late 1940’s America when distinctions between identifiable types of communicative methods (e.g. a ‘high’ or ‘low’ art) could be made clearly, and when there was also a generalised distinction between ‘European’ and ‘American’ practices and attitudes. These shifts, which continued into 50’s America, seemed to cement many Modernist beliefs, but during the next decade the problematic preconceptions of taste and preference began to be more starkly realised. The current location of Modernist criticism began to seem far from the disinterested objective standpoint it had professed, as Kosuth claims of the critic Clement Greenberg: “Above all things Clement Greenberg is the critic of taste. Behind every one of his decisions is an aesthetic judgement, with those judgements reflecting his taste. And what does his taste reflect? The period he grew up in as a critic, the period ‘real’ for him: the fifties.” [17] It was in response to this perception of Modernism’s fallibility, then, that a number of younger artists began to submit alternatives – Kosuth significant among them perhaps because within his own definition of ‘art’, he retains the Modernist idea of a reductivism of art’s interests and a preoccupation with defining and refining the scope of the art object or idea. This approach may 68

ironically be seen as a relic of Greenbergian ideals which posit the narrowing and tightening of art’s span into a honed and specific tool, the difference being the shape, language, and purpose of that tool. Kosuth’s text ‘Art After Philosophy’, and its definition of art as a proposition exclusively distinct from the simple world, represents a train of thought on the cusp between two discourses. Kosuth is championing the fall of Modernism, he criticises it openly and berates its limitations, but he seems to some degree to be still bound within Modernism’s structures of understanding. It is important to state, however, that this approach was not the only one pursued as Modernism as a tract began to become unfashionable. A range of other artists with concerns very different to those of LeWitt or Atkinson, were also Kosuth’s contemporaries, and Kosuth’s definition of art as a proposition must be identified as a relational ‘manifesto’ which was placed within a widening discourse. Those suggesting alternative directions for art practice included artists calling for re-evaluation of the worth of the art gallery’s confines, such as Robert Smithson, as well as practicioners like Gordon Matta-Clarke who began to blur boundaries between disciplines. Again, an influential number, Robert Morris and Joseph Beuys notable among them, began to suggest the importance of the viewer’s experience and perception. Clearly, among these examples there exists a necessary degree of both difference and overlap, but what should be reinforced is the variety of responses and claims which were offered by a variety of artists, Kosuth being a figure among them. This multitude of emerging attitudes toward art making and thinking perhaps indicates a notable criticism of Kosuth’s text in which he intimates

a linear and shared view of the function of art. It would be difficult to incorporate Kosuth’s fairly limited definitions of art and art audiences (“the ‘man on the street’ is intolerant of artistic art” [18] with the sheer breadth of ideas and functions which art practice was beginning to inhabit. Kosuth’s text arguably seems isolationist in this manner, as he unleashes a dogmatic ‘programme’ which prescribes legitimacy for artists apparently universally. This mode of isolation, this expressed desire not to be “flung out of art’s ‘orbit’ into the ‘infinite space’ of the human condition” [19] will now be considered ‘synthetically’ in Kosuth’s terms looking out at that ‘infinite space’ to ask what matter this strict divide was constructed from. Art After Philosophy was written in 1969, at a time when America was hung in a moment of considerable political and social imbalance. Kosuth includes an almost poignant description of one aspect of this period within the text itself: “One can fly all over the world in a matter of hours and days, not months. We have the cinema and color television, as well as the man-made spectacle of the lights of Las Vegas or the skyscrapers of New York City. The whole world is there to be seen, and the whole world can watch man walk on the moon from their living rooms. Certainly art or objects of painting and sculpture cannot be expected to compete experientially with this?” [20] However, Kosuth does not explicitly mention the ‘flip side’ of this visually-affluent moment. Certainly the monumental popularity of colour television and the increasing importance of the media in general was delivering spectacle on a daily basis, but it was also delivering images of horror in a way which was very accessible. It could be suggested that at the time Kosuth was writing, ‘the whole world’ (although presumably he only

means Western Europe and the United States, here) were being presented with a daily platter of political folly and atrocity which it would have been hard to ignore. During the same year as Art After Philosophy was written, for example, as well as men landing on the moon, Nixon was inaugurated as the 37th U.S.U.S. citizens were protesting against the continuation of the Vietnam War which was reporting over 100 American combat deaths in a week. The controversial trial of Mitchell and Calley’s involvement in the Mylai Massacre also opened and an awareness of the brutality of the conflict was permeating American society to a significant degree – especially within intellectual and left-wing circles. Outside of the U.S., inflation was becoming a worldwide problem, while Britain was also undeniably involved in violent questions of culture, nationality and conscience as Enoch Powell attempted to ‘repatriate’ Black and Asian residents just as 500 British Army troops were dispatched to Ireland to ‘keep the peace’ after bloody rioting in Belfast. We might legitimately ask whether the brooding question of the Vietnam War might have affected the way that Kosuth, a 24 year-old man living in America, considered the nature and function of art within such a fraught and seemingly instable world, and attempted to define art as a proposition within that world. In 1970, Art Forum printed a number of responses from artists to the question of the kinds of political action which should be taken by artists [21]. Kosuth’s response is not recorded, but Art After Philosophy may be taken as an indication of his desire to remove art from the context of the shock of America’s contemporary socio-political environment, rather than solely as an abstract linguistic proposition. The idea of art as an analytic proposition is arguably abstract, as the suggestion of an ‘art’ functioning entirely without influence 69

from the world is a psychological improbability. The viewer who experiences the work, as well as the artist who makes it, cannot fail to have a history, experiences, memories and beliefs about things other than art. As we cannot ‘un-know’ something once known (knowledge must inevitably change the knower, after all, even at a chemical level within the brain), Kosuth’s proposition must exist as a hypothesis only. A linguistic game; as his ‘art condition’ can never, in effect, be isolated except linguistically. Kosuth himself did come to ameliorate his position. By 1992, a catalogue essay on his 1990 installation ‘The Play of the Unmentionable’ in the Brooklyn, states that: “Kosuth links his political agenda with his concern for the nature and concept of art thus: we cannot ignore the link between politics and the concept of art precisely because the presentation of the work in the museum or gallery is an ideological position, by the very fact of its institutionalization [sic]. ... the catch lies in the play between our own responses to objects as objects, referring to the world of facts beyond them, and our responses to the objects understood (by virtue of denomination or installation) as works of art.” [22] In conclusion this essay might suggest that perhaps the shift which had occurred by then was not simply that: “…the early phase [of Kosuth’s work] was the philosophy of Wittgenstein, that of the second phase was radical anthropology, and that of the third phase was the philosophy of Freud.” [23] But that something other than Joseph Kosuth’s loci of research had shifted, and has shifted, both in the continent of art and in the world in general, a concept which will now be tentatively introduced. Around the time of Art After Philosophy, there existed something of a fetishisation of the idea of ‘art’. An idea, exemplified by Kosuth, of art’s ‘purity’ 70

to some degree – its qualitative difference to that which is ‘not-art’. It could conceivably be argued that this fixation with art’s identifiablity (the idea, intimated by Art After Philosophy, of a ‘whole’ or a consistent identity) coincided with the increase of artists (Kosuth included) who were working in non-traditional art-forms to open the possibilities of what art might and might-not be. It was at this time, as we have already identified through examples such as Smithson and Matta-Clarke, that as well as the conceptual school works described as ‘process-based’, ‘time-based’, ‘sitespecific’, ‘public’, ‘interventionist’ etc, etc, began to establish a place within the serious art canon, increasingly encouraging the perennial question of ‘but it is art at all?’ Kosuth’s faith in a rigid identity-structure for art comes at a time when the ‘unity’ of art was in fact being broken down and contemporary art practice was becoming, and has now become, a multiplicity in terms of form and function. Kosuth talks of ‘the tradition’ in Art After Philosophy. He mentions that: “If an artist accepts painting or sculpture he is accepting the tradition that goes with it. …the European tradition of a painting-sculpture dichotomy” [24] I would argue that no such singular tradition may any longer be assumed. In Britain alone, consideration must be given to a plurality of traditions, all valid, and all followed within art practice an Indo-European tradition, for example; an North African tradition, a West Indian tradition, a specific Islamic tradition, and so on. Not simply do we now consider the breadth of art practice in terms of a range of cultural influence, but the traditions of habitually separate discourses are also becoming less easy to distinguish [25]. Advertising now routinely appropriates images originally made as fine art (an image of Damien Hirst’s ‘Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind

of Someone Living’ has recently been used as a book jacket illustration), or simply references fine art - either as a genre or through specific artworks

“It is necessary to separate aesthetics from art because aesthetics deals with opinions on perception of the world in general.” Perhaps one result of this degree of post-modern layering of experience has been to suggest a definition of art which is far less concrete that that which Art After Philosophy chases, and flexible enough to allow difference to become a strength. Undoubtedly, as practitioners, we also recognise the multiplicity of the possible functions of art whereby the aims and intentions of someone working site-specifically with sound-art would

not be expected to necessarily relate to those espoused by a gallery-based text artist, but may not be seen as entering a hierarchy such as that suggested by Kosuth because of this. Art After Philosophy is no less valuable because Kosuth in time became less extreme in his opinions, nor because we read it now across a temporal cultural divide. Rather the text should perhaps be considered as a historical document, emerging at a particular time in a particular continent and crystallising a particular set of culturally relative beliefs and assumptions. It is no irony that our judgements of Kosuth’s argument are as culturally determined as his own, nor that this summing up is entirely synthetic in nature. Kosuth defines art as ideally being entirely separate from the world, but this proposition seems to flout the contemporary understanding which describes the nature of our perceptions of what that world might be, as fluctuating, as temporally and culturally specific. Attitudes shift just as culture and societal experience changes, and the text of Art After Philosophy is arguably as significant for all the things which it does not say, as for its youthfully didactic content.

[1] Art After Philosophy was first

4 James, W. The Principles of Psychology

1900-1990 p797.

published in three parts in Studio

(1890), Described in Gross, Richard,

[17] Kosuth, Art After Philosophy p 843

International, in October, November and

Psychology; The Science of Mind and

[18] Kosuth, Art After Philosophy p 846

December 1969. This essay will refer

Behaviour, second edition, p 610

[19] Kosuth, Art After Philosophy p 847

only to the first section of the original

Theories of Self.

[20] Kosuth, Joseph ibid

essay, as it is here that Kosuth develops

[7] Kosuth studied philosophy at the

[21] Reprinted in Art in Theory, p 897-901.

the theoretical side of his argument.

New School for Social Research, New

Smithson’s response [p. 900] may be

For convenience, all page numbers and

York City, between 1970-1971, an

useful to consider here, as he expresses

references will refer to the Art in Theory

interest which perhaps this text, with its

a conviction that art cannot be kept

(Harrison and Wood, 2001 edition)

linguistic academic structure, and its

separate from it’s external context (that

reprinted extract of this text. Quote a) –

explicitly comparative opening paragraph

outside the ‘art-condition’) because

Kosuth, Art After Philosophy p 845. Quote

discussing the ‘end of philosophy

art’s relationship with its maker, who is

b) – Art After Philosophy p 845-6

and the beginning of art’ prefigures.

subsumed by that world, prohibits it: “The

[2] ibid p. 845

The other significance of this ‘knower/

artist does not have to will a response to

[3] Definitions of art are complex, an

known’ separation is that art is perhaps

the ‘deepening political crisis in America’.

issue which I will return to at some length

effectively lent a residue of cognition, and

Sooner or later the artist is implicated or

later in the essay. For now it is perhaps

so, consciousness.

devoured by politics without even trying.

enough to emphasise that Kosuth uses

[8] Here Kosuth would include (amongst

My ‘position’ is one of sinking into an

the term in a very narrow range, in

other things) aesthetics/ morphological

awareness of global squalor and futility.”

contrast to most standardised definitions.

taste, the expression of the artist, the

[22] Freedberg, David Joseph Kosuth

The Encarta® World English Dictionary,

influence of “the infinite space of the

and the Play of the Unmentionable,

for example, includes the following:

human condition”, decoration or politics.

catalogue essay from The Play of the

1.the creation of beautiful or thought-

[9] Kosuth, Art After Philosophy p 845

Unmentionable p 41-2

provoking works, for example, in painting,

[10] Kosuth, Art After Philosophy p 846

[23] Freedberg, David Joseph Kosuth

music, or writing 2.beautiful or thought-

[11] By this we are not implying that Art

and the Play of the Unmentionable,

provoking works produced through

After Philosophy exists as an art object

catalogue essay from The Play of the

creative activity 3.a branch or category

itself, but rather that the arguments it

Unmentionable p 40

of art, especially one of the visual arts)

presents in relation to the nature and

[24] Kosuth, Art After Philosophy p 844

4.the skill and technique involved in

function of ‘art’ are superficially at odds

[25] It is of course acknowledged that it is

producing visual representations 5.the

with an empirical validation.

only relatively recently, and only within a

study of a branch of the visual arts

[12] So termed by Harrison and Wood in

set cultural tradition, that schools such as

6.creation by human endeavour rather

the introduction to the edited version of

fine-art, graphics, advertising etc. have

than by nature 7.the techniques used by

Art After Philosophy in Art in Theory.

ever been distinguishable at all.

somebody in a particular field, or the use

[13] Donald Judd, Specific Objects, 1965

[26] The car adverts in which people

of those techniques 8.the skill or ability to

Arts Yearbook. Although Judd claims that

were shown holding placards with

do something well 9.the ability to achieve

“three dimensional art doesn’t constitute

hand-written ‘personal’ statements, for

things by deceitful or cunning methods.

a movement, school or style” [Specific

example, being a direct nod towards

Objects, reprinted in Art In Theory, p

Gillian Wearing’s work. Fine art has also,

AFrom Ad Reinhardt ‘A rt as Art’, in Art

809] what his claim does do is offer an

of course, become adept at using not just

International IV, no. 10. Reinhardt’s essay

alternative direction to the Modernist

the language of advertising but also pop-

was published six years before Kosuth’s,

model which had gone before it.

culture more broadly, and in a much more

and contains several ideas which Kosuth

[14] Kosuth, Joseph Art After Philosophy

complexly integrated way than it occurred

appears to have gone on to develop in

p 849 footnote 5.

in the work of an older generation –

Art After Philosophy. Kosuth’s ‘analytic

[15] In the Sentences on Contemporary

consider the work of Glasgow artists

propositions’ seem closely related to

Art, for example, LeWitt states that “all

Beagles and Ramsey, for example, in

Reinhardt’s ‘art as art’ ideal.

ideas are art if they are concerned with

comparison to Warhol.

[5] ibid. As Kosuth claims [Art After

art and fall within the conventions of art”

Philosophy, p 847.] that “Reinhardt had

(Sol LeWitt, Sentences on Contemporary

a very clear idea about the nature of

Art, 1969, Art-Language, Vol.1, No.

art, and his importance is far from being

1.) Clearly there is a sympathetic

recognised”, I feel that this is enough to

relationship between this opinion and

legitimise using his text to contextualise

that extolled by Kosuth. To repeat and

Kosuth’s terminology. Kosuth writes

expand upon quote b): “…saying that a

extensively on Reinhardt in Symptoms

particular work of art is art, which means,

of Interference, Conditions of Possibility

is a definition of art. Thus, that it is art is

saying, of him that [p 46] “it is a function

true a priori (which is what Judd means

of my desire to honour an artist who

when he says that ‘if someone calls it art,

has held my deepest regard from a

its art’)” Art After Philosophy p 845-6

young age.”

[16] Harrison and Wood, Art in Theory,

Books

Articles/Periodicals

Becker, Carol (ed) The Subversive

Art Forum

Imagination; artists, society and social

26, number 7, March 1988

responsibility

Kosuth, Joseph, essay; No Exit (p

1994, Routledge

112 – 115)

Damsch-Wiehager, Renate (ed) No

Studio International

Thing, No Self, No Form, No Principle

Number 915 (Volume 178) October 1969

(Was Certain)

Kosuth, Joseph, essay; Art After

1992, Edition Cantz

Philosophy (p 134 – 137)

Gonzalez-Torres, F; Kosuth, J; Reinhardt,

Studio International

A; Symptoms of Interference, Conditions

Number 916 (Volume 178) November

of Possibility

1969

1994, Academy

Kosuth, Joseph, essay; Art After Philosophy (p160 – 161)

Gross, Richard D. Psychology The Science of Mind and Behaviour (second

Studio International

edition)

Number 917 (Volume 178) December

1993, Hodder and Stoughton

1969 Kosuth, Joseph, essay; Art After

Harrison, Charles and Wood, Paul (ed)

Philosophy (212-213)

Art in Theory 1900-1990; an anthology of changing ideas. 1992, Blackwell (2001 edition) Smithson, Robert The Writings of Robert Smithson (edited) 1979, New York University Press Kosuth, Joseph Art After Philosophy and After; collected writings 1966-1990 1991, MIT Press Kotik, Charlotta, with Freedberg, David The Play of the Unmentionable 1990, Thames and Hudson Wittgenstein, Ludwig Philosophical Investigations 1968, Blackwell

Ed Ruscha 75

“I love the language. Words have temperatures to me. When they reach a certain point and become hot words, then they appeal to me.”

It is hard to define Ed Ruscha, even with the most prominent subject matter of his career: letters. Letters, words and phrases have been the main subject in Ruscha’s art for more than 50 years; he has experimented with words using different materials and motifs. His process is simple: a layer of backdrop, then add a layer of words. Ruscha was particularly interested in typography and the concept of the word as art, painting prominently written words and logos in his paintings and occasionally juxtaposing the text with images. Throughout the early 1960s Ruscha played with various typographic styles, which he explored more exclusively later in his career. He liked to experiment with the expressive qualities of text, and often focused his paintings on one word. He explained his fascination with text,

S.R: Now have a little bit a different question on your

are working with different issues and some different media

practice and it maybe a little abstract. Can you say

which is not typical for the 50s. For me you are something

something as the aim or the goal of your work?

like a turning point in history, not to say it’s a break. But I think there is a turning point. How do you explain this style

R: I think the aim and the goal is maybe just to continue

circles or maybe I understood it right.

on. Because continuing on clouds the mind in some way because then you look at yourself and you say well what I

R: Maybe I said style cycle. Which is also like circle in a

am really doing is continuing on. I mean there is no, I don’t

way. It seems to me like there is a style cycle in the world

see the light at the end of the tunnel, what am I actually

of art. In the sense that things get swallowed up by time.

going for? I finally don’t understand, it really clouds my

And they eventually are forgotten. I think it was Arthur Miller

thinking and maybe suggests that maybe there’s nothing

who said, every writer will always be forgotten for a period

there at the end of those thing except the daily activity.

of time. I feel like Leonardo da Vinci was at some point in history like almost forgotten. But there was like a little thread

S.R: Do you think that there are Conceptual paradigms

of history that kept him together. Today so that now we see

sometimes and if there are Conceptual paradigms is it

Leonardo, Michaelangelo and those artists but there was

possible to extend them or do we have to renew them all the

a point there were maybe for a hundred years or I don’t

time in the production you were just talking about?

know but that those artists were actually forgotten and there statements were considered out of date. But then as

R: Well I guess when an artist, lets say a Conceptual Artist,

the world turns these things come back into this cycle that

gets out on the stage and makes a statement then he’s in a

happen. I mean you could almost say that something like

fact he’s saying this is what I am doing, this is what I believe

Art Deco you know something like that maybe in the 50s

in and can it be developed to beyond that is to be honest

was considered way bad taste you know and yet it was just

this is one of the biggest questions and certainly every

created twenty, thirty years before that. And now it’s like

artist is, I mean I am overwhelmed by the pure number

coming around again and people begin to see this thing

of artist there are and I think a lot of artist are maybe not

and even the most tedious(?) forms of art will somehow

challenging themselves enough or become part of a huge

come around again. We are all just little soldiers I guess

group that are voicing the same words, doing the same

(laughs) //in what way?// Well we do our part in the war and

things and yet at any moment this thing can buy the world

sometimes we don’t know what the purpose was of that.

public taste, directions, influences can go in this direction,

but we just make our statements and we’re influenced by

it can go off to that direction at any point in history. It’s just

the world around and there a so many things and even the

such an open world that any time people begin drawing up

price of gasoline probably influences painting in the future.

manifestos, paradigms and things like that are really trying to contain the statement or as the statement shouldn’t have openings that you got to escape from and go off in other even in different directions. S.R: You were talking about the world style-circles. I think it was more concentrated on your own work. How do you see this changing directions to your own work, because you

Interview with Ed Ruscha, Roosey Gallery, New York

Still, 1967-1969. 152.4x137.2 cm

Plenty big hotel room, 1967-1969. 213.4x152.4 cm

Large trademark with eight spotlights, 1962. 165.9x337.8 cm.

Standard Station Study, 1986.

Annie, 1962. 182.9x170.2 cm.

OOF, 1962-1973. 182.9x170.2 cm.

Sin - Without, 1991. 177.8x350.5 cm

The Mountaim, 1998. 193x182.9 cm

Artist Ed Ruscha’s hard-edged brand of

Utility Modern. Inspired by the truncated edges of

California Pop is as singular as it is evocative

the Hollywood sign, the typeface is transformed

of contemporary Americana. But along with the

as letters take the place of characters on a

highway iconography and gauzy California light

stage, hovering in middle distance with a three-

that characterize much of his work, there’s another

dimensionality all their own. The result? Images

element at the core of the artist’s oeuvre: text.

that land somewhere between clarity and mystery, symbol and signifier, art and poetry.

Ruscha’s first brush with artworld acclaim came in 1960s with a series of paintings of single words rendered in polished logo-like typography. Set against plain colored backgrounds, the text stood out like enigmatic messages the words themselves easy

In the lithograph Mark Twain Quote from 2012, Ruscha takes his ongoing relationship with text and image to an even more meta dimension. Here, he “borrows” from an artistic predecessor, while casting doubt on the very idea of the ownership of ideas with his dubious citation. Regardless, as the viewer reads English—or German, as in the case of the shadow cast by the letters—the image holds fast as a visual statement. Layers of meaning are wrapped up in a sleek visual package as language dissolves into form.

to read, but their meanings entirely ambiguous. That intersection between text and image has been a recurring theme of Ruscha’s artistic output ever since. By superimposing quotations and other deadpan sayings over landscapes, starkly lit backdrops, or flat fields of color, like title cards from film, Ruscha elevated words to the status of subject. Since 1980, he has delved deeper into this uneasy relationship with the introduction of the (now-iconic) self-designed font he calls Boy Scout

Editorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Note: This piece of art, which led to me the source of inspiration for all this project. I was very impressed that I did not see anything without understanding the attached text into work, and at that moment I discovered that it is marking the US agreed to mark roads, the abstract work to me to become clear and understandable image. This impressed me greatly and made me create my series of paintings in the topic and explore other works that way.

U.S. 66, 1960. 33.2x33 cm

Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;M DEAD SERIOUS ABOUT BEING NONSENSICAL 96

Edward Ruscha born in 1937 in Omaha, Nebraska, Ruscha was raised in Oklahoma City, where his family moved in 1941. In 1956 he moved to Los Angeles to study graphic design at the Chouinard Art Institute (now the California Institute of Arts). Ruscha came to prominence in the late 1950s when he began making small collages similar to those of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg and would have his first solo exhibition in 1963 at the Ferus Gallery.Early in his career, he began to refine his collages, isolating and recombining words and images in increasingly subtle and unique ways. Because he drew upon sources from the everyday and embraced the techniques and imagery of commercial culture, his work is associated with pop art. Ruscha used unconventional materials in his graphic work of the late 1960s and 1970s: he drew with gunpowder and painted and printed with foodstuffs and with a variety of organic substances such as blood and the medicine Pepto-Bismol. He is well known for his depiction of words and phrases and for the books he published of his series of deadpan photographs. Such work, characterised by there low-key humour, were influential in the development of conceptual art.

Ed Ruscha is widely regarded as one of the world’s most important artists with a career spanning six decades from the early 1960s until the present day. Ruscha has been the subject of numerous museum retrospectives that have travelled internationally, including those organised by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1982; the Centre Georges Pompidou in 1989; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in 2000; the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in 2002; the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney in 2004; the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2004; and the Jeu de Paume in 2006. In 2005, Ruscha was the United States representative at the 51st Venice Biennale. In recent years exhibitions have included Ed Ruscha: Fifty Years of Painting 2009 at the Hayward Gallery, London, Ruscha: Road Tested 2011 at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and On the Road 2011 at the Hammer Museum. In July of 2012 the major exhibition, Reading Ed Ruscha opened at Kunsthaus Bregenz in Austria.

Edward Ruscha has consistently combined the cityscape of his adopted hometown with vernacular language to communicate a particular urban experience. Encompassing painting, drawing, photography, and artist’s books, Edward Ruscha’s work explores the banality of modern urban life and gives order to the barrage of mass media-fed images and information that confronts us daily. Edward Ruscha’s early career as a graphic artist continues to strongly influence his aesthetic and thematic approach. 97

ON WORDS AND PHRASES

I’M DEAD SERIOUS ABOUT BEING NONSENSICAL Words and phrases are at the centre of Ed Ruscha’s work and first appear in his paintings as early as 1959. The use of words and text in twentieth century art can first be traced back to cubist painters such as Braque and Picasso who integrated letters and words, painted and found, into still lifes as they questioned the representation on the two-dimensional surface. Playful linguistic manipulations were central to the dadaists who left an important legacy with their radical, often humorous use of wordplay. Ruscha cites the dadaists as early influences and his use of words in an ambiguous and playful way could be seen as a manifestation of that influence. Ruscha uses a range of linguistic devices in his text pieces such as onomatopoeia, puns, alliteration and contrasting meanings. Many of his early works such as Honk 1962 depict single words in a strong typographic format. A more brooding atmosphere emerges in the later series, The End, which illustrates the words overlaid with imagery recalling fading film credits. Other works such as PAY NOTHING UNTIL APRIL 2003 reference advertising while setting the text against a mountainous landscape. Ruscha’s group of 98

‘catch-phrase’ drawings dating from the 1970s, including Pretty Eyes, Electric Bills 1976, mix visual formality with playful language. In this series of pastel drawings Ruscha set his pithy phrases against fields of colour. The sentences and phrases evoke American vernacular and slang, draw attention to a particular experience or recall the excesses of Hollywood culture. In the drawing Pretty Eyes, Electric Bills 1976, the juxtaposition of the phrases ‘Pretty Eyes’ and ‘Electric Bills’ is at odds; the first conjures romantic and evocative images while the second makes reference to a mundane chore. The artist has explained his own view of this drawing, stating: ‘Pretty Eyes, Electric Bills is my way of separating two subjects that are on the far end of the world from each other. This somehow gets to be the reason that I want to make a work of art of this.’

ON LITERATURE

I READ WHAT READTOWHAT II WANT READ. I WANT TO IREAD. THINK MOST I THINK MOST PEOPLE PEOPLE DO THAT. DOI READ THAT. OR I READ WHAT OR WHAT II WANT TOTO SEE SEE WANT The words Ed Ruscha uses in his work come from a variety of sources including books which occasionally suggest images to him: ‘I’ve done a few paintings using verbatim words from certain sections of books. Of course the words I use come from every source. Sometimes they happen on the radio and sometimes in conversations. I’ve had ideas come to me literally in my sleep and I tend to believe on blind faith, that I feel obliged to use.’ Ruscha is an admirer of the British writer J.G. Ballard and the American writers Don DeLillo and Tom McGuane. He has said that Ballard ‘cuts open the belly of what’s going on and everything falls out.’ Ballard’s transgressive fiction is associated with dystopian modernity, bleak man-made landscapes and the psychological effects of technological, social or environmental developments. In his painting The Music from

the Balconies 1984 Ruscha uses text from J.G. Ballard’s novel High Rise 1975. The novel, set in a high rise, is the tale of urban disillusionment where society slips into a violent reverse as the isolated inhabitants of the high-rise, driven by primal urges, recreate a dystopian world ruled by the jungle laws. In The Music from the Balconies Ruscha juxtaposes a beautiful landscape and serene skyline layered with the dark and unsettling quote “The Music from the Balconies Nearby Was Overlaid by the Noise of Sporadic Acts of Violence”. This juxtaposition seems itself an act of violence, overlying the tranquil landscape with the wordy Ballard quote.

BOOKS AND PHOTOGRAPHS I’M NOT INTERESTED IN BOOKS AS SUCH BUT I’AM INTERESTED IN UNUSUAL PUBLICATIONS. THE FIRST BOOK CAME OUT OF A PLAY ON WORDS. THE TITLE CAME BEFORE I EVEN THOUGHT OF THE PICTURES. I LIKE THE WORD “GASOLINE” AND I LIKE THE SPECIFIC QUALITY OF “TWENTY-SIX”

I’M NOT INTERESTED IN BOOKS AS SUCH BUT I’AM INTERESTED IN UNUSUAL PUBLICATIONS. THE FIRST BOOK CAME OUT OF A PLAY ON WORDS. THE TITLE CAME BEFORE I EVEN THOUGHT OF THE PICTURES. I LIKE THE WORD “GASOLINE” AND I LIKE THE SPECIFIC QUALITY OF “TWENTY-SIX” Ed Ruscha’s first book Twentysix Gasoline Stations 1962 featured photographs taken by him along Route 66, on trips to and from Los Angeles to his parental home in Oklahoma City taking in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas en route. The pictures, which are void of people, do not document a particular journey and there is no sense of narrative. Twenty Six Gasoline Stations was the first of seventeen books Ruscha would make throughout the 1960s and 70s. These books are characterised by their use of serial photography, a wry sense of humour and use of minimal text. The titles of the books such as Every Building on Sunset Strip 1966 and Thirtyfour Parking Lots 1967 function as banal descriptions of the subject matter. The photographs in Ruscha’s books are black and white until Nine Swimming Pools (and A 100

Broken Glass) 1968 when he introduces colour. This book featured nine photographs of pools from a selection of hotels in LA and Las Vegas interspersed throughout the book followed by a sequence of black pages. Again, these photographs are absent of people giving them a feeling of desertion and vacancy. The human subject is however referenced in Pool #5 1968/97 where liquid footprints lead up to the diving board situated at the bottom centre of the image. Ruscha’s books were highly influential in the conceptual art movement and they share many elements of its practice. In Ruscha’s books the idea dictates the form of the finished piece while an interest in structure, serial imagery and the mundane are also characteristic of conceptual art. Ruscha suggests that his books are ‘an extension of the readymade in a photographic form’.

HOLLYWOOD I looked outside my window here and I saw the sign ‘Hollywood’ and it became the subject matter for me.

I LOOKED OUTSIDE MY WINDOW HERE AND I SAW THE SIGN ‘HOLLYWOOD’ AND IT BECAME THE SUBJECT MATTER FOR ME. Ed Ruscha has lived and worked in Los Angeles since 1956 and since then his visual vocabulary has been hugely informed by the city and its film industry. Ruscha references Hollywood and cinema in a number of ways in his work. In PAY NOTHING UNTIL APRIL 2003 the words juxtaposed against a mountainous landscape allude to the opening credits in an action adventure film while words such as ‘Hollywood’ (in works such as as Hollywood 1969) and symbols such as the Twentieth Century Fox logo (in works such as as Trademark #5 1962) appeared in Ruscha’s work from the 1960s.

work since the late-1960s. Ruscha also created a series of works such as Miracle #64 1975, where a bright beam of light entering a black space, which allude to a film being project in a cinema. Ruscha once commented, “‘Hollywood dreams’ – I mean, think about it. Close your eyes and what does it mean, visually? It means a ray of light, actually, to me, rather than a success story.” Movies are also referenced in The End series, which illustrate the words with imagery that recalls fading film credits (THE END #40 2003). Works such as Miracle #64 and The Final End 1992 allude to Hollywood success as a near religious experience.

The dimensions of Dec. 30th 2005 call to mind the format of widescreen movies; Ruscha had previously replicated the ratio of the widescreen Cinemascope in the size of several canvases. The Hollywood sign, an iconic feature of the Los Angeles skyline, is silhouetted and blurred with orange and red spray paint. The colours and the shaded sign suggest a sunset or blazing white heat. Ruscha has exploited the sign as a monument to the town’s myths and dreams in his

Edward Ruscha’s book Every Building on Sunset Strip 1966 years also references the cinematic; the photographs for this book were created by attaching a camera to a moving vehicle and shooting in real time.

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MATERIALS

THE FIRST WORK THAT I DID INVOLVING VEGETABLE MATTER AND ORGANIC MATERIALS CAME OUT OF A FRUSTRATION WITH MATERIALS. I WANTED TO EXPAND MY IDEAS ABOUT MATERIALS AND THE VALUES THEY HAVE. Ed Ruscha attributes the tactile quality of materials such as paper and Higgins India Ink as the catalyst for his interest in art. As a boy he discovered art through the medium of Higgins India ink. He recalls a neighbourhood friend using this material using this material in his cartoons: ‘I had a very tactile sensation for that ink; it’s one of the strongest that has affected me as far as my interest in art.’ This fascination with the tools of the artist’s trade would continue throughout his career. In the late 1960s Ed Ruscha began to experiment with materials creating the print portfolio Stains 1969. Among the varied substances used to create the seventy-five works on paper, which makes up the Stains portfolio, where egg yolk, turpentine, beer, salad dressing and gunpowder. Inside the portfolio case, which contains the series of prints, was one final stain: the blood of the artist. The artist’s tendency to work with unorthodox materials would continue into the 1970s.

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The painting DANCE? 1973 was made using an array of materials including coffee, egg white, mustard, chilli sauce, ketchup and cheddar cheese. This work highlights Ruscha’s preoccupation not only with using unusual materials but also the symbols of American popular culture of the 1960s and 1970s, with the monosyllabic invitation to dance invoking lighthearted entertainment. The edible ingredients, which make up the painting, suggest the kind of foodstuffs that might be consumed in an American diner, and are in particular the condiments that accompany typically American fast food such as hotdogs and hamburgers.

LANDSCAPES

IT’S NOT A CELEBRATION OF NATURE. I’M NOT TRYING TO SHOW BEAUTY. IT’S MORE LIKE I’M PAINTING IDEAS OF IDEAS OF MOUNTAINS. THE CONCEPT CAME TO ME AS A LOGICAL EXTENSION OF THE LANDSCAPES THAT I’VE BEEN PAINTING FOR A WHILE ...horizontal landscapes, flatlands, the landscape I grew up in. Mountains like this were only ever a dream to me ; they meant Canada or Colorado.” At the end of the twentieth century and beginning of the twenty-first century Ed Ruscha continued to appropriate images of landscapes though his metro plots his and mountain paintings. His metro plots are ariel views of metropolitan areas defined by intersecting parallel lines of the grid system or by actual written names of Los Angeles streets and avenues. These works such as BLVD.-AVE.ST. 2006 bring together various concerns that have appeared in Ruscha’s work throughout the previous decades such as the photographic books of the 1960s that document subjects found along Los Angeles streets. Plotting, mapping, identifying and labelling are among the most prominent themes in Ruscha’s work. With the metro plot series Ruscha began to

elaborate on the axialaerial perspective that he first introduced in his gasoline station paintings of 1962. Ruscha once said: ‘I guess I’ve always been intrigued by oblique perspectives, like ariel views. There’s something about the tabletop… taking a viewer up in the air, so you can look down from an angle.’ Around the same time as he began to make his metro plots Ruscha was also appropriating a backdrop unrelated to LA – bold and colourful mountain ranges. Some of these works superimposed words and phrases, such as ‘Pay Nothing Until April’ and ‘Daily Planet’, over the mountain landscape. The relationship between the text and the landscape is more elusive in these works.The phrase ‘Pay Nothing Until April’ in the painting of the same name, overlaying the mountainous landscape, could refer to advertising slogans that follow the formula, ‘Buy Now, Pay Nothing until April’.

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DEC.24,1932 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; JUN.27,2014

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It’s hard to write an obituary for On Kawara, the seminal

canvases, often small, whose only images are the dates

Japanese conceptual artist who passed away last week.

on which they were made, rendered in meticulous white

Kawara resisted formal biography, foregoing interview

letters that look almost printed against fields of red, blue,

requests – even when it came to our monograph. Instead

black or gray. The series began in New York on Jan. 4,

the artist offered a deeper and simpler meditation on

1966 — before the term Conceptual Art existed — when

the individual’s place within our era. Most famously

Mr. Kawara painted that date on an 8-by-10-inch blue

he painted his Today series - simple acrylic on canvas

surface. It continued throughout his life.

renderings of that day’s date – from the 4 January 1966 up until the final years of his life.

The “Today” series, part of the Duchampian tradition of making art directly from dumb reality, treated each date

On Kawara, a Conceptual artist who devoted his career

as a ready-made. The works seemed straightforward —

to recording the passage of time as factually and self-

even obvious — and maddeningly repetitive, suggesting

effacingly as art would allow, died in late June in New

the Zen passivity of John Cage’s acceptance of noise

York City, where he had worked for 50 years. He was 81.

as music. But they were also diaristic and meditative

his represent, announced the death on its website. Mr.

and could resonate with existential, psychological and

Kawara’s family declined to provide the date of death

scientific implications about the time-space continuum.

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or the names of survivors, in keeping with his lifelong penchant for privacy.

The date painting canvases were on thick stretchers that gave them a tombstone-like solidity. They usually

Working in painting, drawing and performance, Mr.

memorialized days that had passed routinely for most

Kawara kept himself in the background and almost never

people, and it was always a little jarring to see them

gave interviews. The rare published photographs of him

plucked from oblivion. You realized that any date was

showed him from the back. Toward the end of his life, he

special for someone, somewhere; you experienced

stopped attending his own openings.

space as full of time, and in the painting’s silence, you sensed the noisy tumult of history. The date paintings

He belonged to a broadly international generation of

were always site-specific, using the language and

Conceptual artists that began to emerge in the mid-

grammar of the country in which Mr. Kawara painted

1960s, stripping art of personal emotion, reducing it to

them (more than 130 locales). He used eight different

nearly pure information or idea and greatly playing down

sizes, up to around five by seven feet, but otherwise the

the art object. Along with Lawrence Weiner, Joseph

method of production rarely varied.

Kosuth, Hanne Darboven and others, Mr. Kawara gave special prominence to language. He was best known

The dates were painted in liquitex on four layers of

for his “Today,” or date painting, series: monochromatic 106

acrylic paint rubbed smooth. Any painting not finished by

midnight was destroyed. If finished, it would eventually

resonant. A 1965 triptych titled “Titled,” with the words

be placed in a custom-made cardboard box that was

“1965,” “One thing” and “Viet-Nam” painted in white on

often lined with parts of that day’s local newspaper.

red, inspired the date paintings.

Sometimes exhibited with their paintings, the clippings measured time’s more specific tumult.Sometimes the

More lighthearted, personal works recorded time as a

dates were significant, like the three large gray ones

process of moving through space, and life. Between

made in July 1969, during the Apollo 11 space mission,

the late 1960s and 1979, Mr. Kawara sent telegrams as

the first to land on the moon. On Kawara was born in

regularly as possible to a rotating selection of friends and

Japan in December 1932 and raised in an intellectual

colleagues that announced, “I am still alive.”

atmosphere infused with Shinto, Buddhist and Christian teachings. He was a promising student, he said, until the

During the same period, his “I Got Up” series consisted

bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 left him

of mailed postcards rubber-stamped with the time he had

traumatized and full of doubt about “everything.” After

risen and the address where he was staying on a

finishing high school in 1951, he moved to Tokyo and

given day. For “I Met,” he typed lists of all the people

embarked on a course of self-education, reading

he encountered in the course of a day. In the mid-1990s

1 DAYS

he typed lists of one million years — one reaching back omnivorously in European philosophy and in political

in time, the other forward — that were read aloud in

and psychoanalytic theory. He also began making and

performances in New York, Paris, London and elsewhere.

exhibiting art and, with remarkable quickness, became

This work was published in a limited-edition two-volume

a rising art star in Tokyo, an experience he disliked.

set that ran to 2,012 tissue-thin pages per book.

He was known for figurative work of a decidedly dour postwar cast that culminated in a series of drawings of truncated bodies and body parts floating in tilted, tilelined bathrooms. He returned to New York in 1964, by which time his work was abstract and included drawings involving grids and random words. Dubious of art’s ability to communicate, he made paintings that reduced specific phrases to indecipherable geometric shapes of color interrupted by intermittent spacing and punctuation. He destroyed these works, but they convinced him that he could not do without legible words, ones that were both literal and

Keeping the viewer focused on time’s incremental, day-by-day omnipresence was one reason for Mr. Kawara’s deliberately low profile and his habit of listing his age in exhibition catalogs in terms of the number of days he had been alive as of the show’s opening date. In the catalog to a show at the David Zwirner Gallery, an otherwise blank page titled “Biography of On Kawara” put the count at 26,192 days on Sept. 9, 2004. Last week the gallery calculated he had reached 29,771 days. 107

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I GOT UP I Got Up, following I Met and I Went, closes out the trilogy

geographical maps of I Went, is proven by the postcard,

by On Kawara. I Got Up begins on 10 May 1968 and ends

purchased in the same place, and postmarked the same

on 17 September 1979. On every day of this period, On

day. This work is a daily one – it is fundamentally “of the

Kawara sent two postcards showing where he was. On the

day” – but the resulting “diary” is not necessarily intimate.

back of each card, he stamped the words “I GOT UP AT” in

While the time at which the artist got up, reported on

capital letters, followed by the time at which he stood up that

the back of the postcard, recovers in itself from a private

day. The name and the address of both recipient and artist

matter, when an artist has faithfully reported the facts of

are also stamped on the card. I Got Up brings together this

his everyday life, this time becomes an important objective

corpus in twelve volumes. They total up 4160 pages.

datum : the time at which the artist’s day begins stands de

The final and missing piece I Got Up intersects with the

facto for the starting point of his work. This time becomes a

facts reported in I Met and I Went. That the artist was such

scientific descriptive element of the work. I Got Up gives us

day in such a place, as it is precisely documented by the

its starting time of departure.

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ONE MILLION YEARS One Million Years is one of the artist’s best-known works, as it speaks directly about what is relevant to us all: the passage and marking of time. In 1966, Kawara embarked upon his on-going Today series of date paintings, of which there are now thousands, each one consisting of the date on which it was made, meticulously painted in white on a plain colored background. The first audio presentation of the reading of One Million Years occurred in 1993 during Kawara’s yearlong solo exhibition “One Thousand Days One Million Years” at Dia Center for the Arts in New York. Visitors could hear One Million Years [Future] being read, while viewing One Million Years [Past] and a group of date paintings. The longest public reading from One Million Years took place at Documenta 11 in 2002, where male and female participants sat side-by-side in a glass enclosure taking turns reading dates for the duration of the 100-day exhibition, switching between [Past] and [Future]. In 2004, the project traveled to Trafalgar Square in London for a continuous outdoor reading lasting 7 days and 7 nights. Since then, readings and recordings have taken place in cities around the world.

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The series began on Jan. 4, 1966

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New Yorkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s traffic strike: Acrylic on canvas, 20.3x25.4 cm 115

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Dec. 2, 1989 ‘Saturday’ Liquitex on canvas and handmade cardboard box with newspaper clipping from The New York Times, 25.4 x 33 cm.

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Unanswered Questions “DEAR KARLYN, IT’S A ‘NO’ I’M AFRAID. WITH BEST WISHES, JONATHAN” UNTIL TODAY, I DID NOT HEAR FROM HIM ANYMORE. NO ANSWER.

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By Karlyn De Jongh

Today is Saturday, 19 December 2009, and right now I am in my apartment in Venice, Italy. My name is Karlyn De Jongh. I am an independent curator and author from the Netherlands and I have spent two years working on the project Unanswered Questions to On Kawara. Unanswered Questions to On Kawara consisted of collecting questions for the artist On Kawara. I gathered questions from all kinds of people who are somehow connected with On Kawara, people who either know the artist or his work very well, asking them to submit a question they themselves wanted to ask him. Their questions have all been formulated in the languages I was certain On Kawara would understand: Japanese and English. It resulted in a collection of questions posed by 79 people from different parts over the world—Africa, Asia, Europe, North and South America. As they are, the questions provide information about On Kawara’s life and work. This special edition contains all questions asked. On Kawara On Kawara (born in Japan in 1932) has been making work that addresses time, space and existence since the 1960s. To say something about On Kawara, to give a biography or to state something about the meaning of his work, is complicated. It seems that On Kawara has never published any personal written statements, that he doesn’t give any public speeches, and that he doesn’t give interviews. Catalogue texts about On Kawara are often formal descriptions of his work. Biographies of On Kawara have been made

without 7 detailed facts concerning his personal history. Often they only state the amount of days the artist has been alive at the time of writing. For example: “Biography of On Kawara (August 16, 1974) 15 211 Tage”1 Taking the information from his 100 Years Calendar, On Kawara seems to have been born on 24 December 1932. Today that means On Kawara would now have been alive for 28,119 days. Because of all these elements, most people who, like me, have never met Kawara personally only seem to be able to ‘know’ the artist through his work. But what if you think his work is important that you want to include him in a publication with texts by, and interviews with, other living artists? How do you include someone who solely communicates through his work? Someone who never publishes any personal written statements? The only thing we can do to get information about On Kawara’s life is to rely on statements from people who have met the artist and said something about him. Having to rely on such statements, we can only guess about reasons why On Kawara does not speak publically. Franck Gautherot and Jonathan Watkins, for example, state: “There is too much and therefore nothing for the artist to say.”2 In a recent catalogue, curator Charles Wylie says: “Kawara, as an artist, does not, in fact, wish to be quoted nor to have his ideas and thoughts paraphrased: his project is not that of subjective autobiography but of steady, disciplined recording, in universally recognized and accepted objective terms, of experience and time 127

that stretches from the year 1966 to today.” Or: as Ulrich Wilmes clearly pointed out in an email to me: “I know Kawara and for quite a long time. And if you do some research you will find out that he never wrote a text or published a statement, nor did he ever give an interview... ...This is not a caprice of an eccentric artist, but part of his artistic concept. The only way that he communicates is via his works!” On Kawara created several series of works that seem to manifest his existence. Most of these series he started in the 1960s. For example: Since 1966 Kawara has been making the Today Series; the series I met and I got up both started in 1968 in Mexico City; his I am still alive telegrams have been sent at irregular intervals since 1970. Of these series, the Today Series also called Date Paintings is probably the most well known: a monochrome ground on which month, day and year are painted in letters and figures, the spelling being influenced by the country he was in. On Kawara continues to paint until the present time. To me, On Kawara’s work seems to be a self portrait. The series of facts that these works present, say something about On Kawara’s life. The series lend presence to the artist, while he himself remains physically or, depending on the viewer, even personally, absent. His works seem to state something similar to the number of days in his biography: at that specific point in time On Kawara existed. The questions in this book are a way to learn more. They give additional information and add to the knowledge we have about the artist: the 79 questioners, the questions they ask, the statements they give, all these things provide information about On Kawara.

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The project Unanswered Questions to On Kawara started in April 2007. It was the result of the wish to incorporate On Kawara in the publication Personal Structures: Time Space Existence which includes interviews, essays and symposium texts by 53 artists, communicating their thoughts verbally or in written word.5 Given his artistic concept, including On Kawara was a challenge. To ask an art historian to write about his work was not an option for us. Instead, Rene Rietmeyer suggested asking people who know On Kawara personally, or at least his work, to submit a question and then try to present these collected questions to On Kawara. And: in the expected case that he would not answer, we would publish these questions in Personal Structures: Time Space Existence as the Unanswered Questions to On Kawara. I met Rene Rietmeyer for the first time on 14 May 2007. At that time I was a student, on the verge of finishing my M.Phil. in Art History at Leiden University, Netherlands. I was asked to work with the project Personal Structures as a curator. Together with Sarah Gold, I organized the Personal Structures symposium and exhibition TIME in Amsterdam, Netherlands. As part of the exhibition we showed twenty I am still alive telegrams, which On Kawara had sent to the German art critic and writer Klaus Honnef in 1971. I placed this installation in the exhibition: it was my first opportunity to work so directly with On Kawara, and I was deeply impressed. After finishing my studies, in September 2007 I went to Venice, Italy, where I worked for the German Pavilion at the Biennale di Venezia. Rietmeyer was in Murano at that time where he was creating his Venezia glass-boxes. During

a dinner on the island of Murano, he asked if I would be interested in taking on this On Kawara project. The artist and this project intrigued me and, without thinking, I said “yes.” Unanswered Questions to On Kawara became my project.

suitcases. They got into the car and drove away. I am sure it was On Kawara. I realized that when I saw the number of the apartment house; the car was standing almost in front of it. Impossible that it could have been someone else.

Our initial idea was to collect approximately 50 questions. And at this point in time, when I first heard about the project, we had only collected one: Rietmeyer had asked Klaus Honnef for a question, because of his connection to On Kawara. It was 7 May 2007 and Honnef had spontaneously reacted with

I waited in front of On Kawara’s house for nearly two hours, reading over my questions to him and trying the doorbell several times. No one answered and no one returned. I had missed him.

“Do you still remember me?” After hearing about the project, I immediately started doing my homework. Sitting outside of the pavilion that October, in cold and rainy Venice, I searched the Internet for names that showed up in connection with On Kawara. I was looking for answers to my own questions: To whom did he send his telegrams? Who received postcards? Who did he meet? Who wrote about him? Which museums have his works in their collection? What galleries handle his work? At first, I was overwhelmed by the number of names that came up. I realized: this was not art in theory; this was art in reality and I was new to it. Greene Street, 7 May 2009 On my last day in New York, it was Thursday 7 May 2009, I had to do it; it was my last chance. I went to SoHo by subway. I walked across Greene Street, holding the questions in my one hand and my microphone in the other. As I approached his apartment building, an older Japanese man and woman crossed the street. They were walking together with a younger man, who was carrying

After I returned from New York, I don’t remember the date, I got a nice surprise: I may have missed On Kawara, but Joseph Kosuth suddenly gave approval for the publication of his question. Venice, Italy, January - April 2011 We did not hear from On Kawara, no sign of life. There seemed only one last possibility to reach On Kawara directly: postcards. I bought a whole bunch of them, 1 for each question plus another one for myself, my own question to On Kawara, and a few extra just in case some would get lost in the mail. On 5 January 2011, I posted all of them, at San Marco Square in Venice. In the months after, I received back the postcards I had sent to On Kawara. Stamped: Return to Sender. In the meantime, also the Art Project with Roman Opalka had been published and it became time to print this special edition. In a last attempt to get a sign of life from On Kawara in this book, I contacted Jonathan Watkins. In a two-minute staccato telephone conversation, I explained him my dream and that he was my last hope to make this dream come true. He understood. I had to send him my request to his email address and he replied some days later. On 22 March 2011 129

he wrote: “Dear Karlyn, I’ll be in touch with On and get back to you as soon as possible. He will say no most probably, and of course that will signify he is still alive. With best wishes, Jonathan” I appreciated his support very much and was full of hope. Would there still be a chance to hear from On Kawara? Two days later, on 24 March 2011, Watkins wrote again: “Dear Karlyn, It’s a ‘no’ I’m afraid. With best wishes, Jonathan” At first, I was thrilled about the email. But did this ‘no’ come directly from On Kawara himself? I asked Watkins kindly for a confirmation. Until today, I did not hear from him anymore.

No answer.

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January 16, 2009

Dear On Kawara, Do you think the meaning of your work will change essentially after your death? Daniel Marzona Director, Konrad Fischer Gallery, Berlin, Germany

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if you happen to be in London, Skarstedt Gallery revisits the early works of the conceptual artist Barbara Kruger, from the 10th of February until April 11. The exhibition features her seminal early works of the 1980s, the characteristic large-scale black and white photographs in an equally characteristic red enamel frame overlaid with

whole world. Her chosen method is the overlaying of images she gathers from newspapers and magazines and small sentences, sort of slogans.

quite provocative captions in bold Futura type; The artist communicates all these messages with an

this body of works consists of the captions in her choice of font, though the artist has said that as far as the type of captions is concerned, whatever works!

economy and consistency of typography and means. Her critique on society and culture is very dense and direct, both very important elements, especially in a time when the attention span of people is extremely limited. The observer simply cannot neglect Kruger’s work. Some emblematic captions such as “I shop therefore I am”, “Love for sale”, “Your body is a battleground”, challenge the sensitive

Born in Newark, New Jersey in 1945, she studied in

themes of consumerism, identity, feminism and are open

Parsons instructed by Diane Arbus, whom she considers

to multiple interpretations. Barbara Kruger unfolds in a

to have been a great influence. After leaving Parsons,

very laconic way hypocrisies and puts the observer in the

she started working as a graphic designer at Condé

position of the sinner and the saint, the criminal and the

Nast Publications, where she learned how illustrations,

victim through her bold messages.

messaging and mass media semiotics work but decided that this career was not for her so she transitioned and

What is so powerful about her oeuvre is that it has proved

pursued a career in art. So far, Barbara Kruger created

to be timeless as she keeps expanding her work according

a very consistent body of works, an art form with an

to the changes of today maintaining their high criticality. The

undeniably recognizable aesthetic.

artist is always present, she observes the contemporary society and continues to form a critique with her own

Her background resulted in the continuous exploring of

signature style taking into consideration the explosion of

the themes of power, control, body, money, consumerism,

social media in the highly digital environment we live in.

identity, Barbara Kruger believe.

Kruger’s work still influences a lot of young artists and serves as food for thought every single time. There is one

Barbara Kruger keeps challenging the American culture and society which has strongly influenced the

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tiny concern though; the artist has undoubtedly created a group of works that is effective, powerful and emblematic. a bit apathetic towards well-meaning provocation and criticism. But as she says,Talk is cheap.

Barbara Kruger This is her story in her own words

On how she perceives art making “It is about objectifying your experience of the world, transforming the flow of moments into something visual, or textual, whatever. Art creates a kind of commentary.” On the letterforms she uses

On culture and American cities

“I’ve done pieces that don’t have Futura. Actually, when

“If most American cities are about the consumption

I need type that has to be set very tightly I always use

of culture, Los Angeles and New York are about the

Helvetica Extra Bold caps because it sets tighter than

production of culture, not only national culture but global

Futura. It cuts through the grease. That’s why I like it. I don’t

culture. You can make good art anywhere. But these two

like to talk about my influences, but certainly they include

towns have an incredible density of cultural producers:

30 years of New York tabloid newspapers, plus the films of

people who migrate to them in order to define themselves

Sam Fuller, that black and white stuff.”

through their work that they do.”

On her artistic vocabulary

On fame and recognition

“The so-called language of Barbara Kruger is vernacular

“It’s good to keep in mind that prominence is always a mix

language. Obviously, I pick through bits and pieces of it and

of hard work, eloquence in your practice, good timing and

figure out to some degree how to objectify my experience

fortuitous social relations. Everything can’t be personalized.

of the world, using pictures and words that construct and

Prominence is cool, but when the delusion kicks in it can be

contain me as artist and as person.”

a drag. Especially if you surround yourself with friends.”

Words by Dimitra Nikolou, Art historian and Lawyer at art

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be a jerk 137

God said it. I believe it. And that settles it. 138

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Untitled (We donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t need another hero), 1987. 228.6x297 cm.

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Untitled (You Are Not Yourself), 1981. 182.8x122 cm.

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Meanings & intention Don’t be a jerk, 1984.

Michelangelo’s fresco. The potent intersection of text and imagery suggests that art is a secularized

We had image this on a coffee mug in our house

religion that can be bought and sold, provided we

when i was growing up. This is the first time i’ve

believe in its immortality. By using the pronoun “you,”

really thought about it since then, and I cant say i’ve

Barbara Kruger implicates us within the system that

tried to interpret the work before now. Don’t be a jerk

peddles faith with her design.

and… follow the crowd? …get lost in the crowd? … be like everybody else? Just from the three works

We don’t need another hero, 1987.

I have examined so far, It seems the idea of “the crowd” has some loaded ideas attached to it. Am I

the typical black and white photograph is in the

interested in these ideas? Yes, but not with this work.

background, where a young girl pokes the muscles

It makes abstracting my work even more important,

of a little boy. She is clearly enthralled by his

as to separate these loaded ideas for my concept –

muscles, showing how from even that young age,

which is about the physicality of a crowd -not what

women are trained to look to men as the muscle or

it means to be inside or outside of it. I think its a

power, and that men are trained to be strong and

beautiful thing when thousands of people gather to

heartless. This picture perpetuates these types of

see a performance, particularly a band – there is

stereotypes about the genders. Barbara Kruger’s

a buzz that comes from being in a room filled with

commentary, delivered in white text with a red

people who have a shared passion, that they can all

background, as per usual, says, “we don’t need

enjoy together at that moment in time. I would like to

another hero”. Kruger is saying that the idea behind

capture that beauty in my work, the gathering and

the genders, that men must be strong and women

disbanding of a crowd to be like a dance. Capturing

must admire them and be their opposite, is outdated.

the physicality of the mass for me is not a sterile

That these two exclusive patterns are, as she likes

reconstruction of information gathered say, by a

to say, “too binary”. They are too constricting, and no

time-lapse video of a performance or the like.

one can fit perfectly into these only existing molds for men and women. We don’t need another man

You Invest in the Divinity of the Masterpiece, 1982.

that is like that, and we don’t need another woman that is like that either. This commentary contradicts

In this striking composition, Kruger uses

the background picture, like much of her work. The

Michelangelo’s masterful rendering of the creation

viewer has to reconcile the conflicting message of

of man in the Sistine Chapel as a backdrop for

the picture and the words for themselves.

her razor–sharp text. Kruger constructs a parallel between the biblical creation story, represented by

Your body is a battleground, 1989.

the delicate touch of God’s finger to Adam’s, and that of a masterpiece of Western art. She expertly

reproductive rights protest, the March for Women’s

contrasts the strident, direct address of the text

Lives, in Washington, D.C. Utilizing her signature red,

with the soft luminosity and heavenly focus of

black, and white palette, the woman’s face is split along

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a vertical axis, showing the photographic positive and

image of the woman. She picks up one shard and

negative sides, suggesting a highly simplified inner

examines it, seeming unable to recognize her own

struggle of good versus evil. The political and social

reflection. The parts do not fit together into a whole;

implications of the work are self evident, but Kruger

woman cannot be all that society expects her to be.

emphasizes the directness of her sentiment by having

The construct of “woman” is an identity that alienates

her subject stare straight ahead through the print,

the person from the internal power and abilities

frankly addressing the viewer through both her gaze and

of the self. Society constructs a woman’s identity,

the words emblazoned across her face. The message

building a glass prison that she cannot escape.

unequivocally addresses the issue of the continued feminist struggle, connecting the physical body of female

Buy me i’ll change your life, 1984.& I shop therefore

viewers to the contemporary conditions that necessitate

I am, 1987. & Money can buy you love, 1985.

the feminist protest. Kruger’s slick graphic aesthetic and use of dramatic found imagery also place this work

explores our desires to buy things we don’t necessarily

within the purview of postmodernism, tying it not only

need. This is known as consumerism, where we buy

to contemporary critique, but to the larger social and

things for their aesthetics and by doing so we think we

cultural responses within the period.

will become a more enviable person and appear more successful. The bold typography of Kruger’s ‘Buy me I’ll

You Are Not Yourself, 1981.

change your life’ shows a photograph of a bug eyed toy grimacing at the viewer. The toy doesn’t have appealing

Kruger’s You Are Not Yourself makes visual and

aesthetics and so is ironic that a consumer would want

explicit De Beauvoir’s conception of woman as a

to buy it. However Kruger has done this on purpose. Her

non-essential social construct. Displaying a woman

art is humorous, she places forceful statements over

examining herself in a shattered mirror, Kruger

selective imagery to grab the viewers attention. This

interprets the myth of woman as a mechanism by

particular theme runs throughout her art. Kruger’s uses

which to alienate woman not only from man, but from

strong powerful statements which are shown through

herself as well. Kruger uses bold graphic techniques

bold typography layered on a photographic image.

to jar the woman in the mirror as well as the viewer,

Photography she says “has the power to objectify human

delivering a wake-up call from the messages

beings in the most brutal fashion”. Words can reach out

delivered by society. The small size of the word “not”

to people, and can portray who we are, and who we

indicates that society attempts to trick women into

are not. She began by using the typeface ‘Future Bold’

believing “You Are Yourself,” in other words, that

to convey her message as she thought it would be an

individuals are responsible for their own positions

effective way to reach people.

in life. However, You Are Not Yourself illustrates that “woman” is made up of shattered parts, various roles and expectations forced upon her by society. A mirror should reveal a true and whole representation of oneself, but this mirror is fragmented, distorting the

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BARBARA KRUGER: JUST A GRAPHIC DESIGNER? 152

There is no doubt about it: Barbara Kruger is a true legend a postmodern celebrity through and through. With such an iconic style, if you do not know of her off-hand, chances are you have seen her work. Her signature approach to and execution of visual communication has made her one of the most influential postmodernists of our time. Barbara Kruger’s distinctive technique of mixing appropriated imagery, bold text, and startling messages has been applied to a number of mediums ranging from public to gallery art. Her appropriated imagery welcomes us in to the work, where we are met with her harshly contrasting, easily accessible messages of social, cultural, or political propositions. Since an emerging artist in the 1970s, Kruger has maintained her position as a prominent figure in today’s contemporary art culture. It is said that, “Kruger has been interpreted in three contexts: political aesthetics, feminism and postmodern investigations of the ‘the gaze’, and identity and power.”, And as our world is changing exponentially, mostly due to the rapid onset of technology, artists have had to adapt faster than ever. Kruger is an ideal example of an experienced artist who has adapted styles and techniques over time to fit the ever changing needs of herself and her audience. Considering her extensive career, some make a case that the art world is “over her”; however, it is evident that her vocations, methodologies, style, and influence continue to be pertinent in contemporary art today. One common critique is that she is simply a graphic designer, but there are a plethora of labels that critics, peers, and audience members have slapped on her from activist to fine artist, propagandist, feminist, and commercial designer, to name a few. I argue that giving a

title to her work is irrelevant. Barbara Kruger is a communicator of messages, and her intentional choices of media and medium help effectively get her voice across to the viewer. When it comes to talking about herself, Kruger is rather humble and prefers that people focus on her work. In 1945 Barbara Kruger was born in southern Newark, New Jersey, as the only child of her mother and father. She graduated high school in 1964, and followed up her education by enrolling at Syracuse University as an art major. After the death of her father, who worked at Shell Oil as a chemical technician, Kruger left Syracuse, only to return to her educational agenda a year later by becoming a student at the famous Parsons School of Design. It was at Parsons that she met a number of artistics and educators in the art community two of the most influential were two of her professors, photographer Diane Arbus and Marvin Isreal, a graphic designer and former art director of Harper’s Bazaar. She only studied at Parsons for a little over a year, and upon graduation, Kruger got a small job at an advertising agency. Through some lucky connections, she eventually obtained a position working for Condé Nast Publications as a designer for Mademoiselle magazine and quickly climbed the corporate ladder. By the age of twenty-two, in 1967, Kruger was head designer of the magazine, and worked there for four more years. While working full-time, Kruger started to make art in 1969, and after leaving Mademoiselle, she worked as a freelance designer and moved to a studio in New York which she still owns and uses. During this time, she made a series of large scale crocheted pieces for gallery display. “These challenged separations between art and craft, thereby probing relationships between creativity 153

and gender.” Although she was intimidated by the male-dominant art world, Kruger’s work was modestly displayed in New York galleries. As her career began to develop and she found her place among women artists fighting the battle against misogyny, it is clear to me that her upbringing has had an impact on the kinds of issues she raises. Describing Diane Arbus as, “the first woman role model [I] had who didn’t wash the [kitchen] floor twenty times a day.” Oddly enough, her mother did fit the stereotypical role of the ‘female secretary’. Her name started to gained recognition when she was invited to one of the biggest events of her career, the 1973 Whitney Biennial Exhibition, which jumpstarted a chain reaction of exhibiting all over the United States, and eventually the world. Her early work, though, was nothing like it is today. Although she’s stayed consistent with large-scale objects, her pieces then were typically collages made of crocheting, pieces of ribbon, paint, glitter, etc. By 1975, her work shifted towards being more abstract, however a year later she stopped making art altogether and, as Ann Goldstein stated, spent the next “four years in a number of activities that contributed to the construction of her methodology and identity as an artist.” When asked about her career in the magazine industry in an interview, Kruger explains, “When I first started there, [at the magazine], it was a job. I didn’t know if I wanted to be an artist… I didn’t know anything. I had no college degree. I was drawn to art as a way to objectify the world, which is a large part of what artists have to do in order to function at all.” Through proactive searching for an occupation, Kruger found herself at University of California, Berkeley where she took the first of a number of visiting-artist jobs. During this time, Kruger continued writing poetry, started going to film screenings, and began taking her own 154

photographs. She always preferred taking pictures of architecture to people. It was at Berkeley that Kruger also began reading books on theory and criticism, taking particular fondness in the writings of Roland Barthes and Walter Benjamin, “and their respective analyses of technically reproduced art and semiotics,” which inspired her to start writing for the publication Art forum on film, television, and music. In fact, in Walter Benjamin’s article “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” he states that by being able to reproduce photographs easily, they no longer become original and “based on ritual, but they become based on another practice—politics.” Perhaps Kruger read this and became inspired to analyse and create politically charged art, because she is fully aware of the politics in her art. In a review of her work, “… the task of the work (or at least one of the tasks) is a political displacement of the traditional or dominant mode of representation, a task she accomplishes through reappropriation.” Kruger is a prolific writer to this day, and it should be noted that, this interest in theory is what helps support the evidence that Kruger is an exemplary postmodern, conceptual artist and not just any old graphic designer During the 1970s, Kruger had already gained a fair amount of recognition, and her new works were featuring the integration of image and text. These transitional works first included photographs she took herself, and then switched to photographs of original, black-andwhite, mass media images from the 1940s and 1950s. She admits that she respects photography as an art form, but has no interest in it as a career, so the appropriated images seemed to fit her better. The images were accompanied

with the iconic Futura typeface that was used for years to come. As if all that wasn’t enough, Kruger launched a curating practice during the early 1980s. Kruger also started expanding her practice by looking towards public projects like billboards, posters, bus cards, train stations, and most importantly, social campaigns and issue-based art in the 1980s. “Perhaps the most well-known graphic designer to take up social activist themes in the 1980s was Barbara Kruger,” Stephen Eskilsson exclaims. One of her iconic images is Untitled (Your Body is a Battleground), and is most well known as being adapted by pro life protesting group. The image was displayed all over Capitol Hill in the form on postcards and posters for a march in Washington D.C., in 5 1989. After the march the image lent itself to postcards, posters, billboards, signage, and other campaign materials. Embodying Kruger’s iconic style, the viewer is met with the gaze of a beautiful woman, whose face is split in half, creating a positive and negative dichotomy. In my opinion, this juxtaposition is a perfect metaphor for a number of things: opposing forces in general; the battle a woman fights inside and outside of herself; the contrast between the scale of domestic violence and its privacy; perception and reality; andwhatever else it could mean to the viewer. Due to the simple formal qualities of the piece, the viewer doesn’t have to worry about accessing the information, or being too distracted by what’s going on visually. The rest of the composition is framed vertically, with a clear central axis. The words, “Your Body is A Battleground” are centred on the artwork, surrounded by red blocks, and set in Kruger’s signature Futura Bold Oblique, a clear, easily accessible font. The text jumps right at you, does all the talking in the image, and distinguishes itself as separate from the black and

white photograph. Kruger started using the font in 1979, and by now most designers today cannot use it without being reminiscent of the Kruger style. When asked why she chose this typeface, Kruger explains, “I used to use it a lot at the magazine, definitely Helvetica, Franklin Gothic and sans serifs a lot too, but there was also Century Schoolbook and Bodoni. Mademoiselle was a young woman’s magazine, and it had a young, trendy, artsy reputation… so sans serif type equated with the kind of modernism that seemed to go hand in hand with that demographic.” Paul Renner designed Futura in 1927 for use in the commercial arts, and it is known as a geometric, classically proportioned typeface, with international appeal. In gallery settings, this piece would be framed with a simple red lacquer frame. Hans Bertens points out, “The red frames that surround her works are meant to signal their status as commodities; they are, in effect, a packaging device.” Sometimes Kruger lays text upon the frames, but most times they are blank. Kruger states that she frames the pieces because it is appropriate. “Signed, sealed, and delivered,” she says. It is also interesting to note that by taking ephemeral pieces and putting frames around them, then taking them into and out of gallery settings, Kruger makes the audience question their messages and validity. In Untitled (Your Body is a Battleground), at 112 inches by 112 inches, the viewer would meet the gaze at eye level and be followed by it call it the Mona Lisa Effect. The gaze is all around, filling up a three-dimensional space and pulling the viewer in. The photograph itself is not only reversed, but 155

there’s a definite noise to it a bitmap graininess that Kruger’s technique of re-photographing photographs from the mass media achieves. This grain in the image can be seen in many of Kruger’s photographs, but not all. “The locus of power (domination, of control, of definition),The ruling ‘you’ against which Kruger’s work is directed, is never explicitly identified: it must be inferred by the viewer.” The use of “you,” “me,” “I,” or “we” commonly used in Kruger’s pieces is evidence of direct address, a term Kruger uses for describing her tendency to talk directly to the viewer. “This ‘direct address’ has transformed exhibition spaces,” says Rosalyn Deutsche. By using tactics employed by common advertising, and tapping into her own commercial design and theoretical backgrounds, she forces the audience to look within themselves and respond to the piece internally. Although there is plenty of evidence to support direct address, the critic Masako Kamimura argues that, “Kruger’s address is not ambiguous, but unquestionably feminist.” In supporting his argument, Kamimura states, Kruger’s gender-address is crucially important because it is the key device that incorporates the spectator into her work but also because it is an essential part of the ideological discourse of her art.” With the aim that Kruger’s works especially invite female spectatorship, the claim is made that male spectators often don’t understand her work. Also taking into consideration the spectator, Ann Goldstein points out, “The diversity of Kruger’s practice is underscored by her consistent interest in public address and her shift toward a more intense direct address of the spectator. In focusing on stereotypes, clichés, and categories as manifestations of power and control, her work has consistently positioned itself within the world, actively engaging and confronting the spectator.” 156

With an image such as Untitled (Your Body is a Battleground), this claim made by Kamimura could hold true, since Kruger is most obviously ‘engaging and confronting the spectator.’ But, who better to ask than Kruger herself: “My work is about the female voice, it’s expected that the male voice would try to silence the female voice when it becomes vocal and it becomes seen pictures.” Kruger made that statement in 1988, after the premiere of her exhibit “We Won’t Play Nature to Your Culture.” The title suggests that the “we” in this case are women, and “nature” refers to the cycles of women’s roles in society, while “culture,” of course, is a male-dominated one. Although Kruger’s earliest works had the biggest infusion of feminism, today, Kruger tries to reach a wider audience of consumers of popular culture by making art about the relationships people share between one another, regardless of gender. Since Barbara Kruger takes the images from an array of sources, the texture of the final image will depend on the original. Reminiscent of the comic-like images of Roy Lichtenstein, most often this noise adds to the violence depicted in Kruger’s art and is necessary information pointing to the successful use of appropriation. Through appropriation, Kruger takes images used in mass media and turns them against themselves, while using her background in commercial design to deploy the images correctly and intelligently. She even appropriates her own images you will often see her famous photos and text swapped within her own work. As Carol Squiers writes, “Her image sources ran the gamut from news photos to photo manual reproductions to psychological testing drawings… She manipulates, modulates, and recodes the address of obscure and sometimes hilarious images, playing received wisdom, treacly clichés, and militant critique against visuals whose

original function is often puzzling at best.” And Kruger comments on her technique by saying, “I am working with representations, with pictures, pictures we have all grown up with in some ways, pictures that have dictated our desires.” Kruger continuously addresses this notion of the stereotype in her work. Although she is constantly collecting images from diverse sources and putting them in a different context, she is consistent and intentional with the pieces she chooses. It seems that there is a steady human element in all of the shots. Whether it is a hand, face, eye, or entire body, luring us in, most of Kruger’s work contains this human connection. This could be partially due to the fact that a lot of advertising is based on these same notions, or perhaps because there needs to be a balance between the text and stark colors of her compositions. She has to be selective about the images chosen in order to uphold her reputation and keep her work coherent and recognizable. And, as mentioned, she tends to use images in multiple text combinations, making the image choice even more crucial. Critics have dissected the use of color by Kruger. Her pictorial style, consisting of blackand-white images and red mixed with the text, is coherent with early Life magazines, Nazi propaganda, and the Russian constructivists. The color red, being associated with fear, danger, blood, and hostility is most commonly used in her works. Other than red, she did a brief investigation with the black, white, and green color scheme in some installations in the late 1980s, however, rarely does she experiment with a diverse color palette. By employing the most common of design type/ image relationships, known as separation, Kruger mimics commercial art and takes advantage of

the ease of access. Perhaps, by creating this dichotomy between the image and text, she is also making it clear that the image is not hers, but the text is. Or maybe it is to contrast that the image is old, was used for something else, but the text is new—in the now. Perhaps she just likes this formal style and decided to use it in all of her work. Kruger manipulates the images intentionally, so there is most definitely a reason behind her doing this. “Barbara Kruger creates a new hierarchy and a non-synchronous relation between the “male-view” images and a woman’s texts,” is the observation of one critic, which supports the claim that Kruger’s work can be highly complex. zz, “… Kruger had to quash certain art historical taboos regarding the unholy union between fine and applied art. Commercial art, which includes graphic design, is signs and symbols, layouts and formats, typefaces and typographies conveyed through styles and mannerisms as entertainment and information.” It is tough to pinpoint where Kruger really started in the art world—she was employed as a graphic designer while making works for gallery display, although she was never formally trained in graphic design. Later, she made works that were labeled “graphic design” and stuck them in a gallery setting. She took the normal “rules” of graphic or commercial design and applied them in the fine art, avant-garde world. It was this crossing over from fine to commercial art, and back again, that ultimately made her marketable as a graphic designer in the art world. While her early exhibits featured largescale pieces to be hung on the wall, she later started working with the interior architecture of buildings and spacesSo, what is graphic design? Most understand it to be visual communication 157

through the employment of images and text. An ignorant commentator could say that all graphic designers do is sit behind a computer, but what people fail to understand is that the profession 10 communicates messages into our culture and should not be stereotypically assigned to one medium. Steven Heller defined graphic design well, but to call Kruger just a graphic designer seems juvenile. Graphic design has been a study for longer than some care to acknowledge. In discussing some of the earliest graphic design movements, Steven Heller observes, “In just one era, the early twentieth-century modern movements, Russian Constructivism, Italian Futurism, Dutch de Stijl, and German Dada were in large part characterised by the anarchic type and layout of manifestos in various esoteric and commercial media. Graphic designers were artists who led rather than followed existing ideas of rightness.” While comparing formal aspects between Kruger’s works and El Lissitzky’s, it is clear to see this Russian constructivism link. Essentially, what all these early trailblazers have in common with Kruger is that they are calling for action—for the viewer to challenge the way they act or get up and do something. The main difference, however, is that Kruger wants us to construct that “deeper meaning” that became the tone for postmodern art, versus early designers who were, for the sake of argument, more concerned with production and the aesthetic quality of a piece. While these early graphic designers looked towards technology to create this new type of propaganda art, it soon became mainstream; once again avant-garde turned conventional; much like the work of Kruger when comparing it from the 1970s to today. As Kruger started entering the commercial art field, she became more and more critical of the confines 158

and definitions of artistic practices and strived to work outside of graphic design’s literal frame. In the 1980s, the two major positions were Neo-Expressionism and Neo Conceptualism. The Neo-Conceptualists largely responded to the works of Walter Benjamin, and engaged in the making of simulacra, by acknowledging that in this hyper-reality they could “enslave” the audience. It is really this “deeper meaning” that trumps form in Kruger’s art, 11 yet it is her iconic style that has skyrocketed her towards easy recognition and popularity. During this time the 1980s postmodernism was in its infancy. It is evident that, through her own explorations and practices, Kruger was a leader at the forefront of postmodernist, contemporary art. By setting the bar and challenging her colleagues, a wave of Neo-Conceptualists joined the party. Enjoying similar recognition and concepts as Kruger, artists such as Mary Kelly, Sherry Levine, the Guerilla Girls, Jenny Holzer, and Cindy Sherman are often tied together as ground breaking, postmodernist, feminist, conceptual artists. Often employing one-liners to convince their audience to question social or internal rituals, these women are known for creating theoretically and philosophically charged art. British artist Mary Kelly’s works “are constructed around feminist/theoretical discussions on sexuality, representation, ideology, and subjectivity.” Sherry Levine is known for using appropriated imagery. The Guerilla Girls anonymously publish stark public, issue-based art. Jenny Holzer is renowned for her LED displays, installations, and public art. Cindy Sherman’s work dabbled in feminism, mass cultural values, often included mixed media, and blurred the lines between “high” to “low” art, much like Barbara Kruger’s. “Barbara Kruger’s

concern with the relationship between violence and the will to perfection intensified in the early 1980s, as her work became informed by, and contributed to, feminist ideas about politics of vision,” comments Rosalyn Deutsche. Recalling an exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Barbara Kruger was deeply influenced by the work of Magdalena Abakanowicz in 1969, who made “powerful, large-scale, woven hangings and textile works were central to integrating the so-called ‘craft’ traditions with ‘fine art,’ and were central to issues of feminism among women artists who asserted this so called ‘women’s work’ into art history.” Ironically, Kruger was also making large-scale crochet pieces at the same time. It is understood that Diane Arbus was another great influence on Kruger and quite possibly her first female artist role model. Responding to women artists and art historians in the early 1970s speaking against underrepresentation, gender roles were a big topic in the 1980s. Even before then, a peculiar thing was happening in Germany at the Bauhaus school. Women artists, although encouraged to study there, were often ushered towards fibber arts (rather than say, architecture) and other stereotypical studies. Also during this time, “feminist theoreticians [in France] elaborated new critical approaches to the artwork and its function within an aesthetic and social context.” The women in Kruger’s artistic circle decided to tackle these social issues, and for that, women artists all over the world should be thankful. But, before I dive too deep in the feminist pool, I would like to maintain the view that although I am grateful that these women were pioneers for the fight against sexual discrimination, by speaking out and raising these issues, women have felt

more encouraged to join the art realm. The issue of underrepresentation of women versus men in the workforce is still a problem that most are willing to stand against today, for equality among all, but I am not, however, making the claim that Kruger is not a graphic designer because she is considered more of a feminist. I just think it is an important perspective to consider when analysing the Barbara Kruger’s work. So where does Kruger stand, you may ask? “Her bottom line has always been that an expansive political agenda for women means being free to look good while thinking hard, to not be forced into positions that divide body from brain.” Kruger’s works are not always infused with a feminist agenda, and critics do not do her work justice by looking at it from that perspective only. She also takes aim at politics and consumers, releasing her “passion for current events and appreciation for popular culture,” saying herself, “I’m interested in how identities are constructed, how stereotypes are formed, how narratives sort of congeal and become history... especially now in global culture that is simultaneously hungry for spectacle, yet seemingly shock-proof.” Kruger uses the idea of the stereotype to intimidate the viewer into submission. Craig Owens suggests that, “To become effective, stereotypes must circulate endlessly, relentlessly throughout society.”xl As Kruger points out, “The stereotype, in fact, confers on the individual dream of a double postulation: dream of identity/dream of otherness.” By the displaying of public art, in signs, posters, billboards, etc., Kruger utilizes this stereotypical approach successfully by aiming at consumers. The images she appropriates add another layer of the stereotype. Since their source is from mass 159

media, as has been explained, they typically project the body of an ideal woman, or an object in its idealized state, thus creating the simulacra. It seems that Kruger does not restrict herself to one type of medium, size, or material. Through her explorations, she has continued to expand her practice since her emergence onto the art scene. So why is she relentlessly labeled a graphic designer? While in school, Kruger took interest in architecture, saying “… architecture is one of the predominant orderings of social space,”xlii but it wasn’t until much later that she began to create installations and collaborated with architects for public works. Her architectural works range from a series of five floormosaics for the Fisher College of Business at the Ohio State University (See Image 10), to the aid in designing a pier for the Seattle Waterfront project. She even joined forces with SmithMiller and Hawkinson architects, as well as landscape architect Nicholas Quennell to produce a permanent outdoor installation entitled Imperfect Utopia, in 1987 at the North Carolina Museum of Art outdoor theater in Raleigh. As seen from the sky, the piece reads ‘Picture This’ (in Futura Bold Oblique, of course) and is accompanied with a wall and an entire surrounding featuring thoughtful quotes from famous people. One example, a tile on the wall, reads: “Give your brain as much attention as you do your hair and you’ll be a thousand times better off,” from Malcolm X. Characteristic of Kruger’s style, the quotes are reflexive. Bertens observes, “… the understanding of postmodern spatiality and how it is being transformed by the forces of global commodity and capitalism.”xliii This idea of space surrounding the artwork is a postmodern idea that Kruger actively engages in. Rosalyn Deutsche notes, “In both form and thematic content, Kruger’s message 160

animated the space and disrupted its fixity.”xliv She brings issues that society usually frowns upon or ignores, blows it up, and makes you face it. As a major part of her practice, Kruger continues exploring architectural surfaces and spaces through installations and public art today, stating, “… Working on large-scale installations demands a level of complexity and engagement that is hard [for me] to resist… a way to effectively activate a space.” One may notice after studying her installations that it is hard to imagine a space within them that is not actively engaged. Barbara Kruger is known for her large-scale gallery prints and display art that she has mostly stayed true to since the beginning of her career. While working as a designer and art director for the magazine industry, Kruger worked on the small-scale. However, most of what she is known for, and a characteristic of her work is that it is large and abrasive. It should be taken into consideration that because Kruger is a largely influential designer, her huge pieces have made an impact on the graphic design profession forcing practitioners and receivers of visual communications to think outside the box, or think big. When one considers scale and the simulacra associated with Kruger’s work, one must consider how the human body’s senses perceive the work. Considering the fact that, through the text and image composition, Kruger is creating and ushering you into the simulacra, she is successful at it because by pushing the large scale, she literally puts the audience right into this falsified universe. Another tactic Kruger deploys is paying attention to every space within a space (a gallery or park space, for example), and inserts information into crevices. It is common for her

to write her messages on the floor, ceiling, and awkward angles on walls. By forcing the audience to look up, down, and all around them in order to decode a message, they are putting themselves into her environment and ultimately surrendering their brains to the mind of Barbara Kruger. Unlike paint on a canvas, Kruger’s works are usually digitally conceived and printed on paper, vinyl, or whatever the project calls for. The only sense of texture is found in her commonly grainy photographs. Other than that, there is no need or desire to reach out and feel or touch anything. The works are flat. You are met with the piece as it is, and since your senses have been bombarded by Kruger’s messages, you may have a feeling of uneasiness or insecurity. Due to the fact that the majority of her installations are covered from wall to wall with text, as one tries to decode the messages, the feeling of coldness or isolation (in order to reflect upon one’s actions) is what Kruger strives for. “A lot of people get freaked out by this work, uptight around it, defensive, hostile, threatened, as if it were a person telling them things, which it is, of course, but then a certain number of people never get the joke, and don’t want to get the joke.” Although Barbara Kruger wants everyone to “get the joke,” it is evident that her practice is successful. When Kruger first started making image and text combinations, or typical “graphic design” layouts, the text was typically painted on the surface. Flatness gave way to the onset of technology when Kruger started using Lettraset—a technique of dry-transferring the vinyl text onto the surface of the print. xlvii This was a time-consuming process, but so was hand lettering and silk-screening—the

only other methods available at the time for largeformat pieces. Another draw back to silk-screening is that it was extremely expensive, especially for a struggling artist. These pieces produced with the more primitive types of technology available before the dawn of the digital age, and are labeled Kruger’s “transitional works,” because eventually everything was output digitally. On a positive note, digital output has benefitted Kruger financially. In order to prove that Kruger is not only a graphic designer, one should compare her work to that of a successful artists who embraces the title graphic designer—April Greiman. Born in 1948, Kruger and Greiman are not so far apart in age. Both of these women engaged in the art of graphic design before the dawn of the computer, which revolutionized the field. Unlike Kruger, Grieman received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Kansas City Art Institute and attended graduate school at the infamous Allgemeine Kunstgewerbeschule in Basel, Switzerland.xlviii Also contrastingly, Greiman completely embraced the new medium, and is known for creating some of the first graphic design artwork on the Macintosh computer. (See Image 12) In contrast, Greiman has never really stuck to one consistent style or medium, and as the onset of technology deepened, Greiman looked to a new way of exploring her art through technology and later coined the term “transmedia.” Work produced among the women is commonly conceptual and large-scale. Commenting on her work and the use of the computer and technology as tools, Greiman says, “I find that with the ease of the current tools, it is easy to perpetuate what I call the look of meaning. I am all for true meaning, where it can be excavated or found.” Arguing that anyone can make something look pretty, aesthetically, Greiman’s work tends to be more typography-based than Barbara Kruger’s, but then 161

again, she is not trying to confront the audience with one-liners. Greiman is also known for her work in photography, and often creates works using her own images. Barbara Kruger’s name and works have received international recognition and success. Her first international show was the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, in 1983, entitled “We Won’t Play Nature to Your Culture,” and was coupled with the work of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. xlix Many of her pieces are produced in multiple languages and displayed all over the world rom a train station platform in Strasburg, France, to billboards, bus stop signs, and other propaganda in Germany, Australia, and many other countries. Within the matter of a few months, in 2010 alone, Barbara Kruger produced an installation at the Stedelijk Museum, and video installation in Berlin. She has received major international success, although it is commonly known that consumerism in America is, perhaps, more of a problem than in the rest of the world, certainly more so than in third-world countries. After gaining international success and a hugely successful career, what could possibly be next for the Barbara Kruger? She has had clients ranging from the Gap (where she designed a number of t-shirts), to the band Rage Against the Machine (for whom she designed multiple tshirts and a concert tour backdrop, as well as helped with the music video “Bulls on Parade”), and has even worked on a video project for MTV in support of the “Silence the Violence” campaign in 1993. As mentioned, with the onset of technology, tools and techniques of the “graphic designer” or “hybrid artist” such as Kruger are constantly changing. Although she has worked minimally with LEDs, film, digital media, and Jumbotrons 162

in Times Square, Kruger really has not explored the digital medium too extensively. When asked in an interview what medium or type of project she is looking to engage in, Kruger answered that she had been working with film and video to “bring up the scale of my work a little. I’m doing a 3,000-squarefoot piece for a new student center bring built at the University of California, San Diego, using large images and LEDs running a Reuters news feed. I’m also doing some video projects, one in Beverly Hills on two sides of a large, vacant Robinsons-May building that can be seen from afar.” The interview was conducted in 2008. Will she venture into screen-based media? Unless there’s a huge screen, working on small scale seems to be out of Kruger’s character. With her interest in architecture, could she possibly be involved in designing architectural projections or optical-art installations? Is that what her recent project in Beverly Hills is? “I think I developed language skills to deal with threat. It’s the girl thing to do - you know, instead of pulling out a gun.” Known for publishing a countless number of books and articles, Kruger remains an active writer, professor, lecturer, and artist. There’s no telling what kind of social issue or medium Kruger will investigate next. Because of the issues she embarks upon and the forms she explores, Kruger’s work will continue to be relevant as long as the problems she raises are unresolved mostly consumerism and gender inequality issues that, sadly, guarantee artists and critics like Kruger a job. As far Barbara Kruger the artist, and master of the Kruger Style, she will continue to be studied in the fields of graphic design, issue-based art, and contemporary theory books, for years to come.

When asked what kind of “ism” her work fits into being labeled herself a social advocate; political activist; hybrid, intermediate, or cross-over artist etc. Kruger is strongly opposed to labeling. Jerry Saltz is with Kruger on this, stating, “Pardon me, but what the fuck does it matter? Kruger cut through the bullshit. She completely nailed the potential of her art, and made it absolutely clear that she was at war with hypocrisy. Barbara Kruger was critical but not negative, opened up a wide aesthetic swath, and created something so forceful and indelible it could be called the Barbara Kruger Effect.” What’s certain is that Barbara Kruger’s messages resonate in the eyes of her viewers. Acknowledging that the art world is changing for the better, she mentions, “The containments of categories has loosened, allowing for a kind of grazing: a mixing and matching of activities and mediums.” To put it bluntly, my argument is that graphic design is currently going through a true identity crisis. The crisis lies in the debate over the prevalence of technology or screen based media and a lack of conceptual criticism and art making in today’s world. After all, any young artist, or citizen, for that matter, can grab a hold of a computer and a copy of Adobe’s Creative Suite and call himself or herself a graphic designer.A similar crisis is being observed in the worlds of film and photography, thanks to the availability of YouTube, Picasso, and other self publishing websites, as well as the easier access to materials such as digital cameras and camcorders. anyone who can get a computer and create a blog is an instant journalist.

Kruger was observing this trend in categorising and hierarchy within society, and wrote about these issues in her books and articles like Remote Control one of Barbara Kruger’s earliest, sarcastic books. Warning of the issues of media and our engagement with it, perhaps this is why Kruger is cautious when using technology in her art. Yes, she has opposed the idea of labelling herself as one type of artist, but Barbara must just burn when she is referred to as a graphic designer because of this identity crisis associated with the label to those of us who are constantly stereotyped in the field. In fact, except for a hand full of graphic designers studying theology and a few art historians and critics here and there, the discussion about graphic design as an art form has largely been avoided. One of the main reasons Kruger is invaluable to the practice of “graphic design” is because she took the art into a gallery setting. Ephemeral objects that were only seen on the street, or for public view, were forced under a critical microscope once present in museums. In response to this crisis, artists like Kruger were producing art that made us question labels, while Katherine McCoy strove to reform graphic design education, and yet simultaneously, artists like April & Licko embraced digital media. With the introduction of the computer into the arts in the 1980s, the avant-garde needed a label for this new medium and somewhere along the lines “graphic design” started to be used to apply to the type of art produced. Today, we look at the computer with hesitation, knowing of its limits and restrictions, which were not so evident early on, when the possibilities that the computer brought to the artistic imagination were endless.

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