Death of the Artist: Art World Dissidents and their Alternative Identities 9781788315821, 9781786734723

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Nicola McCartney is an artist and educator. She is a lecturer in Cultural Studies at Central St Martins, University of the Arts London. She was previously Associate Research Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London, and has taught fine art and critical theory at The Sir John Cass Faculty of Art, Architecture and Design at London Metropolitan University. She is also a practising artist and has exhibited throughout London and the UK, received public commissions and undertaken residencies.

‘Nicola McCartney is part of a new generation of thinkers about art. Art now is more playful and indiscreet than it has ever been but it also aspires to talk to a political world that is both frightening but also where there is a possibility to reach new audiences. The idea of the artist in this new space is changing. In this book McCartney charts the careers of artists who question the role of the artist and who seek to subvert the notion that art is produced only by artists. McCartney asks: who do these artists think they are?’ Bob and Roberta Smith ‘Nicola McCartney gets it: anonymous groups subvert the Western convention of the artist as a lone genius (usually a white male).’ Guerrilla Girls ‘Nicola McCartney offers us a fresh and incisive analysis of moments in modern and contemporary art in which pseudonyms, anonymity, and collective identities are put to use. In doing so, McCartney interrogates the foundations of traditional art history and the art market. Death of the Artist is an important and exciting new contribution to our understanding of art's political efficacy.’ Joanne Morra, Reader in Art History and Theory, Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London

Death of the Artist

Art World Dissidents and Their Alternative Identities Nicola McCartney

Published in 2018 by I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd London • New York www.ibtauris.com Copyright q 2018 Nicola McCartney The right of Nicola McCartney to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Every attempt has been made to gain permission for the use of the images in this book. Any omissions will be rectified in future editions. References to websites were correct at the time of writing. International Library of Modern and Contemporary Art 26 ISBN: 978 1 78453 414 1 (HB) 978 1 78453 415 8 (PB) eISBN: 978 1 78672 472 4 ePDF: 978 1 78673 472 3 A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available Typeset in Minion Pro by OKS Prepress Services, Chennai, India Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

For brave artists, especially those included here.

Contents ix xii

List of Figures Preface

1

Introduction 1

2

3

4

5

Parodies of the Self: Surrealism and Ambivalent Authorship in ‘Rrose S
elavy’ and ‘Claude Cahun’

29

Collective Practice: Art & Language and LuckyPDF

59

Interview: Socio-Art & The Art of Interaction: James Early of LuckyPDF Interviewed by Nicola McCartney on 9 May 2013

90

Anonymity and Feminism: Guerrilla Girls

115

Interview: Feminist Avengers: Guerrilla Girls Interviewed by Nicola McCartney on 14 August 2013

152

Pseudonyms: Bob and Roberta Smith

171

Interview: Art Mythologies: Bob and Roberta Smith Interviewed by Nicola McCartney on 18 February 2013

195

Performance and Collaboration: ‘No, I’m Spartacus’. . . Chetwynd!

209

Conclusion

237

Notes Bibliography Index

245 273 285

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List of Figures Figure 1.1 Man Ray, Belle Haleine, 1921. Gelatin silver print, 22.4 £ 17.8 cm. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. q Man Ray Trust ARS-ADAGP.

38

Figure 1.2 Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, 1928. Gelatin silver print, 11.8 £ 9.4 cm. Courtesy of the Jersey Heritage Collections.

39

Figure 1.3 Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, c.1928. Jersey Heritage Trust. Gelatin silver print, 12 £ 9.4 cm. Courtesy of the Jersey Heritage Collections.

42

Figure 1.4 Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp as Rrose Selavy, c.1920 – 1. (1)(A). Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art. Gelatin silver print, 21.6 £ 17.3 cm. Signed in black ink, at lower right: lovingly / Rrose Sélavy / alias Marcel Duchamp [cursive]. The Samuel S. White 3rd and Vera White Collection, 1957. q 2017. Photo: The Philadelphia Museum of Art/ Art Resource/Scala, Florence.

44

Figure 1.5 Marcel Moore, 1930. Printed photomontage. Courtesy of the Jersey Heritage Collections.

52

Figure 1.6 Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, c.1939. Jersey Heritage Trust. Gelatin silver print, 10.8 £ 8.4 cm. Courtesy of the Jersey Heritage Collections.

56

Figure 2.1 Art & Language, Index 01, 1972, 8 filing cabinets, 48 photostats, 4 plinths. Installation dimensions variable. Collection Daros, Zurich. q Art & Language; Courtesy Lisson Gallery.

69

Figure 2.2 Art & Language, Index: Incident in a Museum VI, 1986. Oil on canvas, 174 £ 271 cm. q Art & Language; Courtesy Lisson Gallery.

73

ix

Death of the Artist Figure 2.3 Ed Fornieles models, LuckyPDF s/s 2013. Photo: Oskar Proctor. Courtesy of LuckyPDF.

81

Figure 2.4 Chloe Sims, LuckyPDF’s School of Global Art (TOWIE’s Chloe Sims for the School of Global Art, featuring James Early and Chloe Sims). ICA, London, April 2012. Photo: Victoria Erdelevskaya. Photograph courtesy of James Early.

104

Figure 3.1 Original postcards sent from the Guerrilla Girls to artists asking them to agree to encourage their galleries to show more women and artists of colour. From Guerrilla Girls archive at Getty Research institute, LA, August 2013. Permission to reproduce granted by the Guerrilla Girls. Photograph taken by Nicola McCartney.

118

Figure 3.2 Guerrilla Girls, Guerrilla Girls’ Pop Quiz. q 1990, 1995 Guerrilla Girls. Courtesy of the Guerrilla Girls.

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Figure 3.3 Guerrilla Girls, Code of Ethics for Art Museums. q 1989 Guerrilla Girls. Courtesy of the Guerrilla Girls.

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Figure 3.4 A subscription request from a member of the public questioning the Guerrilla Girls’ varied rates for their journal Hot Flashes, found in the archives of the Guerrilla Girls, Getty Research Institute, LA. Photograph taken in August 2013. Permission to reproduce granted by the Guerrilla Girls. Photograph taken by Nicola McCartney.

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Figure 3.5 Guerrilla Girls, Do Women Have to Be Naked to Get Into the Met. Museum? q 1989, 1995 Guerrilla Girls. Courtesy of the Guerrilla Girls.

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Figure 4.1 Bob and Roberta Smith, ‘Don’t Hate Sculpt’ (1997). Installation view, Chisenhale Gallery, 1997. Courtesy of Chisenhale Gallery.

173

Figure 4.2 The Art Party Conference 2013, presented by Bob and Roberta Smith on Saturday 23 November at The SPA, Scarborough. Photograph taken by Nicola McCartney at the event.

185

x

List of Figures Figure 5.1 Spartacus Chetwynd, ‘Jesus and Barabbas’ the puppet show, as part of ‘Odd Man Out’ by Spartacus Chetwynd at Sadie Coles HQ, London (5 May–4 June 2011). Press image taken from Sadie Coles HQ website, 4 April 2012: www.sadiecoles. com/artists/chetwynd#mgc-odd-man-out-2011.

225

Figure 5.2 Bat Opera, Installation view, lower ground, ‘Marvin Gaye Chetwynd' (11 March –26 April 2014, Sadie Coles HQ, London). Photograph taken by Nicola McCartney at the opening event of the exhibition.

235

xi

Preface Authorship is part of a discourse. How one attributes artists’ creations, the name they use, a chosen identity or whom else they might collaborate with can become complicated and political, a reflection of their time. The significance of who wrote a work, directed a film or spoke a poem varies by culture and history. Currently, the prevailing terrain of authorship in the commercial art world is that the signature still carries a lot of value and the personality of the maker contributes to our understanding of the cultural product. You might wonder, what does it matter? The work itself does not change. But authorship can make a difference. The novels authored by women in past centuries under male guises matter because they reflect socio-political times of oppression and their acknowledgement meant subsequent progress for women’s emancipation. The films sold as a director’s debut earn less because they attract fewer crowds. Art might be revered and sold for millions because it was made by a ‘genius’, who continues to haunt our galleries, retrospectives and histories, marginalising other artists, other cultures and concepts of art. This author thinks the traditional connoisseur is outdated; intellectual property and copyright is sacred yet, in the digital era, we appropriate and clash old with new media more than ever. We use apps to ‘swap faces’ and ‘mash up’ music, and photoshop is a verb. Our concept of authorship and its increasingly idiosyncratic and contemporary issues need to be updated. This project thus intends to reimagine artistic concepts of authorship and its current critique through a series of artists who complicate the debate with their identities and practices. Here follows an example of how the artist is perpetuated in the meaning of their work, which we might consider the prevailing model of authorship. The example highlights that traditional modes of authorship and how we read works of art, with recourse to their maker, remain problematic and limit the wider discourse of visual art. The Royal Academy’s 2012 blockbuster exhibition, ‘David Hockney: A Bigger Picture’

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Preface (21 January – 9 April) divided critics. While the Royal Academy attracted record-breaking ticket sales and press coverage, Hockney’s acidic colours, sparse landscapes and huge canvases were roundly condemned. The late Brian Sewell of the Evening Standard described the work as ‘repetitive’, ‘garish’, ‘careless’, ‘crude’ and ‘coarse’ (19 January 2012). But he didn’t stop there; he made it personal, concluding the review by calling Hockney ‘cocksure’ and a ‘vulgar prankster’, as if we, the public, were being cheated, played for fools by the artist’s purported skills. Sewell’s review reflects much of the media’s cynical response to contemporary art; one just has to pick up a newspaper for the generic ‘that’s not art’ response to the annual Turner Prize. This supposedly keeps art ‘in check’ so that museums and artists don’t insult the paying public who keep their collections alive and doors open. It is a regular threat, akin to the story of The Emperor’s New Clothes. The moral is that those with too much vanity and money will eventually be ‘exposed’ as lacking in skill and modesty. Yet, I find the implied authority of popular criticism, the notion that my taste or value is spoken for, more patronising than any work of art that encourages me to think and engage, even if I don’t like it. Many of Sewell’s questions concerning the number of works and their hanging are better addressed to the curator. I was at the press view for this show and it was made quite clear that the ‘unreally bright’ colours were influenced by Hockney’s initial sketches made on his iPad, which has a limited palette and from which the canvases were painted. So too are the ‘careless’ brush strokes taken from the pixilated image and limited ‘tool kit’ of his drawing app, not as an excuse but as a direct nod to the new medium at the time. Indeed, Hockney is known for his association with science and embracing new media in painting. According to the press release, ‘A Bigger Picture’ was supposed to be a reflection of the artist’s continued engagement with new technology, its simple and communicative advantages and personal influence on his career. Also exhibited were a series of iPads displaying his original drawings, digital prints and a multiple-screen moving-image painting that created an overall landscape from different perspectives. Whether or not Sewell knew this is almost irrelevant; his criticism is explicitly personal, aimed at the artist himself and not his work. Unfortunately, however, it wasn’t only critics who lost sight of what made this work original, good or bad, it was also the Royal Academy.

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Death of the Artist Again and again we witnessed publicity, on the tube, in newspapers, in art magazines and outside the exhibition itself, which showed the artist engaged in the act of painting, a romanticised depiction of the ‘hand of the master’. Despite the presiding medium of the iPad underpinning the exhibition, and the content of the show – that of the rural Yorkshire landscape – the poster depicts the artist as a central figure painting at his canvas, of which two-thirds is dominated by his figure, not quite doing justice to its epic scale. Featured in a beret, striped top and braces, northern lad Hockney poses as the clich
ed ‘artiste’. It seems ridiculous that the publicity image features him holding a brush to a finished canvas, without a palette in hand, standing on a clean floor, unlike any studio I have seen. The large writing, DAVID HOCKNEY, ironically overshadows the subtitle, A BIGGER PICTURE, as if to remind us who the artist was, probably because ticket sales hinge more on the artist’s identity than his work. And yet, if the Royal Academy were apologising for any confusion over the authenticity of the work, its lack of personal execution, medium or master, perhaps their poster would have been better if it had at least featured the front of the artist so we could identify him, and not his back. This is just one exhibition exemplifying the prevailing and problematic nature of the artist’s identity, which filters through the artwork, its press, market and criticism to the public’s understanding of its meaning and intent. Why then do we continually return to the artist, his or her biography and personality for a reading of their works? Answers to this are discussed below, but it should be acknowledged that this is a well-trodden path. As such, it is my ambition to shed light not just on the problems of authorship but on those artists who are traversing more nuanced questions of authorship through their own practice and complicated or dissident identities, artists who are reimagining authorship and its critique for us. Through my research I have had to re-evaluate my own notions of value, authorship and the role of the art institution. I began with somewhat naïve assumptions about the nature of anti-authorial work and have come to recognise that these case studies in fact operate in far more complex and intricate ways within the art world, and their negotiations of authorship have not all been without trial and error. As this research has evolved, I have become more conscious of my reliance on quotations, commercial gallery press releases and auction house databases. I have begun to realise

xiv

Preface the true resilience of the art market and biography, and their significance in supporting access to the arts, by, as Barthes concludes, ‘giving birth to the reader’.1 It has been interesting to learn that those case studies that began as collectives have experienced internal tensions over authorship and attribution while those artists who work under pseudonyms, individually, continue to defy traditional notions of authorship with comparative ease, but I have also discovered that a name or guise is not sufficient in itself to subvert a biographical reading of art. Indeed, as these artists continue to grow in popularity, it is important to revise the significance of their pseudonym and recognise whether we are just substituting one name for another. As part of my practice as an artist and author engaged in this area of research, I must also acknowledge my conservative and traditional contribution to the field, as a singular author writing her first monograph. I would like to thank my PhD supervisor, Dr Suzannah Bierfnoff, for her pragmatic advice and encouragement, my examiners, Helena Reckitt and Dr Luke White, and the peer reviewers for their constructive criticism. I also owe thanks to I.B.Tauris for identifying the project’s potential, Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, and the Association for Art History for supporting the project, and my family, Tom McCartney and Julian Milne, for their patience and proofing. Finally, without the creativity, support, interest and contributions of the artists discussed, none of this would have been possible. In the spirit of the authorial position of this project, I would therefore like to suggest that this work is also somewhat collaborative.

xv

Introduction

As a form of cultural expression, it is important that art continues to critique its own complex infrastructures; an undeniable part of which is authorship. The artists in question here establish that authorship is topical, political and that one can negotiate contemporary art world pressures through authorship and its critique. The following chapters demonstrate existing and new modes of authorship not seriously documented before, which offer alternatives to the prevailing ‘Author God’ or ‘art star’ syndrome but, equally, and as a consequence, alternatives to how we might interpret artworks with less recourse to the artist, which benefits the public, art enthusiast, practitioner, you and me. Seeking an ultimate author of an artwork is an extremely linear view of the act of creativity, and there are occasions when artists have challenged this trope. Through a discussion of selected visual art practices that dodge authorship in varied ways, I hope to provoke a vital and nuanced discussion about contemporary artistic authorship. The series also provides an alternative history of artists who have negotiated authorship that precedes notable authorial critique. How do emerging artists navigate intellectual property or work collectively and share the recognition? How might a pseudonym aid ‘artivism’? How can an alternative identity challenge the art market? As such, this project exposes the art world’s financially incentivised infrastructures, and also examines how they might be reshaped from within. This facet of artistic practice is not well documented because the artists in question problematise the economy that would otherwise benefit from writing their ‘biography’. In some cases, I have been able to obtain

1

Death of the Artist rare interviews with these artists on the subject, published here for the first time. Chapters reflect on the creative partnerships of Duchamp and Man Ray, who collaborated on the construction of the fictitious ‘Rrose S
elavy’, and Lucy Schwob and Suzanne Malherbe’s photographs of Schwob, better known by her nom de plume ‘Claude Cahun’. Contemporary case studies Art & Language, the Guerrilla Girls, Bob and Roberta Smith, Marvin Gaye Chetwynd and LuckyPDF are also examined, which helps to further critique the mythology of the artist. Each utilises a different mode of artistic production that negotiates the traditional role of the singular author or a biographical reading of their work: through the use of anonymity, pseudonyms, collective identities and, in some cases, all three. Whether some of these artists live on in name, legacy, posthumous reincarnation by other artists or as inspiration, each of them demonstrates that authorship is inherently political. By focusing in depth on these artists, some of whom are well respected and frequently referenced but lack serious research, I hope to illuminate alternative artistic modi operandi that encompass the reader more than the reigning art world would have us believe is possible, and how authorship might be reimagined in the future of contemporary art practice and its reception. While doing so, it will also be asked, who are they, why is their work more provocative or political, what causes them to defy the traditional, singular artist’s identity? Is there a history to this and how do they continue to navigate the art world under such guises? It can be taken for granted that these artists and this author critique traditional notions of authorship prominent in the contemporary art world, which are still supported by the art market, but the resilience of the artist’s biography must also be questioned. Whether we need to interpret an artwork is another question: some argue that to imply meaning or a translation is to ruin an artwork, an exercise that perhaps began in earnest to invest ancient texts with contemporary significance.1 Some argue that artworks ought to be more about form than content, and that good artwork rarely requires interpretation. Nonetheless, we live in an age rife with ‘meaning’ and so my enquiry is more about how and, to a lesser extent, why, the critic and us, the viewer, might reimagine ways of interpreting art without recourse to the artist first.

2

Introduction Throughout the history of art we have been conditioned to examine the artist’s biography to better understand their works of art. While this can be a useful tool for interpretation, it is generally accepted that a biography is subjective and socially constructed. Twentieth-century critical theorists, most famously Roland Barthes (1915 – 80) and Michel Foucault (1926 –84), challenged this notion of the author as a monolithic originator of meaning, proposing that a work of art’s purpose and existence depend equally on its viewer, and yet we are still overwhelmed with monographs and retrospectives; a history of artists rather than a history of art. This is largely because the discourse of art history is tied to wealthy art collectors and major museums; the subsequent canon of flattering artist’s biographies therefore becomes an economic necessity. But why is this detrimental to the wider discourse of visual culture, cultural productivity and reception? Since this project charts a series of visual art practices that dodge authorship in original ways, it can be assumed that they too critique traditional interpretative methodology and concepts of ‘genius’, but a short, and admittedly selective, detour into artistic authorship might still prove useful. This is a well-traversed discussion but is included as a reminder of the impact that concepts of authorship and genius have on our understanding of art, gender and subjectivity, so as to recognise the extent of the challenges posed by the artists included in this book. It is often argued that Vasari’s The Lives of the Artists (1550), a homage to what the Western world terms the ‘Old Masters’, set a precedent for an art history that trains and conditions us to examine the artist’s life to better understand his or her works of art. So accepted and common is this methodology that Gombrich makes a famous tribute to it with his very first line in the popular The Story of Art (1950): ‘There really is no such thing as Art. There are only artists.’2 This model for reading works of art is dependent upon the singular author whose identity is integral to an understanding of their work. The Western ‘myth’ of the artist has its origins in classical Greece. Artist’s biographies became an established literary genre during the Hellenistic period (323 –146 BC ), but it was Vasari who took this further with a series of narratives about the personalities of those artists he considered the best. Prior to this, we might consider artists as crafts persons, with a manual skill, almost akin to employing a painter or decorator. But the status of the artist was subsequently elevated to the extent that the legacy of Vasari’s

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Death of the Artist stories resulted in a concept of the artist as more than a man of skill, but instead one of innate talent, a figure revered alongside the rich elite like never before. On closer examination, however, Vasari may not have intended his writing to have such an impact. He actually describes the work of several artists in an attempt to promote a new generation of ‘higher’ art and artists, regularly appending the works of one to another, in order to identify new ‘schools’ and ‘styles’. Cosimo I’s regime encouraged art as production; a set of skills that could be taught so that culture might be standardised or controlled, the antithesis of individual genius. Indeed, the concept of genius as we know it was not applied to the artist until the Romantic period. The term used in Vasari’s Lives was ingegno or ingenium, meaning ingenuity, cleverness or originality. The concept of genius – defined as male, unique, original and almost divine – may not have originated in Lives.3 Originally commissioned by the Medici family and penned with the help of others, Lives is also a document of significant political and economic agency, a fact conveniently and continuously overlooked by the art market, which profits from the notion of individual authentication for monetary value, especially that of the Old Masters. One might even go as far as to consider Lives a form of social theory and not, as so often claimed, the beginning of individualism within art. That Lives should be responsible for a biographical or psychological approach to interpreting art or even the notion of the singular genius is, with hindsight, more than debatable. Thus we must also question the integrity of those who perpetuate the biographical approach to art. There are, of course, other contributions to the evolution of our concept of artistic genius, most notably that of the influential philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804). The Kantian genius’s gift is considered innate, a rare phenomenon that bears relation to nature or God, to the extent that even the artist is unable to explain how he produced such a work. ‘That is why, if an author owes a product to his genius, he himself does not know how he came by the ideas for it.’4 In one way, we can see that this concept of genius is at least extricable from the ‘hand of the master’, in the sense that it is perhaps not the artist that bears all authority. However, still problematic, it does contribute to the mystification of the production of art and thus the mythology of the artist.5 This is not to say that there were not other notions of authorship that existed side by side,

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Introduction but it this lasting concept of the solitary, mythical genius that this project seeks to challenge. Social historians argue that no one single person is responsible for a work of art; there are many contributing factors such as the materials used, education, patronage, the market and the fact that the work of art only exists as such when it has an audience. Sarah Thornton describes the art world as a series of subcultures – from art school to the auction house – that, when collated in her popular ethnographic study, Seven Days in the Art World (2008), can be likened to a type of social history. In addition, many artists, from Michelangelo to Damien Hirst, produce work in collaboration with peers, students or even have employees do it for them. For this school of thought, the notion of a stable or singular authorship is therefore also problematic. Taken to its extreme, one could argue that all art is collectively produced. For example, the collective contributions to a painting are almost innumerable, from a carpenter’s easel and stretcher to the manufacturers of paint. Moreover, if we consider the peers and education that influence a picture’s composition and style, and the critics that deem the artwork of value or not then, as the social historian Janet Wolff says, ‘the individual act of creation is manifestly a social act’.6 Ultimately, the ideas and attitudes believed to be expressed in that particular work can only be reflective of that artist’s social and cultural position, and of those who look at it at that given time. There are several reasons why the West continues to glorify the artist and dismisses the role of his or her assistants, partners or patrons in the making of their work: the art market relies on a hierarchy of attribution, the single signature being most valuable; it is easier to research and insert a singular author into our linear and supposedly progressive history; and, finally, the singular, ‘inspired’ or ‘tortured’ artist is easier to identify or empathise with. From Van Gogh to Frida Kahlo, Gwen John to Jackson Pollock, the wronged or tragic martyr forms the most popular subject. A recent psychological study examined the impact of perceived eccentricity of an artist on the evaluation of their skills and quality of their artworks. It found that, from Van Gogh to Lady Gaga, eccentricity increased perceptions of artistic quality and appreciation to the extent that even a fictitious artist’s work was valued higher based on their eccentric appearance.7 This mode of reading was increased when the sample population (not familiar with art) were faced with artworks more difficult

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Death of the Artist to ‘read’ or considered ‘unconventional’, such as abstract works where the narrative or figure is absent. Interestingly, the art was only considered of better quality when the artist’s eccentricity was deemed authentic, which is something often considered as only evidenced by having lived through a biographical trauma. One might also attribute the West’s interest in the tragic hero and redemptive suffering to the foundations and legacy of Christianity and its accounts of the ultimate martyr.8 The common narrative of the tortured, solitary genius is still prevalent. It has been documented and attested since the Romantics brought this notion to a climax, whereby the death of the poet Thomas Chatterton (1752 – 70), for example, is even celebrated in Henry Wallis’ painting and subsequently heroicised or seen as a prerequisite to creativity.9 The list of those who supposedly suffered for their art is a long one and some scientists have argued that the correlation between mental illness and creativity is too strong.10 The position taken up here, however, is that artists’ biographies have been exaggerated and that these artists should be celebrated because they made art despite their disabilities, not because of them. The belief in a single author and reliance on their intentionality or biography for meaning is not only detrimental to the independent pleasure given by works of art, it also denies the viewer agency and perpetuates their low self-esteem and submissiveness when it comes to making a judgement of taste. Even graver, however, it leads to the neglect of other artworks and artists who do not fit so nicely into the canon of art because of their authorship. In her seminal essay ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?’ (1971), Linda Nochlin highlighted the gap in art history where female artists have been obscured. She argued that the gender gap lies in the inherent assumptions attached to her rhetorical question: there are no ‘great’ female artists because women were denied the education and ability to develop the necessary skills to be considered so; ‘great’ is defined by the academies that rejected women and thus prescribe and define the notion based on their own image. Therefore, a woman cannot be ‘great’ irrespective of her potential. One response would be to dig up examples of worthy or insufficiently appreciated women artists throughout history. The danger of re-writing a parallel female history of art is that it further marginalises woman and reinforces separatism. Moreover, as curator Helena Reckitt posits, a new

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Introduction set of art ‘her’stories fails to critique the market’s dependency on the biography and the origins of the gendered (male) ‘genius’: There’s a danger of creating a version of the star system so beloved of the art market, which prizes individual ‘genius’ and ignores a dialogue and collaboration between women. And there’s a trap of heroine worship, in which the achievements of women are uncritically celebrated in an understandable but counterproductive effort to compensate for years of neglect.11

It is therefore not enough to highlight the biographies of the invisible Other, for this falls short of setting a proper context of artistic practice: the various collaborations, networks and social productions of art at stake. Moreover, revised encyclopaedias and monographs of neglected Others only reinforces the systems of meaning and value that originally excluded them. Art is, of course, not the only sector struggling with women’s authorship; need we mention the series of women writers forced to use male pseudonyms in order to be published? In 1836 Charlotte Bront€e was told ‘Literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life’ by the poet laureate Robert Southey. Along with her sisters, she assumed a male pen name under which she released her work. Charlotte became Currer Bell, Anne became Acton Bell and Emily became Ellis. Even J.K. Rowling was advised to publish under her initials, and not her name, Joanne. Traditional patriarchal structures defining ‘great’ are also perpetuated by the melancholy, passive and sexualised female artists portrayed throughout artist’s biopics. The roles written for some of the better known female artists’ biopics – Artemisia Gentileschi (1593 – 1653; Valentina Cervi in Artemisia, 1997), Lee Krasner (1908 –84; Marcia Gay Harden in Pollock, 2000), Frida Kahlo (1907 – 54; Salma Hayek in Frida, 2002), Diane Arbus (1923 – 71; Nicole Kidman in Fur, 2006) and S
eraphine de Senlis (1864 – 1942; Yolande Moreau in S
eraphine, 2008) – comprise a shockingly short and sad summary of women artists as seen through film. Often defined by their male counterparts – lovers and dealers – they form a tragic and clingy cast of characters, not real artists upon which we should pin our understanding of their artistic output.12 Griselda Pollock’s 1980 essay for Screen highlighted the artistic mythologies of madness and melancholy related to notions of genius 7

Death of the Artist perpetuated by film. In her case study of Vincente Minnelli’s biopic of Van Gogh she argued that Hollywood’s drama-centred genre had reverted back to the structures of the psycho-biographical reading. The film is obviously ‘of its time’, and Van Gogh’s exaggerated character is even amusing with hindsight. A more recent film, however, such as Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus (2006), documents Nicole Kidman as the photographer, but not once does she take a photograph. Hollywood is part of a wider popular culture and in a position to ‘educate’ the masses yet it is still somewhat lagging behind the discipline of art history in recovering women artists from the narratives of romance, domestication and psychopathology, serving again to perpetuate the myth of the male genius. There are several artists who have challenged this trope – and the prevailing myths of artistic identity associated with greatness – whose feminist works over the past several decades have forced art historians and the culture industry in general to reassess issues of authorship through gender. The Guerrilla Girls and, as I will argue, even the early twentiethcentury works of ‘Rrose S
elavy’ and ‘Claude Cahun’ (all included in this book), are examples of this. Should we, or can we, really dispense with the biography? While a biographical approach to reading works of art needs to be critically questioned as fraught with myth it is nonetheless still a significant aspect of artistic interpretation. In attempting to define all works of art without recourse to their author, we are left with a strictly semiotic or formalist approach. On top of this, if we do not acknowledge the impact of art’s wider social production or indeed even acknowledge the ongoing significance of identity politics, we fail to recognise art not made by the default white male. There are feminist criticisms of the authorship problem that must also be considered. For example, to what extent might a text be limited when the reader knows the author’s sex and, if we were to deny this, would it be an erasure of the female voice previously fought for? To what extent, then, can we use a biographical approach to interpreting works of art? As part of Pollock’s essay for Screen she studied Van Gogh’s letters, medical history and posthumous press, revealing that the artist may have in fact injured his ear during an epileptic fit, rather than in an act of self-harm. She also indicates that, while much is made of Van Gogh’s affinity with the peasants he painted, he very much considered

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Introduction himself a part of the bourgeoisie. His relationship with the rural proletariat was actually financial, serving as an employer. Local agricultural workers seeking extra income probably served as models for his destitute peasants, rather than the latter being representative of the artist’s social circle. In doing so, Pollock removes a level of mythology associated with the artist and therefore some of the empathy with which we have come to view Van Gogh and his art. Pollock argues that relying on the artist’s biography becomes self-fulfilling; we begin to read works of art as a means of understanding the artist, and the artist as a means of understanding their work. The two become inextricably bound, so much so that the discipline is in danger of losing its credibility. We then question, is art history a genre of history writing or a speculation on artists? Because the biography is chronological it produces a linear narrative that is not necessarily true, but which we understand as coherent because it belongs to one life, which we use to fix a meaning. So when Pollock argues that ‘Art history can be therefore designated as a literature rather than a history or historical discourse’,13 she is highlighting that using the story of an artist from rags to riches, for example, to explain their progression of work, is a means of deception; there may not even be a progression. Instead, Pollock argues that the idea of the artist is more a reflection and function of our desire to construct a narrative. There are reasons that art historians, curators, critics, connoisseurs and other writers have turned to the biography that are not so intuitive. When constructing an artist’s biography, only those aspects of that artist’s life which are deemed to bear relation to their artistic oeuvre are included and discussed. In this sense, like Vasari’s Lives, the artist’s monograph might not even be considered a proper biography and the discipline of art history not a history at all, but an isolated genre of writing, tracing the artist’s life ‘within the narrow limits of only that which serves to render all that is narrated as signifiers of artiness’.14 Thus even the artist’s biography is unstable because it is selectively written. Facts that may be interesting or relevant to a usual biography are omitted because they do not assert the ‘artiness’ of the subject or serve as a means to contemplate the subject’s creativity. In this sense, the biographical art historian secures their own trade because the monograph or catalogue raisonn
e can be re-written, again and again, with new research, revelations and documentation. Moreover, the artist’s biography

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Death of the Artist has its own particular style; the ‘historian’ edits their research so the reader need only bother with the essential ‘arty story’, so much so that they become dependent on the ‘historian’ as a mediator of the artist in order to understand the art, which undeniably perpetuates the art historian’s career, tasked forever with researching and publishing more archives and facts ‘relevant’ to the artist’s life. Common to the authorship problem is the notion of authenticity that we demand from the artist’s perceived identity or biography. An obvious example of autobiographical art is that by Tracey Emin, who has been scrutinised for exaggerating her troubled childhood experiences. The art historian Deborah Cherry criticises this demand through a case study of her My Bed (first created in 1998). Cherry argues that with the increasingly global art world and travelling exhibitions – international biennales and retrospectives – it is the contemporary artist upon whom we have begun to fix meaning, ‘who can ensure the work’s intelligibility from site to site’.15 Heightened by the fact that she is still alive, Emin becomes both the source and explanation for the meaning of her work. This, as Cherry argues, ‘tempts critics to ascribe a singular and stable referent, the artist herself’ and ‘If art is no more and no less than the artist’s life, then authenticity becomes a key benchmark for a critical practice that judges the artist rather than the work.’16 What then if the artist is telling a lie or their art is not a reliable account of their life? In the British press, Emin received lots of criticism, being branded a ‘media junkie’, along with many other self-publicising Young British Artists. In the United States, however, there was a more positive reception of her work, encouraging the artist to continue to use her art to confront her difficult youth. This is also indicative of the cultural differences that will render an equally different biographical reading of an artwork depending on its location and audience. Critics complained that Emin’s originally shocking work became a bore once they ‘knew’ her life, or that she was exaggerating some of her own personal tragedies. This type of criticism fails to account for the art and is surely more a criticism of the story of Emin’s life than its depiction. More significantly, where has it ever been stated that art had to be a ‘truth’? One would never complain that Old Master paintings of religious scenes or historical events depicted ‘untruths’. Perhaps most uncomfortable, is that the ‘truth’ exposed represents that of a young, sexually active woman.

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Introduction Though Emin is represented through the curatorial text and her personal belongings replace the more traditional signature, there are also objects representing other persons – condoms and suitcases – men, friends and the symbols of coming and going. Cherry examines the significance of the suitcase in an era of extreme homelessness and the condoms at a time of the AIDS crisis. My Bed is therefore a form of social commentary, a conversation of multiple voices, added to that of those who witness it and bring it to life. The cases of Van Gogh and Emin serve as reminders of the dangers of a biographical reading. To some extent, because my case studies use pseudonyms, or work collectively or anonymously, they alleviate questions of attribution and authenticity. They force the viewer to learn to read their works of art in new ways, and thus focus attention on their work and its politics instead of their person. The challenge to the notion of the author as a fixed originator of meaning, as mentioned above, was made most famously by Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault. Their respective essays ‘The Death of the Author’ (1967) and ‘What is an Author?’ (1969),17 became canonical because they provided a timely counterpoint to the still-prevalent criteria of authenticity, sincerity and personal expression by which literary works are understood and judged. The authorship of an artwork is similarly problematic. Their essays are therefore significant for the current discussion but need to be updated to reflect a more nuanced and contemporary visual culture. There is a distinction to be made between the concept of authorship as a legal property, solipsistic category and the particular male, phallocentric version of authorship as genius, which is the focus here. However, it should be noted that there is also an overlap, especially within the arts. Authorship became a pressing concern, or more seriously recognised, in tandem with issues of copyright in the eighteenth century, which grew from the invention of the printing press. In Britain, copyright became a legal concern in order to regulate the copying of books and as a reaction to printers’ monopolies. The result was that, with copyright laws, intellectual production came to be seen as a product of an individual. This concept supports the idea that creative activities can be commodified – their ownership, making and value a system of authorship which we recognise today. The commodity bought at auction, commercial gallery or through

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Death of the Artist the secondary market, fetches a value based on a signature by, and attribution to, a ‘great’ artist and their perceived value. The scarcer that product is, the higher its value. That women were historically denied equal access to art education, such as the life drawing room, or the ability to observe and depict public spaces of ‘modernity’, which was more socially accepted for the popular male fl^aneur, as Baudelaire famously describes in his essay ‘The Painter of Modern Life’ (1863), means they were unable to command the same prices for their artwork and attributable worth of their signature and artistic identity. Thus the definition of authorship as a legal type of ownership or attribution and the male ‘genius’ are inherently linked. Barthes’ and Foucault’s problematisation of authorship stems from their anti-humanist positions, in contrast to the preceding history of individualism. Barthes proposed that a work of art’s purpose and existence depends equally on its reader or viewer while Foucault argued that the author is a discursive construction, their status and perception changing throughout history. Both these ideas target the idea of the author as genius in different ways. Barthes begins by pointing out the still pertinent relationship society has with authorship, which we saw in the cases of Hockney and Emin: ‘Baudelaire’s work is the failure of the man Baudelaire, Van Gogh’s work his madness, Tchaikovsky’s his vice: the explanation of the work is always sought in the man who has produced it.’18 He describes this ‘as the result of capitalist ideology, which has accorded the greatest importance to the author’s “person”’ but discounts it with the argument that the author is not the origin of a text except in the most immediate sense. He posits that a text is only ever a string of quotes with the author’s role merely that of one who selects various possible permutations of a pre-existing cultural repertoire: We know that a text is not a line of words releasing a single theological meaning (the ‘message’ of the Author-God) but a multidimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash. The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centers of culture.19

From this we understand that the author is only a speaker or writer in the mechanical sense of a device for articulation. We might think of the artist as a similar communicator, acting between their means and environment. 12

Introduction Barthes therefore insists that the author cannot be relied upon as the sole originator of meaning and, in order to give the reader more credit in the activation of a work’s function, he concludes, ‘The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the author.’20 Though we cannot take this canonical, provocative statement literally, we can draw a parallel with visual arts: if we are to give any credit to our viewer we must review the profile and authority of the artist, they must be removed from the pedestal and de-centred from the current terrain of understanding works of art. Foucault’s essay, ‘What is an Author?’, further criticises society’s dependency upon the author for meaning and intent: We are used to thinking that the author is so different from all other men, and so transcendent with regard to all languages that, as soon as he speaks, meaning begins to proliferate, to proliferate indefinitely.21

Foucault reverses the usual hierarchy of author over text with the argument that the role of the author is the product of a particular discursive function; the author, like the concepts of sexuality or punishment, is inconsistent throughout human history. Indeed, while Barthes declares the author a ‘modern figure’, Foucault suggests the idea of the author as a part of an historical continuum. In ancient Greece and ancient Rome, for example, the author or artist was considered a vessel or vehicle of creativity. They might invoke inspiration from non-human entities such as divine beings or deceased spirits. This other way of viewing authorship is more present in other (non-Western) societies, where authorship is seen as vastly different – the responsibility for a narrative might be that of a ‘mediator’ – a spiritual or familial ‘elder’ or ‘shaman’; those who pass on folklore through song or dance – whose ‘performance’ is the point of admiration, not necessarily their ‘genius’. There is also a lesser-known modern history of Western artists who continued to make work under such spiritual or occult influences. William Blake is a good example of an artist whose work and religious ideas were out of sync with his time. But because he did not claim agency or ultimate authorship over his artwork, being guided beyond his control, it arguably freed him from conventional practice and allowed room for more creativity and experimentation.22 This changes with the advent of 13

Death of the Artist psychoanalysis, when the ulterior state used to inspire creativity, while still not claiming full authorship, is oneself and the subconscious. A TED talk by the author Elizabeth Gilbert (February 2009) also picks up on this. She proposes letting go of the idea that one ‘is’ a ‘genius’ and, instead, considering that authors and artists might ‘have’ a genius. In this way, we might put less pressure on our contemporary artists and afford more radical expression. Tied up with this, of course, is the notion of mandatory suffering for one’s creativity, a myth this book will attempt to dispel, which is also unhealthy for our prospective art students. Foucault also pointed out that the name of an author, when attributed to more than one work, becomes descriptive and can come to represent (or misrepresent) all his or her works and signify a type of genre, like ‘Jilly Cooper novels’ or ‘a Tarantino film’. When the author’s name becomes an adjective, the product becomes inextricably linked to its author, his or her previous works and a forced milieu, upon which the audience relies for a sense of context. The name of the author, now synonymous with the work of art, is far more than a means of identification. We are then forced to question what difference the name of an author makes to a work of art; the text or painting, for example, does not physically change when the name associated with it does. As soon as we become dependent upon the author we become dependent upon the authenticity of the attribution of that author to the work of art. This is a circuitous problem perpetuated by the art market’s investment in attribution, or ‘capitalist ideology’, as Barthes would say, whereby an ‘authentic Michelangelo’ sells for more than a work of art attributed to ‘the school of Michelangelo’. These are just a few examples of the various registers of terminology employed by auction houses to attribute works. However, market definitions of artworks authored by an artist or that of his or her assistant are also inconsistent. A taxidermy work by contemporary artist Damien Hirst, for example, involves several other technicians, and his studio assistants now execute his ‘Spot Paintings’. Yet, unlike Old Master paintings, Hirst, not his ‘school’, authors his work. Thus, market definitions of authenticity or attribution are also discursive and part of a historical continuum, and not as fixed as we might believe. One of the most potent critiques of the market’s fascination with and commodification of the artist is Andrea Fraser’s Untitled (2003)

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Introduction performance videotape. Fraser approached Friedrich Petzel, her representative commercial gallery, to invite bids from collectors to spend a night with her and have sexual intercourse in an undisclosed hotel. Six copies were made and one pre-bought as part of the deal. Untitled conflates artist and art in a way that takes the meaning, value and production of creativity to its logical and perhaps sinister conclusion.23 Performance art complicates authorship because the artist is implicated in their practice, which reasserts significance upon their person. However, amidst performance and theatre studies, authorship has already been challenged, in so far as seminal playwrights, such as Brecht and Beckett, evolved theatrical devices that placed greater importance on the audience in the work’s meaning and interpretation. Chapter Six applies this thought to the work of Marvin Gaye Chetwynd and examines how ‘theatre’ might help us reconsider authorship in contemporary art. The Modernist preoccupation with medium specificity meant that until relatively recently it has been difficult to disucss art as a multi-disciplinary practice.24 Social art practice, due to its necessarily participatory nature, also disrupts traditional concepts of authorship; it is opposed to dominant beliefs in art practice and theory that wants to interrogate the personality of the artist and their medium. ‘To put it simply, the artist is conceived less as an individual producer of discrete objects than as collaborator and producer of situations.’25 Art historian Claire Bishop cites the writing and practice of Guy Debord in the 1960s, co-founder of the Situationist International, as influential in the early works or lineage of social-collaborative art.26 He advocated constructed situations or events that would involve the audience, producing new social relationships and realities as part of his critique of capitalism. Constructed situations remain an important idea for contemporary artists who work with people as their material. The socialcollaborative turn of the 1990s was coined as Relational Aesthetics by Nicolas Bourriaud, defined as artworks inspired by human relations and their social context, such as Gillian Wearing’s Signs that Say What You Want Them to Say and Not Signs that Say What Someone Else Wants You to Say (1992 – 3).27 Irrespective of the term, the pervading rhetoric of the artist and their ability to convey and objectify is challenged by a discursive and participatory culture.

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Death of the Artist Despite the growing number of objectless artworks being created, performed and platformed, authorship remains problematic, especially in art, where the ‘product’ and personal expression are still considered rare or unique, such as Fraser’s body and her limited edition video-tapes, in contrast to the multiple copies of books, scores or scripts that are published. New York eighties artists such as Richard Prince and Sherie Levine extended the authorship critique and made appropriation a genre in itself. Prince famously replicated Marlborough adverts as part of his photography while Levine created a golden urinal in homage to Duchamp’s fountain and even wrote her own appropriation of Barthes’ essay on authorship. Appropriation, as a conscious methodology, is not the same as copying. This is another topical issue where artists and lawyers carve out the future terrain for artists who use other artists’ media as starting points. The current deciding factor in a lawsuit seems to involve a necessary (but subjective) use of parody as part of the ‘appropriation’. This is different to cultural appropriation, which carries negative connotations, often seen as exploitation by the dominant culture. In literature, it is far more acceptable to appropriate another work of art. Fan fiction, for example, is seen as a low type of popular culture, and admittedly takes place at the margins. It nonetheless operates at a prolific rate and is a sub-culture in its own right, unlike hobbyist copying art. The success of Marvel comic spin-off films in Hollywood attests to this. With new media, contemporary authorship has had to be reconsidered in literature and Cultural Studies, but not so much by the art world. Fan culture is less critical than the genre of appropriation in ‘Fine Art’, and more celebratory of its source, but it nonetheless shares a similar process.28 Within fan culture, no participant can claim self-sufficiency. Conversely, even when Sherie Levine explicitly photographed reproductions of 1930s Depression-era photographs by Walker Evans in 1981, as a means of authorial critique, hers were treated with the same reverence and white gloves as the originals. As Henry Jenkins argues, fan culture also challenges the traditional authoritative model of teaching and reception, that there be a ‘correct’ judgement of taste or artistic interpretation.29 The fan participants add to the ‘original source’, each others’, and often reproduce work, fractured and multiplied, with little attention to authorship. In other arts, then, neither the author nor their work is deemed quite as precious as in ‘fine art’.

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Introduction With the advent of photography, film, printed matter and social media, visual art is no longer as autonomous as it was once was, protected by a frame or the gallery. Neither is art always so discretely visual. Art has become more complicated; it now represents shared cultures and academic disciplines, and uses a range of media, it is also shared and reproduced more than ever before, not to mention the advancing technology of virtual reality exhibitions as a means of engaging with art. Nonetheless, while social media has popularised visual art, it also renders the ‘original’ object more precious, and so ‘fine art’ has far from lost its cachet. It should therefore be reiterated that the art discussed here – collaborative practice, pseudonymous and anonymous artists – are still considered relatively marginal and utterly peripheral in terms of the day-to-day business of the art world, despite growing academic interest. Janet Wolff concludes her analysis of authorship with a nod to literature she calls the ‘polyphonic novel’, which employs multiple voices and characters, or the use of third person as a means of defying authorial dominance. She cites Wuthering Heights (1847) as an example, where minor characters such as Nellie Dean are given the role of narrating so as to free the author a little from their own style of writing and responsibility for imposing intent. There are parallels in the visual arts, where collaborations or ongoing collective practices use their own identity structures to render the singular, dominant artist invisible or, at the least, their ‘voice’ and authorship is subverted. This might be called social art, relational aesthetics or collectivism, all of which, on the surface, challenge art as a portable, commodifiable object, and turn the producer into more of a collaborator and, sometimes, the audience, into a participant. Contemporary artists are increasingly working collaboratively, as collectives and under pseudonyms, arguably to pool resources, but also in an attempt to challenge concepts of the ‘Author-God’ syndrome and the art market, and perhaps as part of a wider political practice. Art critic Jon Roberts problematises collaboration with regard to shared labour but still argues that ‘The individual artist’s identity is dissolved into the collective artist . . . Authorship is defined as multiple and diffuse.’30 This is different to the outsourcing of teamwork by an individual artist, such as the Factory model of Warhol, and subsequently Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst, for example. It is also different to Conceptual Art’s proposal that the idea is the art, such as Sol LeWitt’s wall drawings that come with instructions for

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Death of the Artist others to create, or Keith Tyson’s ‘Artmachine’ that supposedly instructed him, inspired by LeWitt’s practice. Both examples remove the ‘hand of the master’ but simultaneously, and most significantly, perpetuate his name in their making and remaking. The collective discussed here is rooted in the early twentieth century, from the Constructivists who rejected autonomous art, and were interested in collective production, to the shared ideas and studios of Bauhaus artists, trying to destroy the boundaries of art and craft, through to social/participatory art practice today. It is a conscious mode of production, a pervading, inherent critique of capitalism and, increasingly, a critique of the precarious state of labour today. Collaboration is often seen as a more democratic methodology of creative practice. When discussing social art, Claire Bishop argues that: Collaborative creativity is therefore understood both to emerge from, and to produce, a more positive and non hierarchical social model . . . This concern has become acute since the fall of communism, although it takes its lead from a tradition of Marxist thought that indicts the alienating and isolating effects of Capitalism.31

Indeed, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels argued that: The exclusive concentration of artistic talent in particular individuals, and its suppression in the broad mass which is bound up with this, is a consequence of division of labour . . . In a communist society there are no painters but only people who in engage in painting among other activities.32

As Roberts posits, for artists today: This contradiction between the increase in routinized waged work and the crisis of waged work is now a daily, socialised reality; and it is this, I would argue, that has had a huge impact on the rise of collaborative practise in the 1990s.33

As young art collectives spring up, so too does an academic interest in their agency. Collective practice, by default, is also a means of critiquing authorship and biographical readings, because it is more difficult to view

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Introduction an artwork through the traditional institutions of authorship when there is more than one credited artist to consider. In his popular paper ‘The Artist as Producer in Times of Crisis’ (2004), the curator Okwui Enwezor described a generational, international shift towards collective art practice in response to acute socio-economic upheaval, and how this, as a by-product, might ‘generate a radical critique of artistic ontology qua the artist and as such also questions the enduring legacy of the artist as an antonymous individual within modernist art’.34 He identifies two types of collective practice: the first can be described as ‘fixed groupings of practitioners working over a sustained period. In such collectives, authorship represents the expression of the group rather than that of the individual artist’.35 This is the type of collective considered here. The second, and more popular type of collective tends ‘to emphasise a flexible, non-permanent course of affiliation, privileging collaboration on a project basis [more] than a permanent alliance . . . such networks are far more prevalent today due to radical advances in communication technologies and globalization’.36 I would also argue that this second type of collective is formed and broken more rapidly, and attracts more research and curatorial attention because, perhaps rightly so, they confront more topical global issues. In turn, the commissioning process of temporary exhibitions and biennales tend to fund specific, short-term projects rather than ongoing collaborations. Blake Stimson and Gregory Sholette, the founding member of the New York collective Political Art Documentation/Distribution (PAD/D: 1980 –8), and REPOhistory (1989 –2000), also advocate artistic collectivity as a medium for social change. Major concerns of their book Collectivism After Modernism (2007) include concepts of nationality, cultural diaspora, gender and sexual liberation, and the impact of social media on collective practice. However, one of their contributing writer’s essays states that ‘authorship is beside the point’.37 This is not necessarily representative of the editors or other artists and academics engaged in the discourse of issues of collaboration and collectivism but it is worth noting that the subject of authorship is not particularly ‘cool’ and has become somewhat subsidiary to issues of subjectivity and identity politics. On the contrary, this book posits that authorship is political and hopefully demonstrates intersectionality with subjectivity that positions authorship at the forefront of visual culture

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Death of the Artist politics. Moreover, authorship continues to be a contested issue among overtly political artists; those whose practices address government legislation, such as Bob and Roberta Smith. Michel Hardt and Antonio Negri’s book Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (2004) poses rhizomatic growth as the only form of true democracy. Their theory is anti-capitalist and stems from their understanding of an international class struggle. I advocate that artistic collectives and the pseudonym serve as good examples of the individual nodes of the rhizome (much like the internet, a medium some of these case studies employ), which by default of their anonymity or multiple representations, can grow to create larger intersecting networks while retaining individuality. Though largely theoretical, what this comparison generates is the idea that by debunking the traditional notion of the individual ‘Author-God’, one might aid the configuring of a global community as sought by Enwezor’s second type of collective. While there are significant shortcomings to the concept of the ‘multitude’, discussed in more detail in Chapter 3, this reading helps us to envisage a future of networked art practices and their potential impact upon creativity and audience engagement. The artists discussed here do not necessarily reject the idea of the author, per se, but they do negotiate the space between the critique and practice of authorship and challenge the status quo. Their inclusion serves to problematise, reimagine and exemplify how one might adapt to institutions of authorship as its very concept might evolve, highlighting the relationship between artistic identity and art world pressures such as intellectual property, career and commercialism. The documentation and evaluation of each art practice helps form an alternative history of authorship and demonstrates a contemporary alternative to Barthes’ ‘death’ for other artists. Chapter 1 reviews the surrealist partnerships of Duchamp and Man Ray, who collaborated on the construction of ‘Rrose S
elavy’, and Lucy Schwob and Suzanne Malherbe, who I believe are collectively responsible for the creation of ‘Claude Cahun’. Through ‘Rrose’ and ‘Cahun’ we will see that traditional notions of authorship were being disrupted and critiqued several decades before Barthes and Foucault. Working under pseudonyms of the opposite sex, these ‘authors’ also disrupted concepts of gender. Thus, Chapter 1 will also explore how authorship might be used to question subjectivity. Aiding this argument

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Introduction will be an evaluation of a series of photographs each partnership collaborated on. The constructed guises and poses will be discussed with reference to notions of gender performance and psychoanalytic concepts of the Self. Texts by Duchamp and ‘Cahun’ will also be cited as demonstrative of each artist’s pre-emptive authorial ‘deaths’. All the while, I attempt to consider how these early examples of negotiating authorship might be reimagined in a contemporary context. Given ‘Cahun’ and ‘Moore’s’ works were predominantly acclaimed posthumously, I discuss how the artist’s legacies have been taken up within a post-modern context and their complex historiographies. Chapter 2 discusses another mode of authorship, collectivism, through the work of Conceptual practitioners Art & Language. Founded in the 1960s, Art & Language is a collective comprised of both theoreticians and artists with a history of fluctuating, transatlantic membership, whose individual birth names have always been known. The collective has a history of tension over authorship and the attribution of their work, which leads me to a discussion of the prevalence of the biography and human desire for credit. Text and reproduction are discussed as artistic mechanisms for defying the recognisable, and thus attributable, ‘hand of the master’ but because a commercial gallery represents Art & Language I also discuss the significance of the market in determining a work’s value; economic and cultural capital. I conclude this chapter with a reflection on the recent London-based collective LuckyPDF, which I cite as an example of contemporary collectivism that worked outside the market. LuckyPDF created events that acted as platforms for other artists and they utilised the internet to promote their practice. As such, the democratic nature and potential anonymity of the internet are discussed as an alternative mode of authorship but also critiqued. This is aided by an interview with James Early, a member of LuckyPDF, who talks of how he viewed their position in the art world as collaborators. This chapter questions the assumptions that collectivism is in itself a good thing, and asks whether it might also be seen as a form of social adaptation or co-option by the neoliberal corporate structures of museums. Chapter 3 considers the Guerrilla Girls, an anonymous and feminist artists’ collective employing as pseudonyms the names of deceased and overlooked female artists. The Guerrilla Girls wear gorilla masks to retain their anonymity and are best known for their protests against gender

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Death of the Artist discrimination in public museums during the 1980s, which were mainly manifested through fly-posters and billboards. While their choice of identity is an obvious means of negotiating authorship in itself, their witty prints and posters will also be discussed as a strategic appropriation of the patriarchal authorship assumed by corporate and tabloid media. This will be done within the context of ‘ad-busting’ or Culture Jamming. Their anonymity is a strength in their ongoing international practice, but also the point of tension between the group that led to their fracturing and having to copyright their own name, a form of signature and authorship in itself. The gorilla mask poses serious questions over race and the generalisation of ‘woman’. To that end, tensions within feminist identity politics and the significance of the gendered signature will also be addressed in the chapter. As the group have gained international attention the very institutions they once critiqued now embrace them. How the Guerrilla Girls overcome their new position as ‘insiders’ is problematised. The Guerrilla Girls were not only one of the first collectives to utilise the internet to promote their practice but also as a means for other artists to disseminate their protest posters. As such, this chapter discusses the Guerrilla Girls’ practice as a model of Hardt and Negri’s Multitude and pertinent feminist criticism of the ‘multitude’. This chapter draws on an interview conducted with Guerrilla Girl ‘Kath€e Kollwitz’. Chapter 4 examines the pseudonymous artist as a means of negotiating traditional authorship. Bob and Roberta Smith is a fictional partnership invented by artist Patrick Brill. He works under the pseudonym openly, appearing as himself in interviews and at protests, but retaining the name Bob and Roberta Smith to author his work. In the spirit of Bob and Roberta Smith’s practice, I will refer to the artist in the plural. This chapter considers the strength of the pseudonym over time, when it becomes synonymous with the artist’s real name, and whether it can retain its authorial ambivalence against the market, in undermining notions of the biography. Bob and Roberta Smith’s practice is often political, using text, speech, protest banners and signs, and online petitions to call for policy changes on arts education. Therefore, this chapter will examine the political possibilities opened up by alternative identities. Collaboration is an important facet of Bob and Roberta Smith’s practice; along with their DIY aesthetic it undermines the common perception of the individual genius. Humour is also evaluated as a

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Introduction subversive tactic, and I consider how a fictional practice might be able to critique the mythologising of the artist’s biography through parody. Bob and Roberta Smith are also interviewed, in which other aspects of artists’ mythologies are discussed, such as the definitions of success and artists’ fictional personality traits perpetuated by the market and film industry. Performance artist ‘Spartacus’ Chetwynd is the final case study. The most obvious reason for her consideration as an artist that has negotiated the authorship problem would appear to be her name – she has recently changed her forename again to Marvin Gaye – but I argue that the artist’s use of the Theatre of the Absurd, Theatre in the Round and aspects of the carnivalesque play more significant roles in her means of authorial ambivalence. As such, the nature of performance and participation are discussed as mechanisms of undermining the singular genius and breaking distinctions between artist and audience. Performance documentation is also discussed as an index of ‘truth’, providing evidence of the performance, or the reliance on an audience witnessing the live event, which would seem to privilege the author again. Chetwynd’s portrayals of ‘outsider’ characters are discussed as grotesque and their DIY aesthetic as another means of defying notions of beauty or genius. Her mixing of high and low cultural references also undermine notions of the canon. Despite several requests, she has declined to be interviewed. During the writing of this book, however, Chetwynd embarked on a BBC documentary. This led me to question whether a pseudonym might sometimes serve to generate more media fascination and biographical attention than otherwise. Thus, how Chetwynd navigates increasing commercial attention will also be evaluated and leads me to conclude that one’s identity is not, in itself, always a symbol of authorial ambivalence. Each case study was chosen because it represents a different means of negotiating authorship in a post-Barthesian world but also within an art world: using drag, collaboration, and working collectively, anonymously and/or under pseudonyms. Reading them together in this book is important because their methodologies also intersect to reveal common themes of authorial dissidence discussed below. Each case study emerges out of a different political climate and culture, thus each has a different agenda, and yet between them we can see how authorship has been or

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Death of the Artist continues to be a key component of their practice and how it might be played with or manipulated to varied levels of success. From Art & Language to Chetwynd, each practice negotiates authorship from the inside – beginning at art school as a student or staff member – through to their exhibitions or talks at recognised art institutions. I do not propose them to be the most radical anti-authorial creative dissidents.38 Instead, their works and identities problematise or adapt to relatively conventional institutions of authorship – commercial galleries, public museums, monographs and the art market – those we interact with most, and thus those that need to be immanently questioned. My chosen case studies also serve as examples of (Western) artists who have taken potentially (or originally) radical alternatives to traditional authorship and put them to the test within the institutional spaces of art, while also playing the art world at its own ‘game’. The selection is specifically Western because this is where authorship is most problematic. Indeed, the authorship problem critiqued here pertains almost only to the Western world, or market-driven art worlds. The examples are also representative of different periods from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries so as to best examine how authorship has been treated, understood and adapted to at different points, by men and women, within the modern and contemporary art world, before and after its most notable problematisation within critical theory. Because several of my case studies are living contemporary artists, they were offered the opportunity to comment on the inclusion of their practice as having contributed to the renegotiation of authorship in the visual arts. Seeking to understand the artists’ intentions might seem to be at odds with the aims of this project but, given their alternative authorships, their responses should be read as partial accounts and are most useful when understood as part of a larger discourse on authorship rather than as definitive sources. Indeed, we should not dismiss the artist or biography altogether. The biography is not a sufficient point of critical enquiry on its own but some aspects of an artist’s identity – such as race or gender – might be elemental aspects of their artwork and reason for their authorial dissidence. The interviews should therefore be read as source material, contributing to the understanding of the discursive function of authorship.39

24

Introduction There are a number of recurring themes and artistic strategies across the case studies that I perceive as contributing to the renegotiation of authorship. These modes of political interrogation of the problems of authorship intersect with each chapter and feature as part of the artists’ authorial dissidence but it is worth briefly making a cross-comparison of how each methodology acts as a form of agency. The use of one’s name is political. ‘The artivist (artist þ activist) uses her artistic talents to fight and struggle against injustice and oppression – by any medium necessary.’40 While artivism is a relatively new term, the practice of activism and art has a far longer history and may be more obviously recognisable in particular forms of creative resistance. Rodney Diverlus suggests that typical artivists are thought of as anti-capitalist, antiwar and concerned with sociological and environmental issues, and that explicit activist artists may use the medium of puppetry, performance and guerrilla theatre, vandalism and Culture Jamming. He also argues that we must broaden the scope of this definition and believes that all artists have the potential to be artivists.41 My case studies employ these mediums, often as overt tactics of social change, but they also utilise their names and artistic identities as part of a more ambiguous artivist practice, broadening its scope. The Guerrilla Girls name themselves after a political tactic and give feminist talks, advocating equality in the art world. But their use of names – their collective name and individual use of pseudonyms to retain anonymity – defy the biographical reading so inextricably linked to the art market, a capitalist infrastructure of its own. Their naming is therefore also political and a means of protest. Bob and Roberta Smith’s shared name implies the politcs of gender equality while Marvin Gaye Chetwynd’s pseudonym is more light-hearted; this is her third public art name. As such, it defies the notion of a consistent branding, or any coherent or reliable source of intent. Instead, currently taking the name of another, a musician, she mocks the prolific use of the referent and its limited meaning. Humour is used by many of the artists. It mocks the perceived melancholy, authoritative or genius notions of artistic personality. Many of the case studies adopt absurd guises, from Cahun’s top that reads ‘Do not kiss me, I am in training’ to Chetwynd dressed as Cousin It. Bob and Roberta Smith and the Guerrilla Girls rely on puns, satirical humour and wit in their art. This is a tactic to engage with an audience, rather than

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Death of the Artist marginalising or offending them. It also serves to undermine the otherwise patriarchal authoritative voice of mass media and a capitalist art world. The official language of contemporary art is also undercut by humour. Instead, these artists seek a more direct and shared relationship with the ‘reader’, over a laugh. The ability to ‘play’ and experiment similarly removes the symbolic importance of the unique artwork. Chetwynd’s performances are often chaotic and described as carnivalesque. In this sense, they are fun and participatory. The fact that they break the ‘fourth wall’ is equally significant. Theatrical devices are extremely significant to how we can interrogate authorship in contemporary art. Carnival processions, interactive talks and performances that take place ‘in the round’ defy the otherwise hierarchical relationship of author over audience. Inclusivity becomes extremely important for all the artists’ groups too. Both Art & Language and the Guerrilla Girls began with fluid memberships. This was a deliberate tactic to undermine the notion of ‘individual genius’ associated with authorship. Collaboration also aids the destabilising of individualism. Bob and Roberta Smith and Chetwynd repeatedly work with large groups of participants as a means of sharing their authorship, while LuckyPDF used their practice to act more as a co-operative, supporting and offering a platform to other practices. LuckyPDF discuss the importance of working without a dealer. Similarly, Art & Language critique the role of the curator and their ‘power’ as they perceive it. The Guerrilla Girls overtly criticise the infrastructure of the Western art world and deliberately avoid gallery representation so they have more freedom and autonomy over the political works they make. Bob and Roberta Smith have also begun to practice independently of commercial representation, while Chetwynd has spoken about her aversion to the ‘white cube’ space. While it is not necessary for an artist to eschew the art market in order to critique or problematise authorship, it becomes evident that most of the case studies have, at some point, done so. The art market and institutions rely on notions of attribution, the scarcity model and an artist’s oeuvre for their own success – sales, monographs and retrospectives of a few – and so are implicitly perpetuating the related notion of the singular, artistauthor genius. Artists who critique authorship then, will inevitably challenge these systems, even if this is done implicitly. How the case

26

Introduction studies documented here have subsequently gained access to funding and recognition is just as relevant. All of the case studies work with text. The partnerships in Chapter 1 wrote poetry and prose about their ambivalent authorships while Art & Language primarily used text in their practice. The Guerrilla Girls and Bob and Roberta Smith use signs, posters and prints, while Chetwynd often reimagines canonical texts, from the Bible to Karl Marx’s Capital. By reenacting high-culture with low budgets, Chetwynd demonstrates ambivalence towards (and pokes fun at) each of her sources. The prints and posters developed by the Guerrilla Girls are sold directly by the group on their website and through other art institutions. They have no ‘limited edition’ and have therefore been key in helping the group manage their own finances, working largely beyond the art market that otherwise relies on the signature and scarcity model. Being easily reproduced, text undermines the traditional value assigned to the unique artwork. Text also contributes to the erasure of the ‘hand of the master’, such as in the case of Art & Language’s Index01. This helps to problematise the practice of connoisseurship and notions of attribution of an artwork to a singular person’s ‘style’ or ‘expression’, both of which are also frequently related to the artist’s ‘personality’. What, then, if there is little style beyond a font or typography, and several artists are represented? Some of these themes are strategic, such as humour, but are also distinctly part of the artist’s practice at large. In the case of the Guerrilla Girls, humour and text are discussed as political weapons. But for Chetwynd, humour and literature are like any other medium an artist might work with. In her case, the absurdist nature of her performances and name changes might be more properly seen as stemming from the nature of a collaborative practice. It is thus sometimes difficult to ascertain whether humour is employed specifically to debunk the myth of the artist or as a by-product. Similarly, participation and collaboration might be the result of a large performance, while multiple-authorship is more obviously part of an authorship critique. On that basis, each chapter reflects on the extent to which the respective artist/s intended to critique authorship. This is not to prioritise the intentionality of the artist over a viewer’s engagement with their work, but because it seems only fair to evaluate their authorial negotiations as comparative to their own stated aims. Nonetheless, it becomes evident that whether or not each case study

27

Death of the Artist knowingly utilised the above artistic strategies as part of their work, they do serve as key themes that thread through the different case studies, which, through the following research, I hope, will now be associated with the negotiation of authorship. When Foucault asked ‘What is an author?’, he was not just interrogating the historical discursive subject-function of the author, he was also conceiving a future in which authorship might be renegotiated as an ambivalent function: I think that, as our society changes, at the very moment when it is in the process of changing, the author-function will disappear . . . we would no longer ask questions that have been rehashed for so long: ‘Who really spoke? Is it really he and not someone else? With what authenticity or originality? And what part of his deepest self did he express in his discourse?’ Instead, there would be other questions, like these: ‘What are the modes of existence of this discourse? Where has it been used, how can it circulate, and who can appropriate it for himself? What are the places in it where there is room for possible subjects? Who can assume these various subject-functions?’ And behind all these questions, we would hear hardly anything but the stirring of indifference: ‘What difference does it make who is speaking?42

Foucault eloquently links notions of authorship to authenticity, originality and selfhood, which we observe to be true in the art world and its relevant studies. He also calls for those who can, to appropriate authorship, and with indifference. The following case studies all display, in one way or another, a defiance of the prevailing author-function as if in answer. While this project cannot answer all of Foucault’s questions, it will update them with an analysis of authorship in the twenty-first-century infrastructures of the art world with practical examples of how emerging artists might author and sell their own work, retain rights to intellectual property, collaborate and condense materials and expertise in times of arts cuts while making profits, create career-safe protest artworks without the investment of patrons or dealers, and challenge the elitism of the art world.

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1 Parodies of the Self Surrealism and Ambivalent Authorship in ‘Rrose S
elavy’ and ‘Claude Cahun’

Even before post-modernism, issues of the artist-author’s autonomy, authenticity and identity were explored in the work of two artistic partnerships associated with the early twentieth-century Dada and Surrealist movements. This was achieved through performance photography, gender play, collaboration and the use of pseudonyms. One partnership was Marcel Duchamp (1887 – 1968) and Man Ray (1890 – 1976) who formed the visualised female character Rrose S
elavy, played by Duchamp. The other comprised Lucy Schwob (1894 – 1954) and Suzanne Malherbe (1892 –1972), who worked under the gender-neutral pseudonyms Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore respectively, and are best known for their intimate and playful photographs of Schwob as ‘Claude Cahun’. Because each partnership worked on the margins of the artistic avantgarde, either refusing publicity, like Duchamp, or in the case of Cahun and Moore, latterly living in exile on Jersey, their works were only acclaimed or discovered relatively recently. This raises interesting questions of historiography and how these creative partnerships have subsequently

29

Death of the Artist been treated and re-framed as part of a post-modern or queer discourse. However, it is important to remember the time in which they worked in order to truly value their progressive authorial dissidence. Because each practice also involves gender play, their subversive masquerades aid the destabilisation of gender stereotypes and, in particular, that of the white male author and his traditional dominant gaze. Both partnerships also produced text works that demonstrate their ambivalence towards notions of a stable self, gender-norms and, ultimately, their own authorships. However, despite Duchamp and Cahun recognising the co-authorship of Man Ray and Moore, respectively, it seems that their partners have not been given the same credit in the construction of Rrose S
elavy and Cahun’s visual self. History has therefore somewhat failed to acknowledge how these partnerships did indeed complicate authorship. I would like to suggest, instead, that they might be considered a historical reference point for ‘The Death of the Artist’. In 1915, Marcel Duchamp left France to visit New York’s ‘art scene’. There he was introduced to Emmanuel Radnitzky, also known as Man Ray. The pair struck up a friendship and mutual respect that was to last a lifetime and resulted in several collaborations. Throughout his artistic career, Duchamp adopted many pseudonyms. However, it is the pseudonym, character, alter ego and author Rrose S
elavy that I am particularly concerned with because, although Man Ray’s contribution is often underplayed, I believe ‘her’ creation to be that of a collaborative effort between both Duchamp and Man Ray. Without acknowledgement of this we fail to recognise the full potential of an ‘author-function’ disrupted, not just by the double identity of Duchamp and Man Ray or Duchamp and Rrose, but by a three-way ‘author-function’ of Duchamp, Man Ray and Rrose. The name Rose S
elavy (later Rrose) is a play on the French phrase ‘Eros, c’est la vie’, meaning ‘Love, that’s life!’. Rrose first appeared in Duchamp’s work the Fresh Widow (1920), where she authored the piece with her signature. However, it wasn’t until Man Ray photographed Duchamp in drag in 1921 that Rrose gained a visual identity beyond her signature. Lucy Schwob and Suzanne Malherbe met in 1909 as teenagers when Schwob’s father began a relationship with Malherbe’s mother, and they

30

Parodies of the Self later became stepsisters. The two girls struck up an intimate friendship that later developed into a sexual relationship. They were to be lifelong partners and collaborators in several striking photographic portraits, in most of which Schwob, her head and shoulders in particular, is the subject. In 1917 Schwob and Malherbe adopted the pseudonyms by which they are better known, Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, and it was under these names that they produced their collaborative portraits and photomontages. Although the new forenames are ambiguously gendered, unlike Duchamp’s (and Man Ray’s) Rrose, the surnames are from their respective paternal lineages. Though Cahun independently exhibited sculptural pieces with the other Surrealists and Moore was a successfully published fashion illustrator, I will concentrate on their work explicitly made together. This is because I believe their collaboration is key to understanding the portraits of Cahun. In this context, their intimate relationship and Moore’s gaze should be acknowledged when considering how the couple ruptured the author-reader relationship. Like the photographs of Rrose S
elavy, where Duchamp is the main figure and seemingly obliterates Man Ray, Cahun has been celebrated as the sole author of her ‘auto-portraits’. There are a few exceptions to this, and hopefully more will appear as Cahun and Moore’s work gains popularity and more historians research Cahun’s enigmatic ‘help mate’.1 Art historians have long struggled over the works and biographies of Duchamp and Cahun, attempting to deconstruct and reconstruct their complex authorial identities. Duchamp and Cahun have recently been compared to contemporary artists such as Sherie Levine and Cindy Sherman, resulting in both the former being almost decontextualised by post-modern feminist theorists reclaiming them as part of an ongoing project.2 There is also a danger that, in celebrating Cahun as part of the lesbian canon or Rrose among queer theory, the ingenuity of their gendervariant or ambiguous subjects (those performed and portrayed) is overlooked. This would be a shame as both partnerships created artworks that signify a transgression of established gender boundaries before concepts of sexuality and gender identity were separated into identity positions.3 Moreover, this gender deviance is related to notions of self and identity inherent in the author predicament that is similarly overlooked

31

Death of the Artist with such a viewpoint. While it is impossible not to consider their work retrospectively, we must try to situate them within their own cultural milieu as much as possible. The very concept of the self was under intense scrutiny in the early twentieth century. Exploring one’s inner exile and the unconscious offered artists a coping mechanism from the traumatic events of war. Influenced by the poet Arthur Rimbaud’s (1854 – 91) famous line ‘I is another’, the Dadaists began to break with tradition and made work under false names.4 For example, Marcel Duchamp famously signed his readymade urinal ‘R. Mutt’. The Surrealists also embarked on the task of ‘auto-writing’ and drawing that was supposed to lead to uncovering their subconscious creativity or other ‘selves’. Automatism decentres the authorial subject, relieving the artist of ultimate responsibility. Freud had also introduced the new field of psychoanalysis. He was working in Paris in the late 1800s and his Interpretation of Dreams was published in 1900. Andr
e Breton, the founder of Surrealism, was highly influenced by Freud’s theory of dreams. These were largely sexual and there is no doubt that this new enquiry into sexuality and desire informed art theory and practice of the time. It is well documented that the Surrealists were dominated by male artists whose subject almost wholly constituted the fetishised female form, or femme enfant, while their associated women artists gained little attention at the time, other than by reference as muses or partners.5 However, it would only be natural that artists would also resist this sexism, in keeping with the wider struggle for women’s emancipation at the time. The early twentieth century was an important era for ‘Woman’ throughout Europe, America and beyond. Prior to World War I, women had little involvement in public life. However, with the loss of men in battle, women began to thrive in numerous professions in support of the war effort. The newfound social purpose embraced by these women resulted in a stretching of conventional gender boundaries. Women had begun explicitly fighting for their social and sexual liberation. Thus, Schwob’s pose as the androgynous Claude Cahun photographed by Suzanne Malherbe, and Duchamp’s pose as Rrose S
elavy in Man Ray’s two sets of photographs of 1921 and 1924, were probably also, as the art historian Gavin Parkinson argues:

32

Parodies of the Self determined by a society in which women’s emancipation was becoming a reality, and permitted by the increasing understanding and tolerance of the fluidity between genders, as well as the greater freedom around sex and sexuality in Europe and America during the period.6

A cultural enquiry into female subjectivity began that has since been claimed as proto-feminist: Frida Kahlo (1907 – 54) painted self-portraits with more facial hair than she actually had and is photographed with her family dressed in drag. Artist Baroness Elsa Freytag-Loringhoven (1874 – 1927) was famous for her eccentric lifestyle, which consisted of open relationships, a public infatuation with Duchamp through her published poetry and anecdotes of her androgynous appearance and carrying on her person a plaster-cast penis.7 Hannah Gluck (1885 – 1978) has recently attracted a great deal of scholarship; now recognised as a trailblazer of gender fluidity, she is known for wearing men’s clothing and insisting on using only Gluck, with no prefix or suffix to indicate gender. Claude Cahun has more recently been compared to the British sculptor Marjorie Moss (1889 – 1958), who is better known as Marlow Moss, because she too took on a male pseudonym in the 1920s.8 In his essay ‘Marcel Duchamp and Transgender Coupling’, art historian Dickran Tashjian argues that cross-dressing was a form of rebellion; a challenge to the Surrealist’s patriarchy and portrayal of women: Despite Breton’s patriarchal pressures, this anarchic Surrealist zone presented an opportunity for rebellion or subversion among women associated with Surrealism. The inclination of Breton and others to claim the unconscious as feminine challenged the Surrealist women to defy the ideal Woman, the femme-enfant, by portraying themselves as embodied, active subjects living through their mortal existence.9

But subverting gender norms was not just undertaken by women. Duchamp dressed in drag and later Joseph Cornell (1903 – 72) would also direct photographs of himself as androgynous. It could be argued that Cornell was influenced by his belief in Christian Science, which asserts that God is both man and woman, while Duchamp performs his drag in a

33

Death of the Artist milieu of the increasingly popular Com
edie Franc aise. Even Hollywood was embracing cross-dressing; in 1915 Charlie Chaplin starred in A Woman in drag. What is important to note here is that these artists lived and worked on the margins of society and even on the margins of the avant-garde in some cases. In contrast to Breton, Duchamp kept his distance from Dada and Surrealism, often refuting the identity of an artist entirely. Cornell was selftaught and lived in Queens, on the outskirts of the New York avant-garde, while the Baroness often took up casual labour and would retire due to poor mental health for long periods of time. Frida Kahlo exhibited with the Surrealists but was based in Mexico and has only posthumously been acclaimed and now considered on par with, if not a better artist than her husband. In the UK, ‘Marlow Moss’ has become a footnote in art history and her oeuvre only recently celebrated. Cahun moved to the relatively quiet island of Jersey in 1937 with Moore and both were imprisoned towards the end of the German occupation because of their espionage activities. The artists who worked or lived in what might be the first era of open gender fluidity, embodied their ‘performances’ or guises as part of their real lives, which often came with a heavy price. Thus their work is not purely aesthetic and cannot so easily be inserted into a geographical artistic ‘movement’, or the trajectory of queer theory or post-feminism. The works made by these ‘fringe’ artists were perceived as equally as ambiguous – in terms of classification – as the artists’ sex and sexuality at the time. Portrait photography, in the case of Cahun and Moore, for example, no longer served the traditional functions of commemoration or identification. Was the work naïve, theatrical, portraiture or mere play? The answer is that it was all of these, and more. Tirza True Latimer describes this ‘theatrical pursuit’ of photography as having pertinently ‘provided an arena of experimentation – akin to theatre – within which the photographer and the subject could improvise alternate scenarios of social, sexual and artistic practice’.10 It seems apt then to conceive of Cahun and Moore’s work as theatrical or performative; Cahun was part of the experimental Th
ea^ tre Esot
erique in Paris during the 1920s, while Moore helped make their sets and costumes. In the late 1920s Cahun also held a position for a short time in the theatre company Le Plateau, which Moore also documented. Indeed, theatrical devices prove to be significant aids in destabilising notions of authorship throughout this book. Elements

34

Parodies of the Self of set, staging, masquerade and props carry through to Cahun and Moore’s work and help destabilise notions of gender and other categories altogether, such as genre and the self. Duchamp and Cahun’s celebrity status is, in part, due to the work of recent scholars who have (re)discovered their works and thus (re)invented both artists as harbingers of post-modernity. As a by-product, the photographer in each case seems to have been somewhat obscured. Perhaps this is because both Duchamp and Cahun received attention relatively late in their lives or, in Cahun’s case, predominantly posthumously, and it was thus easier to recontextualise ‘their’ works by comparison with contemporary artists. Duchamp regularly exhibited throughout his lifetime and, despite retreating from the art world and any official affiliation with ‘movements’ of art per se, continued to be recognised by the New York and Parisian Dadaists and Surrealists. However, it was not until the 1960s that he gained international public recognition. His first retrospective exhibition was in 1963 at the Pasadena Art Museum, and in 1966 the Tate Gallery hosted a large exhibit of his work. He died in 1968. Similarly, it took a relatively long time for Cahun’s work to be recognised. Though she was associated with the Surrealists, with whom she socialised in Paris, and also exhibited small sculptures, her public work was little discussed. Breton once described her as, ‘One of the most curious spirits of our time’, and yet she has featured very little in the documentation of the Surrealists.11 Only after Cahun’s death and Malherbe’s subsequent suicide did their portraits of Cahun gain significant attention, even though many of them were published during their lifetimes in the book Aveux non Avenus (1930). Laurie Monahan points out the problematic historiography of Cahun’s oeuvre: Cahun fell into complete obscurity at the onset of World War II – indeed, her identity became so uncertain that for a time it was unclear whether she was male or female. Her works were ascribed to an anonymous artist, and the circumstances of her life were essentially unknown. A further irony is that the first extensive scholarly work on Cahun is a biography, Claude Cahun: L’Ecart et la Metamorphose, by Franc ois Leperlier.12

Leperlier’s 1992 biography estranged Cahun and positioned her in an era beyond her own. Both partnerships have therefore been liable to a 35

Death of the Artist reading of their works they could not have predicted. We have come to understand their subversive practices within a post-modern world where identity play and collaboration are more common – in an age familiar with critiques of the self and notions of constructed identities. In her book Postmodernism and the Engendering of Marcel Duchamp (1995), Amelia Jones posits: In examining Rrose S
elavy it is thus interesting to note a parallel between the 1920s, when Rrose was initiated as a ‘subject’, and the 1960s and 1970s, when postmodernism began to be codified as an antimasculinist (feminized, effeminate, and/or homosexualized) alternative to a masculinist, Greenbergian modernism. Both periods, in fact, were moments of intense activity among women fighting for social, economic, and political rights.13

Leperlier also wrote of Cahun: ‘The work not only reflects a crucial moment in the passage from symbolism to Surrealism, but in many ways exceeds them both and widely anticipates the most advanced preoccupations of our own times.’14 Although the alignment of Duchamp and Cahun with contemporary art would be intended as a compliment there are dangers in basing a whole methodology on post-modern feminism. This is something that art historian Abigail Solomon-Godeau has also picked up on with regards to how Claude Cahun has been annexed within feminist art theory. She argues that we risk over-generalising female artists interested in self-representation: Women artists of the twentieth century may well have consistently dealt with the problem of self-representation, but it does not follow from this that Cahun’s or Deren’s or Sherman’s work can or should be collapsed into a ‘master’ category of feminine self-representation even as we acknowledge the omnipresence of certain issues raised by the lives and work of women artists within predominantly male formations.15

Feminist mythologies of the artist are as problematic as any other. There is a danger that all women’s art becomes read as one and the same and celebrated uncritically just because they are women. The alternative 36

Parodies of the Self would be to foreground the reader and/or viewer in the interpretation of the work, as this book asserts, but also the social production and cultural meaning of art. Jones also argues that, considering ‘his’ renowned feminine personification of Rrose S
elavy, Duchamp has been incorrectly addressed as feminism’s ‘daddy’.16 For ‘this “woman”, Rrose, is hardly fully independent . . . she exists only as defined by a man (or two if you count Man Ray)’.17 Again, Jones is alluding to Rrose’s gender fluidity, and her position within a predominantly masculine, Surrealist context. It is therefore impossible to designate either Rrose or Cahun to a singular history. The year before Rrose S
elavy signed Fresh Widow Duchamp had already alluded to his interest in gender play and androgyny in his parody of da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, a postcard of the masterpiece upon which he drew a beard and moustache. L.H.O.O.Q. the title, which when read phonetically in French translates as ‘she has a hot ass’, was a humorous gesture towards Leonardo’s alleged homosexuality and the mystical aura that surrounds the Mona Lisa’s much discussed ambiguous sex and sexuality. The joke might also be at the expense of the masterpiece and the notion of Da Vinci’s biography itself – Freud wrote a psychobiography of Leonardo da Vinci in which he argued da Vinci’s childhood dreams alluded to a homosexual leaning or at least an asexual being.18 Subsequently, it was discovered that the work was based on a mistranslation, undermining Freud’s whole theory (and psychobiographical methodologies), but nonetheless this is demonstrative of growing interests in sex and sexuality.19 L.H.O.O.Q. was documented and reproduced by Man Ray the same year and used by Francis Picabia in his magazine 391 in 1942. Reprinted, published and exhibited several times since, the artwork is now, ironically, a masterpiece in its own right. The first representation of Rrose S
elavy the ‘woman’, was in Belle Haleine: Eau de Voilette (Beautiful Breath: Veil Water) (1921), which was published on the cover of the first and only New York Dada journal in April 1921. The art audience could now put a face to the name (see Figure 1.1). The image mocks traditional advertising techniques where a woman is used to sell consumer products, as Rrose does not look like the traditionally young and attractive model, dressed as she is in dowdy, elaborate clothes, and with Duchamp’s strong features. Between the masculinised Mona Lisa and

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Death of the Artist

Figure 1.1 Man Ray, Belle Haleine, 1921. Gelatin silver print, 22.4 £ 17.8 cm. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. q Man Ray Trust ARS-ADAGP.

feminised Rrose, Duchamp creates another identity for himself as an artist, one that is ambiguously gendered and almost a third sex. This is a very modern idea, with notions of gender fluidity only now becoming better understood. Facebook, for example, now has 71þgender ‘options’ in contrast to traditional gender binary tick-boxes.

38

Parodies of the Self

Figure 1.2 Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, 1928. Gelatin silver print, 11.8 £ 9.4 cm. Courtesy of the Jersey Heritage Collections.

In 1928 Cahun too assumed an androgynous position, not only in her pseudonym, but also in Marcel Moore’s most famous photograph of her; dressed in a chequer-board jacket, sporting cropped hair and holding her collar up; assimilating the pose of a confident young man (see Figure 1.2). 39

Death of the Artist However, closer inspection shows the subject is wearing lipstick and the shine in her hair indicates the use of metallic hair dye – she was predisposed to dying her hair pink, gold, blue or green, while her eyebrows were often shaved.20 In addition, her rather outrageous jacket is traditionally worn by neither male nor female, because it is not traditional at all, but on the edge of classification, much like Cahun herself. Finally, set in a domestic scene, but not the traditionally female kitchen or male ‘sitting-room’, Cahun provokes us to question not only where and who she is, but also what? As Franc ois Leperlier argues: The aim here is to cross and overcome all gender boundaries (masculine, feminine, androgyny; homosexuality, heterosexuality, bisexuality), to arrive, ideally, at just one gender, one’s own, which could never be compared with any other: literally to have a unique gender.21

These two photographs have become emblematic of the legacies of Duchamp and Cahun. In subverting the female subject and masking their own identities, Duchamp and Cahun represent the beginnings of the ongoing project to reimagine the myth of the autonomous male author. Judith Butler argues that gender is performed, innately habitualised through cultural repetition beginning at birth.22 Drag itself, while a playful subversion of fixed notions of gender, and proving that ‘gender’ is indeed performed, is also often a perpetuated stereotype of the other sex. Take, for example, the popular television show RuPaul’s Drag Race (2009 – ) and the categories of ‘woman’ performed such as ‘Banjee Girl Bling’.23 The emerging interest in Drag Kings also reveals stereotypes of workmen and ‘leather daddies’.24 But what about a lack of gender, or genderneutrality, as performed by Duchamp and Cahun? The androgynous figure is often considered transitory or temporary, in-between. Francette Pacteau also argues that androgyny could be seen as affirmation of the sex disguised. For example: The androgynous figure has to do with seduction, that which comes before undressing, seeing and touching. It can only exist in the shadow area of the image; once unveiled, once we throw a light on it, it becomes a woman or man.25

40

Parodies of the Self The relatively recent popularity of gender studies has changed the way we see the works and lives of Duchamp and Cahun and illuminated their practices. Despite this, however, recent exhibitions and biographies have not paid enough tribute to the contributions of Man Ray and Marcel Moore in the construction of Rrose and Cahun, as seen in some of their titles.26 Moreover, these enigmatic photographs of Rrose and Cahun are most popularly described as early examples of drag, which reduces their complexity. When asked to consider whether Duchamp or Man Ray really were interested in gender boundaries or female emancipation, given the crude way in which Rrose was first depicted and knowing Duchamp’s penchant for wit, perhaps we can consider Rrose’s performativity as a means of parody, which, whether intended or not, reasserts the notion of gender as a cultural construction. The same wit or nonchalance is demonstrated in Duchamp’s attitude to authorship through his pseudonyms, also a cultural construction and a type of performance itself. Cahun, however, does not parody gender as much as embody androgyny. In 1929 she translated Havelock Ellis’ theories on the third gender, which influenced her gender ambivalence. As early as the 1930s she stated her discomfort with gender binaries, saying that neuter was the only gender she felt suited her. The androgynous is perhaps a more successful technique in blurring gender barriers than the assimilation and therefore confirmation of those stereotypes that already exist. Cahun’s visible androgyny invites the viewer to question her gender and by extension, their own. On Marcel Moore’s photomontage of Cahun that accompanies Chapter IX of Cahun’s literary piece Aveux non Avenus, or Disavowals, Cahun wrote ‘Sous ce masque un autre masque. Je n’en finirai pas de soulever tous ces visages.’27 (‘Under this mask, another mask. I will never be done taking off/lifting up all these faces.’) This demonstrates how performance and the masquerade might be used to mystify the self. In creating a multitude of constructed identities, via several masks, the author becomes lost and fragmented within his or her multitudinous selves. Figure 1.3 is a portrait of Cahun taken by Marcel Moore in 1928. Cahun wears a mask on her face that completely obscures her own features and any indication as to what sex ‘she’ might be. Only the haircut, or wig, alludes to a ‘female’ doll. The shoes are unisex and belong to another

41

Death of the Artist

Figure 1.3 Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, c.1928. Jersey Heritage Trust. Gelatin silver print, 12 £ 9.4 cm. Courtesy of the Jersey Heritage Collections.

period altogether. The cloak further conceals any indication of gender and the many masks attached to it imply that the one worn on the head of the ‘subject’ is one of many guises, subject to change at any point, and its position here, merely coincidental. This reiterates the point that no one

42

Parodies of the Self identity is more secure than another. The only thing that might undermine this would be the fact that the mask worn by Cahun only covers the lower half of the face, while all the others are intended for the upper half or eyes only. This would indicate that the mask and wig worn at the time of the photograph have been given more consideration than might appear at first glance. The ad-hoc curtains in the background allude to a stage set but are not traditional theatre drapes. They nonetheless support an element of performance, an indication that the viewer or audience, this side of the scene, will not be privy to the notion of a ‘real’ Cahun, ‘subject’ or ‘author’. If one remembers that both women took part in experimental theatre companies in Paris, before their move to Jersey almost a decade later, this series of photographs from 1928 resemble a portable but intimate stage set, where the inhabitants are always performing. There is no real (or singular) Cahun, much like a Barthesian text. Her use of the masquerade creates an infinite and complex sense of their identities. In Rrose S
elavy (1921, printed in 1924), where Duchamp poses with fur, Man Ray photographs Duchamp in a softer light than the Rrose featured on the cover of New York Dada. This more sensitive and sensual ‘woman’ is a new guise (see Figure 1.4). ‘Her’ chiseled features appear less harsh and the drag less of a parody, which is accentuated by ‘her’ poised hands and outward bending wrists. We now know that for this photograph Duchamp used the arms of his friend Germaine Everling, Picabia’s mistress at the time. Dressed entirely in drag and with makeup, Duchamp still chooses to use the arms of a female rather than his own. This indicates Duchamp’s doubts of his ability to embody or capture fully the female persona of Rrose. By doing so, he creates an alternative identity that does not consist completely of his own drag-altered body; it becomes a picture of both sexes, which must have also been embraced at the time of creation. In this sense, Everling becomes another author of the visual construction of Rrose, but her collaboration also complicates how we interpret Duchamp’s understanding of gender play. Everling’s ‘hand in the making’ of Rrose implies that Duchamp didn’t believe he could convincingly or autonomously create an alternate identity and, in contrast to Butler’s argument, that he placed an importance on anatomy to convey gender.

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Figure 1.4 Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp as Rrose Selavy, c.1920– 1. (1)(A). Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art. Gelatin silver print, 21.6 £ 17.3 cm. Signed in black ink, at lower right: lovingly / Rrose S
elavy / alias Marcel Duchamp [cursive]. The Samuel S. White 3rd and Vera White Collection, 1957. q 2017. Photo: The Philadelphia Museum of Art/Art Resource/Scala, Florence.

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Parodies of the Self His physical dependency on a woman also adds another dimension to how we read the power of the gaze in each photograph. In both the photographs of Rrose she stares back confrontationally. Similarly, Cahun often returns the gaze of both the viewer and, significantly, the photographer. The gaze has been an important tool in each partnership’s practice in questioning the traditional power play between gender (man – woman) and authorship (author –reader). Aided by the confidence provided by their respective masquerades, both ‘subjects’ stare back at their partner with an unusual intensity. It thus seems that we are only gazed back at by default. This is particularly true in the case of Cahun and Moore. Latimer argues that these intimate portraits allow us ‘to imagine the sitter’s expressive acts coming together in the eyes of another unseen but present observer to whom those gestures are addressed’.28 That is to say that, unlike the traditionally passive subject portrayed for our pleasure and scrutiny, in this case, there is a sense of ‘three’s a crowd’ for the viewer. In Reclaiming Female Agency (2005), Julie Cole similarly argues that Cahun and Moore’s portraits are difficult for the viewer to penetrate because Cahun and Moore’s (photographic) gaze operates almost autonomously: The repeated reflections and the women’s implicitly reciprocated gazes frustrate the spectator’s attempts to locate himself in relation to the image, and he is prevented from fully entering a play of gazes that are not narcissistic but self sufficient.29

Not only do Rrose and Cahun defy the traditionally passive female subject, they cleverly subvert the traditional male gaze. This is a further negotiation of the conventional ‘author – reader’ function; instead encouraging a collaborative ‘author– author’ function. Kristine Stiles has said that performance, an extension of the masquerade, has ‘complicated art theory by changing the dichotomous subject/object to subject-subject’.30 We are thus prohibited from forgetting the person behind the lens and reminded of the fact that the ‘masquerades’ of Rrose and Cahun only exist because of, or for, someone else. Everling’s feminine hands might even act as a stark reminder that there are always other collaborators ‘behind the scenes’; it was Man Ray and Marcel Moore who took these photographs, with whom the characters 45

Death of the Artist of Rrose and Cahun were created and, ultimately, collaboratively authored by. Cahun’s masks that are attached to the cloak in Figure 1.3 appear redundant but still animate. As Gen Doy argues in the first English monograph on Cahun’s practice, the mask this partnership employs has a feeling of Freud’s Uncanny and perpetuates the sense of seeing double.31 When the mask is taken off, it becomes an inert object, like a doll or puppet, confusing the boundaries between the living and the dead. It thus relates to Freud’s instances of the ‘uncanny’, described in his essay of 1919, where the unhomely and the familiar seem to be ‘doubles’ of things, disturbing us with their mobilization of repressed memories and traumas.32

The hanging masks add a sense of suspense so that they might be picked up at any stage, be exchanged for the one worn on the face and brought to life. In this sense, Cahun is performing as some sort of maskstand where the props are inanimate, but not dead. The photograph, being a snapshot in time, only serves to exaggerate the anxiety created by the temporal and ‘uncanny’ effect. The masks imply notions of the masquerade and role play, and perhaps symbolise the gaze. The audience therefore helps activate these artworks and is reminded of their own significant role as a viewer. Indeed, Cahun’s poses remind us that portrait photography can be a form of theatre, also brought to life with an audience. Latimer argues that when we look at Cahun and Moore’s photographs in the retrospective context of Barthes’ ‘The Death of the Author’, it is evident the reader is significant in the act of meaning and making: ‘looking at photography through the lens that Barthes proposes brings the spectator’s role in the production of meaning into focus’.33 The masks’ dual-like characters thus resonate an uncomfortable familiarity, not just within the photograph but also for the external viewer who has no choice but to participate in their function. Therefore, the ‘uncanniness’ of the masquerade not only alludes to a duplicative subject, but also authorship, played by Moore. At the heart of each partnership’s masquerade is the theme of the double. Not only does this refer to the collaborative partnership, but also the pseudonym or character manifested by each of the artists, in doubling themselves. To add another layer, both partners employ a degree of mirror46

Parodies of the Self play in their work that leads us to an analogy of Freud’s narcissism and Lacan’s ‘Mirror Stage’.34 Although these theories have been used before in discussions of both Rrose S
elavy and Claude Cahun, I intend to subvert the commonly understood notion that it is the self the subject loves with an argument that it is in fact the viewer that the subject loves, or the sensation of being gazed upon, which, in this case, is performed by the collaborative partner/photographer.35 Photography is a medium defined by its duplicative nature. It not only relies upon the mirror for its mechanical functionality, but also acts as a (delayed) mirror in the way that one can look back at oneself after the photo has been taken. The confirmation of one’s own image is central to Lacan’s essay ‘The Mirror Stage’ (1949), which argues that recognition of the self in the mirror, as an Other, is a determining factor in achieving the status of adulthood. Lacan refers to Freud, when he terms the state of recognition as the ‘ego-ideal’:36 ‘The point of the ego ideal is that from which the subject will see himself, as one says, as others see him – which will enable him to support himself in a dual situation.’37 The ‘mirror’ is also often referred to in Freud’s theory of narcissism, based on the myth of Narcissus whose downfall was the love of his own reflection.38 Despite the negative connotations, the mirror is a way of confirming one’s own existence. However, because we have already demonstrated that the notion of the ‘subject-author’s’ identity is insecure, Cahun’s and Rrose’s portraits acknowledge the fragmentary self instead of falling into the trap of narcissism. Furthermore, because Rrose and Cahun reciprocate the gaze, it is not their own reflection that they love, but the gaze of their partners and therefore, also, the viewers’. Jennifer Shaw claims ‘Photography is both a means for understanding the power of the myth of narcissus, the false belief that one might truly know the self by looking at the self, and the thread that unravels that myth.’39 This is particularly evident in the iconic image of Cahun dressed in the chequerboard jacket in which she ignores the mirror and instead looks longingly into the camera. The mirror, though it reflects Cahun’s ‘other side’, another ‘self’ (un)masked, could here be read as a metaphor for her partner Moore, who is always present in their photographs but whom we see less of. Thus, when we look at Rrose S
elavy and Claude Cahun we also see Man Ray and Marcel Moore.

47

Death of the Artist In 1934, in collaboration with Man Ray, Duchamp, under the pen name of Rrose S
elavy, wrote ‘Men Before the Mirror’, a literary piece that discusses ‘male’ narcissism. The text demonstrates ambivalence towards authorship because it is written collaboratively and signed by a third fictional author. It has since been singularly attributed to both artists, published in Man Ray’s monograph Photographies 1920 – 1934 (1934) and in Duchamp’s The Essential Writings of Marcel Duchamp (1975). To complicate matters further, the translator Michel Sanouillet suggests a female friend of Man Ray’s originally wrote the text.40 It begins: Many a time the mirror imprisons them and holds them firmly. Fascinated they stand in front. They are absorbed, separated from reality and alone with their dearest vice, vanity. However readily they spread out all other vices for all, they keep this one secret and disown it even before their most intimate friends . . . They meditate, they are content, they try to take themselves in as a whole. Certain traits appear too small, and it is well so, but others appear too large and it is magnificent so. Women have taught them that power does not succeed. Women have told them what is attractive in them, they have forgotten; but now they put themselves together like a mosaic out of what pleased women in them.

The text concludes: But with them goes always, ever present their face. The mirror looks at them. They collect themselves. Carefully, as if tying a cravat, they compose their features. Insolent, serious and conscious of their looks they turn around to face the world.41

The line, ‘now they put themselves together like a mosaic’, implies that ‘men’ are also no longer unified and whole, but fragmented. Commenting on his many pseudonyms, Duchamp once said of himself: ‘My intention was always to get away from myself, though I knew perfectly well that I was using myself. Call it a little game between “I” and “me”.’42 Though Rrose’s ambiguous gender plays an important part within Duchamp’s and Man Ray’s work that has been subsequently hero (in)icised by many a scholar and artist, it was perhaps their foremost desire to radicalise the (or their) sense of ‘I’. 48

Parodies of the Self Dada and Surrealism are early twentieth-century expressions of the anxiety to uncover or discover the complexity of an authorial ‘I’. To quote David Lomas: ‘“Who am I?” – the question(ing) of identity resounds across the Surrealist project, but for the Surrealist artist or writer there were no ready-made answers.’43 But while there are no clear answers, the readymade, most famously employed by Duchamp, was a useful means of at least questioning authorship and, to that end, notions of identity. ‘Men Before the Mirror’ itself, supposedly a piece of writing originally by another, could therefore also be understood as a readymade text. Claude Cahun was also a writer and in 1930 she wrote the antiautobiographical text Aveux non Avenus, which was first published in Paris as a limited edition with chapter dividers that were designed by Marcel Moore. Roughly translated into English as ‘Cancelled Confessions’, it was published in English in 2007 titled Disavowals. Moore’s 10 photomontages consist of Cahun’s various photographic portraits taken by the couple over the course of their relationship along with other collaged elements. Fragmented and multitudinous, they reflect Cahun’s writing style. In the English version, Susan de Muth reflects that the text’s ‘linguistic devices, for example abrupt, inexplicable changes in tense . . . are at once unsettling and stimulating, adding to the overall effect of a Rimbaudian “derangement of the senses”.’44 For example, Cahun writes ‘Self-development. / I would never wish to worry myself, burden myself with anything else. Alas! We can only chase that hare by pursuing all the others at the same time.’45 Throughout Disavowals Cahun changes from the first to the third person, adopting other pseudonyms and fictional characters along the way, much like Janet Wolff’s description of the polyphonic voice. The selfreflective but flexible authorial voice, like that in ‘Men Before the Mirror’, is demonstrative of the unstable ‘I’. As such, Aveux non Avenus is also a critique of autobiography. Both resonate with Rimbaud’s sentiment that ‘I is another’, and the trend in Surrealist writing at the time, to discover whom ‘I’ may be. Indeed, across Europe, the fragmentation of identity had become a heightened concept post-World War I and might be seen as a precursor to this symptom of post-modernism. For example, Virginia Woolf’s and James Joyce’s writing typified a style of broken narrative and stream of consciousness, leading to a destabilisation of social convention taken up by other arts.

49

Death of the Artist This is inherent in the title of Cahun’s text. ‘Cancelled Confessions’ alludes to the genre of the work, which is one that cannot cohere into a unitary understanding or authorship. As Jennifer Mundy, in her introduction to Disavowals, said: ‘Cahun’s many leveled attacks on notions of truth and authenticity, and on the veracity of appearances, mean that ultimately the text is not confessional, it is rather a collage of fragments that mirrored Cahun’s parodic view of the self.’46 Aveux non Avenus is simultaneously biographical and anti-biographical, undermining the traditional artist’s monograph. Doy argues that ‘the photographic and literary work of Cahun in collaboration with Malherbe simultaneously mixes the “facts” of the self with “fictions” of the self, mixing “I” (as subject) with “She” (as object)’.47 Thus, the various guises, identities and portraits of Cahun, that are concurrently reflected and refracted by Cahun and Moore, undermine the myth of the autonomous male author. It is significant that both Duchamp and Man Ray, Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore use literary and visual artworks to blur the binaries of man – woman; author –viewer/reader; true – false. Because they also use text, it is even more pertinent that we consider these partnerships as having provided alternatives to Barthes’ call for ‘The Death of the Author’ long before he wrote it. Their work ‘prompts numerous questions about the tensions between the autobiographical “I,” the textual (or visual) “I,” and the referential “I.”’48 The combination and flux of possible selves is therefore not just trans-(gender)variant and trans-authored, but also transmediated between image and text. The multiple identities that Duchamp and Man Ray, Cahun and Moore create and project in both their literary and visual artworks could be seen as a series of experiments with the possible permutations or ‘innumerable centers’ of the ‘self’ and author. Aveux non Avenus, in particular, with its flux between tenses, narrative voices and interwoven characters and stories, is an explicit and self-conscious demonstration of Barthes’ ‘multidimensional space’ that the author can inhabit or draw upon. Barthes insists that the author is not to be relied upon and is one whose presence, as a platform for interpretation, is inauthentic. The multitudinous identities, inherent in the nature of collaboration and those identities constructed and projected by the works discussed here, demonstrate just that. Barthes and Foucault have been enormously influential on the post-1960s avant-garde. It is therefore not surprising that it often seems as

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Parodies of the Self though the ‘author-function’ did not exist prior to 1967. This is perhaps why ‘Rrose S
elavy’, ‘Claude Cahun’, ‘Men Before the Mirror’ and Aveux non Avenus were considered so progressive when they were rediscovered. The literary and visual artworks created by those partnerships were ahead of their time in asking their viewers and readers to question notions of intentionality and authorship by subverting their traditional roles. They are particularly special because they use the individual as a site of agency, before identity politics existed, ‘to imagine a different world where identity does not fix the individual but radically transforms the culture that would define [them]’.49 However, despite the extremes with which both partnerships attempted to reimagine authorship, subjectivity and artistic identity – ‘Duchamp’s wish to escape his own authorship was part of a larger programme to pass beyond any formal designation, carried as far as wanting to change his own gender and identity’50 – neither Duchamp nor Cahun actually ‘die’ (in the metaphorical Barthesian sense), they are merely transformed into their various other identities. The mirror, the masquerade and multiplication, all play a part in blurring the role of authorship but never actually rid the work of it. Duchamp and Cahun remain visible and, given their legacies, they are not allowed to ‘die’. Man Ray and Marcel Moore, however, have never received the same attention as their partners: one might even say that, as authors of these works, they have never ‘lived’. This leads us to question the extent to which the respective partnerships intended to negotiate authorship. Cahun admits the compromise she makes in using herself as the subject of her and Moore’s artworks: ‘I exist and that compromises everything. Forgive me for existing.’51 While it seems a little literal, the temptation is too strong not to point out that in the top left of one of Moore’s photomontages (see Figure 1.5), Cahun even holds a gun to her own head, which seems to depict a sentiment akin and prior to Barthes’ ‘The Death of the Author’. Of Duchamp, Tashjian has pointed out: Over the years we have come to recognize Man Ray’s portrait of Rrose as fictive, as a photograph of Duchamp in female drag. Duchamp’s continued association with Rrose in a series of exchanges decisively transforms her portrait into his self-portrait, doubling Rrose the

51

Figure 1.5 Marcel Moore, 1930. Printed photomontage. Courtesy of the Jersey Heritage Collections.

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Parodies of the Self woman into Rrose/Duchamp, an androgynous figure. We can no longer see Rrose without seeing Duchamp. Knowledge has become vision.52

As Duchamp and Rrose have become synonymous, Rrose’s strength to complicate the author-function has weakened. But if we consider the wider and disparate output of Duchamp, Man Ray, Cahun and Moore, their work is less easy to identify or pigeonhole. This is another factor in the makeup of why it has been such a struggle for scholars to unify the lives and work of the respective artists. Amelia Jones has written: ‘I insist here that if one takes note of the various aspects of Duchamp’s productivity, it is impossible to unify “Duchamp” into even a momentarily non contradictory, international identity.’53 If the contributions of Man Ray and Marcel Moore were better recognised in their collaborative works with Duchamp and Cahun, or collective authorship better understood in general, the undermining (and somewhat ironic) task of compressing the works and biography of Duchamp and Cahun into comprehensive retrospectives or monographs might be less arduous. In Whitney Chadwick and Isabelle de Courtivron’s Significant Others, they argue against the notion of the singular genius, but accept that collaborative partnerships will always be misunderstood because of this preconception. For if the myth of solitariness prevails, can only one be genius? And if the reality of community prevails, how is the genius to define itself? We started with the assumption that, given our culture’s emphasis on solitary creation, one is always constructed as Significant, and the partner as Other, and concluded with the realization that although this schema remains powerful, the truths which we are learning to decipher are indeed much more interesting.54

Through several essays on creative partnerships, Chadwick and de Courtivron argue for a society that reads with more depth and which is open-minded to the challenges of accepting multiple authorship, which would benefit us as viewers and readers: ‘If we know how to read their stories with fresh eyes – the realities of exchange and influence in these partners are unexpectedly strong and innovative.’55

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Death of the Artist Indeed, it was Man Ray, after Duchamp’s death, who continued the enigma of Duchamp’s ‘impossible’ and ‘contradictory’ identity: At the opening of the Tate retrospective, entitled The Almost Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray took to its logical conclusion the challenge to fixed notions of authorship raised by the Art and Artists cover, as well as his earlier collaboration in the construction of Rrose S
elavy, his friend’s lascivious alter-ego, when he confused and confounded the assembled art critics by introducing himself as Marcel Duchamp. ‘Yes, I am Marcel Duchamp’, he declared to a writer for the Observer newspaper’s weekend review, ‘let me say that I’m pleased with my retrospective show at the Tate. I think the organization is wonderful. It’s come at the right moment in my life. I was born in 1860, which makes me 106 right now. You know, I must introduce you to my friend. Marcel Duchamp!’56

Man Ray’s self-declaration as Duchamp is a way of proving that Marcel Duchamp the artist, author and legacy, is no more fixed than Rrose S
elavy. It was therefore incredibly important for both Man Ray and Duchamp to problematise and complicate authorship, not just within gender and the traditionally singular role of authorship, but also between the two distinct men. Man Ray here indicates that he is just as worthy of recognition for their collaborated works. He has been equally significant in the creation of Rrose S
elavy as Duchamp. In fact, as photographer, it is Man Ray to whom the portraits of Rrose S
elavy are attributed. His loyalty and support for Duchamp, even after the latter’s death, demonstrates a willingness to continue their collaboration and blur their authorship indefinitely. It therefore does not matter whether the artist is ‘dead’ or ‘alive’ for their project to succeed. More problematic, however, has been the virtual obliteration of Marcel Moore from her collaborative works with Claude Cahun. Unlike Man Ray, whose photography and mechanical inventions are internationally recognised, relatively little was known of Moore beyond her occasional recognition as ‘help-mate’ until recently. Detrimental to our understanding of their artworks and Cahun herself, Moore’s elimination as contributing artist has ironically served to fortify the syndrome of heroic individuality. As Julie Cole argues, in failing to recognise Marcel Moore, she has been demoted

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Parodies of the Self to the position of helpmate (simultaneously raising Cahun to the level of individual creative force or artistic genius and ridding her work of the ‘taint’ of collaboration).57

Perhaps because, like Duchamp, Cahun was the first of the partnership to die, she was subsequently romanticised, but it is more likely that her attention, and Moore’s lack thereof, is to do with the fact that Cahun is the identifiable and recurring subject of their photographs. Marcel Moore is, however, more visible in the portraits of Cahun than at first sight. She is represented not only metaphorically in the mirror, the infinite replications of ‘Cahun’s’ ‘selves’ and in the nature of reproductive photography, but also in her own shadow, perhaps the same shadow Cahun refers to in her own creative writing: ‘I find myself walking in step, in step with my forgiven shadow. My breath, still uneven with some faded terror, offers me a transition.’58 Whereas one could make the easy leap of imagination to draw parallels with an argument that suggests Moore lives in Cahun’s shadow, this is not how I think the indexical trace was intended, if at all (see Figure 1.6). Rather, because Moore’s shadow frequently features in the bottom right corner of the portraits of Cahun, where a signature would often appear, it could be argued that the photographer’s presence is another indication of their joint and equal collaboration and authorship. Latimer describes this as ‘a sort of artistic contract that the couple would honour for nearly forty years’.59 While Doy argues: The shadow of the photographer, an indexical trace of the photograph’s making, reminds us that there is an observer, an/other, involved with the making of the photograph, or a viewer who will look at the image once it is made and developed. Cahun herself (or any other model), when looking at the indexical image later, looks on herself as both the same and ‘other’.60

Moore is implicated in the photo-portraits through their making process and her own visible trace, not to mention the relation both would have had with the objects and each other when viewing them with hindsight. She therefore no longer needs to be distinguished from Cahun. Her authorship is implicit in the portraits of Cahun and ‘Cahun’s’ oeuvre. Because Cahun and Moore are both enshrined within their photographs,

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Death of the Artist

Figure 1.6 Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, c.1939. Jersey Heritage Trust. Gelatin silver print, 10.8 £ 8.4 cm. Courtesy of the Jersey Heritage Collections.

like Duchamp and Man Ray, neither need ‘die’ for the ‘birth’ of their readers/viewers. This is because (1) Man Ray and Marcel Moore already inhabit the reader/viewer position as photographers and (2) their effortless fluttering between author and reader, and gender-variants, mean that they 56

Parodies of the Self do not monopolise any one of Barthes’ ‘multi-dimensions’, leaving adequate room for their viewers to simultaneously exist. Furthermore, considering that the only images of Cahun that were intended for public viewing were Moore’s photomontages, published by the couple as part of Aveux non Avenus, and which were explicitly attributed to Moore, it seems even more ironic that Moore has not been given due credit for her significant contribution to the creation of ‘Claude Cahun’. Archive material belies this representation of [Moore’s] passivity, subservience or separateness. It illustrates that it is artificial to separate the couple’s personal partnership from their artistic endeavours. It is to be regretted that the appreciation of Schwob and Malherbe as equal partners throughout their lives has been neglected or ignored.61

I do not wish to draw too much attention to the biographies of either partnership but it is important to establish that both Marcel Duchamp and Claude Cahun also thought of Man Ray and Marcel Moore as their coauthor equals. This chapter concludes with primary evidence of Duchamp’s and Cahun’s dependency upon their partners in the creation of Rrose and ‘Cahun’, which demonstrates how significant it is to read their works as collaborative efforts, and the extent to which each partner knowingly constructed a dissident authorship, ahead of their time. Claude Cahun talks of her partner romantically: Sweet though, beneath a candle stick in an old bottle of Bass, the moment when our two heads (ah! That our hair would meld indistinguishably) leaned together over a photograph. Portrait of one or the other, our two narcissisms drowning there, it was the impossible realized in a magic mirror. The exchange, the superimposition, the fusion of desires. The unity of the image achieved through a close friendship of two bodies – for the sake of which they send their souls to the devil!62

Marcel Duchamp is more pragmatic: View is preparing a ‘Duchamp number’ and I would like to have your collaboration. Can you send any documents (photographic or

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Death of the Artist other) retracing our relationship over the last thirty years that you managed to bring back from France? For example, do you have a photo of your portrait of Rrose S
elavy?63

Like Cahun and Duchamp, many artists fled their homes during World War II. After this time, artists and their work could no longer be so easily categorised by their geography. The Parisian-centric Surrealist movement ceased to be what it was and notions of self or identity became even less stable. In my next chapter we will see how artists reconfigured transatlantic creative alliances in the 1960s but where the visual self is entirely lost. Art & Language, the name under which several artists worked between Britain and America, were in some ways a social and cultural product of post-war feelings of dissent and distrust towards notions of nationality and institutionalisation. They navigated authorship very differently to Duchamp, Man Ray, Moore and Cahun, the artists discussed in this chapter, by forming an all-male collective. This coincided with the birth of Conceptual Art, a greater interest in academia and the use of text among the artistic community.

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2 Collective Practice Art & Language and LuckyPDF

The artistic collaboration known as Art & Language serves as a case study to test the idea that collective practice is a critique of the singular genius. This may seem to be a given; however there are inherent complications to multiple authorship. For example: How might a collective continue to negotiate authorship as it takes on more members? How is recognition and intellectual property shared? Can artists’ groups operate in a truly democratic fashion? How has the collective that formed post-war been reimagined in contemporary art; are there similar concerns or have the institutions of authorship changed? Collectivism can be seen as both critical of and an adaptation to neoliberal institutions of authorship – the contemporary art group might sometimes appear to act in a similar way to larger corporations, museums and galleries by having shared spaces, designated roles, coherent branding and a manifesto. But if institutions such as the Tate, for example, largely operate in a capitalist, hierarchical manner with VIP or members’ areas and corporate sponsorship, how do we conceive of earlier collectives like Art & Language that were set up to operate with a more democratic model of authorship? And, if these collectives now work with and within these 59

Death of the Artist institutions, how might they negotiate the borders of authorship such institutions represent any differently to those collectives that grew out of neoliberalism? Given the rise in collective practice, this chapter will also make a comparison with an all-male London-based artists’ group, LuckyPDF. Since my research and interview with one of their founding members, the group have separated and LuckyPDF is no longer active. This is not necessarily a failure of the group, but the decision itself may be reflective of the practical difficulties of working collectively that are discussed in detail in this chapter. Their work supports an argument that points towards the internet as a medium that might negotiate authorship more successfully. The internet facilitates the appropriation of images, complicates intellectual property and provides a theoretically more democratic mode of authorship. The internet is not as anti-elitist as it appears, however, and there are particular problems with respect to artistic identity, which is both subverted via the anonymity of the internet, and also perpetuated by the desire for attention with the advent of social media. Supporting this chapter is an interview with James Early of LuckyPDF who discusses the group’s own authorship, creative labour and social networks. What I have learned is that collective practice alone is not in itself always a critique of authorship or the associated art market, but can be, as part of a more holistic approach, part of re-negotiating the borders of authorship in a contemporary art world. Art & Language is a Conceptual Art collective that now consists of two men, Michael Baldwin (b. 1945) and Mel Ramsden (b. 1944). Until his death, Charles Harrison (1942 –2009) was a prominent third member, often credited as the theoretician and biographer of the group. Since its inception in 1968, Art & Language has varied in number and at one point was transatlantic. Through collaboration, self-published journals and textbased art, often theorising its own conversational practice, Art & Language resisted easy categorisation and provided an alternative mode of authorship to the individualism of the modernist avant-garde. Art & Language became a common identity for a number of people already involved in various types of collaboration and is still regarded as an important influence on Conceptual Art in both the UK and the United States. Its work continues to address issues of documentation, modes of collaboration, and the function of art criticism in art practice. Art &

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Collective Practice Language continues to exhibit internationally and is currently represented by Lisson Gallery in London. It is important to explain the extent to which Art & Language have perceived themselves as a collective. Their journal published under the title Art-Language admittedly included texts by individually credited authors, all of which were associated with the group Art & Language. In contrast, their exhibited works are attributed to the group, whomever that comprised at the given time. For example, the individual elements and creative labour that shape the filing system of Index 01 (1972), such as the hand-typed cards, are not attributed to the individual voices of Art & Language who spoke them, while the essays that form the journal are. A long-time member of the group, Charles Harrison, as part of his own ‘Partial Accounting’ of Art & Language’s history also describes the group as a collective.1 So, while Art & Language’s core membership has fluctuated over the years and is now primarily made up of two men, for the sake of this analysis we can consider the collectively authored work to be that of an artists’ collective practice. Conceptual Art of the 1960s was part of a growing disbelief in the power of traditional mediums such as painting and sculpture to convey increasingly conceptual, social and political concerns. Notions of ‘voice’, self-expression, unique meaning, authority and artistic style were becoming unstable. Charles Harrison of Art & Language articulates this trend of cynicism towards the artist as individual: It should be noted that the status of the (modern) artist as individual author had coincidentally become a highly propitious or over-determined subject for examination and critique. The very formation of Art & Language in 1968 could be seen as symptomatic of dissent from prevailing stereotypes of artistic personality and of the individual artistic career.2

It should not be overlooked that the new generation of Conceptual Artists creating periodicals and journals, a form of the multiple, such as Interfunktionen, Wallpaper, Tri-Quarterly, Pages, not to mention ArtLanguage, as part of their practice, emerged at the same time as the seminal essays by Beardsley and Wimsatt (‘The Intentional Fallacy’, 1958), Roland Barthes (‘The Death of the Author’, 1967) and Michel Foucault (‘What is an Author?’, 1969), all of which critique authorship.3 61

Death of the Artist In order to challenge the attributable, unique image, emerging artists of the 1960s increasingly turned to text. This coincided with a broader ‘linguistic turn’, a revolution in Anglo-American philosophy invested in French theory and, in particular, Ferdinand de Saussure’s (1857 –1913) semiology. The 1960s also saw the first generation of artists who had attended university. Post-war, their art was concerned with destroying conservative notions of aesthetics while, perhaps ironically, introducing intellectualism in reaction to the powers of social elitism. Language, as a medium of art, became a way of negating traditional conceptions of visuality – does art have to be visual? Different to Duchamp’s readymades, which also served to challenge conceptions of aesthetics, and his parodying signatures or accompanying puns and wordplay, Conceptual Art used philosophical texts as artworks. Duchamp had employed the urinal (Fountain, 1917) for example, most significantly because it would challenge taste and the distinction between ‘art’ and ‘non art’. The texts presented as part of Conceptualism challenged the distinction between looking and reading. Art & Language employed philosophical debate to argue that art theory could itself be considered a conceptual artwork. Their very first self-authored publication states that they wanted to explore ‘the possibilities of a theoretical analysis as a method for (possibly) making art’.4 These new texts were not literature; the essays, definitions and statements served as works of art. The new generation of British, university-educated artists, now part of an expansion in art education and intellectualism, comprised four artists teaching on the Art Theory course at Coventry School of Art in England: Terry Atkinson (b. 1939), David Bainbridge (b. 1941), Michael Baldwin (b. 1945) and Harold Hurrell (b. 1940). Together they formed the initial Art & Language. Interestingly, Baldwin and Bainbridge were sacked from Coventry in 1971 for advocating language as the main medium of their students’ art practice. It should therefore be remembered that Art & Language began as a pedagogical reaction as much as anything else. Art & Language was a label under which to gather the various forms of collaboration the four founders had developed over the previous two years and as a title for their publication Art-Language. The collective maintained an open membership to all those who believed in creating art by conversation and investigation. Harrison and Ramsden joined in 1970, and by 1972 some 10 names were associated with Art & Language. By 1976 the

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Collective Practice collective had grown to 25 theoreticians and artists working under the name, more or less equally divided between England and New York. At its peak, however, the collective split and the English division thereafter dispersed, leaving Michael Baldwin, the only original member, Mel Ramsden and Charles Harrison. Through their self-authored criticism and self-produced publications, Art & Language almost managed to appropriate the authority of the connoisseur, critic or curator in conveying meaning. Art & Language defined their own terms of reference, thereby offering a direct challenge to the writer still employed in the role of explaining and judging art. In Essays on Art & Language (1991) Harrison gives an anecdote to explain the confusion felt by curators faced with their work; they knew it was part of the avant-garde they should be seen to be flirting with or superficially supporting despite not understanding how to exhibit it. Certain anxious curators . . . faced both with the necessity of including an Art & Language contribution and with their own confusions in face of the work, resorted to framing copies of ArtLanguage and mounting them on gallery walls – thereby at one and the same time confirming their own stereotypes of avant-gardism and rationalizing their sense that the journal was ‘unreadable’.5

This is a kind of artistic tautology whereby the curator does not recognise the irony in framing a text that explicitly discusses ways and means of avoiding cultural mediators like the curator. Perhaps, however, it also demonstrates the ongoing power of the gallery institution and the market’s affinity with two-dimensional artwork, despite the artist’s best intentions. Plausible, also, is Harrison’s suggestion that the journal was too difficult to ‘read’. He describes creating art that reflects social production and cultural conversation as an ambiguous process, in contrast to Modernism’s recognisable ‘style’ of production: The more significant gambits involved forms of art which seemed designed either to test or to resist the normal habits and assumptions of mainstream Modernist production and connoisseurship, based as these were seen to be in protocols which mystified both production and interpretation.6

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Death of the Artist Conceptual Art, as Mel Ramsden reflects, ‘was never quite sure where “the work” was’.7 It is exactly this mystification of production and interpretation that Harrison describes which makes Conceptual Art, and Art-Language in particular, difficult to categorise and attribute to a single author, which are deemed here as positive effects. Conversely, Conceptual Art can be hard to engage with which, from an authorship perspective concerned with the ‘reader’, can be a negative effect. Institutional mediating and mystical art language is continually, and rightly, critiqued for its elitism. This often complex and highfalutin language has recently been dubbed International Art English, or IAE, and has spurred its own criticism.8 Art & Language developed in order to transcend the preceding ideas and terminology of Modernism. It is problematic, then, that Art & Language’s own use of art language is often difficult to understand. Art & Language might even be partially accountable for developing the sometimes impenetrable International Art English. The concluding sentence of their Introduction for the very first issue of Art-Language states: ‘I would suggest it is not beyond the bounds of sense to maintain that an art form can evolve by taking as a point of initial enquiry the language-use of the art society.’9 They certainly attracted criticism for their own complicated style of language at the time. In 1967, the art critic Brandon Taylor, while praising the group’s ability to self-criticise, also wrote that, ‘The pages of Art-Language were apt to induce nothing better than a sense of unfocused attention . . . a vague stringing together of concepts.’10 Some of the text in Art-Language was incredibly complicated and often intercepted by the other writings of its several authors, representing their conversational and shared style of creativity. For example, throughout the different volumes and issues, Art-Language artistauthors would respond to each other’s articles and letters like a form of collective self-reference. This perpetuated and sustained the journal for a period of time but also makes the experience of reading them rather alienating, and the temptation to search for an authoritative interpretation all too great. It should be acknowledged then that a collaborative dialogue of art making, which is deliberately philosophical and self-referential, is not necessarily a form of authorship that ‘gives birth to the reader’. Art & Language’s early work does, however, complicate notions of attribution and the role of the connoisseur and curator, which are inherent aspects of traditional authorship.

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Collective Practice By virtue of being a collective practice it appears easy to criticise the notion of the singular author but there are more complex and subtle issues at stake within what we might define as Collectivism. The limited edition and multiple series artworks, such as printed texts, subvert the understanding and commercial value of the more ‘unique’ object. This is a similar concept to how multiple authorship or collaboration subverts the understanding of the more tangible and important single author. However, while the market can accommodate multiple artworks, multiple authorship is less understood. Collectivism after Modernism: The Art of Social Imagination after 1945 (2007) is arguably the first book to posit collective practice as an ‘ism’. Blake Stimson and Gregory Sholette, the editors, believe that, while artists have often worked in groups and been politically motivated, World War II initiated a social cynicism about nationalistic and institutionalised concepts that changed collective practice. Collectivism, they argue, has not previously been properly recognised – foregrounded as an agenda or ‘genre’ of its own by the historical and theoretical accounts of other postwar movements, such as Pop Art, Fluxus, Minimalism, for example. None of these brought the question of collective voice to the fore in the same way, none saw collectivization itself as a vital and primary artistic solution, none sought first and foremost to generate a voice that declared its group affiliation, its collectivization, as the measure of its autonomy.11

Stimson and Sholette use the volume’s case studies to trace a recent history of artistic collectivism, which is inherently positive given their belief in the political agency of collectivism, but they interestingly also problematise what they consider a current trend in ‘gallery sponsored art groupettes’.12 Their criticism is aimed at contemporary young artists exhibited at fringe galleries with the cursory, and now fashionable, ‘collective’ attached to their group or collaborative name. These young collectives are seemingly endorsed by the art world enterprise culture opposed to the more ‘authentic’, anti-establishment groups that formed post-World War II. Brian Holmes also takes up this position. In his essay ‘Artistic Autonomy and the Communication Society’ for Third Text in 2004 he describes the contemporary artists’ collective as an assimilation of 65

Death of the Artist corporate capitalism, operating more like a business model than the antiestablishment ethos of groups like Art & Language: the values of transnational state capitalism have permeated the artworld, not only through the commodity form, but also and even primarily through the artist’s adoption of managerial techniques and branded subjectivities. The current explosion of cleverly conceived ‘artists’ collectives’ thrusting themselves onto the institutional market is sorry testimony to this profound and unquestioning mimesis of the values projected from the consulting firms and human resources departments. It is in this sense that contemporary capitalism has successfully absorbed the artistic critique of the 1960s.13

Holmes appears to suggest that artists and public art institutions alike have absorbed neoliberal values: the avant-gardeism of collective practice may have been assimilated by the institutions that exhibit them, while artists appear to have internalised corporate, group strategies. His essay describes the Tate Modern as a neoliberal tourist attraction with its ‘Imperial capital’ corporate sponsors at the heart (Barclays, Lloyds, British Telecom and Beyond Petroleum, formerly British Petroleum), representative of the privatisation culture initiated by Reagan and Thatcher.14 The art institution has become increasingly privatised – corporate sponsors, temporary exhibition fees and VIP members’ areas – but masquerading as a free and public museum. ‘We can see the formula at work in communication machines like the Tate Modern, where the aesthetic populism of spectacular drifting on the ground floor combines with highpowered elite initiation on “Level 7”.’15 Artists’ collaborations and collectives that formed recently might therefore be naïvely appropriating these structures. As Holmes asks, ‘Is the post-studio art of attitude and behaviour fatally involved with the motivational strategies of neomanagement, completely permeated with opportunism and individualism of the flexible personality?’16 Claire Bishop goes further and argues that under New Labour in the UK (1997 – 2010), social inclusion and participation became political buzzwords tied to arts funding; intending to increase employability, community networks and effectively adapt to decreasing public services. Unlike contemporary art’s definition of participation as a form of collective action, the funding of

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Collective Practice accountable arts projects, with increased market reach, became a way to eliminate disruptive individuals, those socially excluded. ‘As such, the neoliberal idea of community doesn’t seek to build social relations, but rather to erode them.’17 This rhetoric might therefore have invoked a culture of participation or collectivity that may not have been as conscious or anti-capitalist as its legacy once was, which changes the way we view emerging collectives as resisting the corporate institutions of authorship to co-operating with them. The contemporary collective might therefore be seen as an individualist survival mechanism under the guise of collective emancipation – the need to share resources, ideas, capital, peer networks and press outweighs the desire to test and resist the institution. For contemporary collectives to exorcise the control structures of the aesthetic institution it is no longer enough to employ collectivism, the group must also avoid assimilating the same internal hierarchies of gallery and museum ‘Communication Machines’. Indeed, there are many logistical problems incurred when creating a successful multiple authorship. It could be argued that the only common denominators of Art & Language have been their consistent ethos to investigate the phenomenon of Conceptual Art and their claim to the right of inconsistency. Charles Harrison, a late-joiner himself, admits that: Since 1968 when a group first saw itself as having an explicit identity and gave that identity a name, the idea of a modern art has been the one potentially consistent determinant upon the diverse range of interests and activities which can be associated with that name.18

The very ideal of the fluid membership presented significant logistical challenges. Members of the New York branch, such as Joseph Kosuth, began to feel a strain between the aims and concerns of those in England and themselves: The recent collapse of the spirit of Art & Language as one community has come about through work by the New York group which concerns itself with issues anchored in the specificity of their New York lives and the larger community here. . . . It has forced us into the real word, or to put it better it has shown us that Art & Language spans two real worlds: and that the gulf between the two communities is, indeed, as wide as the Transatlantic.19

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Death of the Artist In 1976, at the peak of Art & Language’s membership, the New York branch disbanded. While Charles Harrison did not appreciate Kosuth’s division of ‘real’ worlds from that of art, he does admit that the conceptual concerns between the two geographies were rapidly differing. He puts this down to the New York art world becoming more interested in ‘radical politics’.20 He concludes that the groups no longer shared the same interests but that, ultimately, New York members were no longer interested in England’s vision of Art & Language: Indeed, the blurring of those distinctions was a more-or-less inevitable consequence of the enlargement of Art & Language, a consequence which the extension into other forms of association was bound to aggravate. Under these circumstances the means of individuation of Art & language work and of Art & Language membership became matters of confusion, of anxiety or of irrelevance to those in New York.21

It should be noted that a lot of the group’s self-historicising is written and accounted for by Harrison. This is perhaps not the most democratic form of authorship. Founding member Terry Atkinson speaks out against what he called Harrison’s ‘History Managing’ in his own account of his involvement with Art & Language’s most famous work, Index 01 (1972), which was first exhibited at the international exhibition Documenta V.22 Index 01 was a catalogue of 350 typescript texts documenting the group’s conversations on the meaning of Conceptual Art (see Figure 2.1). The texts occupied eight filing cabinets that were presented on four plinths at eye level. Each text was assigned a tag, which related to a code in an index. This was a cross-referential mapping system of how particular statements were either compatible, incompatible or lacked relational value. Key to the work was its indexing system, so that a viewer who had not been privy to the original conversations might have a chance of being able to navigate the results. So self-referential and exclusive was it, however, that Index 01 might be argued to evoke a singular sense of an Art & Language ego. In 1973, after the indexing project, Terry Atkinson left the group, but some 20 years later he chose to speak about it publicly. His account, published in two sections by Cornerhouse in Manchester, was titled The Indexing, The World War I Moves and the Ruins of Conceptualism (1992) and reflects a history of tension over authorship and attribution. He describes Harrison’s dominant 68

Collective Practice

Figure 2.1 Art & Language, Index 01, 1972, 8 filing cabinets, 48 photostats, 4 plinths. Installation dimensions variable. Collection Daros, Zurich. q Art & Language; Courtesy Lisson Gallery.

presence as ‘guarding the fortress Index’ and ‘caring little about the turncoats pissing in the wind or even in the moat’.23 He appears to consider Charles Harrison the pervading authoritative voice of the collectively produced archive. In the same way that institutions continue to adopt artists’ archives, despite many not being on display (in order to appear inclusive and democratic), so were the dissenting voices of Art & Language being buried among the archive of Index 01.24 Atkinson also critiques the unquestioning idealism ascribed to postwar collective practice in the 1960s that Stimson and Sholette articulate in Collectivism after Modernism. He states: In 1973 I was beginning to sense this as a considerable irony . . . in respect of all the rhetoric at that time about groups by their very nature being a better guarantee of maintaining an open theory

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Death of the Artist situation in contra-distinction to the alleged more opportunist and relatively feeble domain of the ‘individual.’25

Atkinson describes how the group’s conversational practice began to take on a life of its own, out of control and indefinite. Frictions among the group were labelled as ‘Incompatible’ but still included among the various filing cabinets of Index 01. Statements or thoughts were typeset on individual cards and those that disagreed with each other were attributed a ‘-’ symbol as part of a key to the filing system, so that one could locate and follow each of the threads of conversations within Index 01. This meant that conversations within Art & Language, and therefore the practice of the group itself, were impossible to close or resolve. Even the conversations that Atkinson had with Baldwin over his wish to terminate the collective were liable to be included in Index 01. ‘They could still have been secreted in the exhausting internal spaces of The Indexes . . . Fatigue was an important component in controlling the individuals whom The Indexing defined as aberrant.’26 Atkinson appears to resent the power that the indexing system began to exude over the individuals of the group, as if its infinity and transparency were an ironic sort of censorship for those wishing to express their dissent. Even though difference of opinion was being represented, it was being assimilated into a collective voice, but one whose internal politics and dissidence were perhaps at risk of being fetishised: Here is the Caucus claiming through The Indexing to be registering a crisis of implosion in The Caucus (and in the group as well since Art & Language New York was claimed to be part and part cause of this implosion) but registering it in a recognisably high-profile Conceptualist style. This was, in my book, fetishisation of the inside of the group, a power play to establish a corporate logo of crisis.27

In contrast, art historian Chris Gilbert holds Index 01 as demonstrative of a democratic and shared authorship, inclusive of the external participant. For his essay ‘Art & Language and the Institutional Form in Anglo-American Collectivism’ for Collectivism After Modernism, he describes the group as a reflection of post-World War II US and Eurocentric bureaucratisation but one which allows for an open conversation.28

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Collective Practice This was a form of sociality that, like the use of the project itself, was permeable from the outside and based on participation rather than membership. Because of its open, dialogic structure, Index 01 allowed the provisional and problematic features of the group’s sociality to remain at the forefront.29

It has been difficult to ascertain whether the visitors of Documenta V actually did pull out the drawers of conversations contained by Index 01 and engage with the work as presumed, or whether participation was limited to the authors. Thus, was Index 01 truly ‘permeable from the outside’ or limited to an exclusive membership? Art & Language’s current representative gallery could not comment on the actual creative labour of the project; which member, if any, typed all the cards?30 These critical questions are important to consider – to what extent was traditional authorship actually being questioned or negotiated within this project, or were the conversations a superficial critique, the rhetoric and symbolism of Index 01 perhaps being enough to provoke a debate on the status of art and authorship? Throughout his association with Art & Language, Charles Harrison has maintained that the group’s fluctuations and conflicts have remained important facets in identifying the nature of the group’s variable practice and, indeed, the very same facet that comprises their purpose of existence, which is to create a shared and disparate authorship. In his subsequent retrospective Conceptual Art and Painting Harrison wrote: Where more conventional artist-authors are concerned, it is the narrative of a single life that tends to organize disparate production into an apparently coherent development . . . If the individual named by ‘Art & Language’ has a single life, however, it is the continuity of a transforming and self-transforming conversation that that life must be looked for.31

Whether we believe Atkinson’s account of Index 01 as a record of Harrison’s ‘masquerading as an honourable “we”’, his ‘selective re-writings of the earlier years’ and attempt at ‘controlling the effects of the name Art & Language’, it is clear that collective practice can instead precipitate tension over authorship and attribution.32 Atkinson concludes, ‘I didn’t have the power to terminate Art & Language, I did what I did have the

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Death of the Artist power to do, terminate myself as a member.’33 Nonetheless, the politics of Index 01 demonstrate that a collective practice is not, in itself, always an obvious or necessary critique of traditional authorship. After Index 01, Art & Language had to reassess its modes of practice. As Peter Osborne notes in his survey of Conceptual Art, the process and proceeds of a theoretical analysis as a ‘new’ sort of art can only be considered ‘for as long as the classification of practices into art and non-art practices retains its significance as a measure of cultural value’.34 Where was there to go for Art & Language after the pinnacle of Index 01?35 The artwork could not avoid its own ‘quasi-decorative’ status, as Osborne puts it.36 Were Art & Lanuage now being fetishised themselves? Their dissident practice had become a beacon for Conceptual Art and ironically celebrated by the art world. In 1976, however, we notice a turning point when the group began to paint. In their section, ‘Political Aspects’ in Art in Theory 1900 – 2000, Harrison and Wood explain Art & Language’s unlikely change of medium: As some Conceptual artists, Burgin among them, turned to semiological methods in their critique of fine art, Art & Language was to turn to painting, with its traditional depth and opacity as a form of resistance to the academic appropriation of picture-andtexts.37

But how would Art & Language continue to generate a cumulative and shared style of authorship when working with a medium historically associated with individual style? In their 1986 exhibition, ‘Confessions: Incidents in a Museum’ at Lisson Gallery, London, Art & Language created a series of paintings collectively rendered, which depicted various museums. One of the works, Index: Incidents in a Museum VI is comprised of three intersecting canvases and depicts the internal architecture of the Whitney Museum, New York (see Figure 2.2). Upon the wall of the rendered museum Art & Language imagine their own early painting, Portrait of V.I. Lenin in the Style of Jackson Pollock, though the Whitney has never exhibited their work. One could argue that, through paint, Art & Language subverted the power of the Western museum and hierarchies attributed to medium and maker, by turning the attention from the viewer back onto the institutional 72

Collective Practice

Figure 2.2 Art & Language, Index: Incidents in a Museum VI, 1986, Oil on canvas, 174 £ 271 cm. q Art & Language; Courtesy Lisson Gallery.

setting and by making the museum their subject. As Harrison puts it, the museum is supposedly where ‘modernism is interpreted and represented, and falsified’.38 The paintings critique the very thing they depict. The museum usually mediates meaning and value with press releases, curatorial hanging, information texts, preservation and temperature-controlled rooms. But without the artist and their art, the museum becomes a shell of itself; large walls, high ceilings and museums’ church-like atmospheres become silly, especially when the objects they value are ridiculed with fictionalised parody pieces. In this case, it is the modernist artist and painting preceding Conceptual Art that is being taunted, and its value and owners (or gatekeepers) questioned. Moreover, because the paintings are multi-layered, multi-authored, serialised, fragmented and patched together in different orders, they cease to represent the autonomous and singular ‘hand of the master’, or ‘strokes’ and ‘drips’ of individual expression by canonised artists, such as Pollock. However, further research shows that Index: Incidents in a Museum VI was sold on 9 November 2011 at Christie’s auction house in New York for $110,500.39 Notes on the lot state that the painting is stamped with the 73

Death of the Artist ‘artist’s’ (singular) signature, and that it is signed and dated ‘VI ART & LANGUAGE 1986 Michael Baldwin M. Ramsden’ on the reverse. So while the singular collective, like a brand, authors it, it is attributed to Baldwin and Ramsden as the individual creators. This appears to perpetuate the traditional modes of authorship Art & Language originally sought to reimagine. How the artists or the collective divide the original labour and sales (minus commission, before it entered the secondary market) among themselves remains relatively private; their representative gallery, understandably, stated that this is confidential.40 Despite the fact that Art & Language was reduced to members Michael Baldwin, Mel Ramsden and Charles Harrison, the group still insisted on collective representation. On the Lisson Gallery website, Art & Language’s practice is still identified as the three men, citing Harrison, even though he passed away in 2009. It will be interesting to see whether the group continue to be represented by Lisson as an ‘estate’ and whose relations manage the collective legacy of Art & Language. This is a far cry from the second issue of Art-Language, in which the introduction by Terry Atkinson states: One can assume that whether or not in the long run the artists associated directly with Art and Language Press are called conceptual artists is of no matter, one hopes anyway that in the future there will be new younger artists bringing fresh ideas to the identity of the Press thus affecting its identity no matter what it is or what it is called.41

Ironically, throughout Harrison’s many essays on Art & Language, where he indirectly discusses what a collective biography may or may not resemble, he cumulatively formulates the same monograph that Art & Language hoped to supersede: ‘If we can conceive of a biography of a collective, in so far as it respects the existence of that entity, it will not be quite the same as a collection of biographies of individual persons.’42 For the collective biography to succeed, he has said, ‘it cannot simply revert to the mythical principle of the necessary and sufficient individual author’.43 The prominence of Harrison’s author-voice over that of Baldwin and Ramsden in Art & Language is, therefore, problematic. Despite continually referring to the collective under their official name, Harrison is consistently credited as author and editor of most of their publications. 74

Collective Practice In 2011, Michael Baldwin and Mel Ramsden gave a radio interview with Radio web MACBA (Museum of Contemporary At Barcelona) to coincide with an exhibition there. As such, they discussed ‘Charles Harrison, A Critic in the Studio’. Michael Baldwin:

I think it could be quite cogently argued that the ideas, these theoretical initiatives, came from the work, the art. We didn’t wait for Charles to theorise the work. We tended to theorise the work and, if you like, work with Charles . . . Charles never did the work but we quite frequently buried our identity in his academic identity. Mel Ramsden: He did sometimes bring some things to the work. Sometimes those things were quite interesting, sometimes they were quite annoying. Michael Baldwin: The division of labour, we tended to be a little bit private about that.44

Burying the collective’s identity in one man is not in keeping with the project’s original intention: ‘As a common authorial name, Art & Language was intended as a partial safeguard against possessive individualism and careerism in the world of art.’45 Harrison wrote on the work of Art & Language more than any other critic or historian of his time. Therefore, in pre-emptively and most popularly theorising their practice, his voice appears to dominate over other members of the group and leave little room for the interpretative voice of the ‘reader’. There is a rich history of artists who theorise their own work. Artists’ interviews and writings can be valuable sources as part of identifying the making and meaning of an artwork and its given context. However, these should always, like the biography, be read as subjective and partial accounts. Artists celebrated for having provided a discursive context around their own art include Dan Graham, Adrian Piper, Martha Rosler, Barbara Kruger and Andrea Frazer, to name just a few. The difference is that these artists do not profess to speak about or on behalf of a group. Julie Ault, who edited Show and Tell: A Chronicle of Group Material (2010), provided a timely and political account of artists’ groups and their social function, but the essays are still partial accounts.

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Death of the Artist Harrison argues that towards the end of Conceptual Art, artists’ defiance of traditional authorship – presumably in an attempt to avoid working directly with the powers of the art market – had mistakenly morphed into a form of autonomy that represented a sort of brand, akin to another kind of self-asserted authorship. In the more degenerate continuations of Conceptual Art, the death of the artist as author was the birth of the artist as self curator – proprietor and protector of an always-consistent, always unmistakable logo . . . The artist now aspires to reverse the roles of connoisseur and author, treasuring that artificial authenticity as author which is extracted from the creative consumer.46

This is also, however, what seems to have happened to Art & Language. Their popularity and self-theorising created a brand or logo that could be argued to represent another problematic mode of authorship, which precipitates Holmes’ critiques of corporate collectivity. Harrison appears to criticise artistic autonomy, whereby an artist begins to manage their own career as self-promoter and curator, and asserts themselves as the ‘unmistakable’ author. Baldwin and Ramsden echo this in their radio interview with MACBA. As such, they spoke on the subject of the ‘Creators versus Curators’. Michael Baldwin:

Mel Ramsden: Michael Baldwin: Mel Ramsden:

The idea that the artists and the curator converge is an idea that I find utterly, frankly, intolerable. But you don’t find that intolerable because you wish to preserve the sanctity of the artist? No. You find that intolerable because the artist and the curator becoming the same person is not preserving the sanctity of the artist, it’s the artist turning into a manager and turning into an entrepreneur, and turning into a curator. The curators have the power. If art has no physical limitations, no material limitations, no medium – It’s not medium specific, I believe they say – then the person with the most power wins. And that’s what we’ve got today.47

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Collective Practice They describe the merging of roles as problematic for art ‘today’, in the same way that Holmes is cynical about young artists mimicking ‘Communication Machines’. However, it seems shortsighted to consider artists that act as entrepreneurs as colluding with ‘power’. Artists have long-since had to promote and manage their own practices. The original members of Art & Language also juggled the roles of artists, writers, publishers, critics and teachers. They did not directly call themselves curators but, in converging the aforementioned roles, they certainly challenged the role of the curator by retaining power to make and write about their own works. Moreover, the increasing crossover between artists and curators and the increase in artists taking up postgraduate curating courses can only be a good thing in sharing or challenging traditional ‘power’. Perhaps, then, Art & Language’s relationships with the market and art institutions over time have changed. There is a big difference between the Art & Language conceived to challenge the protocols of modernism, individualism and institutions, and the two men who remain represented by a commercial gallery. Baldwin and Ramsden’s interview with MACBA radio appears to imply an almost romantic notion of the artist. This demonstrates a gap between the ideals of authorship critique and the practical realities and difficulties of implementing a shared authorship over a sustained period of time. It should also be noted that the coinciding exhibition with MACBA consisted of Art & Language works owned solely by their main patron, Philippe Meaille. This represents another type of power; one in which money and selective taste shapes and informs the public’s perception of an art practice and its exhibited oeuvre. Baldwin and Ramsden make a correlation between a lack of medium specificity and the power of curators to therefore inflict meaning and intent. But what of art that has an even less tangible medium, but which is still specific, such as the internet? With the advent of the internet, artists and curators have had to reassess their role or ‘power’. This is because the internet offers a ‘studio’ and ‘gallery’ outside those traditional spaces, whereby one can self-curate, invent and manipulate one’s own artistic identity and network remotely with others. In their 2004 preliminary essay ‘Periodising Collectivism’ for Third Text, Sholette and Stimson point towards the internet as a plausible means of re-negotiating authorship. They hypothesise that internet-based

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Death of the Artist collectives might offer new modes of art production that could change the focus of art history and agency thus far.48 They also discuss the power of the internet and collectivity to embrace difference, with reference to Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (2004), published the same year as Sholette and Stimson’s essay.49 Hardt and Negri argue that global democracy is only possible through their conceived social project of the ‘multitude’. Their theory is anti-capitalist and stems from their understanding of an international class struggle: The multitude is composed of innumerable internal differences that can never be reduced to a unity or single identity – different cultures, races, ethnicities, genders and sexual orientations; different forms of labor; different ways of living; different views of the world; and different desires. The multitude is a multiplicity of all these singular differences.50

The condition of the ‘multitude’ is that it must expand rhizomatically and should be accessible to all, in order to prevent a hierarchical system, never stopping, so it becomes a multitude of global difference. As Hardt and Negri describe: The Internet is a good initial image or model for the multitude because, first, the various nodes remain different but are all connected in the web, and second, the external boundaries of the network are open such that new nodes and new relationships can always be added.51

How then might the internet be taken up by collective practice and production, and help shape the way we understand collective biographies? One group that utilised the internet was the recent LuckyPDF, a young London-based, all-male collective, to whom I posed questions on the subject of authorship, creative labour and biographies. I did this with the thought that they resembled the next generation of an all-male, anti-establishment, British collective. They now work separately but LuckyPDF were a company of artists who formed in Peckham in South East London in 2009, and delivered cross-disciplinary productions. They were James Early, John Hill, Ollie

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Collective Practice Hogan and Yuri Pattison and their extended peer network. They typically used the internet, performance and digital media as platforms to showcase other artists’ work. This is also evidenced by their website’s homepage, which (at the time of writing) is still active, and which showcases the logos of institutions, artistic companies and commercial enterprises they worked with. This layering of imagery and identities has a strong bricolage aesthetic. It is also reminiscent of Baudrillard’s concept of the hyper-real, where everything is a copy of a copy.52 In this sense, we might also conceive of the platform as a polyphonic voice, the ‘original’ being difficult to determine. It should be acknowledged that this is the exact same framework Holmes critiqued as emulating a ‘Communication Machine’; the format is not dissimilar to the aesthetics of sponsorship campaigns and shared endorsements – something any internet savvy artist would utilise to boost SEO and extend their own reach. How LuckyPDF identified themselves as independent from these other organisations and also as a platform for other artists will help us determine the possibilities of a collective biography. Examining LuckyPDF also brings to the fore pertinent questions how ‘one’ might represent oneself outside the commercial gallery without emulating it. One of their better-known projects includes the sale of Lucky Pages, a directory of all of their (compliant) email and Facebook contacts, for the price of £249.90. Lucky Pages also contains 64 adverts submitted by the individuals and groups on the list. There are now just five copies left from the original print run of 85.53 Like any other commercial artist’s print, postcard or limited edition artwork, these were available to buy online, signed, numbered and framed, but in this case, Lucky Pages was only for sale to those already in the directory. Lucky Pages is a pun on Yellow Pages, a British telephone directory of local businesses, funded by advertising and provided free to all households with a landline. The format is now considered redundant due to the advent of the internet and mobile phones. Lucky Pages, being a closed network, highlights the value of industry contacts and networking, which is precious in an art world where mailing lists of collectors and dealers are almost invaluable. By putting a monetary value on their own network, LuckyPDF commodify both their friends and their own name brand, while bypassing the traditional role of the gallery in generating such a list. Moreover, in

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Death of the Artist creating a hard copy of their network, signed and as a limited edition, Lucky Pages deliberately undermines the nature of digital sources of communication, such as Facebook and email. In this sense, the directory might also be seen to echo the scarcity model of the art market and the value of the tangible object and signature. By including all their contacts, Lucky Pages is also a form of collective authorship. It recognises that without its contributors, it would cease to be what it is and, therefore, the list of contents is also a list of authors. However, unlike Index 01, it does not record the group’s conversation or pretend to represent an infinite list of contributions and contributors. Lucky Pages has a ‘limited edition’ production and also a limited network; it cannot be bought or accessed by anyone outside that ‘inner circle’. Because collaboration was part of LuckyPDF’s practice, there is also a tension over authorship that must be addressed, ethically and legally. In 2012 they launched the Young London Collection, a fashion line for the namesake survey exhibition hosted by the publicly funded organisation V22, which referenced the designs of other artists (see Figure 2.3).54 In my interview with James Early of LuckyPDF I asked how the group dealt with labour and attribution.55 In response to the question of whether the pattern cutter or tailor took a commission on sales Early explains that these skills were not implicated in the collaboration this way, but as one-off paid jobs, much like an artist’s assistant. The patterns and imagery taken from other artists’ designs, however, were not paid for. Instead, Early discusses how the internet has facilitated appropriation and generated equality to images found online via search engines: What I quite liked with the fashion project is that we were proposing the artists themselves were just as appropriate-able as the sources that they were appropriating. I liked that this suggested a nonhierarchical understanding of image resourcing. So, for example, a friend of ours appropriated a famous rapper that she was referencing in one of her pieces. In our minds, and according to Google image search, both are just as valuable as each other.56

It appears here that the internet was inherent in LuckyPDF’s interpretation of a democratic authorship, which also proposes a difference between skill and creativity. This is problematic because, while a critique of 80

Figure 2.3 Ed Fornieles models, LuckyPDF s/s 2013. Photo: Oskar Proctor. Courtesy of LuckyPDF.

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Death of the Artist the scarcity model is part of a critique of authorship, there appears to be an inconsistent division between ‘artists’ and ‘manual labour’. While some artists are paid nothing and their designs are appropriated, LuckyPDF as artists benefitted from the profits, which may be more or less than a tradesperson’s paid contribution. This throws up significant questions on how authorship is treated and understood within the realms of the internet. Images have become readily available for copying and are appropriated into new works of art. If, in a post-modern era, we believe in there being no more originality and that everything, as Barthes says, is ‘a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash’,57 then perhaps appropriation and a cumulative form of creativity via the internet is a good space within which to begin re-shaping authorship. In Julian Stallabrass’ book Internet Art (2003) he asserts that defiance is an inherent quality of online art, particularly towards the more fundingreliant models of the art museum: The ethos of much online art is opposed to the established hierarchies and niceties of the mainstream art world, particularly its courting of corporations and very wealthy individuals for sales and patronage. The suspicion towards art institutions, particularly the neoliberal economies, is well founded for they have to adapt to the realities of the market as state funding was cut back or withdrawn.58

He explains that museums are often forced to exhibit online works as if they were two-dimensional images, on a limited number of devices that cannot be accessed by more than a few people at any one time. This again reminds us of the framed Art-Language issues. The works are displayed on individual monitors, forcing viewers to move from one to another, unlike the browsing experience online art is designed for. Some artists have even made works that address this ironic form of display. Stallabrass gives the example of Thomson and Craighead’s Triggerhappy (1998), a web-based game of Space Invaders in which the aliens shoot down fragments of text from Foucault’s ‘What is an Author?’: ‘In the gallery version, the contrast between user and spectator is brought to the fore: the person who is playing the game has no time to read the texts; those watching and reading cannot play.’59 82

Collective Practice Art museums now utilise the internet for their own marketing and ‘public impact’ purposes. Institutions are increasingly uploading their entire collections online and interacting remotely with their audience via visitor blogs and various online initiatives, such as virtual residencies. This is a relatively cost-effective method of display, marketing and communicating, which also allows institutions to claim to be reaching an audience far beyond their usual remit. Stallabrass argues that the internet demystifies the process of selling art online, because prices are displayed next to works, which all appear the same democratised size on a screen, and art’s function as a commodity becomes more explicit. However, while the latter can be true, commercial galleries have significantly changed since Stallabrass published his book and, unlike auction houses, artworks listed often do not advertise their prices online so that competitive negotiations can be made in person and behind ‘closed doors’. Commercial galleries now use their websites to convey their own ‘brand’ and as a portfolio of the artists they represent. They still act as agents between the artist and buyer and, in hosting their own websites and domain names, they are also another type of ‘author’. There are a few artists who have mimicked entire gallery websites so as to defy the authoritarian nature of the market – Stallabrass gives the example of Nick Crowe’s SERVICE200 (2000) – but such is their economic power that private galleries can usually buy out the domain name relatively quickly to take back ownership. Like a gallery or museum’s parental role in displaying a collection or portfolio, LuckyPDF too imposed its ‘brand’ onto those it collaborated with. When I questioned James Early on the issue of copyright and attribution his response was pragmatic; he discussed the difficulty in giving the full and proper accreditation to all their collaborators once an image or article has gone through the hands of a journalist, editor and publisher, and that it is something they began to pay strict attention to. He followed on with recognition that, even if proper credit is given, it is problematic that another artist’s work is seen through the lens of LuckyPDF. We’re also aware of the fact that with any article about us, which also includes references to other people’s work, there is an implication of a co-opting into our brand. It’s really subtle and it’s not even the editor’s fault. It’s just that when you read an article

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Death of the Artist titled, ‘LuckyPDF’, all the content is seen and understood through that prism, which in itself is also very dangerous.60

The same danger is present in the supposedly non-hierarchical nature of the internet. An element of authorship is inherent in a domain name, for example. As much as the internet is asserted as more interactive, and thus democratic or participatory – one can read an essay online and follow other embedded hyperlinks to related images and text; one can leave comments and add to online encyclopaedias; or one can play a game with seemingly infinite possibilities – the choices are mostly to ‘click’ on those options or not, which are provided by a host/author or artist and then edited by the ‘official’ parties. The superficial nature of participation and emancipation of the reader posed by internet art may therefore be no more interactive than the theoretically interactive drawers of Index 01. Cultural anthropologist Michael Wesch argues that the most emancipatory facet of the internet is its means of social organisation, which is both theoretically infinite and international: Internet-based social platforms all create different architectures for participation. Some, such as Facebook, require persistent and mostly verifiable identities, whereas others allow for more identity play, pseudonymity, or anonymity. Some connect people around the world, and others emphasize local connections, Some are text-only, others audio-only, and some use video or a mix of all three. Some are synchronous whereas others are asynchronous. Some are open, others closed. Some are archived, providing a running history of social interactions; others are not. Every feature shapes the possibilities for sociality. In the end, the most pertinent and active structuring principle of online sociality is not a simple list of features and characteristics but instead an open-ended range of possibilities limited only by human imagination. The Internet has become a playground for new media forms, each one connecting people in different ways and allowing new forms of sociality to emerge.61

Wesch uses the case study of Anonymous to demonstrate the power of social organisation online. Anonymous’ site requires no login details. Any poster can leave a message in reaction to another and they mostly leave the ‘name’ field blank. Hence, most of the prolific users of this ‘hacking’ and 84

Collective Practice anti-establishment community are considered anonymous. This gives the users a greater sense of freedom and, consequently, a feeling of unaccountability and also power. At the same time, users can be considered individuals or a revered collective. By default, it is a group that could never reject you, despite its fearsome comments to one another. Moreover, Anonymous also means that one has no idea whether a conversation is a thread of posts by the same person. Like Index 01, it is heavily self-referential: ‘posters can pose as another poster or even talk to themselves. Somebody could also pose as multiple people in the same conversation.’62 Anonymous is therefore infinite and all encompassing, like the democratic rhizome. So, if the rhizome (or ‘multitude’) is ever expanding, how might we begin to historicise particular artistic collaborations, projects, groups of artists and their networks? I put this question to James Early, proposing that the only way LuckyPDF could avoid an ‘authoritative’ history was to reject the monograph. In response, he suggested that it could be ‘something that included contributions from everybody we’ve ever worked with, or it could be a group writing exercise’.63 If LuckyPDF were to embark on a collective writing exercise it would have to navigate the difficulties apparent in Index 01: of collapsing inward and perpetuating a selfreferential conversation; like Lucky Pages, but without the irony. The other danger is, of course, that in writing one’s own history, the fascination with the biography is also perpetuated. The ability to reimagine one’s identity is an important facet of an artist’s negotiation of authorship. The relative anonymity of the internet makes this all the more easy and the target of one’s dissidence clearer. Wesch argues that the very nature of Anonymous mocks the concept of identity, community and celebrity; a form of biographical fascination: The phenomenon of Anonymous presents a scathing critique of the postmodern cult of celebrity, individualism, and identity while presenting itself as the inverted alternative – a ‘group’ made up entirely of unidentified and unidentifiable ‘members’ whose presence and membership is fleeting and ephemeral.64

However, with the advent of celebrity culture and social media, the internet has paradoxically become a space for infinite and imagined personas, status updates and biographical image galleries; a need to be 85

Death of the Artist ‘seen’, ‘heard’, identified and ‘recognised’. The endless threads of comments on sites such as Anonymous’ 4chan /b/ message board are even indicative of a society that seeks attention and ‘e-fame’. So while the internet facilitates alternative modes of authorship, it also perpetuates biographical readings and, moreover, these are generated by and for the same, relatively niche community. The internet is therefore a complicated medium reliant on authorship for its existence and spectatorship, which are often one and the same. Within the even smaller art world, it could be argued that the advent of the smart phone/tablet and social media has changed the definition of artistic success from that of quality to quantity – how many shares or likes a work gets might be prized over the value judgement of a curator, for example. In this sense, the internet has also changed the traditional role of the biennale, critic, museum or dealer. As the critic Michael Sanchez says, the increased speed of communication ‘disables the judgemental element of consensus in favour of collective attention. What had been a process of legitimation, attributable to particular institutions or critical bodies, now becomes a process of simple visibility, attributable to the media apparatus itself.’65 This sense of self-documentation is also instrumental, Early argues, to the way in which artists can now visualise their own networks without the dealer or curator. However, in promoting and judging themself almost instantaneously through social media, the artist has less time to develop their practice. In this sense, while the internet poses an opportunity for the artist to manage their own visibility and identity, the quicker and more direct author – reader relationship also inhibits an artist’s sense of self or subjectivity. One could also argue that an artist’s increased visibility might result in art that is increasingly conflated with the artist’s self and thus a new mode of a digital but still biographical art appreciation is born. For example, in 2014 artist Amalia Ulman created what has been considered the first ‘great’ Instagram work of art, which echoes this paradoxical concern. Excellences & Perfection was a five-month-long ‘performance’ by Ulman, consisting of a series of social media posts that played with, perpetuated and manipulated cliches of the selfie culture and privileged feeds – from images of Ulman undergoing a fake breast augmentation operation to sharing seemingly discerning emotional content. As a result, Ulman was criticised and ‘liked’ for her fictionalised online self, an oxymoron.

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Collective Practice The fact that online artistic identities and networks are remote, digitised and sometimes imagined shows the exciting potential for the future of authorship but at the same time it must be acknowledged that they are devoid of the ‘human’ or ‘real’ body. This freedom also poses threats; the world we now live in has resulted in virtual knowledge but real war, for example. The opposite can also be said, however. For example, social media played a big role in facilitating the protests and organisation of the Arab Spring. Nonetheless, we should remember that the primary use of the internet in its early days was for military control and national security, an inherently controlled and panoptic structure.66 The internet is not, then, inherently anti-establishment or ‘free’. Theorist Franco ‘Bifo’ Beradi uses the term ‘semiocapital’ because he believes that most of the physical objects of value once in circulation have now largely been replaced with immaterial signs; figures, images, projections, fear and expectations. He has said that ‘new technologies have also cancelled or obscured the possibility of a bodily relationship between social beings’.67 This is relevant to the identity and authorship of the artist because we have to acknowledge that the power of the namelessness or imagined identities the internet has fostered also negates the lived experiences of human bodies. In 1984 Donna Haraway wrote ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’, in which she posits the cyborg as a way to rid the world of rigid binaries and, as a result, hopefully lessen sexism.68 The contrary argument is that the real and bloody battle grounds on which difference has been fought for, such as gender, sexuality, nation and class, are often unified, blurred or reduced; trending hashtags can trivialise important events and issues and identities become code, usernames and email addresses. In an age of social media that requires instant status updates, selfies and the construction of real or easily falsified identities, there is no doubt the biography remains resilient, whether the market or the artist authors it themselves. Having reviewed some of the works of Art & Language and LuckyPDF, we are also left questioning whether the autonomous or entrepreneurial artist can avoid appropriating the authorial ‘communication machines’ that Holmes described. In the beginning of my interview with James Early, he likened LuckyPDF to a service provider, rather than a co-operative. He later used another analogy, that LuckyPDF are more like a music label than a band

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Death of the Artist because they produce more than the sum of their parts through their networks and collaborations. It is clear from LuckyPDF’s savvy internet use, sociality, co-option of commercial spaces and business model approach that they did indeed see themselves as autonomous from the wider art market. Because LuckyPDF were (and individually still are) young artists, it is difficult to distinguish their practice and collaborative approaches from contemporary neo-management and the ‘communication machines’ they emerged in parallel with, and to which Sholette and Stimson, and Holmes, attribute the recent rise in ‘art groupettes’. For example, the creative sector, and others, increasingly demand self-employed, multi-disciplinary, ‘employees’ with a network of contacts but do not offer a contract, pension, office or other traditional benefits of ‘work’. This type of precarious labour is sometimes deemed, naïvely, ‘liberating’ or flexible by the young, energised creative person holding down several different jobs, roles and projects. In an essay that foregrounds gender as part of a re-assessment of the precarious labour concepts associated with Hardt and Negri’s ‘multitude’, discussed in the next chapter, Angela McRobbie describes this as a ‘veneer of equality’ and argues that ‘the informal conventions of network sociality in fact negate the relevance of legal entitlements associated with “normal work”’.69 It is almost impossible for young entrepreneurs and creative workers like LuckyPDF to objectively critique their own use of social networks, and even harder to determine whether LuckyPDF was formed as an unwitting survival mechanism amidst a culture of austerity (the sharing of resources, capital, ideas, peer networks and press); a mirror product of the art institution; or an independent choice of approach. If, however, a collective is successful in defying the scarcity model of the art world – which we associate with phallocentric, individualistic notions of authorship – through their collective identity and collaborative practice, and in facilitating opportunities for other artists, need this matter? The proposition to work as a social group is often viewed as one with an agency for change. Throughout this chapter, Collectivism can be read as an inherently positive and social project, although sometimes it is idealised. As Harrison himself says, ‘The critique of individualism, on the other hand, departs from a positive image of community.’70 Meaning that he, and by default Art & Language, consider community to be important, and

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Collective Practice thus individualism comes under scrutiny. Collectivism would seem to be an inescapably political project. Those who choose to write on collectivity by and large tend to be those in favour of it and so naturally present the paradigm with bias. ‘Periodising Collectivism’ concludes: This then is our fetish now: that the dream of collectivism realise itself as neither the strategic vision of some future ideal, of a revised modernism, nor as the mobile, culture-jamming, more mediatedthan-thou counter-hegemony of collectivism after modernism, but instead as Marx’s self-realisation of human nature constituted by taking charge of social being here and now.71

Artistic collectives are relatively difficult to critique, though it should have been demonstrated through the case studies of Art & Language and LuckyPDF that issues of recognition, equality and authorship are not entirely resolved by collective formation alone, particularly while identities remain visible and audible. Instead, these issues are further complicated and tested through collective practice. The works of Art & Language and LuckyPDF do challenge traditional notions of authorship and serve to help shape and reimagine a more plural construction and conception of authorship, but they also demonstrate the difficulties of group work. In the next chapter we discuss how another group of artists use anonymity among their collective practice to critique the market and art world. Like the case studies in this chapter, they utilise text and appropriate corporate voices. They also face issues of equal recognition but, in stark contrast, the Guerrilla Girls are all female. Their practice readdresses subjectivity and female emancipation through the use of pseudonyms and alternative guises, namely, a gorilla mask.

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Interview: Socio-Art & The Art of Interaction: James Early of LuckyPDF Interviewed by Nicola McCartney on 9 May 20131

LuckyPDF was a company of artists based in South East London who delivered cross-disciplinary productions since 2009. They were comprised of James Early, John Hill, Ollie Hogan and Yuri Pattison, and their extended network. Lucky PDF typically used the internet, performance and digital media as platforms to showcase other artists’ work. One of their well-known projects includes the sale of Lucky Pages, a directory of all of their email and Facebook contacts sold only to those already on the list. In 2011 they exhibited at the Venice Biennale’s internet Pavilion and were commissioned as part of Frieze Projects to host Live from Frieze Art Fair this is LuckyPDFTV, a series of live daily broadcasts incorporating over 50 artists of their choice. In 2012 they took up the first artist residency for Dazed and Confused magazine and in April 2012 they presented a performance work as part of ICA London’s exhibition ‘Remote Control’. Later that year they launched the Young London Collection, a fashion line for the namesake survey exhibition hosted by the publicly funded organisation V22. Thanks are due to artist James Early for his hospitality, time and willingness to engage in conversation about his role within the artists’ group LuckyPDF and their practice. NM JE

Although we’ve already talked a lot, could start from the beginning? LuckyPDF is a space where our individual ideas are realised, so there is no one LuckyPDF. We are ambassadors for our 90

Interview: Socio-Art & The Art of Interaction projects, we do not speak on behalf of others and we do disagree. So this is James Early, member of . . . So you do not speak on behalf of your collective? No, but what I say is informed by the conversations we have and hopefully my role informs the decisions we make. How and when were LuckyPDF formed? LuckyPDF is a collaboration between four members. They are John Hill, Ollie Hogan, Yuri Pattison and myself, James Early. John and Ollie formerly worked together as the group LuckyPDF. Their aspiration was to run a gallery space rather than to be artists, as we currently operate. I met them for the first time, socially, at a Documenta campsite.2 We had mutual friends and we all lived locally, around here in Peckham, South East London. John had formerly done a group show with some of my work. I think he’d seen some of it at my degree show, which was video and performance. I knew Ollie socially, he worked in a bar nearby, and it’s quite a small scene, Peckham. The projects that preceded my full-time working with LuckyPDF, as we know it now, in its current configuration, were much more group projects, facilitated to an extent or at least coordinated by John and Ollie, who were the core members of LuckyPDF at that time, the end of 2008. Immediately after graduating, the idea was to have an infrastructure, but those projects were realised in much more loose association with a more fluid membership. Those guys were the consistent people at the time, other parties came and went; some people DJ’d under the brand name. It was more about people coming together for specific projects, rather than to have a career trajectory for its core membership. I was involved in some of those projects, mostly just contributing work as an independent artist. Then we did an exhibition of my work in a curatorproject-artist relationship-space. John especially helped to facilitate the work that I was making so there was a bleed of responsibility. So from that point we had familiar roles and working relationships. Although it was my work and I conceived it, I think that informed our mode of operation. So was LuckyPDF the name of that artwork or exhibition? No. LuckyPDF was their umbrella name for delivering projects that they and others were involved in.

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Death of the Artist How did the name come about? The manifesto was tested on a sofa, but it was written as a constitution rather than a manifesto. It was an outline of the responsibilities of the group, what they hoped to achieve. It was more about ways that they would like to realise projects rather than the objectives they would like to achieve with the projects, or that’s how I perceive the difference between a manifesto and constitution. The idea was that LuckyPDF could exist as a ubiquitous shop sign. ‘Lucky’ is the prefix that could be synonymous for anything, like ‘Lucky Launderette’ or ‘Lucky Chinese Takeaway’. The idea is also that a PDF is readable in all document formats. But you can’t edit a PDF unless you have special software. That’s true but this idea has sort of been retrofitted, to be honest with you. The ‘Lucky’ thing was cute, and also I didn’t make it up. It’s only in retrospect and having done a few projects through which we’ve noticed that our shared ideas towards art are that they can be massively distributed and replicated without deteriorating the quality of it. So it is a mass-market model rather than a scarcity model, because it’s not a craft object. I think PDF was borne out of a name that came up when people were on the ‘net too much, or perhaps that’s their normal mode of reading space, downloading documents etc. The ideas behind mass production or distribution inherently critique notions of the elite or original. How has that effected how LuckyPDF makes any money; do you sell any artworks or take on commissions? Ideologically, we like the idea that we could pre-sell, like we are a service provider. We prefer to understand our relationship to content to be more like a service provider than creating content and trying to sell it. I think this is because it is borne out of the fact that we work as a group. It seems more natural to respond to invitations; if we were determining our own trajectory, I think we would be guilty of creating lead roles. That could work but it would be more like a co-operative. That would be fine too, and we do to an extent realise our own projects that we want to see, but we often try to use commissions. We probably could have pitched some of the things that we have done but we haven’t had to. We haven’t really made any money through our art. We leverage our skills’ set, which has given us some credibility and reputation in the art 92

Interview: Socio-Art & The Art of Interaction world. Our recent fashion project has sold some pieces, and that’s a first, but this is a relatively recent occurrence. So we have sold artwork in our recent history but it represents a very small portion of our practice. With the fashion project, I presume that items are tailor-made; so do seamstresses and pattern-cutters take a cut of sales in the way that a contemporary art dealer might? No, that’s not how we understood our role. Our working relationship with craftspeople, in that instance, was that they were not implicated in the collaboration. But that’s specific to this project. In others, the cameraman, for example, is certainly implicated creatively. Tell me more about the fashion project.3 We were invited to be part of an exhibition that profiled young Londonbased artists at V22 studios. It’s a group survey over three years. We had worked with lots of the people who were exhibiting before. We were also keen on the idea that the V22 exhibition programme was building up towards our own collection. The relationship for that project was that they gave us a production budget, which we reciprocated with work. The working title was the ‘Young London Collection’ but I don’t think that was the published title of the exhibition itself. The fashion project started simply as being borne out of our understanding of the word ‘collection’. We are also interested in fashion in other ways; its potential for display in social spaces, not just art spaces; it’s complete ubiquitous nature with people; and people understand their terms of engagement with it; so we could infiltrate people’s lives. We didn’t really reach a price point low enough to be able to distribute that way but some of our interests in fashion are based on those ideas. I guess that’s the shortcomings of the realisation of the project. We didn’t want to print t-shirts basically, so while we were able to work with tradespeople, craftspeople, a pattern cutter, so that she could also be creative, which made mass-distribution impossible. We often work with other artists, and their creative role being part of the conversation, but this was almost like an opportunity for us to devise an aesthetic, that we could then champion and display in a different way. Some of my personal disappointments are that artists, who I think have a really good aesthetic, position themselves as artists rather than great designers. Why does this hierarchy within creativity exist, why do we have to self-define in these ways when some of the aesthetics of

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Death of the Artist these art projects are really transferable; into clothes or style, and creating objects? So we tried to extend that idea. What do you think was important about the group realising an aesthetic or creating an identity? We were selective with people’s work that we used or referenced. Sometimes the references were quite explicit; sometimes they were loose. Sometimes we lifted motifs directly from a work and sometimes it was a reference point that they had made and we found a similar source. I think it was more about us moving into a role as trend researchers. In the back of our minds we were thinking about curating, because practically speaking there were couplings of artists mixed together, using Photoshop, and then a ‘fill’ solution, like how Photoshop will just fill a space or area. It was quite interesting to make unique patterning; it wasn’t tessellating patterning as such. So we allowed there to be a lot of freedom in the way that these designs came out. The artists we showed had a shared aesthetic and came together. How was it authored? It was a LuckyPDF work and we were subtle about the way we alluded to some of the other people’s works that we referenced in our titles, just by making them compounds of the two artists. Something we are really interested in is how a lot of the people in our social, creative scene are essentially appropriation artists, or more than just collage artists - they are appropriating all sorts of material on the web - and where the edge of ownership lays. Does an artist who appropriates another image own that image? What I quite liked with the fashion project is that we were proposing the artists themselves were just as appropriate-able as the sources that they were appropriating. I liked that this suggested a non-hierarchical understanding of image resourcing. So, for example, a friend of ours appropriated a famous rapper that she was referencing in one of her pieces. In our minds, and according to Google image search, both are just as valuable as each other. Image has no intrinsic value until it manifests somewhere else and so by us appropriating something that she has appropriated shows she is as equal in our eyes as much as, for example, Fifty Cent. Do you ever have issues with copyright? For example, if a collaborative project is published in a magazine, or some other media, and it is attributed as a LuckyPDF work of art? 94

Interview: Socio-Art & The Art of Interaction Yes but it’s much more nuanced than something official like that. We learnt this lesson really early on; that we couldn’t afford to be lax on accreditation, and we also became very distrustful of editors. I think we’ve just wised up to the process, and I totally get it. An institution that has four or five points of contact before it goes to print; you’re talking to the interviewer, they give the text to an editor with a few images, you talk to someone else about commissions, about the crediting, by the time it goes from editor to editor and some sub-editor, there’s no control over the material and, no matter how passionately we try to make sure that the proper titling is unchanged, they’ve reformed it, or it just doesn’t fit their page layout. So we’ve had to be really careful about that. We’re also aware of the fact that with any article about us, which also includes references to other people’s work, there is an implication of a co-opting into our brand. It’s really subtle and it’s not even the editor’s fault. It’s just that when you read an article titled, ‘LuckyPDF’, all the content is seen and understood through that prism, which in itself is also very dangerous. The only way we can avoid this is by suggesting to the people that we work with that we will try our best to deliver their art in ways that we think is more effective and bigger than the institution of a magazine. In a way, that is our responsibility. If other people don’t meet their social responsibility then at least we are trying our best to promote the projects we have done in a format we think is more successful for the delivery of their content. Practically speaking, in all our projects we realise with other people, we have a mutual understanding that we can use the material and so can they so long as accreditation is fulfilled. Are there any contracts? No, we don’t really do that but we probably ought to at some point. In a way it would be a shame. It’s also something that would fundamentally change our working relationships with people because we facilitate these opportunities. If we have an opportunity to exhibit or do something for a magazine, that’s also a great opportunity for us to gift to our friends opportunities to be a stylist in a great photo shoot, even being the PR person for ‘such and such’ project can be a great opportunity. So it’s a shared responsibility. If we had to compartmentalise those roles it would be to the detriment of everybody’s involvement. It would also be difficult

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Death of the Artist for us to define where the edges of our roles are with others. We just have to keep our social working relationships close to friends. Are there particular institutions for which you do have to compartmentalise roles? Yes, with book publishing and photography. Or, for example, I also work in commercial production, where people understand their roles as being fairly defined, it’s much easier. Whereas in all of our projects we want to encourage input from everybody. But as soon as we do that we are not just asking someone to contribute their skill’s set, we’re also asking for their creativity, and when the project is realised it’s also the fruit of their labour. For example, photographers are also creative practitioners and artists, in the same way that we are, and their imagery is valid as much as ours. So even though we’ve facilitated the work, we’re asking someone to do much more than just press a button. But then, of course, everybody who has worked on the shoot is in the same situation, it’s just that there is a perceived hierarchy of roles, which we are trying to do away with but they may still subscribe to. But photographers have to rely on those roles and compartmentalisation. As much as they have a creative input, their skills and equipment are hired per hour, which is very different to an artist who makes money out of a perceived cultural capital or artistic ‘value’, almost irrespective of their time. Yes, but money isn’t the resource we have; we rely on reputation and potential opportunities to do interesting projects. Artists also run on the idea that their work may have no monetary value while other more vocational forms of creative practice, like photography and design, rely on particular, more quantifiable, ‘skills sets’. Perhaps this is why there is such a stark contrast between the work and earnings of an artist whose work may never sell or, at the other end of the scale, earn millions, irrespective of the hours they’ve put in, and that of a more vocational practitioner. Yes, the processes of creativity are quite different. Except that LuckyPDF would like to streamline their processes so that we don’t have to operate that way. We’re quite practical because we don’t have a shared conscience. Often, if we are walking around an exhibition together, which

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Interview: Socio-Art & The Art of Interaction is not that common but happens quite a lot if we travel, the ideas that we share in conversation are those of our thinking spaces that an artist might have in their studio. It’s quite interesting to talk to people who work in creative industries, those who work for good companies or business are allowed that thinking space and it is encouraged. We’re not too far from that ourselves, it’s just how we define thinking about art. What about the four of you, do you define your roles within the group or collective? Not so much. We do when we realise projects for practical reasons. For example, with video projects, we fall into natural roles. There needs to be a formal understanding of the roles within a production environment because it gets confusing otherwise. Also, because most of our projects are realised with other people, there is usually one point of contact or, at least, one of us has initiated that conversation. It tends to be that same person who maintains the curatorial relationship, but no one of us has the role of ‘artist liaison’, we don’t value that understanding. Generally speaking, we fall into roles determined by which member of the group is most interested in that specific project. In that case, they will take the lead. We are all involved in the development of ideas but mostly, if we work on projects for a long enough time-scale, we find ways that we can exist to satisfy whatever our wants are. How important is it that people contribute equal amounts of time and creative input and, if that varies, is it ever a problem? We are quite pragmatic about it. If any one of us isn’t pulling their weight it’s probably because they’re not interested in the project and so we would change the project in some way. People are rewarded by seeing their level of input realised in a project. There are certain things that are the responsibilities of the entire group. For example, responding to invitations, email requests and sorting images for publication. I think if that were consistently the work of one person there would be bitterness. Mostly we avoid that by being sensitive to each other’s wants, or at least trying to be. A good project will bring the best and greatest work effort out of all parties. Do you think if LuckyPDF were operating on a higher financial scale it would change or compromise the group’s work or dynamic? 97

Death of the Artist Yes, that is a practical thing that we worry about, for sure. We can’t pretend any more that it isn’t quite time-consuming. If LuckyPDF received a large sum of money, would you try and divide it as equally as possible or, like the Beatles, does one person have a higher stake because they conceived a particular idea or ‘wrote the lyrics’ and therefore own more royalties? We haven’t had to have that conversation yet, it hasn’t come up. We’ve won money in the past and we have had production budgets but it’s never been enough that it’s worth us taking anything from for ourselves; it’s just been ploughed into further projects. With practical things like travel, that’s often the reason we decide to do a project at all; we want to do a trip. We possibly don’t scrutinise projects for their artistic merits enough if there is the prospect of a trip but we only tend to notice that in retrospect. But that’s also because that’s our understanding of what art should be; we want it to inform ourselves. One of the things we’re interested in is the idea that an artist is somebody who could use their practice to learn rather than to gift an education to the rest of the world. Certainly, that’s how I think of it; that’s achieved by realising projects that stimulate me, primarily as a viewer, but also as a participant, which is a relationship with the work that an actual viewer would have. We’re often trying to create platforms for opportunities of social interactions to happen and that’s obviously facilitated by travel. Travel can also be used to measure the success of a project, which is a far better social marker than art world markers. Knowing from the outset that the prospect of sales are quite low, and because our projects are very difficult to package up into something that’s commercially viable, means we have to find other measures for the success of the outcomes of the project. Do you mean, how would we ‘split the spoils’? I suppose I’m asking if an equal collaborative practice is sustainable once you introduce financial gains or, conversely, if the collective’s income doesn’t increase but members eventually need a secure and consistent income? Obviously I can’t really say yet, but so far it’s sustainable. It’s not sustainable financially if that’s the thrust of your question, but the practice sustains itself quite well, I think. How sustainable is an artist’s interest in their own practice if they’re not working with other people? I find the

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Interview: Socio-Art & The Art of Interaction behaviours of groups really fascinating and being part of one is a great bargaining tool. So, certainly, working in this way is sustaining my interests in creativity and art, but in the loosest and broadest meaning of art. Financially, and individually, we sustain ourselves with non-LuckyPDF related projects. But some of the opportunities we are independently afforded are because of the work we’ve done with LuckyPDF, and working with LuckyPDF has fostered some of the skills that we have. Those sorts of things are invaluable. In that sense, LuckyPDF could be likened to a thinktank. We have roles outside of the group where we can use our own conversations to inform those that happen within the think-tank, like consultancy roles. Because, together, we’ve realised projects higher up the food-chain than we would have in other fields, we’ve been able to move laterally into other areas, and that’s something I’m excited about. We were quite sincere in the way that we wanted to realise the fashion project; we didn’t propose that we would become successful fashion designers overnight but at least we’ve had an insight now. And because we’ve produced these online TV shows we would feel more confident producing much higher-level television shows or film work. So our trajectory on this one would be about us moving laterally, as individuals and as a group, trying to find ways and other fields where we can use our skills sets with other artists. So, in fact, you’re nothing like a band because LuckyPDF is far more than the sum of your parts; people are investing in you not just financially but also conceptually and culturally, because they gain a shared learning experience and you don’t just provide LuckyPDF, you provide LuckyPDFs network and other people’s skills. So perhaps, because of that nomadic and transitory state, you are more sustainable than the traditional music band. Yes, and hopefully we are more reactive, and we respond to invitations. Whereas in music it requires figureheads, the singer, writers and producers, in LuckyPDF the understanding is that one of us is not the singer and we’re not the band. Maybe we’re actually the label. I’m interested in those different roles and in creating a good product. That’s really interesting. I’d never thought of you operating as a label before, but actually that’s a perfect analogy because it means that you’re more diverse and you can employ different acts. 99

Death of the Artist Well there are also lots of labels that have an identity for themselves as well. And you still have an identity but which is defined by whom you choose to work with and in what medium. Yes but that also depends on your access point to our projects. If you meet me at an exhibition, for example, then I’m the filter through which you understand our projects. If you just saw it online, then you might have a very different understanding of what our projects are and what they mean. Do you care either way? No, not really. I think it’s important to accommodate all those audiences; I think that’s why we’re interested in working the way we do. It’s not about creating one audience; we’re trying to reach multiple audiences at different levels of engagement and at different access points. Why? I think people should want their projects to reach a large audience but also, for me, if I’m not able to be an ambassador for some of those projects then it’s not useful because I’m not getting the feedback. But why should you want to reach a large audience? Good question. There’s no point unless you believe in the content. Because you feel like it’s a larger learning experience, or because of the greater publicity? Yes. There is greater opportunity afforded to those with a reputation, in as much as the hit-rate of interactivity is greater. I really liken social interaction to nuclear fission; the more people in a space, the higher the intensity and rate of conversation, the quicker and further you will go in a given amount of time because multiple people are networking and bouncing ideas off of one another. I think this is why social spaces become the epicentres of various movements, like the cafes in Paris and now online. There’s an accelerated rate of development of ideas or exchange of ideas, which doesn’t necessarily have an end point in mind. I enjoy that process of changeability and of sharing ideas. When a project reaches out to a large

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Interview: Socio-Art & The Art of Interaction audience the chances of feedback are greater and the diversity of audience is also hopefully greater. I think it’s a benefit. Also a lot of our projects are contingent on lots of people being involved and the success is measured sometimes by the amount of people who see it. Maybe it’s also ego, partly. A large audience is perceived to be a way of opening doors as well. It’s also a quantifiable measure of success. Especially if we’re not going to have monetary success. Do you think people always need to have a way of determining themselves? I think it’s inherent in our education and culture. Do you think it’s inherent in our DNA? We must have some kind of survivalist gene in our nature and popularity is one way of comparing ourselves to others. As much as you may work in a group you are still an independent person and you want to do well. Or at least we want to be validated by peers. Also, the institutions commissioning you, your peers and those you choose to work with, are all relying on your network, larger audiences and popularity. For example, most project budgets and arts funding is contingent on how many people you or your art might engage, as a way of qualifying the project. Why you think funding bodies want to reach a larger audience? The only way we can judge public art is by saying ‘x amount of people came’. So, for example, Tate Modern must be one of the best public institutions because it’s the most visited modern art gallery in the world. That doesn’t necessarily equate but I think it’s one way that we’ve learnt to validate art. That might be a good reason for doing anything. ‘Well if it is popular it must be relevant’, is one of our mantras. Or is it relevant because it’s popular? Essentially, that which has a mandate is relevant to the people; the more people who see something, the more people who are socially or culturally implicated in this environment.

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Death of the Artist The internet is how you reach the majority of your viewers. How do you see that having changed over the last couple of years and particularly within our generation? Well, the internet is also a reason you want to reach a big audience; people want themselves to be accepted. The more people who are complicit in whatever it is that you are doing, the more acceptable to you feel, and this all helps to serve any fragile notions of self. For example, with ‘friends’ on Facebook or Twitter followers. What kind of a person do you want to be and do you want to achieve something that resembles a good understanding of people at large? I do. That also means a global audience, and the best way I can reach a global audience beyond the gallery is online. Would you rather be in a gallery? No, that’s why the internet is important, because it becomes a platform that serves my wants better than a gallery, a place where a conversation can start with another collective in China, for example. How do you think internet art has changed in the last few years? Some people would associate internet art as a movement. internet art may also be a movement that has passed, which can be historicised like Conceptual Art, even though art is still conceptual. My understanding of post-internet art is that there is a shift from there being artists who explored the new media and material of the internet to create works that may exist online but which were also shown in a gallery to artists who are now making work specifically for the internet. They were born into a world of the internet, or certainly raised in a world with the internet, and it seems like a very natural place to exist, socially, and therefore for art to exist. I think it’s a relatively small portion of the history of art in which art has been shown in galleries. Maybe the internet is like the cave wall or the inside of a church; a public space where people can visit and communicate ideas. It’s much more mass market and widespread in his outreach and audience. I’m not anti-art world but the wider reach of the internet interests me. It’s complicated; a lot of our peers are self-defined artists and they’re creating work that has a specific, predetermined audience, which are online. But a lot of my access to non-artists’ creativity is also through the internet. I would like to imagine that the work LuckyPDF makes, and the work of other artists in our group or network, is seen as part of the wider cultural ephemera. We ideologically talk 102

Interview: Socio-Art & The Art of Interaction about the internet as non-hierarchical but there definitely is one, though I would like to maintain that there should not be. Even with the vlogging culture, or with YouTube tutorials, these are the spaces where people are sharing ideas. They may be practical ways of sharing ideas but this is what art is about, or perhaps it’s a role of art and now we don’t call it art but it’s certainly a space where we communicate visually. I have a very loose understanding of what people call art. I understand myself to be an artist but have pretensions is to be much more; I want to include other people’s large and diverse outputs into the brackets of art. Can you describe a hierarchal practice of art within the internet? Analytically, it’s quite easy to measure how acceptable your art is with Google analytics or Tumbler reposts, for example So it’s a hierarchy of popularity again? Well, yes. It’s a peer-appointed hierarchy so there’s no institutional gatekeepers in the same way as offline. Are there any steps of approval you have to go through? Yes. It’s really naïve to talk about the internet as not having areas of censorship. People share ideas on Facebook but you are in dangerous territory if there’s too much nudity, for example. But that’s not really art, that’s probably people just bandying ideas around. In terms of hierarchies, the same things that we understand to be trusted institutions offline still operate online. I suppose the people and companies that host websites, who determine their content and who contributes, work at the top of a hierarchy and form a type of censorship. I guess that’s what we’re doing; we show online and select the people we work with. Is there anything wrong with that? No I don’t think there is because all parties could have a platform of their own and make their own judgements; also I’m not proposing that one work is better than another. I don’t imagine such a thing to exist, I just think there are better fits or there is one working relationship that is better than another. Similarly, an art piece may be relevant to one person more

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Death of the Artist than another. Certainly, I want to create projects that are relevant to a large audience and I think that means working with large groups of people, or at least that seems like a strategy that might work. So your audience and the popularity of LuckyPDF work are incredibly important to you? Yes but having said that, that’s a difficult pact to have. I don’t want to be in projects that are trying to court favouritism that way, in terms of taste. Also, the people who I want to appeal to are quite specific; we try to appeal to people we respect. And our respect is determined by a sense that they have a shared ideology. How does that fit in with your piece for the ICA, which featured Chloe Sims from The Only Way is Essex (TOWIE)?4 Tell me more abut that project. That was an intervention piece, which was a contribution to the opening of ‘Remote Control’, an exhibition at the ICA that marked the analogue to digital switchover of television in the UK.5 It was a survey of

Figure 2.4 Chloe Sims, LuckyPDF’s School of Global Art (TOWIE’s Chloe Sims for the School of Global Art, featuring James Early and Chloe Sims). ICA, London, April 2012. Photo: Victoria Erdelevskaya. Photograph courtesy of James Early.

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Interview: Socio-Art & The Art of Interaction artists who worked, in some cases very spiritually, with television. We have worked with the format of television, though we have always championed online as the best mode of distribution.6 The idea was born out of a few things. For example, we weren’t invited to contribute to the exhibition itself; we were only invited to do something for the opening. Sometimes we’re used as a court jester, or we feel like that. Perhaps it’s because of our age; we were much younger than most of the exhibiting artists.7 Actually, that might be an unfair parallel to the curator, and ourselves and a little unreasonable, but basically we had one night to win the show, and that was our main objective. What do you mean by ‘win’ the show? Well, we wanted to make an impact, and because we were only invited to take part in the opening we wanted to contribute something that was part of the publicity of the exhibition. The ICA was a really good institution to work with, by the way, and they totally went with it. It was one of those fun ideas but in retrospect it’s interesting that we could have extended the mythology of Chloe Sims to include an art gallery opening. Her life is lived in the reality show but, as a viewer, your investment in the characters cannot be served completely by just watching the TV show. You have to extend your relationship to the characters by reading magazines, which are then substantiated by reading newspapers. So the idea is that when we take Chloe Sims out of that environment, which is in itself a ‘ reality’, and put her into another environment, which is actually quite artificial, like a gallery art show, we are contributing to her artificial social construction, so that the ICA also becomes a studio, or space or stage, for Chloe Sims to extend her narrative. Because she is a character who plays herself, but a self that is informed by her own recent history, our disrupting that narrative was like us manipulating her reality, her ownership, her accountability to her fan-base and her responsibility to her reputation management, which is intrinsically linked to her values as a person and as a commercial entity. When she appeared the next day in the Daily Mail, pictured leaving the ICA, they mostly gave her favourable fashion reviews because she looked quite demure and sophisticated. She looked great and quite at home in an art gallery, kind of. Leaving it she did, any way. It was a great opportunity for us because thereafter we’ve been able to give other sound bites from Chloe to the press.

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Death of the Artist You mentioned that an exhibition opening can be more artificial that a socially constructed ‘reality’ TV show. To what extent do you think inviting Chloe Sims to attend ‘Remote Control’ was a critique of the institution? I’m not actually a fan of the show; I’m more a fan of popular culture. I don’t want to see a world through prisms of hierarchy. These pretentious, self-serving methods of understanding – ‘low-brow’, ‘high-brow’ – just serve the egos of the people. Even being a fan of one thing seems be a qualification of status these days and I think that in itself is quite sad. I’d rather have a much more rounded and nourished understanding of life itself, which included both opera and The Only Way is Essex, and I don’t want to see them differently for their entertainment merits. Could we liken Chloe Sims, the display product of reality television, to a work of art and the infrastructures of the gallery institution? The irony of the whole thing is that people still found her fascinating. Apart from anything else, and I don’t want to objectify her, she is the very material of her own art performance. So putting her in that context is intriguing. Of course, she is also quite interesting looking; she is very beautiful, in a very specific kind of way. Having met her, and my understanding of the show, is that the characters embody a stereotype that they disrupt with personal quirks, in order to give themselves a personality, which they can sell on. That isn’t necessarily their ‘real’ personality but it becomes their personalities because they exist in character all the time. I find it really fascinating. All of these things are very similar to some facets of the art world. For example, having to maintain ‘face’ at all times with limited actual or personal ties to people with whom you spend a lot of time. The best thing that Chloe Sims said, which certainly revealed the nature of our actions was, ‘I think we’d better go now because we might be upsetting the real art people.’ That understanding – from somebody like her, who is so comfortable in front of the camera but who felt like an imposition in this public space –was so telling of the art institution. Do you think she felt inferior? No. I certainly didn’t make her feel like that, and she was much loved by all the ICA people. She was fulfilling a role in an institution she wasn’t familiar with. But that is her role; arriving at an art gallery isn’t that 106

Interview: Socio-Art & The Art of Interaction different to another public appearance at a club, as far as she’s concerned. The point is that there are multiple levels of understanding with any social interaction; we all have different levels of invested interests and which can sometimes be served but sometimes served independent of one another. In that instance, she was paid. That didn’t mean we owned her but we understood the rules of engagement, she definitely understood the rules of engagement. So, who won in that scenario, I don’t know. We paid her, so maybe she did. Maybe it’s not about winning. Absolutely, but when you say ‘inferior’ I would like to suggest quite the opposite. For example, she’s not deluded while a lot of people in the world are. I’m involved in this art world of smoke and mirrors and, although there is lots of sincere art, I’m very distrustful of and attributing value to it. We all have to sip the same Kool-Aid in order to maintain that value but she doesn’t, and she understood that. The depth of her delusion was much better understood than a lot of people in the art world. Art shows themselves are often stage performances. I like the idea that power or value is only a perception gifted by others, but you could simply take away your participation in that value system and then you take away their power. But if everyone takes away his or her perception of power from another then what do we trade on? Perhaps this is akin to the story of the King’s Robe [The Emperor’s New Clothes]?8 Yes, that’s what I’m likening the art world to. I personally find it – the understanding that to succeed you have to participate in a system you don’t believe in – very uncomfortable. But then it does become your reality. We talk about the art world as being false but for those of us who participate in it, it’s the real world. I don’t think there is an inside or outside world of reality but I understand what ‘virtual reality’ means in terms of the internet. Yes, but someone real is still physically sat down on a chair, logging into that ‘world’. How do we even know the level of someone else’s’ performance anyway, even within personal relationships? It’s impossible, isn’t it? If someone has 107

Death of the Artist had a bad day when you first met him or her, it would be different to another time, or if they’ve had too much coffee, or they just slept with someone they’ve fallen in love with. I do think these understandings of reality are distorted; to propose that we have a real or unreal understanding is false. It’s all about the election of our level of participation or delusion, and both of those could be our reality. Do you think there is a rise in collective practice or artist’s groups and, if so, why? We may perceive there to be a growth in a number of artists working collaboratively, or in a group-practice environment, but that’s because we are living now. These groups may not stand the test of time and, therefore, while they may have previously existed, they are perceived to be growing because they have formerly been forgotten or condemned to an unhistoricised moment. This immediately makes me think of women artists that were essentially written out of history. It’s exactly the same. Then I suppose the question is, why is it now more acceptable or popular to discuss collective practice? It’s partly because there is a level of self-historicising now, with the internet. But the institutions that write histories of art are still fairly discriminatory, they have to be. So actually, how much research have we done into female artists, or is our point of contact and research still determined by institutions which have a responsibility to represent the best-known, which generally means those which are most popular? In which case, we fall back into the same trap of believing there to be a widely European or North American history of male artists. Then what is it that is happening that’s forcing institutions to recognise collective practice? For example, the ICA recently curated a series of talks based on collective practice, which you spoke at.9 If a growth in collective practice does exist, as a caveat aside, I think it’s because we now understand our social relationships online; they can be quantified and chartered. We understand ourselves as social beings in a

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Interview: Socio-Art & The Art of Interaction much more acute way and we understand networks; they are much more visible. It’s quite easy with youthful arrogance to imagine yourself to be able to self-institutionalise, to bring into your network enough people that you become the scene and that your scene becomes significant enough. There is either a tipping point or a moment – maybe it’s to do with the older you get – when one starts to notice ‘there are lots of people here, they’re our network’. LuckyPDF is starting to fill the posts that we perceived to be filled by others and we are in fact our own institution, we have institutionalised. It doesn’t necessarily fit into the existing, established world, but it’s certainly a move towards the establishment, and that will probably look to the next generation as if it were a concrete image. But biennales and curators are definitely more interested in commissioning groups, collaboration and showcasing regional if not other, with a capital O, collectives. Especially since Document 11, curated by Okwui Enwezor. Perhaps it’s only a fashion, or do you completely disagree? I don’t disagree. I’m just distrustful of the notion that I might be more familiar with the work of collective practice than others. I’d end up researching myself into a belief that’s not a completely objective understanding of the world. That might always be true. We’re kind of working in a social bubble; it’s just that we want that bubble to be bigger. Do you think is because we’re all a little bit more politically correct or democratic? Let’s say that people do work together in times of crisis. By the way, I’m not saying this is a crisis – I’m in my 20s without any children and little responsibility; this isn’t a crisis and I don’t want to implicate the other guys in this. But maybe it’s better that people come together of their own accord because, actually, I find the condescending and social aspirations of institutions to get people together a little hypocritical. They’re reestablishing a notion of hierarchy and puppeteering social interactions and the fruits of natural human interaction, which is ridiculous. It’s regrettable that people are out of work and not everyone can have a social conversation, but that would be ideal. I appreciate that I’m unrealistic, or might sound desperately out of touch. Do you think there is an inherent moral dimension to collective practice and, if so, how do you utilise that? 109

Death of the Artist There is a social arrangement or contract implicit in our mode of practice, and an understanding of other people. From that working position you can assume a position of moral authority; you are considered to be altruistic by virtue of your authorial identity. Do you think institutions work with you for those same reasons; they want to trade on your altruism, and in the same way corporate sponsors of art fairs and public exhibitions trade on arts charity status or cultural capital? We are being guilty of naïvely thinking of the art world as a charity. I think corporate sponsorship is a good measure of the reach of art, but less so with art fairs because access to the fair costs so it’s not really public reach. Corporations are managing their brand from a commercial viewpoint, a luxury that national or public institutions don’t necessarily have. For example, BP managed to sponsor the Tate summer party after the oil spill last year. I remember it being controversial that Simon Starling won the 2005 Turner Prize for his environmentally friendly travel sculptures. There are contradictions and hypocrisies throughout. Art is thought of as worthy but I think it’s deeply immoral. The messages from some artists are in themselves, we might think, immoral but these are universal messages and that’s why they are popular. Others are very humanist. Our group achievements are because we’ve had the ability to tap into a psyche that appeals to more people. When an artist is popular, not better, it’s probably because they are tapping into something that is universally understood or questioned, which people are interested in. Giving people a contact point or reference that they congregate behind – a song, artwork or film, which are tools or catalysts for social interactions – should be championed by society. I’m conflicted about my understanding of institutions: although I see them being gatekeepers or self-appointed tops of the hierarchy – self-appointed because most people who appoint them don’t understand what’s going on with the specifics of the art scene but they believe them to have a public mandate – they are accountable to the public and, therefore, if the artist is popular, then maybe they should be exhibited and considered worthwhile. Perhaps not the individual artist, but certainly their creative processes. LuckyPDF would like to engage with people; make them critical, playful, questioning, self-learning, imaginative, self-teaching, interested,

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Interview: Socio-Art & The Art of Interaction and so they can create their own value systems and hierarchies. Putting themselves at the top of the hierarchy because they value themselves and their own ideas. These are the things we try to realise in our projects through helping people learn on the job; giving people a camera to become cameraman. All these things, if not useful in themselves as social skills, in terms of helping the wider community, are gestures towards ways of living that, I think, if were more massively adopted, could be for the betterment of people. When I say ‘betterment’, that doesn’t mean keeping people out of hospital beds, but learning through practice is still more nourishing and richer. This open-mindedness is applied in other fields, like science or business, and all sorts of other industries, but the art world has maintained its commercial model and most people within the art world perceive that to be the only model. As artists increasingly rag-pick from different cultural sources or work across disciplines, networking and collaborating more, what does the future history of art look like? Sadly, I don’t think it will look that different. You could say that art in its current guise has only existed for the last 50 years or so, moving from a celebratory purpose, religious, or patronage, to abstraction and self-service. It’s only the pretentious people that call themselves artists; cartoonists or graffiti artists are all artists but maybe that looks like a history we don’t want. Perhaps this era of self-historicising within the internet, that you described, will change our current trajectory of the canon? Implicit in the way that we work is the idea that history isn’t that important. Having said that, that’s not 100 per cent true. The question of authorship is really difficult because I like reading biographies but I also like the idea that we exist more like a species and contribute in equal measures to a different world, quite idealistically. It’s quite contradictory that I want to achieve that. It’s inherent in human nature to be contradictory. History would have us believe that people operate with single points of interest and it isn’t true, I don’t think.

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Death of the Artist We must, by nature, participate in constant relationships otherwise language wouldn’t have evolved. It’s the same instinct I have when I enjoy seeing old family photographs. Those photographs exist because people came together to take the picture. That’s a disgustingly nostalgic and romantic way to see art. Perhaps I’m optimistic about working collaboratively or being involved in a creative lifestyle because I don’t yet have children or family preoccupations. I haven’t yet extended my own history or figured out how I will exist in the future. I certainly know that I liked some of the projects we did because we had so many people involved that they became documents of history themselves; they document a moment of relationships in the social world. We watch some of our past works and we feel a sense of nostalgia. If I were in a more pragmatic mood, that self would hate me for saying so but I do quite like them for that reason. I think that’s also human nature; there’s nothing wrong with saying that. But there is a danger to thinking of the past as being unproblematic. How would LuckyPDF’s biography be formatted? I’m thinking of how we can avoid the solo narrative of the retrospective, the singular point of contact or reference, like the prism you discuss, through which we read an artist’s career or works. Maybe it’s more about a shift of emphasis. It is difficult because people are responsible for the things that they’ve made and they get attached to it. I like the idea that art is ephemera that comes out of social interactions. That’s not what our art is but that’s what it can be or could be, which happens naturally within a group dynamic, even if it’s the invention of a game, joke, or people playing chess. For example, folklore isn’t attributed to one person or, if it is, it’s sometimes retrospectively been attributed to one person and it’s questionable whether it’s a singular writer or simply the person who told the story. But you aren’t folklore. LuckyPDF is comprised of four tangible people. But we partly give projects an understanding with retrospective branding. So perhaps LuckyPDF’s projects are a type of folklore?

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Interview: Socio-Art & The Art of Interaction There may have been many more people involved on a particular project than documented, for example. The reason we came together is because we were working on the video documentation of a music festival but we weren’t the only people doing that.10 Maybe the instinct to write a monograph is made necessary within very specific, commercial or reputation requirements. Otherwise, we don’t need them. Who do they serve? You. I think the artist can benefit through publicity. Publishers benefit in monetary terms and exhibition venues use them to generate greater interest in, and supplement, their solo exhibitions and retrospectives. In future, if everyone does have access to the internet, perhaps there won’t be a need for the monograph? That’s actually the right answer, isn’t it? That’s what I meant by saying everyone was self-historicising, they can’t help but self-historicise. Do you think the monograph will become redundant? There is always an ‘official’ history or an ‘abridged’ version. In future I think there will be threads of different histories and stories of the same events and, with the internet, it will be more difficult to have an ‘authoritative’ one. I agree, especially because of the way people now access information. Most people do a Google search and hit the top result, so perhaps Wikipedia is the source. Searches online are all hyperlinked or there are multiple networks on top of each other like Venn diagrams. We always stumble across things in different ways. Whenever I want to look up a DJ I quite like, or some content online, it’s often by recommendation, because they’ve been linked to somebody else’s work I know or they’re just ‘friends’ on Facebook. Because that’s my access point, I imagine a scene of people who all know each other; but maybe they only know each other as much as I know them. I guess it’s about reading. That sort of documentation is very subjective and should be understood according to the vantage point from which you are reading it. So, I’m not sure we won’t still want an account of ‘what actually happened.’ The only way LuckyPDF can avoid an ‘authoritative’ history is to reject your monograph offers. 113

Death of the Artist I don’t see why we can’t take the format and just use it like a vehicle for the way we want to tell our story. These formats don’t need to be completely dependent upon their own known ways of realising their own content. The role of the monograph could still be fulfilled and be done just as easily by something that included contributions from everybody we’ve ever worked with, or it could be a group-writing exercise. I also don’t think there’s anything wrong with biographies, per se, and I don’t think it’s contradictory to say that LuckyPDF is primarily the work of four people who have contributed to particular projects. Essentially, the ideological drive and the concepts that determine the nature of our projects are our own, so that’s where the art exists. That wouldn’t mean discounting the processes that helped contribute to build a holistic project. It’s about different or misunderstandings of what art is. More recently, I’ve been thinking about what inspired cave painters and it may or may not be the same instinct that inspires a Photoshop painter. I can only imagine it’s an instinct to communicate with others. Maybe it’s not about cave painting; it’s storytelling. Perhaps they’re not different. When I was in Australia, I was told that most of the cave paintings were indicators of natural resources or threats for the following nomadic tribes people. Art is a language that anyone can get good at but that is also a way of discounting people who are ‘non-art’, who were not educated, unable to or choose not to use the same lexicon of creativity. I think it’s the responsibility of all people who are creative to try and use the tools of communication they have at their disposal, at that time, with other people. That’s what the internet is. That’s what LuckyPDF projects try to do.

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3 Anonymity and Feminism Guerrilla Girls

In 2011 an artist going by the alias ‘Gertrude Stein’, in collaboration with her equally anonymous peers, told Art Journal their ‘inside story’ of the formation and fracture of the internationally renowned feminist collective, the Guerrilla Girls. But, significantly, they did this as Guerrilla Girls no longer; their account was pointed at current members. ‘Stein et alia’, according to their story, had all been members of the Guerrilla Girls at one or several points.1 Their controversial account was published on the tenth anniversary of ‘Stein’s’ departure and subsequent formation of another collective, Guerrilla Girls BroadBand Inc. One thing that both current and old Guerrilla Girls agree upon is that the group formed in the spring of 1985 during a meeting at the loft of the still active member ‘Frida Kahlo’ in Soho, New York. Thereafter, the group’s membership fluctuated and still does: Altogether, nearly one hundred women were invited to become Guerrilla Girls between 1985 and 2000, staying for short, medium and long periods, sometimes leaving and returning – because once a Guerrilla Girl, always a Guerrilla Girl!2

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Death of the Artist This chapter offers a historical account of the Guerrilla Girls, from the perspective of someone who is not and has not been a Guerrilla Girl. It is among the first significant, academic and critical reflections on the history of the group within the context of authorship and feminism. The collective itself demonstrates another way that authorship might be negotiated in a post-Barthesian world, as a critique of the prevailing white-male ‘authorfunction’. When appearing in public, the Guerrilla Girls wear gorilla masks to protect their anonymity. The only identifying feature of each Guerrilla Girl is her pseudonym (or voice when performing); all are names of deceased female artists such as Frida Kahlo, K€athe Kollwitz, Alice Neel, Alma Thomas, Claude Cahun, Eva Hesse and Meret Oppenheim, to name just a few. Referring to themselves as the ‘conscience of the art world’ (see the bottom of each poster included here), they formed in response to the diminution of interest in ‘active’ feminism, the growth of academic and theoretical feminism, and a general frustration with the underrepresentation and exclusion of women and artists of colour from exhibitions, collections and funding. Collectivism as a means of political reaction was not in itself new. But the 1970s saw a new wave of political protests. In America, the civil rights movement and gender debates spurred a milieu of protests that informed artists’ groups, resulting in more direct activism. Founding members of the Guerrilla Girls had been part of previous feminist protests in the late 1970s but were increasingly frustrated with the diminishing power of the picket line and formal petitions.3 Picking up on new trends of street art, graffiti and increasing concerns over corporate culture, the Guerrilla Girls began with self-printed posters appropriating advertising text and slogans as part of their practice and disseminating their message direct to the dealers and galleries of the (New York) art world, before they went global. The Guerrilla Girls’ first prominent work was a series of posters embarrassing the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which included only 13 female artists out of 169 in their 1984– 5 ‘International Survey of Painting and Sculpture’ exhibition. The posters were exhibited illegally, pasted on the street corners of Chelsea, New York’s Manhattan art district, in the middle of the night and under cover. Early press clippings show the Girls wearing ski masks. It wasn’t until later that the group started using

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Anonymity and Feminism ‘gorilla’ as a pun and donned the primate masks as part of their guerrilla art actions. As the Guerrilla Girls continued to protest against inequality in the art world through the medium of billboards and posters containing simple statistics, they accumulated fame and fear among the art community; for who knew to whom they might be speaking and how many of them there were? Their tactics meant that a number of dealers and critics even apologised: ‘as a result, we did get some interesting letters early on, apologies in fact, from a couple of people. Ida Panicelli wrote us an apology, and [art scholar] Thomas McEvilley.’4 This was mostly attributed to their anonymity, which allowed them to publicly criticise artists, dealers and public institutions with little consequence to their individual careers. In an Oral History interview held at the Archives of American Art, Guerrilla Girl ‘K€athe Kollwitz’ recounts loitering around the poster THESE GALLERIES SHOW NO MORE THAN 10% WOMEN ARTISTS OR NONE AT ALL the morning after she pasted it. By chance, she witnessed dealer Diane Brown attempting to deny its implications to her young son: ‘Mommy, what does that mean?’ . . . He saw his mother’s name on the poster. And she sort of said, ‘Never mind, it’s not important. It’s not important.’ But it was a classic moment, because then we realized that people were embarrassed [to be named on our posters].5

In a follow-up 1989 poster campaign, the Guerrilla Girls even managed to co-opt male conceptual artists such as Sol LeWitt and Joseph Kosuth into their projects. They sent out ‘sign and return’ postcards asking male artists’ permission to include their name in the poster WE HAVE ENCOURAGED OUR DEALERS TO SHOW MORE WOMEN ARTISTS AND ARTISTS OF COLOR. HAVE YOU? (see Figure 3.1) Should the artist choose to decline, they were even warned they might be ‘named and shamed’. The Guerrilla Girls became a voice for feminism and equality in the art world and began to also give public talks and workshops, which they refer to as ‘gigs’. As the collective and their actions became internationally recognised, their pressure campaigns became more powerful and their posters grew larger in size; at one point they received a government grant for their newsletter Hot Flashes, designed to ‘monitor sexism and racism in the art world’. In 2005 the Venice Biennale commissioned them; in 2013 they held a retrospective at Alhondiga Bilbao (now Azkuna Zentroa) in 117

Death of the Artist

Figure 3.1 Original postcards sent from the Guerrilla Girls to artists asking them to agree to encourage their galleries to show more women and artists of colour. From Guerrilla Girls archive at Getty Research institute, LA, August 2013. Permission to reproduce granted by the Guerrilla Girls. Photograph taken by Nicola McCartney.

Spain and in 2016 they were named one of the most influential artists by Artsy. Yet, despite the group fracturing and their internal disputes occasionally creeping into the public domain over the past decade, the Guerrilla Girls, to their credit, remain largely anonymous. Because the group’s membership has fluctuated over the years and some Girls have shared pseudonyms, their sense of authorship is incredibly complex. This is further complicated by the fact that the Guerrilla Girls author all works of art as the collective, but are comprised of several individuals who each have different opinions, which they voice at ‘gigs’ and in interviews. ‘Gertrude Stein’ explains, ‘We always sent at least two Guerrilla Girls on gigs and appearances in order to demonstrate that there was a range of feminist views within the group.’6 This element of discrepancy should be seen as integral to the group’s infrastructure and longevity by comparison with some other feminist groups; a significant challenge to feminism is its inability to account for all women. 118

Anonymity and Feminism Guerilla Girl ‘Alice Neel’ was proud to admit that, ‘Over the past ten years, we’ve come to resemble a large, crazy, but caring dysfunctional family.’7 Even so, they have remained an incredibly well-organised collective. Roles were assigned like any other organisation: ‘Eva Hesse’ worked on commission to sell Guerrilla Girls posters to museums; ‘Rosalba Carriera’ negotiated performances and lectures; ‘Meret Oppenheim’ was the group’s first publicist; ‘Alice Neel’ was the archivist; ‘Elizabeth Vigee LeBrun’ the first treasurer; and ‘K€athe Kollwitz’ the graphic designer. Beyond formal organisation, the Girls also supported one another financially when budgets afforded. ‘Gertrude Stein’ claims that: The Guerrilla Girls established a reimbursement policy for child care expenses, while WAC collective did not. We could afford to be generous to Girls in need; the collective decided to give two thousand dollars to ‘Djuna Barnes’ after she was burned out of her loft.8

Affirming this is a 1997 letter to the Girls from a former member that I read at the Getty Research Institue, LA, which holds the Guerrilla Girls’ archives.9 This particular member thanked the group for their personal and financial support, which had enabled her and her husband to ‘prevail against the odds’. A key component to their success is their ability to communicate far and wide, beyond the art world. This is without question aided by their appropriation of mass media, not just in form but also in style, which the public recognises and understands because it is a part of the everyday world. The growing 1980s culture of corporate brands, concise slogans and mass manufacturing meant that the Guerilla Girls could utilise the very same patriarchy they were criticising. In 1985, the year the Guerrilla Girls formed, Hal Foster described these as defining characteristics of critical post-modernism and the zeitgeist of American Conceptual Art as treating ‘the public space, social representation or artistic language in which he or she intervenes as both a target and a weapon’.10 New York in the mid-1980s saw a rise in artwork appropriating media-based text. Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger, for example, capitalised on headline slogans, the rising dominance of mass media and information – statistics and subliminal advertising – and the 119

Death of the Artist growing popularity of new typographies, creating their own phrases and fonts. These practices could be viewed as subverting the language and ideology of consumer capitalism while simultaneously using concepts of branding and advertising to create their own specific identities but, significantly, without relying on the use of the handwritten signature or ‘original’, ‘unique’ medium of traditional artworks, such as painting. The early Guerrilla Girls’ Pop Quiz, for example, uses a clear, capitalised and bold typeface for its headline, much like a newspaper, while its rhetorical question and upside down answer also resembles the kind of formatting seen in the games and quiz sections of newspapers and magazines (see Figure 3.2). Its lack of imagery, tight formatting and use of black-on-white similarly means that the poster could easily be appropriated for an ads column as much as a billboard. The fundamental reproducibility of print also serves to undermine the ‘original’ artwork, which is attributed to the notion of the singular artist. Walter Benjamin famously argued in his essay ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ (1935) that the aura of an artwork is reduced with mechanical reproduction. Copies or reproductions also result in greater access to art and culture, and potentially democratise exhibiting institutions and notions of authorship bound up with attribution, genius and authenticity. Print work is easily copied, at little expense to the original ‘quality’ of the piece, and easily converted into commercial reproductions, such as the postcards and posters that the Guerrilla Girls independently sell. ‘Kath€e Kollwitz’ explains that this multitudinous, direct trading undermines the traditional infrastructures of the art market: We’re a small business: a Mum and Mum and Mum and Mum store. Even though it’s a lot more work, this idea of small exchanges really works for us. It spreads our ideas and message anywhere a book, poster or T-shirt can go. We also give talks and workshops internationally. We sell portfolios of our posters to public collections so they become part of the historical record. We receive exhibition fees and small project fees, too. It’s a new paradigm compared to the old market model where the artwork gets more and more expensive and more rare as it gets better known.11

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Figure 3.2 Guerrilla Girls, Guerrilla Girls' Pop Quiz. q 1990, 1995 Guerrilla Girls. Courtesy of the Guerrilla Girls.

Thus, the group’s chosen medium has also been key to their conceptual and financial success, enabling them to sustain their practice autonomously. It is important that the Guerrilla Girls do not have to rely on the fashions of the art market, an agent or dealer, so that they can criticise the institution with distance and perceived objectivity. The Guerrilla Girls frequently author their prints and posters in typefont with ‘q Guerrilla Girls’ and ‘conscience of the art world’ in the bottom right-hand corner, further undermining the traditional artist’s signature, which commonly appears in the same space. Copyright is a form of claiming authorship, but it also implies a global entity, and serves as a reminder of the product’s nature as a mass-produced commodity, rather than a singular ‘original’ artwork. In her book No Logo (2000), Naomi Klein discusses the rise of a satirical and parodying practice called Culture Jamming. She claims the term was

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Death of the Artist coined in 1984 by a San Fransisco ‘audio-collage’ band called Negativland, and defines Culture Jamming as ‘the practice of producing advertisements and highjacking billboards in order to drastically alter their messages’.12 The term was previously popularised by Mark Dery through articles in The New York Times and Adbusters, and in his name-sake book (1993), which describes the practice as media hacking, neo-Situationist sociopolitical satire, and guerrilla semiotics, all in one. Klein cites examples, including the parodying of Burger King’s logo to read ‘Murder King’ and oil company Esso to become E$$o. Largely, these revisions are anticonsumerist and part of social awareness campaigns, similar to the antisexism work of the Guerrilla Girls. While Klein argues that the practice of Culture Jamming predates (by at least a year) the founding of the Guerrilla Girls, its recognition as a movement is relatively recent and only in hindsight. I would therefore like to consider the Guerrilla Girls as having been early practitioners of Culture Jamming before it became popular. Practically altering the ‘message’ can historically be seen in fine art, such as Duchamp’s moustached Mona Lisa (1919). As technology has advanced, Klein notes that desktop publishing, the internet and software packages, such as Photoshop, have enabled Culture Jammers to appropriate their subject matter so convincingly that they can trick the public into questioning the authenticity of the image itself. The artists The Yes Men, for example, have extended Culture Jamming to performance and have made a career out of tricking the public when they pose or appear as the subjects they wish to critique. There is also a literary history to this. In 1994, Joel Schechter wrote an essay comparing Jonathan Swift’s Drapier’s Letters to the Guerrilla Girls’ anonymous and political practice, noting that both appropriate political language and contemporary media in order to disseminate an ulterior message.13 Given his comparison, perhaps the history of Culture Jamming should be deemed much longer than Klein proposes.14 Schechter further explains how he perceives the Guerrilla Girls to use language as both a target and a weapon ‘through quotation and construction of a simulacrum of the world through the language of statistics’.15 He describes corporate language and the use of figures as deliberately impersonal so that the representatives of the industry – broadcasters, PR companies, financiers or galleries – seemingly separate themselves from the voice they use, to ‘absolve them of personal responsibility for their acts against the poor,

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Anonymity and Feminism the oppressed, the forgotten’.16 An art world example might be the gallery press release. As discussed in the previous chapter, this often uses a distinct style of language, which is highly impersonal, conceptually opaque and intentionally elitist, so as to maintain the cultural capital of the aesthetic object.17 The Guerrilla Girls’ borrowed language – use of statistics, bullet points and headlines – successfully undermines the institutions they critique because they are able to communicate in the same way as their adversaries in order to appear just as authoritative, even if only by parody. Another example of where language is used both as a weapon and a tool can be seen in the bottom right-hand corner of their works: the words ‘A public service message from’ prefaces ‘Guerrilla Girls, Conscience of the art world’. Already likened to a satirical ‘signature’, the ‘public service message’ is similar to the political sloganeering heard at the end of televised news broadcasts, whereby the voice assumes public responsibility and authority. On the use of language, the group’s name should also be examined. While the catchy alliteration of Guerrilla Girls adds to the group’s comic

Figure 3.3 Guerrilla Girls, Code of Ethics for Art Museums. q 1989 Guerrilla Girls. Courtesy of the Guerrilla Girls.

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Death of the Artist take on female activism, the word ‘Girls’ was widely perceived at the time as derogatory to women. In a separate Oral History interview as part of the Archives of American Art, ‘Alma Thomas’ ambiguously mentions ‘the issue of the word Girls’ without going into more detail.18 Perhaps she was uncomfortable with its patronising connotation. On the other hand, member ‘K€athe Kollwitz’ remembers the early disagreements among the group over their name but explains that it was powerful in defining themselves as a new force of feminism and a means of claiming the epithet: Some of us wanted to call ourselves Guerrilla Girls and that caused an argument because some older members had previously struggled to be called women, not girls. We wanted Girls so we could send the message that this was something different, something new. We wanted to reclaim the negative use of the word. Eventually everyone agreed. This was before ‘Girl Power’ and Riot Grrrls and all that.19

While ‘Girls’ might imply immaturity there is also an endearing sense of humour attached to its knowing self-deprecation; sarcasm and wit are indisputable components of the group’s ‘voice’ and practice. Another example of their use of political wit is in their Code of Ethics poster (see Figure 3.3). In 1987 The Guerrilla Girls were invited to give a talk at the Hartford Atheneum. Part of their lecture included the naming and shaming of several galleries and institutions that exhibited or collected few, if any, women artists or artists of colour. In addition, they disclosed relationships between the art market and curators of public institutions who have vested interests in exhibiting the same canon of white male artists. They named two men who had profited from art auctioned at Sotheby’s because they had programmed the artist’s work to simultaneously exhibit at the Whitney museum, thus raising the profile and monetary value of the artwork. Two years later the Girls produced the Code of Ethics for Art Museums (1989). The Code of Ethics mimics The Ten Commandments and includes: i. Thou shalt not be a Museum Trustee and also the Chief Stockholder of a Major Auction House. ii. A Curator shalt not exhibit an Artist, or the Artists of a Dealer, with whom he/she has had a sexual relationship, unless such liaison is explicitly stated on a wall label 8” from the exhibited work. 124

Anonymity and Feminism iii. Thou shalt not give more than 3 retrospectives to an Artist whose Dealer is the brother of the Chief Curator. Listed on the website, the work is accompanied by the text, ‘It’s the only poster we have ever done in Old Testament language.’20 The formal, archaic language implies a long history of the unethical practice they are condemning and simultaneously (and with irony) appropriates the voice of ‘authority’. The stone-like tablet adds a moral dimension to the criticism. In mimicking The Ten Commandments, it also cannot be disassociated from Christianity, a historically (if not inherently) patriarchal and hierarchical religion, possibly akin to institutions that embrace the mythology of artistic and tragic genius and which champion the Western canon of white male artists. Rarely are non-profit organisations, such as public museums, exposed as Machiavellian inside traders and yet the internal structures supporting the public art world are heavily dependent upon the politics of private philanthropy or the auction house, from which museums buy with public money. The Duveen Gallery of the British Museum and Duveen Galleries extension of the Tate Britain are named after the philanthropist Joseph Duveen, for example, who made his money out of buying art from declining European aristocrats and selling it to wealthy Americans, such as Henry Frick (of the Frick Collection, New York). More recently, in 2010, The Whitechapel Gallery in London hosted a series of exhibitions that drew from the collection of the Greek art collector Dimitris Daskalopoulos. This was a mutual exchange, but it tells the public ‘this art is important, because we have chosen to display it’ and simultaneously raises the value of the collector’s work. And, over the financial year 2014 –15, for example, Tate added works of art valued at £76,981,000 to their Collection. Of this figure, £72,742,000 was donated by individuals either directly or in lieu of tax. What we learn from this is that the potentially arbitrary selections of individual wealthy men have historically influenced what ‘great art’ is, and who it is made by. It is important these connections are made more transparent so the audience is aware of why some art and artists are considered greater than others and subsequently given more exposure. Josephine Withers wrote an essay on the Guerrilla Girls for the journal Feminist Studies the year before they released the Code of Ethics, drawing parallels between the art market and what would be considered illegal 125

Death of the Artist insider-trading within the financial market.21 Though Withers writes with an American perspective, the predicament is international; collectors and dealers are free to purchase or ‘invest’ in any art they like because it is a product like any other. A customer in a retail shop could not be accused of discrimination because they preferred one item of clothing to another, or one fashion designer over another; taste cannot be legislated. The art market is similarly difficult to regulate. Therefore, artworks by women and artists of colour can be excluded for several other ‘justifiable’ reasons, which echoes ‘why there are no great women artists’. ‘For example, artists have no protection under Title VII, since they are viewed as independent contractors; so even if racist or sexist bias can be demonstrated, there is no legal recourse.’22 If the Guerrilla Girls revealed themselves they might be dismissed as bitter individuals and so Withers’ discussion of discrimination reiterates the power of the Girls’ anonymity. Their unified, anonymous guise means they are able to symbolically represent more people and are perceived as less partial, like the third-party ‘protector’ that Withers describes. Conversely, individual artists are easily dismissed on the grounds of the ambiguous term ‘quality’. In 1993 the Guerrilla Girls exposed art collector Alfred Taubman for his conflict of interest in serving both the Whitney Museum and Sotheby’s. They did this in the ‘Banana Bites’ section of the first issue of Hot Flashes dedicated to ‘An examination of the U.S newspaper of record, the New York Times’ (NYT) ‘In June 1992, The Art Market column reported that Sotheby’s went public. It did not mention the $275 million wind-fall profit that Alfred Taubman, Sotheby’s CEO and Whitney Museum Trustee, earned in the deal.’23 Another ‘Banana Bite’ revealed that the NYT had chosen to cover artist Dan Flavin’s wedding at the New York Guggenheim rather than the better attended Women’s Art Caucus protest against the Guggenheim’s exclusion of women artists. A further section redefined the meaning of ‘Family Values’: ‘When Frank Stella, whose dealer is the brother of Bill Rubin, Chief Curator Emeritus of MoMA, is given three retrospectives at MoMA before he is fifty.’24 Given their critique, it is therefore also important to consider the Guerrilla Girls’ own relationship with different institutions and their sources of funding. In a Skype conversation I had with ‘K€athe Kollwitz’

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Anonymity and Feminism she acknowledged sometimes benefiting, implicitly, from private corporations.25 An example of this would be the London Southbank Centre’s 2013 ‘Meltdown’ festival, organised by Yoko Ono (15 –16 and 22 – 3 June 2013). For this the Guerrilla Girls were invited to talk and hosted activism workshops, helping attendees create their own posters and modes of protest. In the lecture, it was brought to the attention of ‘K€athe’ and ‘Frida’ that the Southbank Centre was sponsored by an oil company, which was at odds with much of Ono’s principles. They were seemingly unaware of this alliance and admitted to wishing they had done more research on the venue. ‘K€athe’ also acknowledges that many of their university lectures are paid and, in turn, many American universities are recipients of grants from private corporations that the Girls would otherwise avoid working with. However, in museums and galleries that are restricted in their choice, by inviting the Girls to talk or exhibit their works, curatorial staff are able to express their individual frustration with the under-representation of women and artists of colour in the collection. For example, from 1 October 2016 to 1 March 2017 the Whitechapel Gallery in London commissioned the Guerrilla Girls to revisit their 1986 poster stating ‘It’s Even Worse in Europe’ with a statistical research project exploring the diversity of 383 European museums, including themselves. Institutional support has not always been so readily available, however. For example, when the Girls were not so well recognised, they struggled to obtain institutional support. In 1989, the group was asked to design a billboard by the New York Public Art Fund (PAF). Excited by the opportunity to create something far bigger than their current posters, the Girls proposed an illustrated mock up of what is now their most notable work, Do Women Have to Be Naked to Get Into the Met. Museum? This poster featured a gorilla-headed recreation of Ingres’ famous Odalisque with a set of statistics criticising women’s representation at the MET (see Figure 3.5). This was to be their first count, which they update every few years. The PAF rejected the proposal on the basis that it ‘wasn’t clear enough’, but perhaps also because of the fan’s phallic connotations, and so the Guerrilla Girls ‘passed the hat around’ and ran the poster on the sides of New York City buses at their own expense instead. It is worth noting that, despite its name, the PAF is privately funded.26 Some of its current trustees continue to work in

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Death of the Artist politics and with major museums. Its own founder, Doris C. Freedman (1928 – 81), served as New York City’s first Director of Cultural Affairs. So while the PAF does not intend to make a profit, it is, like several other arts organisations, reliant on relationships with other (perhaps less ethical) institutions, and cannot afford to break these ties in order to continue its own ‘good work’. It is because of these fragile relationships that ‘K€athe Kollwitz’ believes their billboard proposal criticising the Met. was rejected. Determined to communicate far and wide, so long as the commissioning institution did not ask them to compromise their artworks or messages, the Guerrilla Girls worked once more with the PAF. In 1990 they displayed the following in LED text: A public service announcement from the GUERRILLA GIRLS, conscience of the art world. / New Year’s resolution for the 90’s . . . I will look at things I don’t want to see. This formed part of the PAF’s project ‘Messages to the Public’ (1982 –90), an exhibition series that ran on an 800-square foot animated light-board in Times Square, which featured more than 70 artists, among them Keith Haring, Jenny Holzer and Richard Prince. The only other ‘public’ funding the Girls received – original projects were self-funded and later ones sustained by sales of prints and gig fees – came from their application to the government’s National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) for their newsletter Hot Flashes. Publishing only one volume comprised of three issues, the NEA refused their second application because it advertised, albeit as a joke and impossible to police, a two-tier subscription fee: a higher level for white males and a standard rate for everyone else (see Figure 3.4): One male journalist is still threatening to sue us for charging white males a higher subscription rate to Hot Flashes than women or artists of color. We thought it was fair, because white men earn more. We told him to go sue hairdressers who charge women more for a haircut.27

In her conversation with me (June 2013), ‘K€athe Kollwitz’ concluded that the Guerrilla Girls learned very early on that they could not afford to rely on institutional funding or support but that they were still willing to exhibit within and alongside such institutions so long as they benefited from being able to disseminate their messages far and wide, and on the basis 128

Anonymity and Feminism

Figure 3.4 A subscription request from a member of the public questioning the Guerrilla Girls’ varied rates for their journal Hot Flashes, found in the archives of the Guerrilla Girls, Getty Research Institute, LA. Photograph taken in August 2013. Permission to reproduce granted by the Guerrilla Girls. Photograph taken by Nicola McCartney. Efforts have been made to protect the privacy of the author of this postcard.

that they were able to critique that same institution. An early example of this was their exhibition at the 2005 Venice Biennale. As part of this exhibition, the Guerrilla Girls exhibited the poster Where are the women artists of Venice? Underneath the men. The satirical text is matched by their own mocked-up image of a woman with a red dress slipping off her shoulders, itself a parody of the movie poster used for La Dolce Vita (1960). She is on her hands and knees, seemingly being sat on or ridden by the male. Underneath her, but unknowingly, as her eyes are closed, lie images of canonical Western works of art, each the portrait of a woman. The fine print below reads: It isn’t La Dolce Vita for female artists in Venice. Over the centuries, this city has been home to great artists like Marietta Robusti, Rosalba Carriera, Giulia Lama, and Isabella Piccini. They and many others succeeded when women had almost no legal rights and rules were set up to keep them out of the

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Death of the Artist artworld. Where are the girl artists of Venice now? Underneath . . . in storage . . . in the basement. Go to the museums of Venice and tell them you want women on top! FREE THE WOMEN ARTISTS OF VENICE! Of more than 1,238 artworks currently on exhibit at the major museums of Venice, fewer than 40 are by women:

What follows is a count of Venetian museums’ collections of works by women artists compared to those on display. For example, in 2005, at Ca’ Pesaro International Gallery of Modern Art, there were 120 artworks by women in their collection but only two of these were on view, and at the Guggenheim there were at least 18 women artists in the collection but ‘only a few on view, which were inside Peggy’s house – including one in the bathroom!’28 Venice’s rich history within the Western canon of art and also as the site for arguably the most important contemporary art biennale, makes it the perfect ‘geographical institution’ to be criticised ‘from within’. However, as with all rebellious practices, like the feminist picket line, there comes a time when even forms of protest must reinvent themselves to retain potency. As corporate culture, celebrity culture and mass media have entered the home and become more targeted, like the sidebar news feed and advertisements we encounter online, critical Culture Jammers have had to become more inventive and political. In the late 1980s the Guerrilla Girls began to incorporate colour and images into their work, commenting on sexism beyond New York and the art world to an increasingly global audience. For example, in 2001 they began to critique the film industry, such as their sarcastic Birth of Feminism movie poster (2001 –5), which was recommissioned as part of the exhibition coinciding with the 2005 Venice Biennale. They have also extended their work to the music industry, and regularly comment on US politics. The Guerrilla Girls also set up their own website in 1996, when they began archiving their own work. They used it to start poster campaigns that could be downloaded from the internet so fans could spread the message internationally. Significantly, however, despite timely revisions, Guerrilla Girls posters have continued to retain bold headed statements and similar fonts so their campaigns could still be attributed to the group. In this sense, the group could be said to have exploited a 130

Anonymity and Feminism signature style. Guerrilla Girl ‘Liubov Popova’ has said, ‘I think that was very much part of our success. That we established a visual style in the street and everywhere else.’29 While it is important that the Guerrilla Girls are able to appropriate and parody the institutions and language they critique, it is equally important that their consistent (collective) style, language and medium are accessible. One way of continuing to engage with and remain accessible to wider audiences, and key to several of the aforementioned works, has been the Guerrilla Girls’ astute use of humour: We’ve discovered that ridicule and humiliation, backed up by irrefutable information, can disarm the powers that be, put them on the spot, and force them to examine themselves. A few years ago, some new members joined who were impressed by our reputation but disagreed with our sense of humor. They wanted us to start organizing seminars and writing position papers. They lived out the stereotype of feminists with no sense of humor. We had to kiss them goodbye.30

Do Women Have to Be Naked to Get Into the Met. Museum?, is a prime example of the Girls’ running sense of humour (see Figure 3.5). The gorilla-headed recreation of Ingres’ well-known Odalisque holds a fan, which is alluded to in their description of the work. This humorous, euphemistic account indicates that one is not entirely imagining the phallic connotation: Asked to design a billboard for the Public Art Fund in New York, we welcomed the chance to do something that would appeal to a

Figure 3.5 Guerrilla Girls, Do Women Have to Be Naked to Get Into the Met. Museum? q 1989, 1995 Guerrilla Girls. Courtesy of the Guerrilla Girls.

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Death of the Artist general audience. One Sunday morning we conducted a ‘weenie count’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, comparing the number of nude males to nude females in the artworks on display. The results were very ‘revealing’.31

Using humour, popular references and accessible language, the Guerrilla Girls subvert stereotypes of feminism and engage with wider audiences, in a bid that ‘feminist activism might become fashionable again after a decade during which the national media all but declared feminism extinct’.32 Unfortunately, the Girls’ humour is not always well received. In 1986 a protest letter was written to the Guerrilla Girls from the curator of a public museum: I don’t mind being among the subjects of your posters. I do, however, object to your language. As a gay person living in America in 1986, I am under surveillance by everyone . . . That I am also under surveillance by a group of so-called ‘radical’ female artists makes me wonder what your politics really are about. Feminism and the right wing are strange bed partners indeed.33

An apology letter was issued to explain that the curator himself was not under surveillance, but the upcoming show, which they hoped would represent women and artists of colour. So is the Guerrilla Girls’ unified ‘voice’ also problematic? To speak on behalf of all women is to discount the fluidity of gender and sexuality, and other notions of difference within sex, such as race, religion and class. In 1998 the Guerrilla Girls published the Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art. In an attempt to write a history of art that included more women, the book lists a series of female artists the Guerrilla Girls considered to have been left out of art historical encyclopedias published since the nineteenth century. However, despite being an easy and accessible read, by putting together a chronological list of these women artists with brief biographies, the book arguably exchanges one set of monographs for another. This reminds us of curator Helena Reckitt’s warning that a parallel, female version of the ‘star system so beloved by the art market, which prizes individual genius’ fails to critique a biographical reading of artworks, and that it would be counterproductive to celebrate women for the sake of it.34 Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock also describe this as a recurring problem

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Anonymity and Feminism within feminist history in their book Old Mistresses (1981): ‘In the attempt to make art history take notice of women artists, we have submerged them once again in a slightly reformed but still traditional notion of history.’35 Since leaving the group, Guerrilla Girl ‘Alma Thomas’ has criticised the Bedside Companion because it implies ‘that women were feminist artists just because they were women artists and that all of them were the same’.36 Perhaps there is a similar danger in the Guerrilla Girls’ use of varying pseudonyms pertaining to deceased female artists. When the Girls gig, for example, they lecture the messages of the Guerrilla Girls. They do not perform in character, per se, or adopt the personality of their pseudonym in public. So, though intended to memorialise the chosen artists, the Guerrilla Girls could be argued to dislocate the life and works of Alma Thomas, Frida Kahlo and Ana Mendieta from their place in history, by masking them once again or imposing a politics on that person. In 2003, the Guerrilla Girls published another book, Bitches, Bimbos and Ballbreakers: The Guerrilla Girls Illustrated Guide to Female Stereotypes. Here they list and describe stereotypes and derogatory names that have been attributed to women. But in listing these, do we also reinforce them? As Parker and Pollock argue, ‘We have been caught too often in reacting against the dominant notions about women’s art and have tended only to exchange one set of stereotypes for another.’37 The woman who adopted the pseudonym ‘Alma Thomas’ is herself African-American. In her Oral History interview with the Archives of American Art she describes being torn over wearing the gorilla mask. Considered a part of the group’s humour – a pun on their practice – and as imperative to their anonymity, she recognises the power of the mask but felt that other Guerrilla Girls did not appreciate the offensive and negative connotations it contained: When you have a mask, you do become featureless, and so one of the issues for me was that when I had a mask, which covered my hair and my face, and my skin is actually not that much darker, especially if I’m on a stage, almost – and my vocal intonations are not particularly black because of my background, nobody would believe that I was black, and they didn’t even make the connection to the fact that I was being Alma Thomas, right. So, you know, there would always be this moment when I would have to explain to the audience that I was actually black, and then

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Death of the Artist you would look out and there would be, like, kind of in a strange, like, blank expressions. Nobody believed me, in fact. They thought I was – they thought that that was part of the performance and – but the mask was an extremely powerful thing, and entering a space, the two girls, you know, throwing bananas, it was very, very – it was very powerful, but I myself always objected personally to the mask because the mask had such a terrible connotation for black women, the gorilla image. It was too close to home, but I didn’t want to wear the mask. I never wanted to wear the mask, but I always had to bow to the symbology that the Girls had locked into that was so powerful.38

Guerrilla Girl ‘Julia De Burgos’, herself of Latin descent, adds to this: ‘I do remember bringing up this whole issue that the very fact that they felt comfortable using this gorilla mask was part of the white privilege.’39 Anna Chave has also observed in her ‘Reckoning’ account that the Guerrilla Girls, at times, struggled to retain a diverse or accountable membership within their own group.40 ‘Alma Thomas’ continues to discuss the issue of ‘tokenism’ in her interview, as does ‘Agnes Martin’, of Asian-American descent, who describes ‘being used as window dressing’ and, as such, never feeling that she held the gravitas of being the ‘invitee’ or founding member.41 In a letter among the Getty’s archives dated 1992, there is an anonymous resignation because of the same issue. It reads: ‘I knew the primary reason I was asked to join was because I am not white . . . Political change is not limited to the large social arena.’ I asked Guerrilla Girl ‘K€athe Kollwitz’ in my interview with her about the various criticisms from past members on the issue of tokenism. She discussed race and feminism’s historically complicated relationship, but insisted that the Guerrilla Girls had learned from these experiences to create campaigns that addressed both issues: Diversity isn’t something that just happens, it’s something you have to work at. It takes honesty and perseverance. Our meetings were safe places to express all our frustrations with each other and with the larger world. Things that couldn’t be said out loud in the art world could be said inside our meetings. We all learned a lot about each other. Alma’s concerns resulted in a great campaign she did with me and other members about tokenism, which asked a larger question: is tokenism part of the solution or part of the problem?

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Anonymity and Feminism I’m really sorry there were members in the group who felt like tokens even after those posters and others like These Are The Most Bigoted Galleries In New York and Traditional Values and Quality Return to the Whitney Museum.42

‘Alma Thomas’ led the Guerrilla Girls’ last issue of Hot Flashes, which was dedicated to ‘Tokenism’. Her editorial statement is rather poignant and advocates collaboration with ‘white women’. As such, perhaps we should re-examine her statements in interview with the Archives of American Art through the lens of a larger dispute over the group’s subsequent fracture in 2003. When I announced that I was a black artist, an African-American woman in the rear asked, didn’t I think it was a mistake to combine our issues with those of white women? In my head, I heard the warning notes of several bits of African-American folk wisdom echoing simultaneously; don’t trust anybody, don’t collaborate, don’t share your ideas, just remember when you make your move that there’s only room for one of you at any time in any office, any grad school, any gallery, any art magazine. It seemed like the 50s redux in the 90s. Perhaps in the meantime nothing had changed? But if we as African-Americans knew all there was to know about tokenism, about being ‘the spook who sat by the door’, then perhaps sharing that with white women could help us both. Because white women are certainly tokens themselves, though on a larger scale, and we couldn’t dislodge the structures of power alone. When the tokenism campaign was proposed, it was one on which we all could agree.43

In theory, anonymity can account for infinite difference but, in practice, it must also be acknowledged that it fails to recognise the individual women behind each mask, all real and integral components of the Guerrilla Girl collective. Beyond that, the mask also fails to account for aspects of identity such as sexuality, religion and race. Race was a particularly contentious issue within American (second wave) feminism because the country’s history is so uniquely bound up with the history of slavery, the contradictory foundations of the ‘American Dream’ and as the site of the civil rights movement. And, given the recent need to reinstate a campaign for equality, such as #BlackLivesMatter in 2013, not to mention

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Death of the Artist the ongoing racist comments directed towards the previous First Lady Michelle Obama, we can go so far as to say that race is a contentious issue in American society at large to this day. Indeed, the Civil Rights Act was only instated in 1964, and would certainly have been within the living memory of some of the Guerrilla Girls. It is thus no surprise that artists like ‘Alma Thomas’ felt uneasy about masking an identity that had so long been fought for and that, as in other feminist groups, it became a point of tension for Guerrilla Girls of colour whose historical and personal experiences of oppression could not be explained by the singular difference of gender or rectified by the promise of a ‘sisterhood’. In her survey of Art and Feminism, Helena Reckitt continues to reflect that feminism should not be considered an all-inclusive umbrella: For some black women artists, the label ‘feminist’ is so caught up with the history of white women that they don’t wish to be associated with it. For other artists the feminist label is restrictive. Threatening to overshadow other elements in their work.44

How then, among the feminist community specifically, might women be able to work without a ‘coloured’ lens?45 In her book The Trouble Between Us: An Uneasy History of White and Black Women in the Feminist Movement (2006) Winifred Breines documents a few ‘emergency’ cases in the USA that forced ‘White and black socialist feminists . . . to recover each other and devise a politics in which they could work together’.46 One such instance is the Joanne Little case (1974 – 5). Little, an African-American of poor means, was accused of murdering her jailer, who had sexually abused her. Women all over the country joined forces to protest against sexual abuse and domestic violence and raised financial support for Little’s appeal so that she would not face the death penalty. Domestic violence occurs across different classes, races and cultures, thus women of all identities are affected. Breines also attributes the unlearning of racism to the growing number of academic Women’s Studies programmes at university level. The National Women’s Studies Association was set up in 1977 at a conference in San Franciso and, by 1981, more than 100 programmes existed on the subject. That same year, the first conference on racism was held. This also had an impact on the success of the Guerrilla Girls, as my research in their archives at the Getty Research Institute reveals that several of their early 136

Anonymity and Feminism invitations to lecture were from Women’s Studies programmes, not necessarily art schools. It strikes me, however, that the anonymity afforded by the Guerrilla Girls’ masks, despite the connotations, does protect their individual identities while symbolically representing a common, collective and political force. The mask, therefore, might offer a temporary compromise between devising new racial, gendered and sexual selves while the feminist cause becomes the primary and visible concern. As ‘Alma Thomas’ herself concluded above, ‘the symbology that the girls had locked into that was so powerful’. The mask of an animal also subverts any problematic trope of gendered-drag. Indeed, faced with the problem of merely perpetuating gender norms through the use of ‘drag’, Joshua Williams presents ‘transspecies drag’ as an alternate solution. ‘Transspecies drag is the performative face of simian feminism, the practice by which women artists test the limits imposed on their political selves by moving “crabwise” across categories of gender, race and species.’47 He references the performance artist Coco Fusco, and suggests that for feminists to get ‘around’ the problematics of drag we might first move sideways (Williams uses the animal pun of the crab) by adopting the dress of an alternate species rather than gender, before moving ‘forward’. In this sense, the gorilla mask continues to offer solutions to the trappings of what it is to be female, and has a history – that Williams calls Simian Feminism – of its own in aiding feminism. In every account that I have read, there is a general consensus that anonymity has been the overriding contributing factor to the Guerrilla Girls’ success. This is affirmed by the fact that when being interviewed, making statements and appearing in public, all Girls, irrespective of which branch of the Guerrilla Girl collective they might now affiliate with, continue to use pseudonyms and wear disguises. In Whitney Chadwick’s essay on the Guerrilla Girls, published in their first book Confessions (1995), she states ‘Anonymity provided the cover that enabled the Girls to circumvent the art world’s obsession with individual personalities and, where necessary, protect their own careers from vengeful curators.’48 Anonymity undermines the idea of the one, the ‘genius’, whom you cannot celebrate without an identity, and prevents ‘superstars’ from taking over to form a hierarchical leadership. So long as

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Death of the Artist the Guerrilla Girls continued to author all their works as the collective, they would defy the traditions of the monograph and the biographical approach to art, thus forcing museums and galleries to concentrate on the content of their work and not their personalities. The group stayed true to this founding principle to the extent that they even published Confessions under the trust of art lawyer Barbara Hoffman, who served as a pro bono attorney, vouching for the unincorporated collective by signing a book contract with Harper Collins on their behalf. As ‘Liubov Popova’ asserts, ‘we wanted to keep the attention on the issues . . . we wanted the focus to be . . . not on our personalities or our own work’.49 It is therefore obvious that a significant strategy of the Guerrilla Girls’ practice has been to retain an anti-authorship model, despite increasingly having to negotiate commercial infrastructures. One could perhaps argue that the Guerrilla Girls’ choice of anonymity was expedient; they didn’t want their individual careers to suffer because of their collective work. ‘Guerrilla Girl l’ admits, ‘The art world is a very small place. Of course, we were afraid that if we blew the whistle on some of its most powerful people, we could kiss off our art careers.’50 There is no doubt, however, that the confidence generated by the Girls’ disguise, which allowed them to publicly point fingers and scaremonger dealers and curators, was a significant force in their success, the results of which far outweigh this criticism. Anonymity also protected Guerrilla Girl informers, providing them with vital statistics and ‘insider’ information. On the contrary, ‘Alma Thomas’ notes, ‘by the time I joined the Girls, any pretense that anonymity was to save careers was, you know, that was a pretense, because anybody who was a Girl by 1991 would have added to their career.’51 In fact, as ‘Gertrude Stein’ points out, many of the Girls would have liked to take credit for their work with the group, which would have boosted their own artistic careers: One of the primary understandings that the founding Guerrilla Girls agreed upon was that anonymity would be an important strategy to shift focus to the issues we fought for, rather than the individual identities of the members. The downside to this strategy is that our individual efforts remain invisible to the outside world. You cannot list the shows and projects of the group on your resume; projects realized for the group cannot help you get shows or

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Anonymity and Feminism teaching jobs. However, this M.O. has the benefit of equalizing the contributions of all members of the collective regardless of art-world status.52

Anonymity is the group’s strength; the source of its almost mythical identity. In reality, though, how anonymous can each woman really be? In order to travel, passports must be shown and, in close relationships, questions would be asked about income and careers. It is a testimony to the group, and their family and friends, that the Guerrilla Girls have managed to remain largely anonymous to this day. As the group continue to work, more people within the arts community collaborate with the Guerrilla Girls and choose to protect their identities. In so doing, they too join and empower the collusion. However, the group’s anonymity has also meant that others can appropriate its identity and, over the years, some, including men, have tried to take credit for their work. In their archives, I read a 1994 letter from the Guerrilla Girls to the International Sculptural Center in Washington D.C. explaining that the centre was inadvertently hosting talks by the wrong Guerrilla Girls, who went by the name of Guerrilla Girls West, but whose work was being considered one and the same as the ‘original’ Guerrilla Girls.53 Eccentric cases of showmanship can result in false histories, folk tales and negative press. This is not too dissimilar to the tales woven around artists whose mythologies proliferate from their over-determined biographies, such as Jackson Pollock, Van Gogh and even Frida Kahlo. The difference is that there is no ‘true’ or original Guerrilla Girl biography that could be misconstrued and, if anything, their ‘larger than life’ presence or mystery has been key to their success. Most problematic is that anonymity has meant that every Guerrilla Girl is attributed the same credit, which became a point of tension for particular founding Guerrilla Girls who had committed much of their lives to the collective’s practice. It could be argued that inequality might be inevitable in a group that refuses to regulate participation. The Guerrilla Girls held meetings approximately once a month and Girls attended as and when they could. Ideas were initiated, discussed and agreed by negotiation and largely unanimously within the group before they were realised. Ultimately, the collective was intended to function without hierarchy. However, ‘Vigee Le Brun’

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Death of the Artist remembers mounting tensions as time went on and the collective grew. ‘Le Brun’ had been a Guerrilla Girl since 1985 and in her role as treasurer she witnessed the collective fracturing – some Girls began to take on the gigs while others became researchers or worked on posters and prints – but they were paid different sums.54 Similarly, the mounting number of members saw an inevitable increase in disparity among the group. Girls who had been part of the founding collective would supposedly override decisions based on experience. ‘Gertrude Stein’s’ ‘Inside Story’ also accuses founding members of wanting to retain control. Her tale is one of resentment, and we should be mindful of this when reading her partial account: ‘they introduced the term “quality” as an excuse for those projects not realized. Ironically, this term was the code word traditionally used by art critics to exclude the works of artists based on colour, gender, or sexual preference.’55 Ultimately, the group fractured, sub-committees began to form and Girls branched out, still under the name Guerrilla Girls and dealing with injustices but within other spheres of the arts, such as live performance and theatre. These Girls began working under the name Guerrilla Girls On Tour (GGOT), still donning the masks but adding black silk capes. Meanwhile, in 1999, founding members had the name ‘Guerrilla Girls’ incorporated so that, on paper, the trademark ‘Guerrilla Girls Inc.’ and, arguably, the legacy of a collective practice spanning 15 years was now owned by a few members only. As ‘Stein’ argued in Art Journal, ‘At issue was nothing less than the rights to the collective intellectual property of up to one hundred women who had participated in the work of the Guerrilla Girls.’56 A letter followed in March 2000, according to ‘Stein’, from founding members suggesting five Guerrilla Girls form an independent group. This became Guerrilla Girls BroadBand (GGBB), an online enterprise. In October 2003, Guerrilla Girls, Inc. appeared in court as part of a settlement to clarify the distinctions between Guerrilla Girls On Tour (GGOT) and Guerrilla Girls BroadBand (GGBB). As part of this public hearing, Jeffrey Toobin, a reporter for The New Yorker, unfortunately revealed the real names of some founding members. For the sake of this project and in the interest of the collective’s ongoing practice I have decided to omit these names.57 It seems this was the peak of internal politics for the group, which has unfortunately also been reflected as part of

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Anonymity and Feminism the Oral History Interviews held by the Archives of American Art. In response to the legal proceedings of 2003 and other members’ negative accounts, I asked ‘K€athe Kollwitz’ if she would like to respond. She answered that ‘Frida’ and she had gone back to edit their interview once they realised other Girls had discussed the group dynamics rather than the output of the collective work. ‘Kollwitz’ continued that it was only as a result of other members’ protests that she and ‘Frida’ were even invited to take part.58 On the subject of the incorporation of the Guerrilla Girls’ name and dismissal of members, ‘Kollwitz’ answers that there had been some mishandling of the group’s finances and so legal action was taken to protect the group. ‘It was devastating. So a small group of us, with heavy hearts, asked her to leave.’ While my research has been able to deduce which pseudonymous character this refers to, it should be noted, however, that at no point do ‘Frida’ or ‘K€athe’ name and shame their fellow Girls and at all points throughout our interview ‘K€athe Kollwitz’ returns to the work and aims of the Guerrilla Girls rather than concentrating on their dynamics. Her only residual anger is directed towards the New Yorker article: Jeffrey Toobin wrote an article about the split – the usual mainstream journalist crap about women, feminists, fighting with each other. He was selective: he used the pseudonyms of everyone he contacted, except for Frida and me. Maybe he did that because we refused to talk to him (big mistake!)59

While I was reluctant to include the Guerrilla Girls’ fracturing, as a distraction from their artistic purpose, it is important to be transparent about the problems faced in a shared authorship, especially one that attributes all members equal credit. That the Guerrilla Girls have had to traverse contemporary and commercial intellectual property concerns, through their book publishing and incorporation, makes their story all the more pertinent in order to understand how authorship might be reimagined in a contemporary world. Even during their split, anonymity was still prized as sacred by all, despite intellectual property being at risk. Toobin’s article described the anarchic court proceedings of the case, which is testament to the Girls’ ability to retain a sense of humour and continue to fight for the cause, even through adversity: ‘Judge Stanton 141

Death of the Artist rejected as “bizarre” the defendants’ suggestion that they be allowed to testify in his courtroom while wearing their gorilla masks.’60 As part of the Oral History Interviews held at the Archives of American Art, interviewer Judith Olch Richards questions each Guerrilla Girl on the subject of anonymity. Fascinatingly, each Girl responds to the concept in terms of their eventual real life obituaries; some would like their involvement with the collective credited posthumously, having felt that they had already devoted a large part of their lives to the cause unrecognised. Others talk as though the collective must live on, beyond their individual lives. I do not see why the two are necessarily mutually exclusive, if pseudonyms can be ‘reincarnated’ and assigned to new members. Following the legal settlement came the issue of the group’s archive; which institution should hold it and how much would they pay to do so? A final group of ‘Old Grrls’ was organised by ‘Alma Thomas’, comprising a representative membership of GGInc., GGOT and GGBB, who decided on the Getty Research Centre in Los Angeles, USA. This is the last documented group activity between the three branches of the Guerrilla Girls. As we saw in the last chapter, issues of authority and attribution are high stakes within collectivism. Disagreement is not always seen as the route to peace and the chaotic nature of large decentralised feminist groups have been critiqued.61 A collective that attempts to undermine or react to the patriarchal, hierarchical system, must support a decentralised system. It must therefore, without a visible leader, make decisions by inclusive group discussions, a potentially circuitous process. But an organisation without hierarchy or regulated systems can also become chaotic and it is difficult to represent and meet the needs of all its members. As we have read, one cannot assume that all feminists will agree on their shared politics. Indeed, there are also differing positions in feminist thought about the value of authorship. For example, in 1982 Nancy K. Miller and Peggy Kamuf staged a debate on the significance of the gendered ‘signature’ for an issue of Diacritics.62 For example, is it productive or not to introduce an author as a ‘female writer’? Kamuf argued that to assign a gendered signature or attribution to a text was to limit its meaning and referentiality, while Miller argued that the gender of the signature mattered historically and politically, that ‘“we women” must continue to work for the woman

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Anonymity and Feminism who has been writing, because not to do so will reauthorize our oblivion’.63 Kamuf responsed that for feminism to reinstate a concept of a woman’s ‘voice’ is to ‘reinvent the institutional structures that it set out to dismantle’,64 in that, a gendered, ‘female signature’ fails to question the power structures that once excluded women. While no one wants to unrecognise women’s contributions to the arts, does it only fortify discrimination if women are consistently categorised as such, like exhibitions titled ‘women’s art’ and lists of ‘female writers’? Some women refuse to participate in ‘women only’ exhibitions because they do not want to be branded by their sex. Kamuf extends her argument with an element of hyperbole as part of her short letters with Miller published some years later. Not only does Kamuf feel ‘irked when reading something that tells me how, in effect, to evaluate it’, if feminism becomes a form of ‘institutional marker’, then might it also become ‘self-evident, selfexplanatory, and therefore does not need to be read?’65 For example, might an artwork prefaced as female or feminist be overlooked or dismissed by those who perhaps need to engage with it most? We can equally appreciate the dangers (and strengths) of this in terms of branding. For example, might the Guerrilla Girls’ ‘signature’ name and style mean that those familiar with their work, for and against, will be less likely to read it with fresh eyes? With their legacy, they may have created a feminist institution of their own. However, through anonymity, they represent more than one ‘voice’, at least in principle. If we dispense with all branding or identification markers, however, how can women fight for equality if they are not defined as different? The law provides us with examples of where gender ‘difference’ can be used both positively and negatively. For example, gender ‘difference’ supports a case for maternity leave but also implies a woman may not be able to carry out the same work as a man. Difference, therefore, should not to be seen as the antithesis of ‘equality’. Instead we should ask more nuanced questions: ‘What qualities are being compared? What is the nature of this comparison? How is the meaning of difference being constructed?66 These new questions, on a case-by-case basis, appear to challenge the power structures of language and institutions that the Guerrilla Girls also seek to subvert. The feminist collective also struggles because, as we see with the Guerrilla Girls, it is difficult to represent all aspects of difference within

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Death of the Artist ‘womanhood’ and various lived experience. To combat this, many women have begun to identify themselves with multiple other identities. Liz Bondi charts the rise of what she calls ‘hyphenation’: Black-working-classwoman; middle-class-Jewish-woman; single-Catholic-mother, for example. The problem with a system of multiple identities, however, is that it assumes the stability of each sub-category type and does not question the fluidity of gender or sexuality or social construction of one’s identity: ‘Reliance upon apparently pre-given categories of class, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity and so on invoked a conception of identity as something to be acknowledged or uncovered rather than constructed, as something fixed rather than changing.’67 A system of accepted multiple identities undermines the idea that some of these identification markers, such as gender, might be largely performed or socially constructed, along with associated stereotypes. The other challenge is that these identities can lead toward an ironic hierarchy of difference – who struggles most? The precursor to this might be seen in the concept of Consciousness Raising, a popular practice among feminist groups in the United Sates in the late 1960s and 70s. It often took the form of group meetings where issues were discussed in a ‘real’ manner and in turn. This sets the context of a time when it became important to present the ‘truth of experience’ and in which the ‘personal is political’. It is another example of how difference is both significant but also problematic. Consciousness Raising has been criticised as a battle for the most ‘authentic’ voice of oppression, an ironic hierarchy of Otherness. Moreover, where difference is fought for and won, it fails to challenge its very conception as a marker of discrimination. Consciousness Raising also relies upon the personal, which is subjective and unique. Notions of feminism and discrimination elicited from biographical tales are no more reliable, stable or representational than the artist’s monograph. Furthermore, knowledge gained by personal experience is particularly difficult to critique: ‘anyone who criticizes knowledge generated in this way is liable to be accused of attacking the person from whom it originated’.68 Bondi’s ‘Locating Identity Politics’ concludes that there might be new geographical ways of framing concepts of identity. New technologies, such as the internet, and the rise of social networking sites, have altered relations between international communities and provided new platforms

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Anonymity and Feminism for constructing identity. Just look at the Women’s March of 2017 that began on Twitter and became a global protest. With increasing opportunities for travel and communication, ‘who am I?’ has become ‘where am I?’ and ‘where do I stand?’ Technology and the internet also allow for more fragmented, contradictory and fluid, networked notions of identity. Bondi posits a concept of space that allows room for both personal and collective constructed identities through the metaphors of location, but how might this work for the Guerrilla Girls? I have long considered the Guerrilla Girls’ anonymous collective a manifestation of Hardt and Negri’s concept of the ‘multitude’, which expands rhizomatically to encompass difference, and I propose this as being one answer to Bondi’s call for a ‘positionality of identities’, while simultaneously critiquing traditional notions of authorship by default of its acephalous structure. To recap, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, in their book Multitude, War and Democracy, In The Age Of Empire (2004) argue that global democracy is only possible through the project of the ‘multitude’. The multitude is composed of innumerable internal differences that can never be reduced to a unity or single identity – different cultures, races, ethnicities, genders and sexual orientations; different forms of labor; different ways of living; different views of the world; and different desires. The multitude is a multiplicity of all these singular differences.69

The condition of the ‘multitude’ is that it must expand rhizomatically without prejudice, in order to prevent a hierarchical system, never stopping, so it becomes a multitude of global difference. While the Guerrilla Girls have undergone several revisions to their original group of founding members and have fought over their own identity politics, they retain the ability, through their use of pseudonyms and masks, to expand and contract like the ‘multitude’, well beyond the mortality and location of the current members. In fact, in order to become a part of the network, one does not need to wear a gorilla mask or be legally incorporated. Anyone can join the conspiracy, sign online petitions and download the posters. Hardt and Negri argue that the right to disobedience and difference are fundamental, but ‘The challenge posed by the concept of the multitude is 145

Death of the Artist for a social multiplicity to manage to communicate and act in common while remaining internally different.’70 That is, the collective or ‘multitude’ should continue to grow in number and strength without detriment to its individual members by undermining the right to difference. The Guerrilla Girls have continued to grow in scale and production, if not in human numbers. Though the Guerrilla Girls have struggled to retain and recognise their internal difference, this is something that their anonymity theoretically provides. However, in my attempts to draw comparisons between the Guerrilla Girls and the ‘multitude’, there is an implicit, somewhat dangerous, celebration of Hardt and Negri’s ideas, which also need interrogating. The ‘multitude’ has received criticism for failing to sufficiently recognise differences of gender and race, which, historically and politically, had shaped their theory. In 2010 Angela McRobbie argued that women were already forming social networks as part of their own precarious labour opportunities, prior to Hardt and Negri’s conception of the ‘multitude’. The Guerrilla Girls are one such example but she cites others of women’s self-initiated bookstores and the sharing of childcare. In her own words, ‘Hardt and Negri are locked within a class model which permits no space at all for reflecting on the centrality of gender and sexuality.’71 Moreover, in their perceived homogonising of ‘class’, it is implied that gender is no longer a ‘problem’ or that class struggle should be enough to unite persons of different nations and histories. The women’s movement is referred to but more for its role in disrupting the supply of new labour, women being ‘cast in the language of either domestic labour or reproduction’.72 McRobbie attempts to rectify Hardt and Negri’s writing on labour by reinstating the significance of the expanding opportunities for women: feminists’ fight for the right to work, equal pay, and thus increased spending power, saw a ‘feminisation of the workforce’ not adequately reflected by Hardt and Negri’s trajectory of the ‘multitude’. Booming sectors such as beauty, fashion and lifestyle are predominantly represented by and aimed at women, as is care-work for children and the elderly, schooling and charity work. Women are thus a significant and distinct bio-political force of labour, which needs interrogating as part of the current ‘class-dominated’ and ‘gender-essentialist’ concept of the ‘multitude’. But if these sectors have relatively little history of unionisation and depend on women’s insecurities – marketing powers implying that one must improve oneself – then perhaps,

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Anonymity and Feminism as McRobbie says, ‘the envisaging of opposition or of organization within the field of work is recklessly optimistic’.73 I would argue that, through the Guerrilla Girls, we might read a form of artists’ union and oppositional representation to the otherwise patriarchal and capitalist art world. There are other shortcomings of the ‘multitude’ too. Not only is the concept idealistic and male orientated, it is, like its authors, implicitly white. This is picked up in another criticism. In 2008, on the other side of the Atlantic, Silvia Federici had also given a feminist criticism of the ‘multitude’. She argues against the ‘multitude’s’ gender-neutral presumptions, foregrounding previous feminist analyses of reproductive work, but adding that there is a danger in assuming (‘labour’) struggle is equal across the globe: There is a continuum between the computer worker and the worker in the Congo who digs coltan with his hands trying to seek out a living after being exploited, pauperized, by repeated rounds of structural adjustment and repeated theft of his community’s land and natural sources . . . When Negri and Hardt speak of the ‘becoming common’ of work and use the concept of Multitude to indicate the new communism that is built through the development of the productive forces, I believe they are blind to much of what is happening with the world proletariat.74

What results, according to Federici, is a ‘great caldron’ of the ‘multitude’, mixing and brandishing each worker the same. Because of this, the ‘multitude’ struggles to act as an agent for change on any acute or localised level. In fact, Federici claims that the ‘multitude’ is ‘concerned with the most privileged section of the working class. This means it is not a theory we can use to build a truly self-producing movement.’75 Instead, Federici concludes that neither intellectualising or the internet can bring about ‘radical confrontations’ and that the main problem of the ‘multitude’ is that it fails to account for difference, or to provide us with the tools to overcome significant social, ethnic and gender differences. To what extent, then, is it useful to compare the social organisation of the Guerrilla Girls to the ‘multitude’? It remains significant for two reasons. First, the comparison helps us to appreciate the original organisation of the Guerrilla Girls as a reaction to precarious labour in and of itself, formed of

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Death of the Artist women juggling creative jobs and struggling to navigate the capitalist, patriarchal art world. The Guerrila Girls are thus a microcosm of the ‘multitude’ in practice, not just an ideal theory and, most importantly, formed prior to Hardt and Negri’s conception of it. Second, the several critiques of the ‘multitude’ confirm the dangers of generalising the scope of those the Guerrilla Girls hope to represent and echo the complications the Guerrilla Girls have faced in their own practical implementations of a critical authorship. Hardt and Negri’s theory is almost naïvely utopian and stems from a positive image of the community, as Charles Harrison said of collectivism, but is consequently limited to theory if it cannot account for the difference of its presumed international members. The Guerrilla Girls, while theoretically infinite in number, in practice remain a ‘closed’ group of all women members. This is in tension with the ideal of the ‘multitude’. The Guerilla Girls’ mission is infectious and globally recognised but their success is local to the relatively conventional, Western art world. This may well be, however, a difference from the ‘multitude’ that has given them more success in practice. As a result of briefly analysing the ‘multitude’, we are able to ask more significant, critical and nuanced questions about the Guerrilla Girls. Does their practice provide us with the tools to overcome significant social, ethnic and gender differences in the art world or does it just critique the power structures perpetuating these differences? Indeed, we should remember that the Guerrilla Girls’ practice is almost wholly reliant on the canon of art history, and their ubiquity on the museum and academic lecture circuit. The complications of working within such infrastructures have already been discussed. But their practice is a response to these; as long as institutions exclude women and artists of colour, the Guerrilla Girls have purpose and should prevail. If they benefit from this, it is by default and more akin to not-for-profit organisational models. By historicising and interrogating the Guerilla Girls, it is evident that the group hold themselves accountable to questions of authorship. Moreover, they shed light on the various ways authorship might be negotiated. But, as Hardt and Negri propose for expansion, it is not the responsibility of one ‘multitude’ to expand and encompass global difference, but of several:

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Anonymity and Feminism Multitudes intersect with other multitudes, and from the thousand points of intersection, from the thousand rhizomes that link the multitudinous productions, from the thousand reflections born in every singularity emerge inevitably the life of the multitude.76

Local ‘multitudes’ or artists’ collectives could work to coexist and intersect, creating a more manageable network effect but where expansion does not impede communication. We can see how the Guerrilla Girls achieved this, albeit at the expense of friendships, finances and perhaps unconsciously. Members split and formed new groups but remain connected through name. While asserting themselves and the difference between each Guerrilla Girl collective, Guerrilla Girls Inc.’s website lists GGOT and GGBB and includes their respective website links for more information, exactly like the rhizome effect. It need not matter how many factions of the Guerrilla Girls exist, or in what medium they communicate, so long as they continue to disseminate their message. As the feminist scholar Imelda Whelehan puts it: I would not wish to suggest that a single unifying feminist discourse is either possible or desirable, but rather that feminists can thrive upon such a diversity of approaches, moving towards a celebration of heterogeneity, and away from the more negative influences of the ‘founding fathers’ of academic discourse.77

When ‘Gertrude Stein’ et alia penned their ‘cautionary tale’ to ‘the current upsurge of young collective art practices’, it read as a lesson to the remaining Guerrilla Girls: ‘In conclusion, when years ago we sardonically said that “one of the advantages of being a woman artist is seeing your work live on in the work of others,” we never imagined that . . . women among us would exploit our efforts and misrepresent them as their own.’78 If ‘Stein’ had hoped to gain recognition for herself and ‘et alia’, they need not have focused on past affiliations. Guerrilla Girls BroadBand have produced innovative, contemporary and internationally significant work, proof of the legacy of the Guerrilla Girls and its multitudinous nature. The Guerrilla Girls BroadBand website (www.ggbb.org) was launched on 23 July 2001. Seeking to reach women around the world, the web seemed a natural platform for communication and geographical flexibility. ‘Stein’ et alia say, ‘this name had the advantage of suggesting that a wide, networked world, including the art world, was our theater of action’.79 ‘Stein’ concludes,

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Death of the Artist ‘Our audience and our issues had shifted from local to global, and the internet had become our natural habitat.’80 Their first project epitomises the internet’s power to popularise and place identity politics. Letters to Bad Bosses provided a central platform for employees around the world to send anonymous letters of complaint to their employers, from acts of discrimination to taking credit, via the GGBB website. Matthew Mirapaul’s New York Times article flagging the project attracted over 900,000 viewers in one day, a number of visitors the Metropolitan Museum of Art would struggle to compete with. If anything, ‘Stein’ et alia’s account should also be read as a problematisation of the realities of collective practice. For, as Naomi Klein indicates in her retrospective account of Culture Jamming, and Sholette in Collectivism after Modernism, there is a rise in collective activity, particularly as social network mediums are advancing. ‘Stein’ et alia also observe an increase in collective practice on several occasions: The trajectory of the Guerrilla Girls . . . is an example of contention and regrouping that is pertinent to the renewed action and debate around collective artistic production and participation.81

And Now that artist collectives are all the rage, we hope our story will invite dialogue among new generations of feminist collectives.82

Like the last case study, this chapter acknowledges that collective life is a struggle and that the problem of authorship cannot be resolved by collective practice alone. However, collective practice, further complicated by anonymity and pseudonyms, do at least bring to the fore the problem of authorship. The Guerrilla Girls in particular demonstrate how authorship can still be critiqued and negotiated while attempting to navigate the complex art world pressures of career, commercialism and intellectual property. Moreover, the Guerrilla Girls demonstrate how the patriarchal infrastructures of the art world might be critiqued through a reimagining of authorship, while playing the game of art and its imperatives. There is a difference between their ideals and the practical realities of maintaining a shared authorship. Indeed, democracy and individual recognition, while preserving difference, must be worked at in the wider world too. However, by retaining anonymity, albeit at a cost, the Guerrilla

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Anonymity and Feminism Girls have grown from strength to strength. In 2013 they presented 28 years worth of artistic activist output, while still critiquing their host institution. Their choice of medium throughout the decades also remains pertinent, as all of their works were digitised, sent via email and displayed as flat-copy printouts directly pasted on to the walls of the museum in Bilbao. The Guerrilla Girls thus continue to save freight, insurance and conservation costs, all the while undermining the traditional ideas or aura of the artist, art production and its market value, which we associated with the more nuanced problems of authorship. While we have seen that it is a sometimes impossible task to represent difference, their ambition and diligence must be credited. The most appropriate way the Guerrilla Girls could be thanked is when institutions and the market begin to bring the work of women artists and artists of colour out from the basements and onto display. This is something that my next case study also addresses. Bob and Roberta Smith, the pseudonym of one man, Patrick Brill, deals with issues of representation, education and community arts. Like the Guerrilla Girls, ‘their’ work is explicitly political, utilises text and defies notions of ‘skill’, by painting on recycled materials in a punk and ad hoc manner. ‘Their’ work is, however, attributed to Bob and Roberta Smith, with a distinct style and medium. Bob and Roberta Smith have served as Tate trustees and were elected as a Royal Academician in 2013. As such ‘they’ became concerned with how the Royal Academy of Arts might begin to represent more female artists. This should not, ‘they’ advocate, be done by patronising women artists and hosting gender-based shows, but by addressing the issues of representation on the RA board of trustees to reflect the public at large, and by enquiring as to why and how gender discrimination exists in the first place. Bob and Roberta Smith took on their double-gender pseudonym so as to always represent a male and female ‘voice’ through ‘their’ practice. How Bob and Roberta Smith’s pseudonym has manifested itself in ‘their’ practice, and whether ‘their’ initial authorial dissidence retains its potency, while the artists’ real and pseudonymous names have become synonymous, and as a visible, identifiable man, is discussed next.

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Interview: Feminist Avengers: Guerrilla Girls Interviewed by Nicola McCartney on 14 August 20131

The Guerrilla Girls are an anonymous feminist collective of artists employing pseudonyms of deceased and overlooked female artists. The Guerrilla Girls always wear gorilla masks to retain their anonymity. Humour and clever language are key facets of their work. They gained notoriety shortly after they founded in 1985 for their protests against gender discrimination in public museums, which manifested in flyposters across the streets of Chelsea in New York and neighbouring billboards. They subsequently evolved into a fluctuating group of unknown numbers, to this day, giving talks and holding workshops on creative activism. During their time they have had two offshoot groups: Guerrilla Girls Broadband and Guerrilla Girls on Tour. The original Guerrilla Girls continue to exhibit, gig and protest. They advocate other artists form their own activist sub-groups and pop-up groups, and supply them with Guerrilla Girls branded posters and flyers to be disseminated around the world but maintain legal copyrights to their name. I met them at the Yoko Ono London Meltdown Festival at the Southbank Centre in London in June 2013. I continued my dialogue with the Guerrilla Girls in Los Angeles, USA, when I visited their archives at the Getty Research Institute as a Scholar in August 2013, which is when this interview took place. Thanks are due to ‘K€athe Kollwitz’ for her hospitality, time and willingness to engage in conversation about her role within the Guerrilla Girls and their practice.

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Interview: Feminist Avengers NM

Please introduce yourself and then whether you are speaking on behalf of yourself or the group?

KK

I’m ‘K€athe Kollwitz’. I’m one of the founders of the Guerrilla Girls. In a way, I speak for myself, K€athe Kollwitz, because not every Guerrilla Girl agrees on everything. In another way, of course, I also speak for the Guerrilla Girls, the group.

When did you join the Guerrilla Girls? I‘ve been in the Guerrilla Girls from the very beginning. The Guerrilla Girls started in 1985 when an artist friend, now Guerrilla Girl Frida Kahlo, and I went to a demonstration at the Museum of Modern Art. An exhibition opened called ‘An International Survey of Painting and Sculpture’ with 169 artists. Only 13 were women. Even fewer were artists of colour. Women artists all over New York were really pissed. To make matters worse, the show’s curator said anyone who was not included should rethink ‘his’ career. It was so hard for women to get anywhere then, and here was this unbelievable prejudice coming from a guy in power. He really thought the art he chose could be the most important work of the moment with so few women and artists of colour. We weren’t complaining because the numbers weren’t 50 per cent; we were complaining because it was less than 10 per cent. A group called Women’s Caucus for Art organised a demonstration outside MoMA. So Frida and I went and joined a picket line carrying placards and chanting. At the end of the day, after lots of discussions with people going into MoMA, we had a kind of epiphany. We realised the museum-going public really believed the art world was a meritocracy, that museums were the end authority on art. They wouldn’t think of criticising the art system. They didn’t feel empowered to question what was in the museum or to ask about what wasn’t there. If there weren’t women or artists of colour, that meant those groups didn’t make museum quality art. At that moment we realised that a museum couldn’t tell the whole history of a culture without including all the voices of the culture. This is a no-brainer now, but then there was so much resistance to it. 153

Death of the Artist It was clear we had to invent some new, more contemporary, mediasavvy techniques to convince people that discrimination, conscious and unconscious, was real in the art world. It seemed like a great idea to do street posters because, who doesn’t love street posters, especially in New York with hundreds of things on the walls all the time? So we called a meeting at Frida’s loft and we invited some women we knew, some women we didn’t really know so well, and some women we invited brought other women. The first meeting was small and Frida and I brought the first posters with us. We hadn’t done the research yet so they weren’t exactly finished but the ideas were there. The first poster put male artists on the spot. It asked ‘What Do These Artists Have In Common?’ The answer: ‘They allow their works to be shown in galleries that show less than 10 per cent women or none at all.’ And we decided to also do a companion poster about the galleries: ‘These Galleries Show No More Than 10 per cent Women Artists Or None At All.’ When we looked through the Art in America Annual, we found lots of prominent male artists, many who identified with liberal causes, showing at galleries with almost no women artists. Then we reversed the info and did a poster of the galleries they showed in. It was so easy. We called it ‘Five Minute Research.’ We passed the hat around for the printing. We didn’t have enough money to have the type set so I laid it out letter by letter with press-on type, Letraset. Then we got a photostat of the mock-up and sent it to an offset printer. Posters with a lot of text were killers before computers! Sometimes we had to hand draw text and images. Some of us wanted to call ourselves Guerrilla Girls and that caused an argument because some older members had previously struggled to be called women, not girls. We wanted Girls so we could send the message that this was something different, something new. We wanted to reclaim the negative use of the word. Eventually everyone agreed. This was before ‘Girl Power’ and Riot Grrrls and all that. A week or two later we snuck around the streets late at night and put up those posters all around SoHo. All hell broke loose. We followed with posters that named critics and art magazines that didn’t write about women, museums that didn’t show women and a super sweet letter to collectors that didn’t buy art by women.

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Interview: Feminist Avengers And at what point did the individual members decide to give themselves pseudonyms? That happened after a string of posters when the press wanted to talk to us. On the day Georgia O’Keeffe died, we were scheduled to do a radio interview and needed to differentiate each other on air. We saw the obituary in the newspaper and it struck us that one of us should take her name that day and the rest the names of other dead women artists from history. In the beginning we didn’t wear gorilla masks, either. You might be able to find some pictures of us very early on wearing ski masks. It just all developed so quickly What about your name, how did you choose ‘K€athe Kollwitz’? I chose ‘K€athe Kollwitz’ not because she’s my favourite artist, but because she was an artist and an activist.2 That was her practice from the very beginning and I really connect with that. I’ve always wanted my own work to be about the world. I’d been a political activist since I was a teenager. K€athe Kollwitz didn’t think art should be expensive and precious. She made prints that she sold and she gave lots away. That’s certainly one of the powers of the Guerrilla Girls too, that there are multiple prints which undermines the concept of the original, the signature or hand of the ‘master’. Yes, we engage in lots of exchanges with thousands of people: posters, books, tee-shirts. It’s different from an art market that operates on the assumption that art should be limited and cost a lot of money. We think everyone who wants a copy of one of our posters should be able to have one for $20. They’re not exactly limited are they? We continually reprint and reproduce our work. Some posters, like Do Women Have To Be Naked and The Estrogen Bomb have been refashioned to fit different situations. Back to your earlier question, another power is our collective anonymity, which was originally meant to protect our careers. But quickly it was clear that the mystery was important to our strategy. It got everyone talking about our issues, wondering who we were. We would overhear people say, ‘The Guerrilla Girls are just a career move. They’ll take off their 155

Death of the Artist masks and cash in,’ or ‘I know who a Guerrilla Girls is.’ Sometimes they’d be right and sometimes they were dead wrong. But we couldn’t agree or correct them! Personally, I got a letter in the first year or two from somebody saying, ‘I know you’re part of this.’ I wrote back as myself and said, ‘The Guerrilla Girls are anonymous, you have no idea who they are.’ I thought it was funny. Do your family know? Oh yeah! Let’s be honest, there is the myth of our anonymity but everyone’s family and close friends knew from the beginning. It used to be a big deal to guess who the Guerrilla Girls were, but now nobody cares. A bunch of women art curators had a meeting last year, discussed the importance of our anonymity and most concluded they didn’t want to know who the Guerrilla Girls were. The outrageous work coming from anonymous voices is what’s important. People write to us from all over the world to say we’re a model for their own crazy kind of activism. It’s a symbol of standing up against things that don’t make sense and aren’t fair. The world needs more masked avengers. How do you feel about others using the name Guerrilla Girls, do you feel they need to differentiate themselves? We believe it would be so much more effective if there were lots of different feminist masked avengers groups and not just more copycat Guerrilla Girls. Is the Guerrilla Girls West a legitimate branch?3 No, that was a group of rogue women on the West Coast. They showed up at a talk we gave in 1992 at the Falkirk Center in California wearing gorilla masks claiming to be ‘Guerrilla Girls West’. We tried to get them to choose their own name and identity, and not use ours. We didn’t like that they were pretending to be us. Did you mind? It got annoying because places would invite them to speak, thinking they were the artists who made our posters. We got confused letters from schools and museums. What they did was cute, but dishonest. They haven’t done anything in years.

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Interview: Feminist Avengers Now that Guerrilla Girls are internationally renowned, at least within the art world, you have become a legacy in your own right. How do you keep people focused on the subject matter? We keep trying to extend our critique. We started out with very simple statistics and over time we’ve gone deeper. We’ve done lots of projects about the film industry, politics and pop culture. We’ve written books about the lives of women artists, about female stereotypes, about female hysteria and our last was about corruption in the art world. We were culture jammers and did institutional critique before those terms existed. Even early on we had a website. We use social media. We travel to over 30 schools a year to talk about our work and conduct workshops. Right now we’ve been thinking about how the art market and art museums have become the playgrounds of the 1 per cent of the 1 per cent, which we plan to address in some future work. When we get finished with all that, we’re planning to write our memoir. Through this all we want to fight for a feminist present and future. So many people who believe in the basic tenets of feminism are afraid to call themselves feminists. So we always made sure we called ourselves feminists and our agenda feminist. Do you think as you travel the world these ideas are still new to people? The idea that museums discriminate against women and artists of colour is still new to a lot of people. The museum thing, though, is problematic. We’re now invited to show inside the museums that we criticise. We thought long and hard about refusing to participate in art museums and galleries but, in the end, why not take advantage of speaking to a larger audience? We make it a condition that we can say or do what we want in shows. Our style of institutional critique is very direct, very in-your-face. At the Venice Biennale we did huge banners criticising the history of the show and the historical museums of Venice. In Istanbul we made fun of the Istanbul Modern. Almost every time we show in a museum or an international show, we get letters that say: ‘I didn’t know it was so bad for women and artists of colour! Tell me more.’ We’ve finally empowered that audience we confronted outside MoMA in 1984.

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Death of the Artist With regards to internationalism, are we allowed to say where we are today? The Guerrilla Girls started in New York and are based in New York but today you and I are speaking in Los Angeles where I now live and where you’re doing research in our archive at the Getty Research Institute. Over time some of our individual members have moved from New York but the internet and email lets us work together easily. Has your dispersal aided the Guerrilla Girls so you can now spread far and wide and is research easier in situ? It’s been great to do anti-film industry billboards right in Hollywood, where a few of us are local, but we’ve also worked in places where none of us live. We’ve researched and done projects and actions in New York, Chicago, Washington DC, Montreal, London, Ireland, Venice, Paris, Rotterdam, Madrid, Bilbao, Krakow, Athens, Istanbul, Mexico City, Brazil, Australia, and Shanghai to name a few. Sometimes we have help. The Venice Biennale gave us a researcher who was terrific and had access to endless info about the history of the Biennale. The Washington Post had a fact checker who called the National Gallery to confirm that there were no African American artists on exhibit at the museum. (That really set them off . . . overnight the National Gallery reinstalled a sculpture by an African American artist.) In Bilbao, Turkey and Ireland, we had dialogues with groups of women artists as well as researchers who collected information for us, resulting in a series of banners that travelled around the country. At what stage do you physically put on the gorilla mask before a gig, and do you have several? I do have more, including some that have fallen apart like my first one, which is sort of my teddy bear. We’ve gotten so skilful that we just duck into a corner and mask up, like Superman in those phone booths. Then we walk into a building as if we always have our masks on. Do the institutions that invite you to speak know you or you as the gorilla? They never know who we are. We sign contracts with our pseudonyms and when we perform or appear in public, we always wear our masks. 158

Interview: Feminist Avengers I heard you explain at the Southbank Meltdown Festival that you now embrace exhibiting in institutions so long as you were allowed to critique them.4 Have any institutions stopped inviting you? No, it’s the contrary. Our work empowers people who work inside the system and wish they could do more to change it. Many curators have had the guts to put us in shows, acquired our work for their collections and asked us to give talks. They are often surprised at the big reaction we get from museum-goers that are seeing our critique for the first time. We inspired a group of curators at the National Gallery to organise and pressure for more acquisitions of work by women and artists of colour. We even opened the MoMA Feminist Futures symposium by thanking the museum for making us so mad in 1985 that we started The Guerrilla Girls.5 Almost 50 museums have our work. That said, no major American museum has offered us a retrospective, yet. An art school gallery, Columbia College of Chicago, sponsored our first mini-retrospective and is travelling to a bunch of museums all connected to educational institutions. Our first complete retrospective will open soon in a Spanish cultural centre, not a museum.6 But we’re still waiting for a major US institution to have the courage to give us a retrospective, to have the courage to let us tell the story of discrimination in the art world over the last 30 years. Our recent work is a touchy subject for museums too, because it deals with corruption in the art market and art world. And super wealthy art collectors control most museums so they’re stuck. We’re not part of the money-driven, celebritycrazed art world of galleries and auctions that feed the New York museum culture. We founded this group because we felt like outsiders. Now we’re outsiders who have suddenly become insiders. Some, but not all of us, have been ‘insiders’ in our personal careers too, but we can’t stand the system or we would never have become Guerrilla Girls. Are you able to date stamp when institutions became more critical of their roles? There are still many institutions that aren’t critical at all. With others it’s been a slow and steady process. And we’ve helped, starting with our street posters. Our books quickly became textbooks in art, art history, and gender studies. Being on the internet made us global. A real push came post 159

Death of the Artist 2003 after Xabier Arakistain gave us a small show in an art space in Bilbao. From there we met Rosa Martinez who asked us to do projects for the 2005 Venice Biennale. Then museums like MoMA, Tate Modern, and the Pompidou started showing our work. Europeans in particular love to hear us criticise the US. So if people want to contact the Guerrilla Girls they can use the website, write to you via post and on Facebook; but I notice you’re not very active on Twitter? We get thousands of emails every month and lots of action on Facebook and Twitter. Our posts deal with issues we care about and we always try to take a new twist on things, like we do in all our work. Okay, we promise to Tweet more. How many of you are still actively involved? We have many secrets and that’s one of them. We never say how many of us are active at any given time, but over 55 women have come in and out of the group; some for weeks, some for decades, but we’ve always been small at any given time. To be honest, you can’t do the kind of work we do in large groups. Can you imagine a big group of artists agreeing on anything? So are you still a collective? Yes! And busier than ever! Yes! I read on your website’s Frequently Asked Questions that you try to arrive at every decision by consensus. How difficult is that? It’s really hard. We decided that if any member really objected to something, we wouldn’t do it. Over time we carved out areas of expertise and figured out who was good at what, like writing and designing posters, talking to the press, going on gigs, etc. Some of us ended up doing the majority of work, which happens in almost every group and especially in a group without a hierarchy. Often it was the members who could work the hardest and deal with all the details who ended up having the biggest voice because they stuck around to get things done. We only did one poster where there was a big fight. We agreed to do a poster written in a Marilyn Monroe voice that proposed castration as a

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Interview: Feminist Avengers solution to NEA censorship.7 It was only a joke and it was so funny we read it in gigs for years. But when it was printed and ready to go on the streets, a few members freaked out at a meeting and couldn’t bear to see a violent pun trapped forever in a black and white poster. So respecting our policy of consensus, we never put it up publicly. But it will be in our retrospective! Now I’m going to come to the sensitive subject of 2003: Jeffrey Toobin published an article in The New Yorker in which two of the Guerrilla Girls’ real names were revealed. The article was about a lawsuit between some of the Guerrilla Girls. Are you able to tell me anything about the lead up to that? The late 1990s were a tough time for the Guerrilla Girls. Most of our members from the earlier years had left. Some new members came in with a very academic take who were against using humour. Fractions developed that paralysed the creation of new work. Only three founding members remained. Look at our timeline; you’ll see the lull in production. Then Frida and I discovered that the only other long-time member who remained had mishandled GG money for many years. It was devastating. So a small group of us, with heavy hearts, asked her to leave. She and a few of her followers regrouped as Guerrilla Girls Broadband. Then, in the midst of it all, a very short-term member decided to form her own theatre company, using the name Guerrilla Girls On Tour. So there were two other groups who wanted to call themselves some version of Guerrilla Girls. We needed some kind of legal separation, a three-way divorce, so to speak, to make it official. Jeffrey Toobin wrote an article about the split – the usual mainstream journalist crap about women, feminists, fighting with each other. He was selective: he used the pseudonyms of everyone he contacted, except for Frida and me. Maybe he did that because we refused to talk to him (big mistake!) while we were in the midst of a negotiation. We asked Toobin not to out us, but he did anyway. It was infuriating. We have never outed ourselves. Some former members have outed themselves, but not us. In the end the Guerrilla Girls reached legal agreements with GGBB and GGOT that allowed those spin off groups to do their own work under their own names without interfering with the mission and work of the Guerrilla Girls.

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Death of the Artist Is there anything that’s held at the Archives of American Art as part of their in their Oral Histories with various Guerrilla Girls that you would like to comment on?8 Artists are individualists, and the art world encourages and reinforces it. At the same time the art world is really hard on individual artists. There aren’t enough rewards to go around and most of them are given to the same handful of artists at the top who are mostly white and male. The unfairness of this is what our work has always been all about. And it can make women artists and artists of colour really unhappy. It’s a miracle our collective has lasted as long as it has with over 55 inspired, wonderful, crazy women trying to work together. Imagine being married to so many different people for 28 years. Everything that can happen in a one-on-one relationship happens times 55! It’s understandable that there would be some hard feelings, some slights, some resentment, and some unhappiness. But on the other hand there’s a lot of solidarity and good feelings, too. We get together with many old members and remain good friends. But some old members are detached from the group. Others didn’t keep up with what the Guerrilla Girls were doing and didn’t know about the money problems that led up to the split. Some choose not to know what happened and want to think; it was based on egos not ethics. The Oral Histories interviewer states that you’ve all had an opportunity to make comments. Yes, we edited our original interview for the Archives of American Art. In the first interview Frida and I made a conscious decision to talk about the work and how we did it. We didn’t want to focus on intergroup dynamics because those problems exist in every collective or group. What’s important about the Guerrilla Girls is the work the group has done over 28 years and the effect it has had on the art world and beyond. When we read the other interviews, we realised several of them were skewed and filled with misinformation. Some former members talked about events that happened after they left the Guerrilla Girls that they had no firsthand knowledge of. Some wanted to talk more about their own discontents inside the group than about the work. It shouldn’t have been a surprise: the former member we had asked to leave handpicked the 162

Interview: Feminist Avengers interviewees. Frida and I were only included at the last minute when someone protested. I can see how easily events can be misconstrued with lots of people being involved and different opinions. And different feelings. People have different ideas and feelings about it, and that’s life. Collective life. The one thing that did come up demonstrating difference among the group was the issue of race. As part of your archives I found an essay that one of the members had circulated on race and feminism.9 The Guerrilla Girls’ work addresses the underrepresentation of artists of colour but a few of the pseudonymous characters have said that they felt as if they were tokens within the group.10 Diversity isn’t something that just happens; it’s something you have to work at. It takes honesty and perseverance. Our meetings were safe places to express all our frustrations with each other and with the larger world. Things that couldn’t be said out loud in the art world could be said inside our meetings. We all learned a lot about each other. Alma’s concerns resulted in a great campaign she did with me and other members about tokenism, which asked a larger question: is tokenism part of the solution or part of the problem? I’m really sorry there were members in the group who felt like tokens even after those posters and others like These Are The Most Bigoted Galleries In New York and Traditional Values and Quality Return to the Whitey Museum. How do you deal with that within the group? For example I read a letter from a woman within the group to the rest of the Guerrilla Girls who said she felt she had been invited because of her colour, which ended with ‘no wonder women of colour continue to leave regularly.’ From early on, the Guerrilla Girls had members of colour and within the first year incorporated issues of race into our examination of exclusion. Everyone wanted more diversity and considered it essential to the work. Some members later started their own groups to work on specific issues. Godzilla was not anonymous and formed to promote the art of Asian Americans. PESTS was an anonymous group of African-American artists

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Death of the Artist jump-started by a Guerrilla Girl who was always an outspoken activist and had ideas of her own to pursue. ‘Alma’, in her Oral History interview with the Archives of American Art, discussed that the power of the gorilla mask was too great so, even if it had negative connotations with issues of race, she still felt the mask was important. The mask came about by chance. After a couple rounds of postering, we needed a disguise to use when we appeared in public. No one remembers for sure but there is a story that goes like this: we were discussing what to do about this dilemma at a meeting and the member who was taking minutes was a really bad speller. She wrote guerrilla as ‘gorilla’ instead. It was instantaneous: we should be guerrilla girls wearing gorilla masks. Gorillas are such huge, fierce, intimidating animals. We saw the mask as an expression of power. To wear a mini skirt or fish net stockings with a gorilla mask was so confounding. As Alma has often acknowledged, it is now our symbol and not a symbol of anything else. Does it give you confidence? Yes it gives you confidence; you can say what you want. You won’t believe what comes out of your mouth when you’re wearing a gorilla mask! Is that an issue now, because everything is recorded – digitised photographs and documents? For example, there’s not many archives or letters at the Getty post-1995 because everything comes by email. So with the internet there’s a lot of self-historicising, you can write your own biography, write your own books, and you’ve got your own website. How do you think this fits in with the idea that women might now be a part of history and getting rid of the traditional monograph that had previously excluded them? It’s great that all artists can make their own websites and blogs and get their work and their story out on the web without an official stamp of approval. The internet is great for giving everyone an outlet and, for sure, it will change the way history is recorded. It’s much easier to find online information about topics that are out of the mainstream than was ever possible in old-fashioned libraries or bookstores. But the dark side is that when something incorrect appears in an online source, it can get passed on and on until it’s considered factual. There’s a

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Interview: Feminist Avengers lot of misinformation about us all over the internet as well as inaccurate books and articles, fake photos, websites and merchandise. Yes, since 1995 almost all our correspondence has been by email and we have hundred of thousands of letters. The Getty archive doesn’t include anything past 2000 and doesn’t have any of the archives of individual members. Frida Kahlo and I are founding members and we each have extensive archives of the work from 1985 to the present. I’ve always thought that the institutional big-gun shows at the Whitney or the Met., for example, are supplemented by the artist’s biography, monograph or exhibition catalogue, where they’re usually featured as the tortured ‘Van Gogh’ personality. It’s because we know who they are, and the institution plays on that, which perpetuates this idea. The tortured artist has been replaced by the Art Star. Usually a white male, he’s identified as a genius by collectors, air fairs, and auctions. He’s cool, everyone wants his work and he’ll become very rich. He’s a winner in the Art Olympics because it’s all about a few big winners and lots of losers. This perpetuates the idea of a mainstream narrative. Lots of contemporary artists play along with it hoping to be one of the chosen ones. Right now in the States, the big collectors control the museums. They’re on the boards, and they promote the work of artists whom they collect. Art has become an investment instrument of the 1 per cent of the 1 per cent and not the story of our culture. If you run the numbers of the solo shows at the museums you’re talking about, it’s still overwhelmingly art by white males. Has this changed at all since the Guerrilla Girls came on the scene? At the entry level things have changed. No one argues anymore that women and artists of colour don’t make work that rises to the quality of art by white males. But if you go up the ladder of art world success, there’s a stunning glass ceiling that crushes women and artists of colour. They don’t get exhibitions, monographs or equal prices for their work. For example, if you compare the highest auction price paid for a white male artist ($143 million for a Francis Bacon) to the highest for a woman ($10 million for a Louise Bourgeois), that’s 7 cents on the dollar. I know it sounds ridiculous to complain about ‘only’ making $10 million instead of hundreds of millions, but auctions do set a standard that extends further

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Death of the Artist down the price ladder. If we keep allowing the art market to tell our visual history, a hundred years from now I bet museums will have collected all the wrong things. When I went to art school at the Slade from 2003 to 2007, we definitely had an equal number of male and female students but all of the full-time painting tutors were male and it seemed male artists were more likely to be financially successful after graduating. US art schools have been more than 50 per cent women for decades. Some faculties are changing but many still have mostly white male faculty members at the top and women in the lower and part-time ranks. Thankfully, the old academic pedagogy of breaking down students with harsh criticism and building them up to please their master teachers is falling by the wayside. But the fact remains that art schools educate women to be artists and then the art world denies them professional opportunities. If that happened in any other profession like medicine or law, some very serious questions would be asked about the field. On the other hand, academic institutions have kept the Guerrilla Girls alive over the years. We earn money for our projects by appearing at colleges and universities and conducting workshops with art students who want to develop activist strategies in their work. Social practice is now an accepted part of the art curriculum. When we started, no one had heard of the term. And our portfolios are in the collections of lots of academic museums where scholars keep alive the idea of an alternative art history. For a long time an artist like Claude Cahun was better known among academics than museum people.11 I visited her archives in Jersey and reviewed her retrospective at the Place de la Concorde in in 2011. It was a beautiful retrospective of all her photographs but my argument was that her partner, ‘Marcel Moore’, who actually took the photographs, ought to be credited as much as Cahun. The photographs were private and only discovered posthumously so they were intended as part of a partnership, not as a onewoman show. The tendency to connect a body of work with a solitary genius is another art myth that’s is beginning to fall. The Guerrilla Girls have always

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Interview: Feminist Avengers been a collaboration, not the work of an individual. We’re happy to prick a hole in that myth. If someone wants to become a Guerrilla Girl, how can they join you and do you accept new members? The bad news is that we can’t ever do an open call for new members. We have to choose people we can work with and who have the skills the group needs. But the good news is, if someone wants to do activism like the Guerrilla Girls, they don’t need us. They can just make up their own crazy identity and figure out new ways to change people’s minds. We’ve often said this before, but it is even more important now: The world needs more than one group of feminist masked avengers. Have you ever had any male members? Good question. When we formed this wasn’t an issue. To have an all-women’s group was the most natural thing in the world. We’ve never had a biological male in the group but lots of men have helped and supported us. (We have had transgender members.) We always joked that we would have male members as soon as we could find some who would be willing to work long hours and get no credit for it. Now things have changed, there are lots of male feminists, and I can see our policy evolving. When the founding members of the Guerrilla Girls are no longer alive, will someone else wear the mask? Who knows? I’d like to see it carrying on. It has so far! But I also expect lots of future feminists to figure out something even better. I think that’s one of the Guerrilla Girls practice’s most beautiful principles; that it can travel and it can be adopted by another because it’s authorless and, although I understand the logistics of copyright, the Guerrilla Girls continue to defy the mortality of the singular artist. Anyone can adapt the idea of anonymous protest and apply it anywhere in the world, although it’s risker in some places than others. But it’s not exactly true to say Guerrilla Girls are authorless. After 30 years there’s a large body of work that came out of an identifiable group of women called the Guerrilla Girls.

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Death of the Artist That said, we do want our work to be accessible to everyone. We’d rather have our posters hanging in thousands of college dorm rooms than over the sofa of one museum trustee. We don’t have patrons buying our work for millions of dollars. We’re probably the only contemporary artists to get into all those art history surveys without a gallery or a long list of private collectors! We like to engage in lots and lots of small exchanges. For example, we recently received an email from a woman wanting to donate to the Guerrilla Girls for her friend’s birthday. I wrote back and said that we’d really like to give her something in return, like a signed poster. You previously asked how we make money. We’re a small business: a Mum and Mum and Mum and Mum store. Even though it’s a lot more work, this idea of small exchanges really works for us. It spreads our ideas and message anywhere a book, poster or tee shirt can go. We also give talks and workshops internationally. We sell portfolios of our posters to public collections so they become part of the historical record. We receive exhibition fees and small project fees, too. It’s a new paradigm compared to the old market model where the artwork gets more and more expensive and more rare as it gets better known. We don’t apply for grants. Back in the 1990s we did get an NEA grant, for our newsletter Hot Flashes. That was the only time. But when the NEA found out we created a sliding subscription scale for white males as a joke, since on average they earn more money, the first Bush administration tried to take the grant away from us. A mole at the NEA leaked this ‘intel’ to us. We called the press and, bingo, the grant came through. But we never applied for another. I understand from one of your earlier exhibitions at the Palladium, that the Guerrilla Girls decided never to curate again. Can you explain this in more detail?12 The Palladium was the hottest nightclub in New York, and the playground of all of those 1980s guy artists making big money and doing a lot of drugs, like Jean Michel Basquiat. They invited us to do an exhibition of women artists, maybe because they had been criticised for not showing any in their much-publicised exhibitions. We did a poster saying the Palladium was going to apologise to women artists, which they refused to put up, so we put it up ourselves all over New York.

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Interview: Feminist Avengers We invited over 100 women artists to be in the exhibition, but we couldn’t invite more than that and some women felt slighted. We started to understand that the Guerrilla Girls are a symbol and that we need to represent ALL artists. For us to be curators, picking and choosing, is wrong. To curate is to be exclusive, and we want to be inclusive. So we never curated a show again. We also have a policy of not talking about living artists. We get asked all the time to talk about what we think of particular artists, but who are we to sit around and judge? Artists pour their whole lives into their work, and hardly any of them get the attention they deserve. We just want to support artists in any way that we can.

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4 Pseudonyms Bob and Roberta Smith

Patrick Brill is a London-based artist. His alter ego, Bob and Roberta Smith, run the Leytonstone Centre for Contemporary Art (LCCA), a shed in Brill’s back garden that travels to Ramsgate and multiplies itself for appearances at other national exhibitions. Like its creators, LCCA is an eccentric manifestation of Brill’s creative endeavours. While the pseudonyms and shed add to the mystery and mythology of Bob and Roberta Smith’s practice, they are in fact very practical solutions for an artist interested in collaboration and communication, a means by which their art might pop up in any corner of the world. In the spirit of their practice, I will refer to Bob and Roberta Smith in the plural. This chapter is also supported by an interview with the artist. It’s no secret that the individual, Patrick Brill, is also the duo Bob and Roberta Smith; all three challenge British politics in the name of and through art. Indeed, they show up to talks and teach as Patrick Brill and/or Bob and Roberta Smith, and very few acquainted with their practice believe that they are separate people. Why then, if Brill and Bob and Roberta Smith are almost synonymous, does Patrick brill continue to use the pseudonyms, and how does their deliberately fallacious myth contribute to the critique of authorship? 171

Death of the Artist Patrick Brill began using pseudonyms while he was working in New York in the late 1980s, after graduating from Reading and before returning to the UK for his Master’s degree at Goldsmiths, University of London. While in New York, Brill discovered that he became rather successful at filling in application forms and winning arts awards; a large part of the job of an artist. Disillusioned with the art world, as Brill describes in his interview here, he began collecting and creating a series of ‘loser’ stories based on an artist called Bob.1 This was a type of fascination and play on the mythology of the artist’s typically tortured personality that we associate with genius and authorship. These stories and sentiments manifested themselves in signs and slogans, inspired by the new generation of New York-based artists making work influenced by billboard advertisements and consumer media, including Barbara Kruger and Jenny Holzer. Brill entered his work under several different names to various galleries in New York and simply found that the generic name of Bob Smith was the most successful. What began as a playful joke on the art world had become an astute career move. Upon returning to the UK, ‘Bob’ asked his sister to collaborate and, for a short while, Bob and Roberta, his older sister’s name, really did work together. Together, Bob and Roberta Smith staged exhibitions encouraging the audience to bring along their own materials and make works of art, in keeping with one of their most famous slogans, ‘Make Your Own Damn Art’. Roberta Brill soon afterwards returned to her profession as a psychiatric nurse but already conceived was a creative duo, consisting of both genders and with such a generic name that it appealed to a wide audience, so much so that they could encourage others to work with them. Whether Bob or Roberta were real no longer mattered. Bob and Roberta Smith have since exhibited at the Tate, where they were elected a trustee in 2009, and have been represented by Hales Gallery in London. They frequently collaborate with Work, a London-based gallery concerned with social ethics; in 2013, Bob and Roberta Smith became Royal Academicians; and in 2017 they were appointed an OBE for services to the arts. Bob and Roberta Smith are concerned with art and advocacy, the belief in art as an agent of social change, through play, text and signage. Their practice often involves collaboration, performance and champions participation. Their work cannot be reduced to one genre. It often takes the shape of music, DIY projects and even cooking. They use this hobby-like practice as a form of subversive humour to seduce the viewer and attract a

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Pseudonyms wider audience, so as to engage the public in a more serious political debate. Most of their recent works are prints and paintings interrogating the British government and education system. Their bright signs and slogans reference the languages of folk, the fairground, punk and the alternative protest movements. In their own words: Bob and Roberta Smith see art as an important element in democratic life. Much of their art takes the form of painted signs. Central to Bob and Roberta Smith’s thinking is the idea that campaigns are extended art works which include a variety of consciousness raising artefacts.2

In 1997 Bob and Roberta Smith exhibited at the Chisenhale Gallery London. Their show ‘Don’t Hate Sculpt’ (see Figure 4.1) consisted of six fictional characters invented by the duo. These fictional artists created works as diverse as concrete vegetables and orange environments. There is the man who paints things orange, the woman who grows potatoes, a man whose creative energies are spent boiling vegetables,

Figure 4.1 Bob and Roberta Smith, ‘Don’t Hate Sculpt’ (1997). Installation view, Chisenhale Gallery, 1997. Courtesy of Chisenhale Gallery.

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Death of the Artist a visionary architect, and another who provides instruction on how to make custard (it doesn’t turn out the way it should). Another artist makes enormous hand-painted texts, telling tall stories about well-known characters that are patently untrue.3

The artists also left a large pile of materials for every visitor to create their own artworks out of, including paint, drills and rubbish, alongside the paintings and political signs by Bob and Roberta Smith. With six invented artistic personalities sharing studio space, along with their visitors, Bob and Roberta Smith demonstrate that the artistic ego need not be so big that there isn’t always room for more artists. This follows on from Joseph Beuys’ 1960s concept of Social Sculpture, part of which proposes that ‘everyone is an artist’. Beuys’ utopian idea was that human action could be innately creative, so long as it was conscious, in shaping society and the environment. It is ironic that Beuys has since become somewhat of a mystery shaman and art star himself. Nonetheless, the sentiment is in stark contrast to the mythology of the solitary artist, without assistants, partners or dealers to facilitate their careers and characters. The market, in order to justify astronomical prices, would have us believe that there is a limited number of artists, and even more limited number of their works worth investing in. The truth is that the art economy is supported and constructed largely by the general public; exhibition tickets, amateur classes, materials sold at arts and crafts shops, local framers, galleries and provincial artists, and all the graduates of the numerous art schools we never hear of, or the fees they pay. With signs encouraging visitors to ‘make art’ and ‘paint it orange’, ‘Don’t Hate Sculpt’ implies that anyone can join in on the creative act and, therefore, be Bob and Roberta Smith too, which they did. Not only does the duo or collective authorship of Bob and Roberta Smith’s practice challenge the notion of the singular genius, so does their use of materials. Commercial paint, old floorboards, concrete and rubbish are not traditional media. From Duchamp’s urinal to Schneemann’s genitalia, the public has arguably become more familiar with less traditional artistic media and its politicised intent, which includes building materials and rubbish. Slightly more subversive is the use of vegetables and baking techniques. As part of an early exhibition catalogue, art critic Matthew Collins contextualises Bob and Roberta Smith’s media as a resistance to art education orthodoxies: 174

Pseudonyms At Goldsmiths Bob made fighter aircraft out of vegetables. Carrot fighters opposing parsnips. His challenge to formalism in art was a video showing Bob cutting up a cake. Battenberg and Swiss Rolls cut into slices. And he made a video called Humiliate. Humiliate was half an hour of stories about Bob failing to make it in the professional artworld . . . He didn’t want to be a Goldsmiths’ robot. He held onto his old ideas about art made of objects that wouldn’t last. Like vegetables. He has another idea. Education in art ought to be about enlightenment and not orthodoxies. He feels quite patronised by art orthodoxy and so he doesn’t bother with it. It’s not that you have to spend your whole time being opposed to it. Just leave a space there. Like fiction. It might be fiction but it might be profound too. A lot of people go around worrying about the truth of art. He is opposed to that. The orthodoxy history, the orthodoxy mythology of art – it should be enjoyable, not absolute.4

Reflecting on their materials, the artists have joked that in using rubbish and recycling their own artworks they have sabotaged their own career: ‘If a gallery ever asked me to make a retrospective I would be in trouble because three of my favourite works have been made from the same lengths of timber that I have written on.’5 This is a sentiment in stark contrast to the scarcity model and notions of unique value we associate with authorship. Esteemed artworks are usually treated with extreme preciousness; conservation temperatures, the use of white gloves for art handling, frames, alarmed barriers and vitrines and so on. Inherent in this statement is also the sense that the duo are capable of making several works of art, which vary in context, meaning and composition, such as this single plank of wood that has carried three different messages over time. This is a neat reflection of what Barthes described as a ‘multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash. The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture.’6 Thus, in recycling their own work, Bob and Roberta Smith demonstrate an authorship more casual and consequential than the traditional carrier of meaning and omnipotent concept of the ‘Author-God’. The notion of ‘truth’ in art or of an artist is something that Bob and Roberta Smith continually disprove and playfully undermine. In their

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Death of the Artist interview with me the notion of ‘truth’ is almost referred to as having sparked their rebellious practice: I wanted to make an art where the artist was embracing the idea of fiction, which nobody does. You can’t do that, you can’t, it is all born out of the essential idea of the authentic experience of the artist, isn’t it? I mean virtually everybody’s visual art is born out of that idea. I wanted to question that by saying, ‘I’m gonna have a fictional artist, and that fictional artist is gonna have a career in the art world’.7

Blurring more distinctions between artist and viewer, Bob and Roberta Smith took a similar show to ‘Don’t Hate Sculpt’ to Japan. Because the artists could not be there in ‘person’, the show was organised and presented without them. As a result, Brill said: There are now two people who are Japanese Bob and Roberta Smith. They took the show up to Hiroshima and I wasn’t even present. It’s a way of being all inclusive but at the same time locating it within the idea of the personality in time.8

Thus, Bob and Roberta Smith are not even physically required for their work to continue. While it is not particularly novel that an artist has someone else assemble their work for them, it would be novel if that artist is prepared to give creative license and freedom of expression to those working with or for them, and share their authorship. This is something that Horst Griese picked up on in one of few academic essays written on Bob and Roberta Smith’s practice: Increasingly, Bob and Roberta’s projects are populated by people from their respective neighbourhoods and site-specific fantasies. They use representatives who act in their own name and tirelessly extend ‘their family’. Successively, they appropriate the world through adopting its inhabitants.9

Their name has become a brand that others are encouraged to adopt and create work under. Bob and Roberta Smith’s work facilitates this because anyone and everyone can theoretically author it at any given time. When I questioned the artists as to whether they would mind if someone

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Pseudonyms else attributed their work to them without asking, the artists seemed to think this would be entertaining rather than exploitative. However, unlike the multiple-use pseudonyms of Luther Blissett or Monty Cantsin, for example, Bob and Roberta Smith is the invention of the man mostly using his pseudonyms. Luther Blissett was the name of a footballer appropriated most famously for the authors of the novel Q (1999), but which has been used and adopted as part of several pranks by artists and activists since the 1990s. Similarly, several Neoists have employed the name Monty Cantsin. It seems, then, that the pseudonyms of Bob and Roberta Smith have perhaps not yet reached their potential to be embraced by others, maybe because they are so synonymous with Patrick Brill. One example of their collectively authored actions is their 2013 national campaign to Save Old Flo, a Henry Moore (1898 – 1986) sculpture threatened with being sold by the London borough of Tower Hamlets, where it was originally situated. Old Flo is the name affectionately given to Moore’s sculpture, Draped Seated Woman (1957 – 8). The artist sold the sculpture to the London County Council (LCC) in the 1960s at a greatly reduced price on the condition it was displayed within the area. It was sited within the Stifford Housing Estate, Stepney Green. After the estate was demolished in 1997 it was put on display at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, where it has remained ever since. In 2013 London’s Tower Hamlets Council planned to sell Draped Seated Woman to raise money towards its budget deficit. Bob and Roberta Smith, also local residents, were at the forefront of the public campaign. From artists to members of the local community, there has been strong opposition to the council’s decision. The Museum of London has proposed that its London Docklands site display the sculpture, which not only concurs with the spirit in which the artist originally sold the work but also preserves it as part of the capital’s cultural heritage. Bob and Roberta Smith staged a protest against the sale with all participants dressed as ‘Old Flo’ herself. The protest was arranged via Twitter, itself an inclusive means of communication, whereby any idea or quote can be repeated (retweeted) and shared among any Twitter account holder. In their interview, Bob and Roberta Smith say: That flashmob was amazing because, genuinely, a lot of people came from Twitter. Half of them were my students and half of them were

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Death of the Artist people who just showed up. And that was kind of remarkable, I thought.10

In the same way that participants are invited to make art with and on behalf of Bob and Roberta Smith at their exhibitions, so too are the public called on to protest collectively. In this case, not only do the participants represent Bob and Roberta Smith, they also represent Henry Moore and ‘Old Flo’ herself, breathing life into another mythologised character. ‘Old Flo’ is given a new personality and reincarnated by Bob and Roberta Smith’s various participants. Moreover, because of the nature of the flashmob, the significance of Bob and Roberta Smith’s identity as the performance’s author or organiser becomes redundant because the collective action becomes the primary objective in raising awareness of the campaign. It is important here to acknowledge the distinction between Bob and Roberta Smith’s public or outdoor actions and their gallery exhibits, where the work presented is for sale. In my interview with the artists I questioned whether commodification was a problematic issue for a practice concerned with the freedom of expression and the public’s right to access free art. Bob and Roberta Smith admit to the contradiction but also point out that having a collective authorship has been ‘a bit disastrous’ for their career.11 Perhaps we could view this as a compromise in return for the political work they make, which garners little financial return. The artists describe the more financially successful artists of their generation as ‘complete tarts’, in their ironically titled publication I Should Be In Charge (2011), alluding to their sales as ‘selling out’: The art world is populated with subversitites and eccentrics and many of them have become great friends of mine. The art world is also an unregulated cesspit of corruption. To be a successful artist with a mainstream gallery is to be a complete tart.12 To make it you either have to be one of them, related to one of them or you have to conform to being either a ‘mystical king shaman person’.13

In contrast, of the two commercial galleries Bob and Roberta Smith have shown with, one was founded by a postman, ‘so it’s a rare event that the “Marquis de la bank of Fox News” darkens the door’.14 Instead, the

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Pseudonyms artists used their 2012 solo exhibition, ‘The Art Party Comes to the UK’, at Hales Gallery to test one of their protest ideas; to raise awareness about the curriculum arts cuts and to launch a much larger protest action against it, a far cry from ‘selling out’. Although the relatively little financial return from advocacy exhibitions might explain why, as of 2013, they are no longer represented by Hales Gallery. Instead, Bob and Roberta Smith sell their work for ‘affordable’ prices online via their Bob Shop or at the wellattended annual Art Car Boot Fair in London. A standard sign painting can be bought for up to £500. Discussing their more modest success, Bob and Roberta Smith explain that the art market is relatively little understood by the public at large; that only the top 1 per cent can afford to make a living off their art alone. Most artists, like Bob and Roberta Smith, are engaged in teaching, talks and workshops.15 As examples, they praise contemporary artists Susan Hiller and Phyllida Barlow for their longstanding commitment to education: ‘their students have ripped them off but they make important work and have shaped ideas and inspired people. Inspiring others to make art is the best thing.’16 Traditional pedagogy has been critiqued for its authoritative style, whereby one’s interpretation of an artwork can be deemed correct or not. Think, for example, of those taught to ‘appreciate’ Shakespeare at school and ‘understand’ the author’s supposed meaning and intent. Philosopher Jacques Ranciere’s writing has begun to draw on the parallels between education and authorship. He problematises the active and passive roles presumed for teacher and student, or author and spectator, respectively, and argues that we should all be considered capable of our own translations.17 More democratic teaching might conversely be viewed as a collaborative act, or one of shared authorship, whereby teacher and student engage in a conversation that influences both artists’ creative output. This reminds us of Janet Wolff’s chapter on ‘The Death of the Author’, in which she considers an artist’s education as part of the social history of art.18 In 2017, Bob and Roberta Smith took part in the Folkestone Triennial with a campaign piece, declaring that FOLKESTONE IS AN ART SCHOOL. They pointed towards the current resources – from workshop spaces to local teachers – in the area, asking that we reconsider the parameters of education; must it be institutionalised? This is not too dissimilar to the growing number of unregulated ‘postgraduate’ programmes, such as

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Death of the Artist London’s Open School East. The philosophy advocates ‘free’ education by shared learning and studio spaces, and organised events set to foster cultural and social exchanges. Nor did the historical artist need a degree, but was instead traditionally trained by a ‘master’, under whom they learned by experience, not modules. It might be augured then that the increasing disenchantment with the education system as a business model will lead us to a return of a more socially authored pedagogy; artists have always been teachers, in one sense or another, as a means of supplementing their career. In 2012 Bob and Roberta Smith began creating The Art Party in opposition to the recent Secretary of State for Education, Conservative MP Michael Gove’s, proposed legislation to reduce art as part of the national curriculum.19 To begin with, on 25 July 2011, Bob and Roberta Smith penned a Letter to Michael Gove that sprawled across several planks of wood, reading much like a beat poem, with little punctuation or grammar. The words are separated with small gaps so that one often appears to flow into another: In memory of Lucien Freud and Amy Winehouse who died this weekend. Your destruction of Britain’s ability to draw, design and sing. Dear Michael Gove Art, images, artifacts, songs; culture are the principal means by which Human beings define themselves. Michael, a look at your tie and shirt combination in images of you online informs me you are not a visually minded person. You do not care how you look. Like many men of your generation you probably disdain the modern media’s obsession with ‘image’. Look around you. What do you see? Everything is made. Everything has been fashioned by human beings who have considered all aspects of what they have made. Human beings consider the function in the system of commerce of what they make but at the same time their work creates images. Image is everything; visual worth, commercial value, moral virtue, authority and integrity. From birth Human beings seek to understand, find their place in society and control their worlds. Through looking and understanding the child interprets the world. Give a child a piece of paper, a brush and some colour and you put them in control.

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Pseudonyms Children’s art is so appealing because they have no problem with being in control of images. As school progresses, poor teaching in some schools impresses on the child that they are not in control. Not only are they not in control, but they are the most insignificant cog in a system of control in which they may never play an important part. From Galileo to Darwin, from Caravaggio to Amy Winehouse creativity is rebellion. Even Free Market economists recognise that wealth creation is based on questioning, innovation and improvement. Creativity is non-acceptance of the status quo, and rejection of the Academy. Your initiative awards conformity and will cause stagnation. Ebacc creates orthodoxy where your un-evidenced view of what will be important to future generations is given an unnatural emphasis. Ebacc is more suited to a planned economy. The rebellious child, the innovator, the inventor, the engineer, the artist, the architect clings on to their prowess with paper, does art at school, goes to art school, studies design or enrols at Imperial College and contributes to the library of images and forms. The relationship between sheets of blank paper, pencils and innovation is undeniable. Art should be the centre of a National curriculum based on creative thinking. Pity the obedient child in a system of education obsessed with ‘vocational skills’. He or she caves in. The child who becomes inhibited is inducted into the mediocre majority of the visually illiterate of which you, Michael Gove, (in your ill-fitting shirt and unmatched tie) are a part. But even those who have creativity beaten out of them by educational systems of the type you advocate, need, enjoy and consume images. Ebacc least serves, what people in the media call ‘content provision’. The ability to fill ‘new media’ with images will determine who has power. Everything is made. Everything is visual. Art, yes but also design, money, numbers: even the ebb and flow of commerce has to be made visual. The English landscape is a creation of human design. In your language ‘Brand Britain’ is visual and cultural. In recent years China has opened 400 schools of art and design. Your Government has whittled Britain’s once diverse, varied culture of schools of Art to just 12 institutions. This reduction is a disaster for British design, British commerce, British Art and Britain’s ability to compete in the world. Does Britain’s image mean nothing to you? Your reforms will cripple future British design. In advance of your reforms Roehampton University has

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Death of the Artist withdrawn its courses training art and design teachers, this is disgraceful. Take Art out of the National curriculum and belittle art in your distorted Ebacc system of categorisation of significant subjects and you will emasculate British Culture. Where are our future designers, architects, craftsmen, engineers, technicians, software designers and mathematicians going to come from if no one can draw? Your thinking and the thinking of your Government is provincial. You want to jump onto a ‘Far Eastern’ bandwagon that has already left town. The crazy dream of turning the UK economy into Singapore is not available to you. You should realise Britain is amazing. In cultural, visual, democratic, musical, design, product development and literary terms Britain is a giant. Art is now part of the language of freedom and democracy. Repressive, ideological regimes restrict Artists. You must realise that art is not a choice made at secondary school rather we are all cultural beings. Your creation of Ebacc promotes modern languages. This is a good thing. On holiday in Italy you will have visited regional museums. The Italians cram their children into museums, they say, ‘look, this is Italy, this is your culture, you are Italian’. Human beings have culture. Your government’s adoption of the last government’s ‘Mandelsonian’ Browne review with is desire to monetize the episteme and its assault on the Arts and Humanities coupled with your inclination to remove Art from the national curriculum is deeply concerning. You will be opposed by all people interested in Art, design, free speech, freedom and democracy and probably also by a few bankers and investors interested in British products and exports who are concerned about the colour of their money. Michael Gove, ditch Ebacc. It is mistaken; Education is about sewing seeds not setting standards for the shape of bananas. Bob and Roberta Smith – Artist20

The intention of the letter is clear, art must remain a part of the national curriculum, but its rhetoric and wit, aimed at Michael Gove’s ‘tie and shirt combination’ makes it an easy read and is typical of the artists’ subversive humour, used as a tool to engage a wider audience. Simultaneously, Letter to Michael Gove is utterly sincere in its ambition to make a change. In an interview with Dazed Digital magazine on the Letter, Bob and Roberta Smith said: 182

Pseudonyms Art is politics and politics is art. Art is about influencing people. It’s not always about telling people what to think, it’s about asking people to think. Art is incredibly important. You have a lot more power than you think and if lots of people get engaged with an idea then it can bring about change. It’s not that artists have a particular insight that other people don’t have but art is part of a huge conversation. I think it can have an effect.21

The letter was uploaded on to the artists’ website and visitors were encouraged to cut and paste the text, like a ‘chain letter’ to the Rt Hon Michael Gove MP, themselves. Though the letter was originally written by Bob and Roberta Smith, by publishing it online and inviting others to sign and send the same petition, the artists demonstrate a diffusion of authorship. Like the flashmob, the format of the chain letter is a cumulative or rhizomatic expansion of the artists’ practice. This is in keeping with the model of what I would like to call the ‘Artistic Multitude’, and which we might compare to the original grass-roots organisation of the Guerrilla Girls. Given that Hardt and Negri are concerned with an international model of democracy, it seems apt that their model might be utilised through the practice of artists concerned with freedom of expression through the rights to creativity. Like the project of the ‘multitude’, which must expand rhizomatically to become a collective whole, while still recognising difference among its individual members, Bob and Roberta Smith’s practice expands laterally through the individual. Their speeches, badges and protests begin with them at the core but seem to encourage ‘right to choose’ participation. The more people that ‘sign off’ as Bob and Roberta Smith, wear their slogan badges, dress as Old Flo or make art under their name, the more prolific ‘their’ art might appear and their authorship is shared. From 9 October to 17 November 2012, Bob and Roberta Smith solidified their ideas of The Art Party through their exhibition ‘The Art Party USA Comes to the UK’ at Hales Gallery. Among several bright and poignant signs – ‘Give a child pencils’, ‘All Schools should be Art Schools’ and ‘Art makes children powerful’ – stood Bob and Roberta Smith’s first ‘political broadcast’ from the Leytonstone Centre for Contemporary Art. The concept of The Art Party was inspired by the populist Tea Party in the USA, which is an American political movement that advocates strict adherence to the United States Constitution. In their interview with me, 183

Death of the Artist Bob and Roberta Smith explain the translation: ‘I’m interested in a kind of pressure group that’s just people who think art is important, whatever political perspective they voice.’22 The Art Party Political Broadcast (2012) was a 6:08 minute long speech on DVD. Holding up some of their own artworks to emphasise parts of the speech, they spoke of art as a way to ‘maintain a free and vibrant democracy’. At times the artists displayed a knowing smile to acknowledge the absurdity of their own ambitions from such a humble environment, but the rhetoric remained earnest: To join The Art Party all you need to do is make your own art . . . Art should be about practical activity not just enjoyment and appreciation . . . Art is the one subject at school where children have all the right answers . . . Culture bashing is book-burning . . . Through our public collections all British people own art . . . Art is not a gift from the rich or educated to the public but an attribute of all human beings . . . Creating things, making things happen is the opposite of destruction and war.23

The Art Party evolved and gained support from artists and students around the country. In November 2013 The Scarborough Spa held the first Art Party Conference, a giant celebration of British arts (see Figure 4.2).24 In attendance were artists Cornelia Parker, Jessica Voorsanger, Bobby Baker and Jeremy Deller. Artist David Shrigley also contributed a portrait of Michael Gove to the mass of those produced for the conference, mocking the MP for refusing to attend. The conference consisted of a series of artist’s talks, workshops, and stalls from different art schools across the country. Events were held in different rooms throughout the venue at the same time and culminated in Bob and Roberta Smith’s speech, which was broadcast live on Resonance FM. In the absence of the real Michael Gove, an actor gave an alternative and challenging speech. Concluding the conference were several bands including The Ken Ardley Playboys, lead by their two front men, Bob and Roberta Smith and Victor Mount. Another demonstration of shared authorship and amateur creativity, both musicians led a series of

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Figure 4.2 The Art Party Conference 2013, presented by Bob and Roberta Smith on Saturday 23 November at The SPA, Scarborough. Photograph taken by Nicola McCartney at the event.

discordant punk songs complementing their pun on ‘Can’t Hardly Play Boys’; their tongue-in-cheek sing-along ‘You’re Shit’ was very popular. While the element of humour is pertinent, first and foremost Bob and Roberta Smith are activists interested in the power of art. Bob and Roberta Smith cite Spike Milligan as an early influence, explaining how they would rehearse Milligan’s routines from The Goon Show and Q9 on the way to school. They say, ‘What I liked about it was that it was a mess but very clever and stupid at the same time . . . . I inhabited a world of nonsense, which has still got me in its grasp.’25 But what makes humour and the absurd powerful political weapons? Jerry Palmer asserts the significance of implausibility to a joke. There is a fine line between Bob and Roberta Smith’s insult of a politician’s sense of dress and the absurdity, or ‘implausibility’, that Gove’s dress sense might actually be a reflection of his policies on the national curriculum. Taking this one step further, Palmer argues that ‘the sheer implausibility of what is attributed disarms

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Death of the Artist criticism’.26 For example, should Gove respond to the Letter with any regard to the ‘joke’ about his dress sense, it would be he that would be ridiculed again, perceived as not able to ‘take a joke’. To many, there is more truth in parody and nonsense than in serious art. For example, the genre of history painting does not necessarily present a fact because of its serious narrative; it merely portrays what it has been commissioned to convey. Similarly, serious theatre presents a story from beginning to end, but real life is never so neatly concluded. Real life is full of mistakes and contradictions, so why shouldn’t the arts reflect that real absurdity? One of the absurdities of the art world that Bob and Roberta Smith’s practice returns to, again and again, is the problematic notion of artistic genius we associate with authorship. On the notion of romanticised fictions constructed around other artistic personalities, they have said: ‘Artists who make art professionally nearly always deride the extent to which art is therapeutic. The Van Gogh model of the crazy artist is not appealing. Van Gogh was amazing despite his illness not because of it.’27 Bob and Roberta Smith’s own identity and pseudonyms are a parody of that very mythology and one that they have consciously constructed so as to dispel the myth. In doing so, however, Patrick Brill has ironically perpetuated the myth of Bob and Roberta Smith, but his humble public appearances and reliance on the public as a part of his creative practice remain devoid of self-grandeur. Certainly, Bob and Roberta Smith are not authoritarian artists. Instead, they often try to facilitate spaces for other artists to exist alongside them. In their interview they discussed this further in relation to film: Jessie, my wife, and I have got a huge collection of all those films like Lust For Life and the Basquiat film.28 We love those because they only depend on trading on the artist’s mythology, and so they expose the unreality of what that’s about . . . But if you get too lost in the mythology of things you don’t understand how wonderful the material reality of all this art is . . . I think most artists are always slightly perplexed by the fact that somebody isn’t so amazed by what they’ve done and that they’re more interested in their story in relationship to what they’ve done.29

One of the most exaggerated filmic portrayals of an artist is of Van Gogh in Lust for Life (1956). The first problem is that the film itself is based on a ‘biographical novel’ (Irving Stone, 1935). The second, as pointed out 186

Pseudonyms by Griselda Pollock, is due to the shortcomings of the medium of film itself. In trying to portray Van Gogh’s paintings within a narrative and with motion techniques, the biopic conflates the artist’s surroundings and inner self with his own work, artificially animating the paintings: ‘Van Gogh is placed as a figure in his own landscape paintings. At the same time, these landscapes are offered as externalised, visualised images of the artist’s inner landscape.’30 To decontextualise an artwork in this way is a failure to recognise the specificity of each medium. The viewer also becomes caught in a vicious circle, relying on the artist in order to understand his art and requiring the art in order to understand the artist. The artist’s biopic is in a position to ‘enlighten’ a much larger public than the site-specific museum or gallery, but it relies on drama and, more often, a fictional narrative. Pollock concludes that the biopic largely perpetuates the conflation between an artist’s work and his or her life, and thus the desire for a biographical reading, an essence of that artist’s ‘self’, despite how unstable this notion may now be. Bob and Roberta Smith have enjoyed performing and contributing to these mythologies as a means of drawing attention to their absurdity. The characters of modern art ‘masters’, such as Pablo Picasso and Joseph Beuys, appear in their sign paintings, containing fictive anecdotes. At ‘Don’t Hate Sculpt’, one sign read ‘After Francis Bacon chopped his ear it was Frank Zappa who rushed him to hospital’ and another ‘I believe in Joseph Mallard William Turner’ (artists’ own spelling), as if Turner were a God. In ‘The Art Party USA Comes to the UK’, one sign articulates a fictional account of Picasso’s Speech to the 1950 Sheffield Peace Conference (2012), which Picasso apparently attended, while Pablo Trimmed (2012) shows a caricature of Picasso having his hair cut, like any other man. In 2011 Bob and Roberta Smith created an entire exhibition based on the sculptor Jacob Epstein (1880 – 1959), whose archives are held at The New Art Gallery in Walsall, UK. Invited to use the archives as artists in residence, Bob and Roberta Smith organised several events, curated an exhibition and made new works of art celebrating the life and works of Epstein, most of which were orientated towards the artist’s biography. Epstein’s Walk was a map showing a proposed route Epstein would have walked between his two households; his wife, Margaret Epstein, in one, and his mistress, Kathleen Garman, in the other. Making a sort of pilgrimage, Bob and Roberta Smith documented ‘themselves’ doing the walk with a

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Death of the Artist cardboard cut-out of Epstein’s dog, ‘Frisky’. The funny images of Epstein’s Walk exhibited at Walsall mock the artist’s biography; there is no mention or display of the artist’s work in this series. Moreover, in highlighting Epstein’s womanising, Bob and Roberta Smith manage to critique another commonly accepted trait of male bohemianism. As part of the Archive Gallery at Walsall, Bob and Roberta Smith also charted a history of sculpture with a wall painting, with Epstein at the heart of it. Researching this involved considering Epstein’s legacy as a whole and, out of this process, grew another project, If You Make Art, What Happens When You Die? Are they remembered forever in a museum created by their family or are their clothes and brushes given away and their work forgotten? Bob was also thinking specifically about the problems of trying to interpret someone’s life from what is often a relatively small collection of materials.31

The installation displayed selected postcards and clothes from Epstein’s archive and some of Bob and Roberta Smith’s own sign paintings. It reflected on some of the methodological and philosophical problems of archival research. What one researcher might be drawn to, another is not, and yet it is upon these materials and subjective interpretation of their significance that we come to ‘understand’ an artist’s oeuvre or authorship. Bob and Roberta Smith deliberately selected both the mundane and more obviously significant items pertaining to Epstein’s life so as to confound the distinction between them. What I’m really interested in is not just destroying the myth of the artist purely for the sake of throwing bricks . . . I do think that he was an extraordinary artist and I don’t want to question that really, but I want to put beside it a bit of the reality of life.32

The biography does not have to be dispensed with entirely; but it does need to be considered critically and as part of a more holistic approach to the understanding of an artwork’s making and meaning. Bob and Roberta Smith also appear to believe that the biography can sometimes be useful in understanding how an artist’s life may have affected their art and, more significantly, how their art and life affected others. However, unlike

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Pseudonyms traditional artist’s biographies, Bob and Roberta Smith attempt to generate a different ‘picture’ of Epstein, not just his ‘artiness’ or the qualities of his personality deemed relevant for an artist’s biography. In highlighting Epstein’s womanising and referring to the ‘reality of life’ – which I understand as a reference to Epstein’s children, two of whom committed suicide – Bob and Roberta Smith almost critique and condemn the artist’s life. Far from heroising Epstein, Bob and Roberta Smith remind us that the artist, no matter how ‘great’ or ‘skilled’, shouldn’t be glamorised to the extent of moral immunity. One object that became the centrepiece of Bob and Roberta Smith’s various homages to Epstein was Epstein’s own First Portrait of Esther (With Long Hair) (1944), which was a bronze bust of his 15-year-old daughter, who did not know Epstein was her father at this time (see Figure 4.3). Bob and Roberta Smith referred to it as Walsall’s Mona Lisa and heralded the piece because it captures the sitter’s disdain at being scrutinised or subjected by the ‘patriarchal’ artist. For Bob, Esther is resisting Epstein’s gaze in his portrait of her and he saw this as a symbolic feminist action; she looks beyond the artist, refusing to be scrutinised. For Bob, Esther is kicking against the perceived wisdom of the dominant male artist interpreting his submissive female sitter. Therefore, Bob wanted to curate a show that would ‘expose this myth of the great male artist who has special insight into the minds of his more “frail” female subjects’.33

Feminism runs through Bob and Roberta Smith’s practice. The artists’ residency with The New Art Gallery in Walsall culminated in a large group show with works by 28 different artists who, like Esther, Bob and Roberta Smith considered to be ‘kicking against the perceived wisdom of the dominant male artist’. ‘The Life of the Mind’ (21 January–21 March 2011) included works by Louise Bourgeois, Helen Chadwick and Sarah Lucas. Bob and Roberta Smith also presented a series of their ‘Feminist Icons’, signs of the names of women artists they consider to have influenced their work. In the exhibition’s accompanying catalogue they state that some of the artists who have most inspired them have been women because of the stronger political messages inherent in feminist art during the 1970s and 1980s.34 In 2011 Bob and Roberta Smith also exhibited at Work Gallery, London. ‘You Should Be In Charge’ (1 April –3 June 2011) took the issue of 189

Death of the Artist representational imbalance in government and asked visitors to join them in proposing a new contract for real proportional representation by signing ‘The New Magna Carta’, which was presented as a petition to Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone after the exhibition. Inspired by their work at Walsall, they took forward the idea of Esther’s Law, ‘Which would be to say that if you had two constituency MPs that were elected together, one male and one female, you would suddenly have female representation across the board.’35 I have since had conversations with Bob and Roberta Smith on their campaign to bring gender equality into the Royal Academy of Arts’ (London) exhibitions and board of trustees, after they were elected to be a Royal Academician in December 2013. In a lecture they gave, promoting women in arts, Bob and Roberta Smith questioned how gender balance might be gained.36 Attendees suggested ‘blind’ submissions for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, the largest open submission in the world, and gender-based temporary shows, but Bob and Roberta Smith argued that women artists should not be patronised by exhibiting based on their gender alone and that some women would decline on that basis. There is also the danger that the ‘female’ label is restrictive, threatening to overshadow other elements in a work. Bob and Roberta Smith also suggested that neither ‘narrative’ nor autobiographical-based works could be simplified into a purely aesthetic judgement, which would favour modernist or abstract works, for example, which are traditionally maledominated genres. The concept of ‘representation’ seemed most fair, but one that the RA trustees should also embrace, so judges and selectors are as diverse as the artists they might then represent. The argument that ‘Käthe Kollwitz’ of the Guerrilla Girls put to me was that male dealers are, by nature or nurture, attracted to works of art by other men, and thus the gender imbalance is perpetuated.37 Bob and Roberta Smith’s gender-inclusive pseudonym cannot biologically rectify this but it does, if only in name, represent a gender balance. Their gender play might also be considered a comparative legacy of the partnerships discussed in Chapter 1; Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray forming the ‘female’ character of Rrose Selavy, and Lucy Schwab and Suzanne Malherbe as artists Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. Bob and Roberta Smith not only undermine the myths of other ‘great male artists’, they also expose themselves as vulnerable. While many of

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Pseudonyms their sign paintings and projects are based on constructed stories and fictional anecdotes, every now and then one is derived from a personal event or ‘true’ story. Such is the case with their ‘Diary Paintings’ (2007). Mother Has Had a Stroke and The Results of My Brain Scan appear sincere and emotional, and to reflect the man Patrick Brill. Of these, the artists say, ‘The idea was not to be confessional and try to plead that I was special or particularly interesting because of these stories but to try to say that all people go through grim moments.’38 This is in stark contrast to the concept of the ‘Author-God’. Bob and Roberta Smith’s art has a twopronged approach to dispelling the myth of the artist: one that parodies the grandiose ‘masters’ and another that seeks to add more humbling biographical accounts to counteract the god-like myths surrounding the Old Masters or those romanticised in film. Of their autobiographical work, Bob and Roberta Smith have explained that their pseudonyms have allowed a little more flexibility in ‘telling the truth’: It’s allowed me to include other people’s experience in my art, at least initially. And when I’ve stuck my own experience into my art, it’s meant I haven’t had to stick to the absolute truth . . . There is a whole series of myths about artists and, by having a slightly fictionalised artist, you can highlight the fact that it is a myth in other people’s lives.39

This can be likened to the idea of ‘parafiction’, whereby fictions are experienced as fact ‘with various degrees of success for various durations, and for various purposes’.40 There is a sense of agency to parafiction’s manipulation of authenticity and authorship, provoking the reader or viewer to reassess a given position through the experience of a presented scenario that bends the truth. Carrie Beatty-Lambert gives the example of the Yes Men’s ‘performance’ as Dow representatives, resulting in the drop of the company’s share prices, and artist Michael Blum’s A Tribute to Safiye Behar (2005) at Istanbul’s Ninth International Biennial, a parafiction of a historical feminist, complicating local notions of gender, civil rights, religion and politics.41 She argues that the story, even when revealed as fiction, still has a lingering effect, as if having known Safiye as real results in the same critique. Similarly, Bob and Roberta Smith create minor parafictions out of the artistic canon, in order to critique it. They themselves are also a parafiction. The idea of a fictionalised self is far more 191

Death of the Artist accepted in literature. The author can write in the first person and it is not expected that they relay any autobiographical ‘truth’. Language is a key component of Bob and Roberta Smith’s practice. It contributes to a more direct political message and theoretically evades the traditional associations of originality and ‘style’ with authorship. However, their punk-like, hand-painted signs have developed an identifiable style of their own over the years and, though recycled, are still unique. Nonetheless, their Do-It-Yourself aesthetic demystifies the significance of the artist and their punchy messages even encourage the audience to become artists themselves. The shortcomings of language and the notion of authorship, as Barthes asserts, is that we suppose meaning in any given rearrangement of the ‘readymade’ words, which interfere with the reader’s own pleasure of interpretation. Bob and Roberta Smith echo this when reflecting on their use of text: Words on their own are pure but by the time someone has arranged a few, however artfully, they have become tainted and you realise someone is trying to tell you something.42

Perhaps this discomfort around the hidden meaning that seeps through a text, from author to reader, which Foucault described as ‘proliferated meaning’, is what caused Bob and Roberta Smith to create their own subversive alphabet. On an earlier version of Bob and Roberta Smith’s website, there was a feature titled Learn to Speak Bob, which directly challenged traditional concepts of authorship.43 This invited visitors to create their own sentences out of the artists’ personally created symbols that look and sound like nonsense. The given alphabet was a series of visual characters that also created a sound when you clicked on them. Once the visitor had assembled these ‘words’ in any given permutation available, they had appropriated and spoken on behalf of, and with, Bob and Roberta Smith. While this artwork seems somewhat irreverent, it is an uncanny representation of Barthes’ sentiment of a ‘multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash.44 In this example, not only have Bob and Roberta Smith debunked their own authorial status with nonsense but they have also created a space in which the viewer is simultaneously invited to become an author.

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Pseudonyms Like many of my case studies, Bob and Roberta Smith work simultaneously within and against the institutions of the art world, which they strive to resist and celebrate. A supporter of public art, they recognise the significance of international museums as platforms for expressions of culture and community. For example, their 2008 sign-painting Tate Modern reads, ‘The Creation of Tate Modern has been as important to British life as the National Health Service’. Indeed, much of Bob and Roberta Smith’s success relies upon public institutional commissions and grants, and their network of supporters. Despite antagonising the art world, Bob and Roberta Smith have become increasingly popular within it. They therefore serve as a good case study to observe how artists might navigate institutional conventions and commercialism while retaining a less traditional authorship, or how their dissident authorship has been used as a strategy to critique education and politics. While their works sell, like the Guerrilla Girls, Bob and Roberta Smith have voluntarily devised a mode of operation independent of the scarcity model in order to continue their campaigns beyond the art market, and to disseminate their protests further. In his multi-media installations and collaborations within his own fictitious and ‘real’ community, Patrick Brill has created a myth that surrounds himself and his work. Through Bob and Roberta Smith, Brill successfully criticises the commercialism of the art world and its dependence upon celebrity by disposing of the autonomous artist figure. They have turned their world of nonsense into a reality that has shaped their career. Their characters, invented stories, travelling personae and exhibitions are fictions merged with real people and actions so that the former seem real and the latter imagined. When the two are confused, the viewer is forced to re-evaluate what artistic ‘truth’ is, and how it should be valued. Bob and Roberta Smith’s practice also helps facilitate opportunities for local people and communities to reconstruct their own realities, to MAKE YOUR OWN DAMN ART. By asking viewers to invent new characters and paint orange environments Bob and Roberta Smith are indulging the public’s imagination, making room for a free space in which the public can think and create without judgement. As one of their signpaintings states, ART IS THE ONE SUBJECT AT SCHOOL WHERE CHILDREN HAVE ALL THE RIGHT ANSWERS (2012). The next case study is also a contemporary British artist working under a pseudonym. In contrast to Bob and Roberta Smith, Marvin Gaye

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Death of the Artist Chetwynd is often unidentifiable in her own performances. Instead, she works alongside a troupe of artists that she collaborates with on chaotic performances that traverse classical and popular culture. She is best known as Spartacus Chetwynd, whose work was nominated for the 2012 Turner Prize, before changing her identity again. This is still thought to be her official name by deed poll. Each time she changes her name, Chetwynd begins anew so that even Google has to work at connecting her various authorships. Unlike some of the previous case studies, her work is not protest-based. What makes Chetwynd an interesting case study for examining how contemporary artists might navigate authorship, above and beyond her name, is her use of theatrical interventions, audience engagement and the grotesque. While Chetwynd resists traditional notions of the singular ‘AuthorGod’, with her shambolic fancy dress performances, collaborations and alternative identities, her work does reside, undoubtedly, within the art world and its market, which begs the question: to what extent does Chetwynd truly represent a dissident form of authorship? Like Bob and Roberta Smith, Chetwynd is self-mythologised, but the next chapter questions to what extent an alternative authorship can also be an astute act in playing the market at its own game.

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Interview: Art Mythologies: Bob and Roberta Smith Interviewed by Nicola McCartney on 18 February 20131

Bob and Roberta Smith were born in London, UK, in 1963. They studied Fine Art at the University of Reading (1981–5) and Goldsmith’s College, London (1991–3). They were appointed a Tate trustee in 2009 and elected a Royal Academician in December 2013. Smith’s work can be found in public and private collections including the Tate Collection, UK Arts Council Collection and UK British Council Collection. Bob and Roberta Smith live and work in London. They are Associate Professors of Fine Art for the Sir John Cass School of Art and Architecture at London Metropolitan University. Bob and Roberta Smith are artist-activists known for their vibrant DIY signs and paintings with political sloganeering and absurdist wordplay. Their work explores the relationship between art, politics, society and humour, and often involves collaboration. Shortly before this interview they led a campaign called Save Old Flo, a public sculpture by Henry Moore at threat of being sold by the London Borough of Tower of Hamlets. They also wrote a Letter to Michael Gove (2011), the then UK Secretary of State for Education, reprimanding him for the ‘destruction of Britain’s ability to draw, design and sing’, culminated in the Art Party Conference in Scarborough and its namesake feature film, released in August 2014. Thanks are due to Bob and Roberta Smith for their time and willingness to engage in conversation about their artistic identity and its impact upon their practice. Thanks are also due to Hales Gallery, London, for their hospitality and support.

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So, where do the names Bob and Roberta come from? Do you want the truth?

Yes, and then you can give me the other version. Well, the truth is my real name is Patrick Brill. I did quite well as an artist when I was a student and, just afterwards, I won lots of awards. But then I realised if you get some sort of institutional award, it makes it a lot easier to get other ones. It doesn’t mean that you’re very good as an artist or that you’re really getting anywhere, it just means that you become really good at filling in the forms, and people like the provenance and that you’re a trusted sort of individual. After I’d won about three of these kinds of things, I realised it wasn’t really about art anymore. So I wanted to throw all that away and start again. Rip it all up and start again. Did you do that with the work as well? No, in reality you can’t do that with your work because you stick all your troubles in your bag and take them with you. But I did want to start afresh and I thought developing a pseudonym would be a good way to do that. By that stage I’d won this amazing award and I was living in New York. New York is a really tough environment for artists. Unless you can make something that people want to buy you don’t really exist as an artist, so it has to be rich and intellectually interesting and stimulating, and also something that is commodifiable. Anyway, in those days, before technology, I thought, in my naïvety, it was all about sending slides out to galleries, so I did. I sent all these slides out to different galleries under different names and made lots of different work and the one that had the most success was this Bob Smith character. It’s a bit more sophisticated than this, but Bob Smith was really doing what I do now, writing the first thing that comes into my head on bits of old rubbish – doors and floor boards and things. The process of doing that – sending out the slides to all these different places – resulted in me getting a lot of rejection letters back for all these different artists. I didn’t realise this at the time, but actually that was a piece of work in itself and quite revealing; an artist is somebody who, after a lot of rejection, can dust themselves off and keep going. I realised something about that was interesting and so I made Bob Smith be both this character that was writing texts but also somebody who had lots of loser stories. I begun to ask my friends their loser stories and suddenly I had a lot of these kinds of stories. 196

Interview: Art Mythologies When I came back to London to go to Gloldsmiths, to do the MA, I made a video piece, which was me telling all these stories as if they’d happened to me, as if I was the ultimate loser artist. And that became Bob Smith. And because I was using other people’s stories, I felt I couldn’t use my own name, actually. Around the same time my sister, Roberta, did a degree in Fine Art at Kingston. I thought it would be great to involve her in projects a little bit so I got her to join me and we became Bob and Roberta Smith. Our whole thing was to present materials in spaces and ask people to do things with the materials. Did you practically make the work together? We never really practically made work together; we filled spaces with materials. There was one piece we did at the Royal College for a show by their curating students, which was just a whole series of vegetables you could paint with gloss paint and stuff like that, and various slightly daft counterintuitive things to do, which would question the idea that art was somehow good for you; that by painting a vegetable, which is pretty purposeless really, would be somehow emancipatory. I also did a piece at Max Wigram’s Independent Arts Space, curated by Adam McEwan, where I put lots of electrical power tools and made a video of children using the power tools with their parents, suggesting to the public that they too could come and use the power tools.2 I did something similar in Japan as well.3 With all of those pieces it was the idea that anybody could be Bob and Roberta Smith; if you were a woman you could be Roberta and if you were a bloke you could be Bob, like Dr Who or 007. Hidden underneath all that, I suppose, is another idea about trying to get away from my own identity and trying to say that it’s about art, not about identity. My father was an artist who ran Chelsea School of Art called Fred Brill and, although nobody knows him now, in those days he was still lurking around as a name, echoing around the arts school establishment. So I kind of wanted to get away from that. His idea about art was that it was very workman-like; it wasn’t going to be any fun and you were just going to be half way up a mountainside drawing something, meticulously. And my idea about art has always been to embrace the idea that it can be fun. And so I think getting rid of the Patrick Brill moniker was also to do with that, slightly. The other thing that I thought about art is that art is always burdened by truth, and truth comes from lots of different places. You know, if you’re a sculptor making great, big, heavy, metal sculpture, the truth of the

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Death of the Artist phenomenological experience can be a kind of truth or, if you’re making a more narrative kind of art, and I’ve always been interested in writing, it comes from the idea of the author and the experience of the author. But around that time, after I’d come back from New York in the early 90s, I was thinking, ‘I don’t really want to make an art which is born out of my individual experience in that way’. The paradoxical thing is that in literature you can create fictions. I wanted to make an art where the artist was embracing the idea of fiction, which nobody does. You can’t do that, you can’t, it is all born out of the essential idea of the authentic experience of the artist, isn’t it? I mean virtually everybody’s visual art is born out of that idea. I wanted to question that by saying, ‘I’m gonna have a fictional artist, and that fictional artist is gonna have a career in the art world’, and I have managed to do that, although people don’t pick up on it very obviously. The whole idea about Bob and Roberta Smith is that it is a fiction, although it’s sort of become a bit of a reality as it’s gone on over time. It might be a bit Walter Mitty-ish or Billy Liar-ish but that question, ‘Why can’t you have an invented reason for art?’ like you would have an invented narrative story, or story-telling, is where I got the idea that you could have this fictional artist and construct it and stick it out into the real world.4 Do you think having the pseudonym, this element of fiction, has in any way liberated your practice or given you more freedom to do things you might not have done otherwise? Yes it has. It’s allowed me to include other people’s experience in my art, at least initially. And when I’ve stuck my own experience into my art, it’s meant I haven’t had to stick to the absolute truth. I could lie a little bit about it and construct it to make it appear more seamless, which I think happens anyway. There is a whole series of myths about artists and, by having a slightly fictionalised artist, you can highlight the fact that the artist is a myth in other people’s lives. That’s the point [of Bob and Roberta Smith], to make that [myth] apparent. But the downside of it is that the art world is so wedded to the idea of the authentic artist’s experience. You mean the art market’s reliance on attribution, the signature and branding, for example? Absolutely; it’s so buried in it that. It has actually been a bit disastrous for my career.

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Interview: Art Mythologies Is there an internal conflict within your career between your public engagements and commercial representation? For example, you’re currently working on Save Old Flo, a campaign to save a public sculpture in threat of privatisation, so to speak, but a private gallery, Hales, represents you in order to sell your work.5 How do you deal with that tension in your work? With Save Old Flo, and these more political things, that is a slight problem. There is a contradiction there because it would be more effective if I was doing it as a real person, as Patrick Brill rather than as Bob and Roberta Smith, I think. But people now understand that Bob and Roberta Smith and Patrick Brill are pretty . . . You know, I’ve stopped trying to suppress the Patrick Brill aspect of it. So are Bob and Roberta Smith and Patrick Brill synonymous? For the first ten years I was like, ‘No, never refer to me as Patrick Brill’, and now I’ve given up on that, partly because of journalism. Journalists aren’t happy with Bob and Roberta Smith. I can’t stop them from doing it, they want to pin you down to something real. And so I’ve just had to accept that Patrick Brill’s going to wander around from behind the shadows a little bit. I don’t want him to really, I still want to retain this idea of the fiction of Bob and Roberta Smith. But now people think, ‘Oh, Bob and Roberta Smith, maybe he’s more of a campaigning thing.’ That’s okay as well, it’s like a political party. Like your Art Party.6 Yes, I’m trying to develop The Art Party but not give it a specific political identity. It’s meant to be that anybody can be a member of The Art Party. I think that concept, that anybody can be a member, compliments the similar purpose of the pseudonym of Bob and Roberta Smith. In the way that Bob and Roberta Smith is theoretically encompassing of anyone else’s’ story that you embrace, The Art Party embraces all members of the public and, as you say, doesn’t have to stick to one political identity. In that sense it can also be a bit more mobile. That’s right. I was inspired by the Tea Party in that regard.7 Not politically, but as a pressure group, because you can have Tea Party Democrats and Tea Party Republicans. I’m interested in a kind of pressure 199

Death of the Artist group that’s just people who think art is important, whatever political perspective they voice. And that‘s true; it does have a parallel with the idea of Bob and Roberta Smith, that anyone can be ‘them’. You mentioned earlier that you took the exhibition ‘Don’t Hate, Sculpt!’ to Japan and I read another interview that you said, ‘Now there’s a Japanese Bob and Roberta Smith’.8 Do you want there to be more Bob and Robertas? Would you be happy if someone else popped up and said ‘I’m French Bob and Roberta Smith’, for example, but they were making completely different work? I would love that. I think that would be fantastic because the other slogan or idea [pertaining to Bob and Roberta Smith’s practice] is the idea that you ‘Make Your Own Damn Art’. So the idea of putting those two things together, and if they did something completely different, would be great. But if artists have to sell their artwork to make a living, and we were to have several pop-up Bob and Robertas, how would they all survive? The artist survives in lots of different ways. Another parallel is to do with the music business. When I was a kid, it was a bit childish, but the whole thing was about attacking record companies who were making money out of us. There was Bow Wow Wow making C30; C60; C90, Go! and, although that was a Malcolm McLaren-ish gesture, the idea was to try and break things down so that people could just record and replicate music, and it would just get out there.9 Like a Do-It-Yourself approach? Yes, without trying to make money out of every single point of sale. Although that sort of activity is completely crushed now because it’s hard for musicians to construct an [ulterior] identity in which they can make money. I still think that it’s an interesting and good idea. Not that I don’t like the idea of artists making money from selling things, I do. I like the idea of D€urer selling prints. Distributing things through commerce is a good thing but it’s hard for an artist to make a lot of money out if it. One way to make money is through print editions. I like all that kind of activity but, really, where money is made in art is at a very high-end. The people making money, really making money out of art, have really, really forced that ‘identity-thing’, to the point where they think that if the artist has touched anything it’s worth money; they’ve got ‘the golden touch’ and

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Interview: Art Mythologies if they make a signature it’s worth money. But that works for very few people. For most people in the art world it doesn’t work like that. They’re getting money through artist’s fees, turning up doing talks, and/or teaching. Actually, for the vast majority of artists, even the artists we know about, it’s more practical and more like the real world than the art world € would have you believe. For example, take what would be seen as the uber 10 manifestation of the art market, Frieze. The way that’s funded is through the purchase of stands, not through the sale of art. Of course, the people [gallery exhibitors] buying the stands are dependent on sales of art but that’s not where the risk is; the organisers of Frieze, the people selling the stands, take on the risk. So, even on that level, there is something else going on. The idea of Bob and Roberta Smith is to try to understand and expose something about the mythology of the whole thing, and to celebrate the reality of it, which is perhaps a bit more ordinary but actually quite tangible, interesting and good, if people could only realise it. What I found interesting about your early-career Bob Smith character, who took on everyone’s melancholy stories and accumulated various rejection letters, was that his tales had more in common with the tragichero-artist stories that we’re all so familiar with – from suicidal Jackson Pollock to depressed Van Gogh – than you. Yet Bob Smith is your constructed myth of a ‘loser artist’. So, in a way, the fiction is more authentic. You inheriting and generating these multiple stories is an antibiographical account of an artist, which I think highlights art’s mythologies. Jessie, my wife, and I have got a huge collection of all those films like, Lust For Life and the Basquiat film.11 We love those because they only depend on trading on the artist’s mythology, and so they expose the unreality of what that’s about. They’re so overdone. It’s so overdone! But if you get too lost in the mythology of things you don’t understand how wonderful the material reality of all this art is. One of the ways that people talk about art is through these different myths but even intellectuals talk about it on that basis. But, actually, one of the really important things about art is just celebrating that this person made this amazing thing, right? I think most artists are always slightly perplexed by the fact that somebody isn’t so amazed by what they’ve

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Death of the Artist done but that they’re more interested in their ‘story’ in relationship to what they’ve done. That’s why I’m interested in artists who use pseudonyms or work collectively. The less you know about them the more you can concentrate on their artwork, and which might explain why most of my case studies make quite political work. So, for example, you with Save Old Flo and the Guerrilla Girls, who deal with representation of women and artists of colour in museums. You’re absolutely right. For example, with that Free the Pussy Riot thing, they were all wearing balaclavas, weren’t they?12 But I’m always slightly confounded by the fact that in politics, in really hard politics, strangely, it is good to reveal your identity. Why, because that’s braver? You have to be brave to do that. But it would be good when you interview the Guerrilla Girls to talk about that because I think anonymity was important for them. But I do think that, like with Ai Weiwei, it’s important that it is him.13 If he were operating underneath a mask or pseudonym then it wouldn’t have the same power, although there’s also a kind of mythology built up about Ai Weiwei now. There’s a power to the singular identity that everyone can empathise with, get behind and rally for. But the power of the anonymity is that it could be anyone, and therefore greater than the sum of the number of discrete ‘supporters’. Anonymity is theoretically infinite. Absolutely, but that’s more strategic, isn’t it? That’s more of a politicised strategy. The circumstances of people who get caught out in freedom of expression issues in countries like China and Russia aren’t designed. These people get caught out doing something quite ordinary, which a more organised, rational and sensible society wouldn’t suppress them for doing, like Ai Weiwei making sculpture, for instance. It’s often not the people who are powerful or who hold extreme political ideas that are getting suppressed, it’s the society that they’re living in, which is extreme and loony, which is suppressing ordinary activity. How that works with identity, I’m not quite sure, because it’s not often by design, but it can be by provocation, I suppose. What I find interesting about other art forms is that, with literature, for example, multiple copies of a script or a book are produced; but if you were 202

Interview: Art Mythologies to do that with visual art the discrete pieces would be devalued, and with music it’s far more common to work as a group or a band than an artist working in a collaboration or as a collective. Yes, that’s true. You don’t tend to have groups of artists who work collaboratively like that because we are very tied up to the idea of the ‘individual voice’. How important is participation, with other artists or members of the public, to your practice? I really enjoy participation and collaboration when they’re fruitful. It doesn’t work when you come down to the lowest common denominator of what you can all agree on; that’s not a good model for collaboration and I don’t think that is a good model for doing anything. Good collaborations work when people feel that they’re doing their own thing, that there’s somehow a genuine symbiotic relationship between everything. So collaboration, itself, I don’t necessarily think has any merit to it. But really great collaborations, where people are working in liaison with each other, in interesting ways, doing different things but coming together to make things, that’s a very special kind of human relationship. Can you give me an example of an influential or powerful collaboration, where groups of artists have worked together, or even with curators? Take the music analogy. I’ve thought about this a lot, actually, the idea of an ensemble. The idea of an ensemble is that everybody who comes along is an expert in their field, be it the cello, playing the piano or being in a band – music band or pop group – and they are fantastic at it. They all have a similar goal but what they produce as a whole is beyond what they could produce on their own, and that’s the important thing. They bring all that stuff to the table and make something really amazing. But where it doesn’t work is if, for example, I’m a cello player and tell somebody how to play the bassoon. I then make their bassoon playing worse; they come back to me, just because of an ego thing, and say, ‘you should play the violin like this . . .’ It works well in lots of different kinds of ways but only if everybody has a degree of tolerance and are coming from the same hymn sheet, where they’re thinking, ‘Actually, if we let people do their thing, we’ll make something that’s better than what we can do on our own’. That happens quite often in architecture and in music. It happens in art on the level of curation but not 203

Death of the Artist in art of itself terribly often because of, again, the predominance of the singular voice, the predominance of the author and the artist. Artists generally point to people and say, ‘You make this for me.’ Although, here’s one good instance of that: I interviewed Nam June Paik when he did the German pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1993– in that biennale they had asked everybody to swap around and show at different pavilions. Nam June Paik made a projection of shoals of fish swimming around the inside of the pavilion and, when I asked him how he had done it, he said, ‘It’s 80 per cent my collaborator so and so’. Nam June Paik wasn’t hiding the fact that he had obviously said, ‘How can we make fish swim round this space?’ And this guy had finessed it for him, he called him an absolute computer genius. Now we’d probably think it was quite easy to do on a program or something. It was quite clunky then but it was beautiful. So sometimes the artist pointing at other people and saying, ‘Make this for me.’ can work well. Do you think it’s important to keep that process of using an assistant transparent, so artists don’t pretend to author it all themselves? Yes, and in the end it is transparent because we’re all so dependent on truth in art. We do see it for what it is, don’t we? Maybe sometimes people lie about it. I think it depends on the context in which you are viewing the art; if you encounter it through an auction house, an exhibition catalogue or first hand, for example, each might present a different story as to how the work was made or with whom. But sometimes it will be really obvious the artist has had help. But that kind of practice has existed since Giotto’s time. I’ve made works where I couldn’t do them myself just because they were huge and it would have taken years to paint them by myself. I haven’t used an assistant or collaborator for about four years now, partly because I’ve been so poverty-stricken but also because I’ve been trying to make a bit more sense as an individual – it seems I’m shifting away from the ‘anybody can be Bob and Roberta Smith’ thing. Do you mean trying to develop a sense of branding? I don’t want it to be a horrible brand. Then it becomes like the look of slightly wobbly lettering rather than the guts of the ideas, which have probably got a little bit more integrity to them.

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Interview: Art Mythologies As time goes on, and people identify Patrick Brill as Bob and Roberta Smith, do you need to create another one? This is a complete fantasy but what I’m hoping is that people will be Bob and Roberta Smith after I die. Well, actually, I’m really interested in Barthes’ ‘Death of the Author’ but I think that, if you have a pseudonym or collective, where anyone can be that person, the author or artist doesn’t need to die; they live on, reincarnated through everyone else’s practice. And the idea that there might be more, like Japanese and French Bob and Robertas, for example, becomes a form of expanding multitude. It would be great to do a group show of Bob and Robertas of the future, all doing different things. It’s not too different, I think, from inviting people to take part in your flashmob to Save Old Flo.14 The flashmob is an interesting phenomenon. That flashmob was amazing because, genuinely, a lot of people came from Twitter. Half of them were my students and half of them were people who just showed up. And that was kind of remarkable, I thought. In a way, I was asking them to be ‘Old Flo’, dressed in green. Not only does ‘Old Flo’ take on a new personality, reincarnated by your various participants, so does Henry Moore. I think that’s another parallel or compliment to the practice of having the pseudonymous identity. It means that anyone can turn up, dress up and be ‘Old Flo’, or even Bob and Roberta, with or without you, Patrick Brill. What is the alternative to the artist’s monograph or retrospective? How can we start writing about and understanding art without this solo picture? That is a real problem; I don’t have the answer to that. Does your practice offer an alternative? It might do, but that is a real problem for curation in the UK at the moment. It’s just based around ideas of monographic shows, or it’s extremely thematic. One show that has been very successful at the moment is the ‘Light’ show at the Hayward.15

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Death of the Artist So do you think thematic curation could be an alternative to the artist’s monograph or retrospective? Yes, that has worked. Ralph Rugoff is great, I really like him, but his curation is basically on that kind of level. He either does two artists on the top or the bottom, or he does everybody. He did ‘Psycho Buildings’, which was a great show, all mental buildings; now he’s done ‘Light’, and he did ‘Invisible’.16 It’s a super framed-down idea, and then he sticks in everybody who he thinks is groovy, who’s done work in that way. But it doesn’t question the margins; it’s still at the centre because he’s got to get people who are really doing something with light for that idea to work. So it’s not like a poetic, thematic idea. The monographic show isn’t a bad thing in itself but it’s the only thing that certain galleries think they can market to their public and get them to come and see. The ‘Light’ show proves that’s not the case but it isn’t the perfect example because it’s not very nuanced. There must be a way, that’s the challenge for curators; to think about things with more intellectual depth, and maybe in a more programmatic way, about the relationship between art and society, because constantly sticking in artists and just thinking about their individual careers in relationship to how art operates within society is not very interesting. No, and it’s decontextualised; you don’t really understand the bigger picture. Exactly. That is something I really do think is amiss in British intellectual life. I don’t know if it happens elsewhere either, but it doesn’t show how art operates within a time. The Museum of Modern Art had a ‘Warhol’ show when I lived in New York, which had a fun idea and opened up lots of questions for me.17 Warhol had died a few years earlier and they staged a big retrospective. One of the things they did was to produce a CD of all the music associated with Warhol, so it went from a bit of 50s Jazz at the beginning to Run-D.M.C., or something, at the end. Playing that CD is really interesting because it opens up whole worlds of speculation about how art operates within society; as graphics, design, brands, as individual experience. And it feeds off of a wider society. Exactly. So as you go forward, these big institutions, that do have some power, have a responsibility to do more than just celebrate these individuals. 206

Interview: Art Mythologies That may even already be celebrated. Certainly, that’s the problem. That’s the sort of thing, in my not wanting to be a ‘head-boy’-type person, that I was trying to get away from when I was a kid. The fact that you celebrate one person, you do it again and again, and again, and again. Repeated. And it just becomes the canon of Western art! Yes, exactly. It needs to be more curios than that, doesn’t it? Curation needs to be curios; it needs to be about discovery. Not necessarily new all the time, but certainly more than the person. What artists have influenced you that deal with identity? There are all sorts of people. An obvious one is Gustav Metzger, because of the whole thing about destroying art.18 Not as a kind of artistic gesture but because of the holocaust; that’s what makes that so powerful – the art of destruction. Another person important to me is a performance artist called Anne Bean.19 I think she’s really interesting. She’s also done collaborative pieces. They did this fantastic project where she got four women artists: one from Northern Ireland; one from Palestine; one from Israel; and I think she’s from South Africa. They all went and made performance art in each other’s countries, with each other. It’s a fantastic series of films about feminism, identity, and female narratives too, and how that’s challenged and questioned in these societies that are at war with each other. It’s about cultural identity too; in each country I bet these women are viewed and act, or are forced to act, differently. Yes. From our perspective we see them as slightly crazy liberals. Another person I find inspiring, although she’s got a complete mythic identity, is Yayoi Kusama.20 The idea that she lives in this mental hospital across the road from her studio, making these dot paintings . . . So she isn’t really incarcerated for mental health? No, she is! Well, not really incarcerated, she’s in a kind of ‘home’. Again, why do I care? Well that was definitely part of her ‘story’, wasn’t it? 207

Death of the Artist Again we’re brought back to the notion of ‘truth’; what’s real and what matters? And other people would be from when I lived in New York. It’s all about formative moments when I was a bit younger, I suppose. I think about Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger, and their practice, which wasn’t necessarily about their own particular story at all.21 It was about making a political art, and also honing down their identity to a font – with Jenny Holzer it’s the slightly angular font that’s been around for years. For me, that was very important, when I was wandering around [New York] with all this text and lettering that I do; that just the look of something becomes the identity of it, that’s fascinating. They also do that by repetition. Yes, it’s repetitious and all embracing. It’s what companies do. But actually they were trying to make something personal about that. I think they were trying to undermine corporate companies as well. But it becomes personal because that’s the condition of your take on the world being tied in with a font, like handwriting or a signature. But still removing the hand of the author. Exactly, yes, honing it down, getting away from it. It sounds mad but the other big influence on me would be Louise Bourgeois. She’s somebody who’s a super mythological artist.22 Sometimes these things can be interesting not because they’re identity-less but because their identity’s got a lot of resonance to it. There is something that is a bit romantic in me. All of those artists [listed above], they’re more sophisticated, New York-y. The reason they’re interesting as artists is because of their politicised desire to be seen and to do something. That’s the reason why I like them. As well as, actually, I like what they do. But they’re all trying to impose themselves on a society that doesn’t really want them to exist. They’re a nuisance. Exactly. That’s the important thing. Actually that is a really important thing I do think a lot about, that art is about rebellion of some sort, and artists do need to be a nuisance. That’s part of their role. 208

5 Performance and Collaboration ‘No, I’m Spartacus’. . . Chetwynd!

Marvin Gaye Chetwynd’s performances began as eccentric, fancy dress parties she hosted as a student of Anthropology at University College London before she attended Slade School of Fine Art and the Royal College of Art. She continues to work with a band of friends and family, her troupe, staging film nights, open house weekends, and carnivalesque performances referencing historical events, classical literature, contemporary politics, cultural theory and iconic film scenes. In 2006 she changed her name by deed poll from Alalia to Spartacus but she is currently represented by Sadie Coles HQ gallery in London under the name Marvin Gaye Chetwynd. Throughout this chapter I will attempt to refer to the artist under the pseudonym relevant to each work discussed. In 2012 she became the first performance artist to be shortlisted for the Turner Prize; in 2014 she had her first solo British exhibition at a public museum with Nottingham Contemporary (25 January – 23 March 2014); and, more recently, exhibited at the Liverpool Biennale in 2017.1 Which of her high or popular culture characters she enacts in any of her chaotic performances is difficult to tell but, as I will argue, this is an important facet in her authorial dissidence. 209

Death of the Artist Of particular interest are the theatrical devices employed by Chetwynd to subvert the traditional hierarchy between artist and audience. There are clear parallels between Chetwynd’s use of humour, script (or lack of) and the agency of Theatre of the Absurd. Indeed, I would like to posit her work within the framework of theatre, to better dissect its agency and authorial dissidence. Theatre and performance are crucial to understanding Chetwynd’s work because her participatory practice is most frequently expressed in the live encounter between her ‘actors’ and a contrived event. The work is also obviously social and collaborative, even if she maintains the rights to its execution and re-enactments. Claire Bishop cites a triangular history of participatory or social art: the avant-garde of 1917; neo avant-garde of 1968; and the fall of communism in 1998.2 All these events spurred collaborative art engaged in social change. This is a useful comparative historiography, when tracing a lineage of other artists who have returned to a social model of art making. But while Chetwynd shares a similarity in medium – that of people – with participatory art, it is her theatrical methodologies this project is most concerned with. Participatory art undoes a certain preoccupation with authorship by dint of its inclusive nature but the playwrights and theatrical devices Chetwynd compares her own work to confront the authorship problem more directly. I first encountered Chetwynd’s work in 2005 when I was an undergraduate student at the Slade School of Fine Art. We had booked tickets to see a performance at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London, in which some of our friends were taking part. We knew it included nudity and fancy dress, and was being organised by someone who was considered, at least among our peers, as a ‘hot new artist’; she had changed her name to Spartacus, which we viewed as a radical act against the capitalist infrastructures of the art world that had marketed the less cool, preceding generation of YBAs. The performance was titled Debt, A Medieval Play and was scheduled as part of the ICA’s exhibition of artists nominated for the Beck’s Futures, an award for contemporary British artists and curators.3 Debt, A Medieval Play featured three re-enactments of the biblical tale of The Temptation of St Anthony, over the course of one evening. Each lasted 20 minutes. Historically, there are several literary accounts of Anthony faced with temptation, from silver and gold to demons and centaurs, while on his pilgrimage to the desert. Several artists have also offered accounts of this

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Performance and Collaboration story, from Hieronymus Bosch to Dorothea Tanning, Max Ernst and Salvador Dalí. Spartacus Chetwynd’s performance concluded with an alternative ‘Triumph of Death and the Adamites’, a reference to the obscure Christian sect of the second and third centuries AD who believed they had inherited Adam’s innocence and therefore denounced the need for marriage, while promoting nudity. Spartacus, who herself supposedly once lived in a nudist colony, played one of the Adamites. These naked bodies entered the performance from giant papier-m^ache hell-mouths, resembling caves, to loud discordant music. From what I remember, they laughed while holding hands and danced about the audience, encouraging participation. The dark lighting, flowing hair and cultish behaviour resembled the dancing in the film The Wicker Man (1973). The performers were just as unconvincing as the set and costumes of Debt, A Medieval Play. They chatted among themselves; their giggles were contagious and the scene was overwhelmingly chaotic. Much like her other performances, I am not sure that I understood the premise until I read the programme later. What was undeniably evident, however, was that we were meant to enjoy ourselves and participate. This was not a theatre production per se; there was no (obvious) script, no applause, no ‘acting’, no stage, and the author-artist-director, though present, was as much a spectator of the performance as she was a spectacle. Spartacus was no single identifiable body; she was the brand under which this ‘play’ was being performed and reenacted, again and again, so that no single narrative took precedence and the idea of the author – which one? Which version of St Anthony's temptation? – was rendered obsolete. This was emphasised by the shoddy handmade set, props and costume, serving to merely ‘give the gist’, debunking notions of skill and the ‘hand of the master’. As her piece for the Beck’s Futures award, Spartacus originally proposed a reenactment of her performance An Evening with Jabba the Hutt, conceived in 2003, after Daniella Watson and Martin Vincent, of International 3, a gallery in Manchester, invited ‘Lali’ Chetwynd to create a one-off performance piece. In this scenario, Jabba is an enormous character made from DIY materials, such as papier-m^ache, surrounded by a loyal cohort of women seduced by his charm and charisma. In stark contrast to the crude, slave-trading crime-lord of the Star Wars series, this Jabba hosts a talk on world politics in Farsi, translated for the audience by a third party narrator. A DJ in the background plays Stevie Wonder tracks,

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Death of the Artist Pina Collada cocktails are served and a game of Pass-the-Parcel is encouraged. We might consider the various narrators – Jabba, his translator and the DJ – as the polyphonic voice, a more democratic form of authorship. The women and those puppeteering Jabba were family and friends of Chetwynd. Daniella Watson, in an email conversation with me, described how the night appeared disorganised, informal, and almost unprofessional. She also, however, explains that it is this very shambolic and humourous facet that engages the audience, who by the end of the evening were taking part in a human form of Pass-the-Parcel. Some of the participants (or actors?) didn’t know exactly what was involved in the evening until the very last minute and the audience got involved in the human pass the parcel and were offered cocktails by the bikini clad dancers. All pretty awesome and thrilling for me to behold. I wouldn’t say I curated the evening at all, but generated a context for the thing to happen in . . . What’s great about her work is that chance to intervene and create something no author could anticipate, for example the smoke machine set the fire alarm off. Rather than be a disaster, the unforeseen was folded into the unpredictable nature of the evening.4

Watson describes a chaotic but thrilling event that engages more and more participants as it proceeds. Watson also indicates that neither the curator, a traditionally lead role in ‘art directing’, nor the artist, can take sole credit, describing the performance as something ‘no author could anticipate’. As such, Chetwynd redefines both curatorial and theatrical understandings of what it means to ‘stage’ manage an event. As part of her proposal for Beck’s Futures, Chetwynd contextualised her own work with Brecht’s theatre in the round.5 She has likened her work to the ideas of Brecht on other occasions, through some of her exhibition catalogues and public talks.6 For example, in 2014 Chetwynd discussed the significance of the audience, relating her own DIY aesthetics to B Movies and Brecht: ‘The audience have to fill in the parts that are missing. It is almost as if B movies don’t underestimate the audience. A parallel are Brecht plays. The lack of finesse enables a less defined suspension of disbelief.’7 Theatre in the Round was one of German playwright Bertolt Brecht’s (1898 – 1956) techniques to remind the spectator that the play is a representation of reality and not reality itself. He believed that theatre

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Performance and Collaboration could be an agent of social change. Indeed, Guy Debord, co-founder of the artistic movement Situationist International, also argued that his anticapitalist constructed events, intended to generate new social relations and realities, were a logical development of Brechtian theatre, but where the audience function would disappear altogether.8 Even Walter Benjamin cited the works of Brecht with regard to disrupting authorship. Benjamin argued that the audience, or reader, should be involved in the process of production: ‘this apparatus is better, the more consumers it is able to turn into producers – that is, the more readers or spectators into collaborators’.9 By placing the action in the middle of the theatre, Brecht removes the notion of the ‘back stage’ or presumed ‘suspension of disbelief’. Set, scene and costume changes become evident or unnecessary and thus the illusion of naturalism becomes a Brechtinian statement of delusion. By highlighting the constructed nature of the theatrical event, much like Chetwynd’s obviously handmade sets and costumes, Brecht hoped to communicate that the audience’s reality was equally constructed and, as such, was something they had control over. This gives the audience a sense of empowerment, perhaps akin to Barthes’ ‘birth of the reader’. Another self-proclaimed influence on Chetwynd’s practice is the work of Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin (1895 – 1975), and particularly his ideas on the carnival, which we can liken to several of her performances. Chetwynd’s giddy Evening with Jabba the Hutt embodies the carnival spirit through its participatory and ephemeral nature, and sense of mockery. Bakhtin’s belatedly published thesis Rabelais and His World (1965) argued that, in early modern society, folk humour and the carnival spirit provided an alternative and free life ‘opposed to the official and serious tone of the ecclesiastical and feudal culture’.10 Bakhtin views the carnival with agency through the prism of class. It acts as a kind of social pressure valve that, when released, provides temporary suspension from dominant conventions and hierarchies; the carnival spirit has the power to puncture authority. In Chetwynd’s use of Sci-Fi, a genre acknowledged to discuss politics and the Other through analogies of alternate worlds and aliens, and in subverting Jabba, she too creates her own form of sub-culture, folk humour, as an alternative and free space for the participants. Bakhtin was also concerned with theories of authorship.11 His term, ‘heteroglossia’, reflects the idea that a writer is constantly facing the

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Death of the Artist challenge of working with words that have already been subject to previous authorship. ‘Language has been completely taken over, shot through with intentions and accents . . . Expropriating it, forcing it to submit to one’s own intentions and accents, is a difficult and complicated process.’12 In this context, Bakhtin is reminding us that everything is a form of appropriation, the traditional concept of authorship becoming weak. In his earlier Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (1963) Bakhtin similarly debunked the position of the traditional author. He argued that Dostoevsky’s novel’s strength, much like the public and collective voice of the carnival, lies in its plural voice: A character’s word about himself and his world is just as fully weighted as the author’s word usually is; it is not subordinated to the character’s objectified image as merely one of his characteristics, nor does it serve as a mouthpiece for the author’s voice.13

By handing over the power to describe him- or herself to each of his characters, Bakhtin argues that Dostoevsky subverts the notion of a true voice of authority. We are reminded of Janet Wolff’s example of the ‘polyphonic novel’ as a means of defying traditional authorship. Wolff’s analysis focuses on Wuthering Heights, but Chetwynd’s carnivalesque performances serve as visual arts examples of the polyphonic voice through which the artist empowers her participants. Many of Bakhtin’s ideas have come back in fashion. Translated in the latter half of the twentieth century, Bakhtin’s work influenced a generation of literary scholars and art theorists. Indeed, as Chetwynd knows, Bakhtin’s essays form a staple part of several courses on anthropology and literature. But, as art historian Deborah Haynes also suggests, Bakhtin’s moral conceptions of the artist’s duty to effect change provide a timely antidote to the cycnisim of post-modernity.14 ‘Discourse about the death of the author or artist, the self and subjective agency also overlooks the fact that selfhood has not really come to an end.’15 That is, Barthes’ provocative essay ‘The Death of the Author’ also overlooks significant notions of identity politics. We could therefore use Bakhtin’s ideas on authorship, answerability and the carnival as useful theoretical frameworks to support the gaps between modernity and post-modernism, so the artist and the significance of their creative act is not completely overlooked but their author function is still debunked and viewed critically. 214

Performance and Collaboration Authorship and genius, though less frequently discussed in association with Chetwynd’s practice, are implicit concerns. In 2007 she organised a performance titled Giotto’s Play for the Migros Museum in Zurich. ‘Humanzees’ dressed in chimp costumes puppeteered the discovery of Italian artist and architect Giotto di Bondone (1266/7 –1337). Interestingly, Giotto is one of Ernst Kris and Otto Kurz’s demonstrative tales in their critical reflection of artistic genius narratives in their book Legend, Myth, and Magic in the Image of the Artist: A Historical Experiment (1979). The accompanying catalogue to Chetwynd’s Giotto’s Play recounts the genius narrative: The renowned artist Cimabue discovers Giotto (the young shepherd boy) drawing a sheep in the sand with a stick. Cimabue takes him on as an apprentice and soon his genius is apparent. He excels in painting frescos in the newly built monastery of Assis. Giotto is seen to become a legend within his lifetime as he tours through Italian kingdoms, being applauded in Florence, Pauda, Rome and Assisi.16 [Programme’s own spelling.]

Spartacus makes evident the ridiculous claims of artistic ‘genius’ by emphasising the story’s fictional creation. The canonical tale is degraded through its re-enactment by a troupe dressed in chimp outfits, and by using a theatrical arena – the props and set obviously put together, the strings of the puppet and his actions pre-determined. Giotto’s genius therefore becomes all the more unrealistic and is further ridiculed by the fact that he is played by a carrot! Several of Chetwynd’s characters are deliberately funny or grotesque so as to puncture tradition and authority through subversive humour. Jabba is a large limbless body, made primarily of one grotesque orifice, his mouth, while the ‘mouths of hell’ used in Debt, A Medieval Play are giant orifices that produce the Adamites. The grotesque body has its own place in the canon of visual arts, from paintings by Brueghel and Hieronymus Bosch to Divine’s infamous film Pink Flamingos (1972) and Martin Creed’s Sick Film (2006). What is important to remember is that the grotesque serves to undermine traditional notions of beauty. Given the potential agency of the grotesque to overthrow dominant structures, it is of little surprise that Bakhtin also had an interest in ‘grotesque realism’. The grotesque is usually associated with base-level humour, anything to do with the gullet, 215

Death of the Artist swallowing, orifices, insufficient organs, features or ability. The belly is often prominent in folk humour and the grotesque because the abdomen is associated with laughter and the digestive system. Jabba is the perfect example.17 What’s interesting to note is that the elongated grotesque body is often presented at the carnival, which requires the support of several individuals. Similarly, it takes several unidentified bodies to animate the giant costumes and puppets inhabited by the dancers of Rio de Janeiro’s carnival or the floats of Notting Hill carnival in London, for example. Grotesque realism, Bakhtin says, is a whole body of the people. ‘Not in the bourgeois ego, but in the people, a people who are continually growing and renewed.’18 This leads us to consider the medium of puppetry, which occurs in many of Spartacus’ works, and is also worth considering as a form of collective creativity. The co-ordinated action of the puppeteers creates a symbol of inter-reliance, trust, and co-operation. Indeed, for a puppet to be animated convincingly, it must move as a whole unit. In 2010 Spartacus Chetywnd received increased media attention having been commissioned to take part in Frieze Projects in association with Frieze Art Fair. In response, she created a performance based on a game show. Two teams, ‘The Oppressed Puree’ and ‘Women Who Refuse To Grow Old Gracefully’, took part in a live competition. Accompanied by a chamber orchestra, the teams performed mime and dance routines in order to compete for the prize of a ride on the Cat Bus, which the ‘winners’ also help animate. The Cat Bus is based on a character from Studio Ghibli’s Japanese anime fantasy film, My Neighbour Totoro (1988), which is about two young sisters and their interactions with local woodland creatures and spirits. Surreal in nature, the event might be considered to mimic the competitive element of the contemporary art fair itself: which gallery will sell the most, and by which artist? However, one step closer to ‘reality’, this performance happens in real time and on site, unlike the edited pretence of the televised game show. The artist has said herself about the piece: I’ve been researching financially powerful women, like Mae West and Dolly Parton. I also find it interesting that in the financial world, and also places like Frieze, no one likes to talk about money or tax. And if someone chooses to live in a tax haven, then there’s a price to

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Performance and Collaboration pay, because they have to separate themselves from society. That also links to cults gone wrong, like Jim Jones’s People’s Temple [who committed mass suicide], which are also isolated from society. So the performance is weirdly a combination of goofy, dreamlike Mae West women running a tax haven which is this wonderful place where you do actually want to be, and the kind of scary arsehole cult leader gone wrong. I am actually making a bumhole costume for that character.19

Like the Guerilla Girls, it seems that Spartacus seeks to critique the institutions that exhibit her work. The costs of shipping artworks and the price of VAT play a large part in the art market. It is internationally recognised that dealers and galleries will deliberately send artworks via Switzerland, a so-called ‘tax haven’, in order to avoid certain costs. Spartacus’ prize offering of a ride on the Cat Bus could be read as mocking the glory of the contemporary art market and its sales at a commercial fair. Another provocation is in her statement about researching powerful women. Opposed to selecting prominent or powerful women of the London art world, such as Victoria Miro, Sadie Coles, her own dealer, or Amanda Sharp, the female half of the pair that set up Frieze Art Fair, Spartacus chose deliberately sexualised women: Mae West and Dolly Parton. The Cat Bus, therefore, could be read as a moral critique. Because it is animated by collective ‘winners’ and paraded around the fair, it also undermines the notion of the singular artist-author, which is championed by the surrounding gallery stands taking part in Frieze Art Fair. The slick and singularly expensive works on show are further undermined by the DIY nature of the Cat Bus. Finally, the puppetry mechanics of the Cat Bus add another dimension to its collective authorship. In an interview with the art critic Ben Luke of the Evening Standard, Chetwynd said: There is a wonderful thing, I think, in this strange world of puppetry . . . when one person is the head of an object and another person is the body, you have this really nice concentration, almost like meditation, on the rhythm and the breathing and the pace of this object.20

Another example of a costumed collaboration and the grotesque can be seen in Chetwynd’s 2002 early reenactment of Michael Jackson’s famous

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Death of the Artist music video, Thriller (1984). The original depicts the metamorphosis of a young man into werewolf, and then zombie, under moonlight. As the dancers come to life, they cumulatively process towards the camera, like a carnival. ‘Lali’ Chetwynd, at that time, had gathered together a group of friends to recreate the musical, which was filmed with a single video camera from one angle at London’s Hoxton Hall. The performance was done in earnest, as a homage to the musician – who arguably underwent his own transformation – and was recorded as a means of documentation. The film itself is not, she later asserted, the work of art. Chetwynd’s performers dance Thriller’s famous routine in the various monstrous guises that feature in the original film, only her version features a few more ‘Michael Jacksons’. In 2008, Studio Voltaire exhibited Spartacus’ documentation of Thriller as part of their series ‘Other People’s Projects’, which also included works by contemporary artists Simon Bedwell, Dawn Mellor and Maria Pask, all of which referenced Michael Jackson. In 2002, Spartacus also staged performances based on the comic-hero character the Incredible Hulk and the ‘fertility dance’ from the cult horror film The Wicker Man (1973).21 Chetwynd is often in one of these guises herself. In reincarnating cultural references that play on metamorphosis, science fiction, magic or transmogrification, she presents a grotesque parody of the artist as mysterious, an alternative shaman, marginalised by his or her own differences, much like the stories of the mad and melancholy artist. The underdog and the ‘freak’ are recurring motifs in Chetwynd’s practice. Much like Bob and Roberta Smith, she is continuously subverting the notion of the singular genius with her collection of ‘loser-stories’, whether it’s Michael Jackson, Jabba the Hutt, Cousin Itt, Aletia Queen of Mars, the Incredible Hulk or, most significantly, her own namesake of Spartacus. Moreover, these monstrous Others incite an element of empathy from her audience. In an online article dedicated to Spartacus’ work in 2008, Jessica Lack observed that their selection reflects our societal treatment of the Other: There is something emotive about the characters Chetwynd champions. She opts for the freaks, those who have been lampooned not for their talent but their emotional or physical vulnerability . . . the emotionally crippled Incredible Hulk, the psychologically scarred Jackson – and in doing so reveals something of our social ills.22

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Performance and Collaboration The selection of (some) fictional and exaggerated characters is nonetheless in keeping with an irreverent practice – we cannot feel too sorry for The Hulk, because he is not real. Chetwynd’s characters engage us because they toe a tight line between tragic and comedic. Laughter and degradation are a tactic of Chetwynd’s in seducing the viewer to participate, but also to democratise classical literature and the Old Masters, by placing them alongside popular culture, and funny, references. In his 2007 frieze feature on Chetwynd, Tom Morton explains: As with the artist’s costumes and props, and even her new swordand-sandals appellation, it is a meagreness of means that allows her to square up to the epic, deconstructing its tropes and then reconstructing them as something provisional, a little ragged around the edges but always full of hope and hardcore joy.23

In 2005 Chetwynd organised A Walk to Dover, commissioned by Studio Voltaire, an organisation of artists’ studios and gallery in South London.24 The pilgrimage paid homage to Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield (1850). Considered one of his most autobiographical novels, David Copperfield charts the life of Dickens’ protagonist from childhood to maturity. David undergoes several turbulent periods throughout his youth, which result in his running away from his home in London to Dover, where his last remaining relation receives him. Throughout the novel, like Chetwynd, Copperfield is referred to by his peers under several different names and takes on different guises and personalities. The documentation of A Walk to Dover, like many of Chetwynd’s performances, captures smiling and joyful performers. Whether her content or references are considered high or lowbrow, they are treated with the same warmth and humour. Indeed, as the critic Jessica Lack observes, her actors’ nonchalance and benevolence ‘somehow elevates the original rather than disabusing it’.25 In destroying seriousness, it could be argued that Chetwynd actually enables the public to engage with what would otherwise often be considered highbrow literary or cultural references, making them more accessible. Spartacus, Chetwynd’s pseudonym, is also an example of her nonchalance in clashing old and new, high and low cultures, but one which explicitly references rebellion, as well as notions of identity and collectivity. Taking on this name in the public domain of the art world can 219

Death of the Artist only be a joke at the expense of its institutions of authorship. The critic Tom Morton observes how this creates an image of artists revolting: Not quite a stage name like Meat Loaf, a pseudonym like Marcel Duchamp’s Rrose Selavy or a Subcommandante Marcos-type nom de guerre, Chetwynd’s adopted moniker seems designed to make us stage a mock-heroic mini-drama in our minds, in which she persuades a band of artists to stop pitting themselves against each other and instead revolt against their masters. Push this fantasy a little further (and Chetwynd’s art is nothing if not about pushing idle thoughts as far they’ll go), and we might imagine the defeated rebels refusing, pace Stanley Kubrick’s 1960 film Spartacus, to identify their chief, instead claiming one after the other ‘I’m Spartacus’, only to be symbolically crucified by a poor auction result or a less than complimentary review.26

Spartacus the name references both historical events and popular culture. It refers to a person, the famous rebel who headed the slave uprising against the Romans, which ultimately failed, and, more recently, Stanley Kubrik’s film of the same name and its famous scene where each of the slaves claims ‘I’m Spartacus’ in a collective and loyal act to protect the identity of the ‘original’ Spartacus. Morton draws a parallel with the failings of the famous Spartacus and the artist’s potential failure in the eyes of the art world. Like Jesus or Icarus, Spartacus is another heroic failure. The play on another ‘loser’ story is interesting and in keeping with Chetwynd’s fascination with the ridiculous notion of the singular genius or exaggerated biographies. However, it is the element of hope and collectivism, associated with the name and events of Spartacus, which are most important. Although the Roman Spartacus’ fate is ultimately predetermined, the association with Kubrick’s film is predominantly a positive one. Ask anyone what they know of ‘Spartacus’ and the majority will describe the film’s iconic scene of camaraderie and collectivism. As such, it becomes difficult to extract the name Spartacus from the slave, the geo-political historical event, its retelling through an iconic film, Kirk Douglas, the actor who put a face to this name and, now, Chetwynd and her troupe. Spartacus is therefore a loaded pseudonym, a legacy to which this latest artist and her dissident practice can be added by association.

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Performance and Collaboration As Chetwynd’s performances have grown from elaborate fancy dress parties to institutional artworks, she has retained her loyal band of friends and family who continue to play alongside her. This troupe acts as a type of collective. It would be nice, then, to conceive of Chetwynd’s name almost as a brand for a type of travelling circus or carnival that she delivers rather than a singular artist, but her works continue to be read as her products alone, authored to her current pseudonym, no matter how many people this may encompass on a given night. In the interview with Luke, Spartacus discusses her change of name and issues with the concept of the referential signature: Chief among her reasons is that she felt that her name was being used like an incantation or a spell to manipulate her. Spartacus offered a form of protection, ‘like a shield, like a trading name’, she says . . . ‘Spartacus, I thought, was going to stop me from becoming professionalised and allow me to continue to have fun – although actually it has been quite serious, the name thing, because people don’t like you to be so flippant, or irreverent. And I am really irreverent.’27

Indeed, Spartacus changed her forename again, to Marvin Gaye, in 2013.28 It came as a timely change, notably after being nominated for the Turner Prize in 2012, with all its associated media attention. Chetwynd admits in an interview for the BBC Four television documentary series What Do Artists Do All Day? that her name changes are a kind of ‘private joke’ to cheer herself up. While she states that it is as simple as a trading name or nom de plume, she also refers to it as a deliberate act ‘to annoy people’.29 The artist clearly acknowledges the implications this name change has had for her career.30 So while her pseudonyms may have brought about more attention they seem to have initially been employed to avoid the pressures of professionalism. Indeed, the biographical model of authorship means that artists from other industries have similarly undertaken alter egos and pseudonyms to avoid the trappings of how they are ‘read’. For example, The Beatles created Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and even Beyonce invented Sasha Fierce. In 2008 the art critic Jessica Lack also observed that the more attention Chetwynd gets, the less able she is to keep her productions ad hoc and chaotic: 221

Death of the Artist As her reputation grows, so do the budgets, venues and caliber of promotion – which ultimately has an effect on her lo-fi productions. What makes a Spartacus Chetwynd event is her ability to motivate the everyman into acts of rational absurdity. If, as Joseph Beuys declared, ‘everyone is an artist’, then in Chetwynd’s world everyone is a performer too.31

As Chetwynd herself discussed in her Nottingham Contemporary exhibition programme, she is more interested in low-budget cultural forms, like B movies and Brecht’s theatre, because the audience has to ‘fill in’ the parts that are missing. In this sense, she is sharing her authorship by asking the audience to take part, by physical participation and through their interpretation of her ambiguous performances. In the television documentary, Chetwynd claims that her ‘amateur’ style isn’t deliberately shoddy; she does not know how or want to craft her performances any better; she prefers to help make the props and costumes herself and to work quickly, generating an aesthetic of urgency and energy.32 While this might seem to assert that the unique ‘hand of the master’ is important to Chetwynd, it is at least a hand that critiques traditional systems of valorisation bound up with notions of the singular artist ‘genius’. To this end, it is important Chetwynd continues to work with her small and familiar troupe, in her chaotic and DIY nature, no matter how famous she becomes. In 2010, the same year Spartacus Chetwynd took part in Frieze Projects, she was picked up by Sadie Coles HQ, London, which now represents the artist’s work and public relations. Her first exhibition with the gallery, ‘Odd Man Out’ (5 May – 5 June 2011), was nominated for the 2012 Turner Prize. Revolving around ideas of democracy and the right to vote, or disincentives to vote, Chetwynd stationed voting booths at the start of the exhibition. Depending on how they voted, visitors were led to different performances via separate routes divided by giant photocopies. The audience’s vote, or participation, literally determined their experience of ‘Odd Man Out’. By giving the audience power to select and control their experience of the artwork, within an explicitly political context, we are invited to consider the work as a demonstration against authority and authorship, and maybe even the power of the ‘white cube’ gallery in our perception of the work’s quality and value. However, much like real politics, the public does not always end up with what they 222

Performance and Collaboration thought they were voting for. The politician, or in this case, the artist, ultimately provides the outcome, slightly masked by their superficial offer of choices, all of which are predetermined. Down the stairs of Sadie Coles’ gallery, via an inflatable slide, all visitors eventually convene for a puppet reenactment of the story of Jesus and Barabbas (see Figure 5.1). Here, visitors are forced into the centre of the set, in keeping with Brecht’s Theatre in the Round. When they are asked by ‘Pontius’ what he should do with the two men, they are encouraged to call out ‘crucify him, crucify him’. In this case, visitors to Sadie Coles are unusually implicated in the death of Christ, the ultimate tragic hero. Unfortunately, when this bi-weekly performance was recreated for the Turner Prize in the larger Tate Britain galleries, it did not translate so well. Run at intervals, the space was often empty and devoid of character and action. The overwhelming noise of the fan supporting the inflatable set emphasised the abandoned, vacuous space, rendering it more of an obstacle route between the other Turner Prize galleries. This is an example of how important the context of space can be and how, for Chetwynd’s work in particular, the elements of theatre – timing, action and crowd – are key components. Perhaps more successful was Spartacus’ earlier The Fall of Man, a puppet extravaganza (2006) in the North Duveen galleries for the Tate Triennial. Between two cardboard sets, sad-faced clowns used potatoes to puppeteer juxtaposed narratives from the Bible, John Milton’s Paradise Lost, the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Karl Marx’s Das Kapital. This was a live performance exhibition only and required an audience for it to take place. The three acts were staged 15 minutes apart and during the breaks a small group from the audience was allowed to pass inside a proscenium arch to watch the puppet show more intimately, where they were met with a readymade ‘“animal audience” of costumed participants not unlike Jim Henson’s “Muppets”’.33 Tom Morton’s aptly titled review of her work, ‘The Epic and the Everyday’, reminds us of how Chetwynd’s revivals are all treated with the same respect: While rubbing these lost and potential Arcadias against each other risks heavy-handed banality (who in the audience, after all, had not identified difficulties in the Bible or Marx long before the night of

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Death of the Artist Chetwynd’s performance?), it’s the very sincerity of the artist’s approach, her utter commitment to the quixotic and the plain silly, that makes her work sing.34

Her ‘homages’ to Milton and Marx go to show that no author is too great to be re-read and re-interpreted, and that a good artwork lives on through its various interpretations throughout history, brought to life by its ‘reader’. As part of the Tate Triennial exhibition, each exhibiting artist was asked to respond to a set series of questions. Their responses were filmed and posted on the Tate website as a curatorial aid for viewers. Much like the text panel we commonly see next to a work of art, these questions and answers attempted to elucidate each work with reference to artistic intentionality. While Daria Martin and John Stezaker answered questions from traditional settings, such as their studio, and discussed their work with fervent honesty, Chetwynd used the clowns from The Fall of Man to answer the Tate’s questions. Though the Tate credits The Fall of Man to Chetwynd, she acts more as a director or curator than an author, and she has described her own role as akin to a tour guide.35 The clowns badly lip-sync answers from pre-written cue-cards with the backdrop of The Fall of Man’s set. With faces painted and mouths drawn on, the actors’ expressions are difficult to read and are deliberately artificial. This only emphasises the ‘stage’ of the museum and institution. Moreover, on set and in costume, they respond in a manner difficult to separate from the performance they inhabit so that the video becomes an extension of the live version of The Fall of Man. In this sense, Spartacus’ practice – her subject matter, materials, ‘her’ media responses and ‘name’ – become one and the same, demonstrating Chetwynd’s ambivalence towards institutional concepts of authorship. That there is more than one clown responding also emphasises the significance of collaboration and undermines the traditional singular genius. Who Spartacus is, in this video, is unimportant. The video invites us to consider a collective of artists as responsible: the clowns, Milton, Chetwynd and even Beatrix Ruf, the Tate Triennial’s curator. Demonstrating this are some of the clowns’ responses: Q. Is there a main theme that underpins your practice? A. ‘Hospitality, human and nonsense. The politics of inclusion.’

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Figure 5.1 Spartacus Chetwynd, ‘Jesus and Barabbas’ the puppet show, as part of ‘Odd Man Out’ by Spartacus Chetwynd at Sadie Coles HQ, London (5 May –4 June 2011). Press image taken from Sadie Coles HQ website, 4 April 2012: www. sadiecoles.com/artists/chetwynd#mgc-odd-man-out-2011.

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Death of the Artist Q. How does your work engage with ideas around appropriation? A. ‘We work with the reinterpretation and rehabilitation of outmoded cultural sources.’ Q. How important is the audience’s experience to your work? A. ‘We’re interested in the audience being part of the event. Not a divided spectacle from spectators.’36

By beginning statements with ‘we’, the collective or polyphonic voice is strengthened. The amusing way in which the clowns respond is also a part of the work’s politics; subverting authority with mockery. As discussed, there are clear parallels between Chetwynd’s use of humour and the agency of Theatre of the Absurd. Perhaps the most famous example of Absurd theatre is Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (1953), in which two vagrant men wait in vain for the arrival of a man they only know by reputation. Throughout the play the men struggle with dialogue, they sing in rounds and swap hats; actions are repeated and become motifs, emphasising the cyclical nature of the play. Characters of the Absurd often appear silly, they represent the underdog, are frequently lost or interchangeable with others. I would like to posit that Chetwynd’s visual arts performances should be read as contemporary art translations of the Theatre of the Absurd. The Theatre of the Absurd is often thought of as part of an anti-literary movement and, with regard to its rebellion against holding to a particular narrative, has been compared to abstract painting.37 However, I would argue that abstract painting evolved as a means of highlighting the medium and materials of painting itself. Though Abstraction served as a rebellion against allegories and meaning, it was not anti-art. Its loyalty to form and composition could be considered meaning in itself. I would suggest instead that Absurdist artworks contain more narrative, even if these are chaotic or anachronistic. Closer to Chetwynd’s practice are examples of the amateur plays put on by some artists who were later associated with Dada. Led by political dissidents, Dada’s aim was destruction. The movement was a reaction against all that was conventional and bourgeois that had produced the horrors of the war. As well as newsletters, collages, wordplay and satires, Dada also produced plays. In the following passage, Hugo Ball (1886 –1927) describes his part in The Sphinx und Strohmann (1907) by Oskar Kokoschka (1886 –1980), which was directed by Marcel Janco (1895 –1984). 226

Performance and Collaboration The play was acted in tragic body-masks; mine was so large that I could comfortably read my part inside it. [Tzara,] also looking after entrances and exits, thundered and lighteninged in the wrong places and gave the impression that this was a special effect intended by the director, an intended confusion of backgrounds.38

Ball describes a chaotic comedy, with exaggerated costumes that echo facets of Chetwynd’s performances. It might then be worth considering Chetwynd’s performances as part of the historical trajectory of visual artists working with elements of Theatre of the Absurd, from Dada to now. Other artists in this lineage would include Martin Kippenberger, Mike Kelly and John Bock. More recently, art historian Shannon Jackson wrote of the artist Pope.L's performance at the exhibition ‘Live’ at Tate Modern (2003) that ‘his presence was most notable for its wild incoherence. Throughout the days of the colloquium and performance enactments he spoke only gibberish. As if refusing any logic that would have linked Liveness with authenticity.’39 So perhaps of more significance is the fact that Theatre of the Absurd is another mechanism for problematising authorship – through its subversive and de-skilled presentation, sense of confusion and collaboration, and debunking the idea of the all-important artist-author – prior to the literary concerns of Barthes and Foucault. That Dada artists were utilising these techniques demonstrates again that the visual arts were critiquing authorship earlier than those cultural theorists credited with doing so. A good example of Theatre of the Absurd in the visual arts is Paul McCarthy’s video performance, Painter (1995). The protagonist parodies the traditional character of the solitary genius by pacing up and down, as if drunk or mad and unable to converse, even with himself. He haphazardly addresses the camera and acknowledges his audience directly. In doing so, he mimics the ‘mock-umentary’ genre, which already subverts the assumed authorship of the camera or notions of ‘truth’ and ‘reality’ in television. The painter also has grotesque and absurdly large hands so he can barely mix his paints or control the brush stroke, which also undermines the concept of the ‘hand of the master’ and the fetish of the ‘seminal’; at one stage he even appears to paint with his phallus. The video sees the painter destroying his own canvas and defecating. Thereafter he is interviewed alongside his ‘collectors’, who are

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Death of the Artist also ridiculed by having equally massive noses while they talk of art and other famous Abstraction artists. The final joke sees fans of the painter lining up to smell his anus, which is presumably a pun on the quality of the work and criticism of the commodification and celebration of the artist, by linking paint and excretion as extended products of the male artist’s body. Painter, as grotesque, highly staged and absurd, also reminds us of Chetwynd’s ridicule of Giotto’s genius, as portrayed by a carrot, and sits comfortably within the Dada and Beckettian legacy of the Absurd. Both McCarthy’s and Chetwynd’s performances critique the notion of the phallocentric author function. Theatre of the Absurd also has a history on the screen through Buster Keaton, the Marx Brothers and Charlie Chaplin, all of whom Chetwynd cites as influences on her practice.40 Similar to Theatre in the Round, the Carnivalesque and Grotesque, Theatre of the Absurd contains its own agency: Once drawn into the mystery of the play, the spectator is compelled to come to terms with his experience. The stage supplies him with a number of disjointed clues that he has to fit into a meaningful pattern. In this manner, he is forced to make a creative effort of his own, an effort at interpretation and interrogation.41

These chaotic performances, often lacking in beginnings or endings, ask us not to question, ‘what is next?’ but instead ‘why and what does this represent?’ Their comedic ambiguity is another method of engaging the audience and overthrowing the notion of the ‘Author-God’ and the significance of their intentionality. Where Chetwynd’s performances do transcend the boundaries of literature, theatre and visual art, their overwhelming context of the ‘white cube’ gallery can be inhibiting. Unlike theatre, with distinct boundaries of time, the traditional exhibition space is open to visitors outside Chetwynd’s scheduled performances. This means that, like her Turner Prize show, ‘Odd Man Out’, audiences are often left with an experience devoid of the performance’s absurdity and participation so that the sense of anarchy, dissidence and intervention is lost. Instead, the space can feel desolate and un-interactive, particularly without any documentary information about the performance. This is indicative of the pervading infrastructures of exhibiting that still subscribe to the art object as finite, commodifiable and portable. While the Turner Prize does not portray a modernist approach of 228

Performance and Collaboration medium specificity, it is another example of where art as an interdisciplinary practice has not quite traversed the larger institution. Chetwynd admits that she struggles with how to exhibit and record her performances, and how these are presented outside the live arena remains a critical problem. But when questioned why her work should be considered as ‘art’ by an audience member at her Turner Prize talk (3 October 2012), she responded unequivocally, ‘Because I went to art school and I’m working in the art world.’ Reflecting on the parameters of the gallery space she concluded, ‘If YouTube existed five years ago, that’s how I would have exhibited.’ However, YouTube does exist now, so why does Chetwynd continue to ‘perform’ and assert the necessity of ‘liveness’? While it might seem obvious that witnessing a performance firsthand is an intrinsic component of appreciating the work’s medium and that ‘experience’ is a significant part of understanding performance, it also means that we are inadvertently privileging the live performance over its documentation and perpetuating the myth of the artist’s authorial status through their particular body. Moreover, this type of physiologicalbiographical reading excludes all those unable to attend the performance and denies one the ability to appreciate the work of art conceptually.42 This is in tension with the ‘carnival spirit’ that should be lived and experienced as part of its social function. Live interaction and participation is also an important component of Chetwynd’s work in subverting notions of authorship. However, while Chetwynd remains rooted in the art world of the twenty-first century, she must continue to navigate the exhibition space outside performance hours and therefore navigate documentation as a facet of commercialism – art museums, representative galleries and press are all reliant on documentation. Her practice might be better understood by the absent spectator if she exploited alternative methodologies of documentation more fully. For instance, I have found that catalogues display the same limited selection of cropped photographs for each of her previous performances and other audio/visual presentations deliberately interrupt a straightforward viewing of the original. The relationship between performance and documentation is a difficult and nuanced one, complicated by the demand for commodifiable outcomes by the market. In his essay ‘The Performativity of Performance Documentation’ (2006) Philip Auslander describes two types of performance documentation: the Documentary and the Theatrical.

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Death of the Artist The first is understood to provide a record of the event, though we understand this record to be fragmentary and subjective. The second is often the only form in which the event occurs; events staged to be documented. These cases ‘had no meaningful prior existence as autonomous events presented to audiences’.43 Such cases would include the theatrical performance documents of Duchamp as Rrose Selavy and Claude Cahun’s masquerades, for example. But to record each of Chetwynd’s events would elevate the status of the original (or those chosen to be filmed), and possibly inhibit the experience of the event for the audience and make her performances more self-conscious. On the other hand, by not showing full documentation of her performances, one could argue that Chetwynd denies some of her audience the opportunity to ‘read’ or interpret her work. Reliant on immediate interaction, Chetwynd’s work is far from Auslander’s theatrical description but neither can the limited interview clips from the internet or PR photographs of her practice be considered entirely documentary.44 Perhaps we can consider her cropped, largely uninformative documentation – in so far as it reveals little of the location, materials, who the artist is or the chronological series of events that the performance comprised – as a third type of documentation: anthropological. Indeed, Chetwynd has an undergraduate degree in Anthropology. Ethnographic documentation is often typified by ‘capturing’ an event, so as not to interfere too much with the subject/event itself. This is reaffirmed in the way that photographic or video documentation of Chetwynd’s practice, until recently, was not offered in place of the performance, or presented as works in a gallery, but only as accompaniments to catalogues or press articles. The fields of Anthropology and Sociology are arguably now more critical of authorship within their own methodologies of research. Henry Jenkins, in his book on fan culture, draws parallels between the participation of fans and new ethnographic practice: Central to this move has been the recognition that there is no privileged position from which to survey a culture. Rather, each vantage point brings with it both advantages and limitations . . . The result is a shift from totalizing accounts of social and cultural processes toward partial, particularized, and contingent accounts of specific encounters . . . The newer ethnography offers accounts in which participation is often as important as observation, the

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Performance and Collaboration boundary between ethnographer and community dissolves, and the community members may actively challenge the account offered of their experience.45

This view discounts any notion of ‘singular’ authorship; and seems particularly pertinent given that Chetwynd’s practice is participatory, and that she herself is a fan of and participant in popular culture. Perhaps the way in which one chooses to engage with her work, as observer, participant or with hindsight – viewing limited visual documentation – might be considered ethnographic, each method carrying limitations and advantages to the act of reception and interpretation, none more authoritative than the other, but she herself – a community member – is also entitled to challenge the account of her ‘audience’ or critic. However, in her public exhibition at Nottingham Contemporary (March 2014), Chetwynd exhibited some video footage of her earlier performances on television monitors. Filmed as the show was being installed by the BBC’s What Do Artists Do All Day?, Chetwynd explained why she has had to reconsider her methodologies of display. She cited feedback from her Turner Prize show suggesting that her practice had to become more ‘robust’ to meet the demands of her public, in that her performances are not currently enacted for the duration of standard gallery opening hours. Chetwynd responded that, as a means of ‘problem solving’ this, she was ‘slipping into film’.46 This highlights the difficulty of ‘exhibiting’ artistic interpretations of theatrical interventions in conventional institutions. As such, it becomes evident that Chetwynd’s theatrical critiques of authorship are problematic for the traditional models of career, commercialism and authorship within the art world. Her practice complicates how one needs to document one’s work but does question documentation’s associated functions of ‘authenticity’ or ‘truth’, which we also relate to authorship. An example of how Chetwynd previously navigated this was via the clown chorus she used to collectively answer curatorial questions put to her on the work Fall of Man. In 2012 the artist confronted the problems of another type of documentation. She refused to have her Turner Prize ‘talk’ recorded on video, which usually takes the format of a lecture, and insisted that only an audio recording was used for future reference.47 Though she rolled on the floor and presented her works in random order, like an Absurdist character

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Death of the Artist herself, attempting to subvert the role of the traditional lecture, the artist could not help but present from a stage and with a microphone. The audience sat in comparative silence, receptive to her words. Despite the somewhat contradictory environment, it was evident that Chetwynd was sincere and serious in her absurdity: ‘My work is enthusiasm’ and ‘Just because it’s fun, that doesn’t mean it’s not art. I have to live with my subject matter being patronised.’48 We are all familiar with the sentiment ‘my child could do that’ in response to some contemporary art but, while Chetwynd’s work suffers from criticism because of its shambolic nature, like most of these case studies, there is more merit than meets the eye. Though her work can be positioned within the trajectory of theatre in art, moreover, several of Chetwynd’s works share a ‘serious’ common theme of morality, with particular reference to money. We saw this in Money, a Cautionary Tale, her Cat Bus for Frieze, and the theme of debt occurred again as part of her project for Nottingham Contemporary. Indeed, in the BBC documentary, Chetwynd asserted that her performances question societal morality and whether our collective values are as up to date as our technological advancements. She also stated that morality is a significant part of her practice and that her performances ought to be able to communicate that for her to consider them successful.49 This is in keeping with the theatrical interventions she uses, pioneered by those interested in social change: The means by which the dramatists of the Absurd express their critique – largely instinctive and unintended – of our disintegrating society are based on suddenly confronting their audiences with a grotesquely heightened and distorted picture of the world gone mad.50

Humour, the absurd elements of repetition, nonsense language and underdog characters need not represent a lack of content. Rather they can serve to symbolise real sociological absurdities, such as the high prices of the art market. Collaboration also strengthens Chetwynd’s moral practice. This comes in the form of her pseudonym, alternative identities, group projects, audience participation and puppetry. We might also consider the analogy of Chetwynd’s puppetry when we think on how her practice relates to Hardt and Negri’s concept of the ‘multitude’ – in order for social cohesion to occur, the individual parts must work together but maintain independence. Unlike the Guerrilla Girls, Chetwynd is not anonymous, but her inclusive practice, which invites audience participation, is a means by 232

Performance and Collaboration which her work might be shared and expanded beyond the individual. Chetwynd’s various guises, her costumes and pseudonyms, also suppress her own identity, whereby she need not die Barthes’ rhetorical ‘death’ for the ‘birth of her reader’, but can be reincarnated and re-enacted by others as her work is shared. Her choice of popular fictional characters such as Cousin Itt and The Incredible Hulk mean that appropriating these guises and identities is all the more easy. What ‘fancy dress’ shop doesn’t have the green mask or long wig? Analogies of Hardt and Negri’s ‘multitude’ might also be applied to the notion of the ‘pop up’ exhibition and spontaneous events, which can be adopted by others and therefore shared without specific authorship or direction. For example, less well known but more locally embraced were Spartacus’ film nights held at Studio Voltaire, and in 2009 she helped set up the ‘South London Cultural Centre’ (SLCC). SLCC was a home shared by Spartacus and her artist friends in Brockley, London, in which they staged various events, from naked barbecues to performance-based open-house parties. In an interview with Dossier Journal, the artist admitted that it was organically set up and mindful of the recession. Hosting a cultural centre in your own home suggests that artists can operate outside institutionalised art spaces and encourages a shared, artistic autonomy. SLCC is a model that could be adopted by like-minded artists and taken beyond South London without the monetary support of gallery representation. Equally, it could be seen as an alternative to the constraints of dealers, curators and the ‘solo show’. In the Dossier interview she stated: I have had a real aversion to the white cube commercial space for ages. It’s so problematic that it is taken for granted as the exhibiting space – as if Land Art never happened, as if YouTube didn’t exist. What we are doing here is definitely a reaction. I think I feel quite angry, maybe because of Frieze Art Fair or something . . . it feels like it’s almost a matter of civic pride. I don’t think things have to be like that, and I have realised that instead of chasing after the let-me-inthrough-the-gates, if you do something on your own doorstep people will come to you again and again.51

Is it then perhaps a little problematic that Spartacus was taken up by Sadie Coles the following year and exhibited as part of Frieze Art Fair? The Saatchi Collection and British Council also own some of her handmade

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Death of the Artist costumes and props. These are, no doubt, prized possessions, in stark contrast to their intentionally ‘shoddy’ making. Once an artist gains recognition, however subversive, their work is recognised in terms of monetary value. Where an artist’s ephemeral practice is historically less ‘obtainable’, such as performance, it is common for their ‘props’ or ‘sketches’ to be bought as the nearest objects demonstrative of the artist’s hand at work in place of a signature or more traditional object of ‘art’. Other options for commercial investors are to consider buying into the cultural capital of the artist by association, such as commissioning a performance. In recent history, however, museums and galleries have also had to navigate the gaps between artistic performance, the artist, ownership and display. While private collectors remain sceptical of investing in a ‘performance’, more and more major institutions, such as the Tate in London, the Pompidou Centre in Paris and New York’s Museum of Modern Art are buying live performance. The works are typically sold as a set of instructions and might be performed without the artist, and necessarily so after their death. In this sense, purchasing performance art might not be so different to buying the rights to produce a play, and demonstrate signs of the market changing its attitude towards artistic authorship. In 2015, Chetwynd sold her first performance to an institution. With the help of the Art Fund, The New Walk Museum acquired Chetwynd’s performance Home Made Tasers (2011 – 12) for £30,000 from Sadie Coles HQ, which consisted of cloth, aluminium, latex, paint, script and instructions for its re-enactment without her. In this instance it appears that the commercial value of her work and intellectual property has lent itself to a means of sharing authorship. So to what extent does Chetwynd jeopardise her ‘morality plays’ by collaborating with the ‘white cube’ commercial spaces she has said she has a ‘real aversion’ to? Bob and Roberta Smith and the Guerrilla Girls are examples of artists who have managed to practise within and outside art institutions, while still critiquing them. Art & Language critique the hierarchies and language of the art world but they undisputedly also financially depend on those hierarchies. Arguably, in order for art to be shared with the greatest number of viewers, artists have to work within existing infrastructures, at least to some extent. Marvin Gaye Chetwynd resists some of the infrastructures of the art world through her guises, collaborators,

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Performance and Collaboration

Figure 5.2 Bat Opera, Installation view, lower ground, `Marvin Gaye Chetwynd' (11 March –26 April 2014, Sadie Coles HQ, London). Photograph taken by Nicola McCartney at the opening event of the exhibition.

polyphonic and chaotic performances, and odd cultural references, which have been key in defying categorisation and thus navigating traditional systems of authorship, but her recent return to painting complicates this. Since 2002 Chetwynd has been making a series of oil paintings called Bat Opera but, until recently, these had not attracted much critical attention. In 2013 she undertook a residency in Tuscany, in which she only painted bats, and in 2014 she returned to Sadie Coles for her second solo show (11 March – 26 April), where they were exhibited prominently downstairs, against backdrops of larger photocopies of the paintings (see Figure 5.3). One review argued that the series ‘encapsulates several of the threads found in Chetwynd’s entire work: a disregard for convention and “good taste,” a fascination with the natural world and delight in the grotesque’.52 Indeed, we could even compare Chetwynd’s furry protagonist to her usual trope of tragic-heroes and supernatural characters. The paintings also reference the grotesque and theatrical sets but, placed on top 235

Death of the Artist of the larger photocopies, they do suppose a hierarchy of medium. Though it should also be acknowledged that the constrained scale and size, and the canvas paper used, still suppose a modest production value. Chetwynd’s consistent use of her own surname is also problematic if we are to conceive of her practice as anti-authorial. Though she changes her forenames and the pseudonyms mock or problematise authorship, we can continue to trace her work and its value. As such, she is never quite anonymous and her pseudonymous forenames can only be seen as a performance, not inhabited or embodied like the Guerilla Girls. In this sense, her absurd noms de plume are almost as synonymous with her practice and surname as Patrick Brill has become with Bob and Roberta Smith. Moreover, Chetwynd’s adoption of particularly eccentric names means she ironically draws more attention and mystery to herself, whereby this supposed ‘game’, in her own words, has ended up with her ‘playing the market’, intentionally or otherwise, and mocking its fascination with the biography. Chetwynd’s practice serves as a reminder that authorship is a complicated, implicit and political subject that goes well beyond one’s identity; it also includes an artist’s choice of medium, materials, documentation, subject matter, collaborators, exhibition spaces and production values. While her practice utilises a matrix of cultural references, theatrical devices, the Absurd, grotesque and carnival spirit to defy the singular genius, we are left questioning the significance of her artistic identity and cannot conclude that a pseudonym alone is a critique of authorship. Have artists since the early twentieth century increasingly defied the institutions of authorship, or negotiated authorship in order to adapt to the biographical model of the market while attempting to retain autonomy and agency?

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Conclusion

This research began with a somewhat moral or ideal charge, to discover new ways of making and appreciating art by examining practices that took seriously the idea of the ‘Death of the Author’, which also accounted for contemporary art world pressures such as intellectual property, career and commercialism. An alternative, preceeding history shows that artists were already criticising and negotiating authorship prior to post-structuralism but those artists, and some of the contemporary artists discussed here, took a more subtle and ambivalent approach to authorship than that proposed by Barthes’ ‘death’. In fact, examining the practical issues of sustaining a commercial art practice reveals a gulf between the ideal and the reality of critiquing authorship, and more open, complex considerations of how authorship might be defined and negotiated. Duchamp and Man Ray, who created Rrose Selavy, and Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore’s collaborative photo-portraits of Cahun, problematised authorship in the visual arts before the canonical, post-modern criticisms of the ‘author function’. Their theatrical staging also demonstrated that an ambivalent authorship might, as a by-product of de-stabilising the phallocentric male author, contribute to the discourse of gender politics. The difficulty in appreciating these partnerships’ contributions, however, is the tendency to view their collaborations as solitary creations, re-enforcing notions of individualism. Collectivism might also be a strategy of negotiating authorship. What became apparent through the case study of Art & Language, however, was that it is difficult to share control and creative labour over a prolonged period of time. The use of text emerged as a means of undermining the ‘hand of the master’, though the internet’s ability to help one self-promote and socially construct one’s own identity,

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Death of the Artist and network globally, is also a mechanism for authorial dissidence. The reflection on an all-male contemporary collective, LuckyPDF, reveals how contemporary collectives might have adapted to institutions of authorship rather than seeking to critique them, and the pervading constraints of neoliberalism. The Guerrilla Girls are a stark contrast to Art & Language as they are all female and work anonymously. The historical survey of their practice shows that anonymity is both a strategy that empowers feminist criticism of the male-author, but also problematises intellectual property and the concept of a ‘sisterhood’ that represents all women. Their ongoing practice and increased international recognition provides an optimistic example of how authorship might be reimagined alongside career and commercialism. Bob and Roberta Smith’s practice superficially critiques institutions of authorship through a double-gendered, pseudonymous name and collaborative practice but is in reality work attributed to one man, which becomes more obvious as ‘they’ gain institutional recognition. Artistic identity alone is not anti-authorial but other facets of the ‘author function’ can be successfully negotiated through collaboration, a DIY aesthetic, sense of humour and a mocking of the individual genius. Marvin Gaye Chetwynd’s practice reinforces the idea that a pseudonym alone is not a critique of authorship but it illuminates how theatrical devices and inclusivity might be and that we should take a multi-disciplinary approach to art theory and criticism. Authorship may not always be the sole intention of a practice but a by-product of an absurdist one interested in guises. Humour is key to many of the case studies, mostly because it punctures the authority of the status quo or seriousness with which artists are treated as ‘Author-Gods’. It is true that artists using alternative modes of authorship are less well recognised because they typically defy the biographical and scarcity models of the market. These artists also do not always intend to politicise their authorial status; it is sometimes a secondary effect of their conceptual or political approach. Moreover, where some artists set out to politicise their identities, they have struggled to maintain this aim or deny doing so. And, despite the growing number of collectives and participatory practices, these artists are equally marginal to the prevalent model of the commodifiable art object, its singular maker and the strength of the art market sustaining this model. It would be naïve to think that an artist can function entirely as an outsider, oblivious to the commerce of the art world and its biographical

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Conclusion reliance: Art & Language are represented by a commercial gallery and retain a patron, the Guerrilla Girls sell postcards and T-shirts, Bob and Roberta Smith released a feature film, while Marvin Gaye Chetwynd is represented by a private gallery. The cliche notion of the ‘artist’s artist’ is a seductive one; those that seemingly work tirelessly in education, gaining little financial success, posthumously or never, esteemed only by their peers. But even Marcel Duchamp, who chose not to exhibit for almost 10 years, sold artworks by Brancusi to make a living in the interim. I thus realised that prior to my research I had personally mythologised or championed my case studies. After all, their politics stem from a positive image of community. Instead, it became clear that the artists presented here are not simply ‘outsiders’. Rather, their commonality lies in their attempts to problematise, reimagine or adapt to institutions of authorship. In fact, from Art & Language to Chetwynd, each of these case studies challenge authorship from the inside – beginning at art school as a student or staff member – through to their exhibitions at notable and relatively conventional art institutions. Why and how they managed this became as interesting as their chosen modes of authorship. Collectives and pseudonymous artists, like ‘Folk Art’, are now trendy but remain relatively unexplored terrain. Perhaps, as a practitioner myself, I was preemptively aware of the growing popularity of my case studies. Bob and Roberta Smith, or Chetwynd, for example, are now art-stars in their own right, and their output has been hard to keep up with. The celebrity status of the artist is an ongoing subject that impacts upon authorship. In her book High Price (2009), Isabelle Graw writes: The figure of the ‘artist as exceptional being’ implies two things: the assumption of an outstanding personality, and the attribution of an extraordinary life. Both of these also apply to the now omnipresent figure of the celebrity, whose life and personality are supposedly exemplary and worth talking about.1

Celebrity lives are constructed through media reception, the only means by which most of us ‘know’ them, just like the artist’s monograph. However, the art celebrity is a little different. For the most part they produce a body of work separate to their person, the exception being performance art. Performance art explicitly blurs the boundary between artist and product, as Andrea Fraser demonstrated in her commissioned 239

Death of the Artist Untitled video, discussed in the Introduction. But, unlike the celebrity, as Graw points out, ‘apart from performance art, fine artists have the ability to adopt a position in relation to their product’.2 This is what the chosen case studies presented in this book do through their varied modes of unusual authorship: collectivism, using pseudonyms, working anonymously and sometimes all together. Another strategy would be to embrace media attention. Celebrity status can be double-edged, however. The Introduction discussed the British press’s personal attack on Hockney’s exhibition at the Royal Academy and their distrusting reactions to Tracey Emin’s autobiographical works. Indeed, in some cases, the artist loses cultural capital because they so blatantly flirt with the media. Graw cites artist Julian Schnabel as an example, who lost favour with his peers after posing for lifestyle magazines in the 1980s as a ‘beserk renaissance man’.3 Graw continues to call for an alternative artistic authorship: A more interesting approach would be either to reject a certain form of media coverage altogether, or to go further and attempt to address the conditions of celebrity culture in one’s own work in a less predictable manner.4

On the other hand, Pop artist Andy Warhol set a precedent for selfmythologising, working with other celebrities, creating his own It-girl stars, and is arguably the most successful self-made celebrity artist. In the UK, since the advent of the Young British Artists, it has become almost obligatory to relentlessly promote oneself and one’s art. It is even part of the skill set to have filtered into the increasingly longer job profiles that corporate culture demands. The creative, self-employed, self-motivated individuals sought after in our neoliberal capitalist culture resemble the ‘successful’ artist more than ever. Thus we might also question whether artists’ collectives or pseudonyms really are a means of negotiating authorship or a mode of adaptation; are they defying or indicative of a ‘neo-management’ culture of ‘communication machines’ that public museums like the Tate have become? As Graw puts it: ‘Capitalism is a perfidious machine that co-opts even the most emancipatory endeavors and the most eccentric characters.’5 Granted, we have seen how the Guerrilla Girls negotiate with major museum exhibitions, but their strength has been their ability to reject 240

Conclusion traditional ‘media’ coverage and, as Graw puts it above, ‘address the conditions of celebrity culture in [their] own work’. In this instance, it is the ‘celebrity’ of the white male artist championed by museums and the market that the Girls critique. The Guerrilla Girls have even used their masks to manipulate the media, gaining its attention to their own ends. Thus, their anonymity and authorial dissidence allows them to critique those institutions that seek to co-opt them. An analysis of the Guerrilla Girls and other collectives and collaborative projects serves as a reminder that maintaining a democratic authorship is very challenging. Viewing these through the lens of Hardt and Negri’s ‘multitude’ demonstrates that inclusivity is just as difficult to achieve, and that one group will always have a bias over what is deemed ‘important’ despite sharing a common goal, whether these be varying positions on feminism, authorship, class or labour. However, the collective struggle is still one of promise and purpose. A hierarchical and singular consensus of what great art is, whom it is for and who decides has held sway for too long. It is outdated and so it is now, when the digital age (somewhat) represents a move away from centralised power, that we should rethink the art world as a multiplicity of art worlds, driven not by the elite, but by a complex network of communities and cultures, The Artistic Multitude. There are other artists whose identities also challenge traditional conceptions of identity, including the British artist Banksy, who works anonymously, and Grayson Perry, who gives talks dressed as his alter ego, Claire. These artists have done much to challenge mainstream portrayals of the traditional artist’s personality. Banksy remains unknown, while his feature film Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010) ridiculed the celebrity artist; Grayson Perry has used his dress and ceramic practice to challenge male stereotypes championed by the market as ‘seminal’ while his popular Reith Lectures for BBC Radio Four discussed artistic strategies of ‘Playing to the Gallery’. The case studies presented here do not amount to a comprehensive history of authorially dissident artworks. Some very different histories of authorial practices are possible. The chosen case studies, instead, serve as examples of male and female (Western) artists who have taken potentially (or originally) ‘radical’ alternatives to traditional authorship and put them to the test within the conventional spaces of art at different points within the modern and contemporary art

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Death of the Artist world, before and after its most notable problematisation by Barthes and Foucault. They provide an antidote to the still prevalent notion of the single-male author with their alternative authorships, which attempt to disrupt or problematise art’s institutional function while also playing it at its own ‘game’. They serve to demonstrate that there might be other ways to critique authorship than one’s explicit artistic identity – for example, through text, feminism, humour, inclusivity or DIY materials. How an artist portrays himself or herself is, however, important, even if this is subversive. It became apparent through the interviews I conducted that a large portion of the success of each of these artists was also due to their personalities, for example, how articulate and charismatic they were. This is particularly important for artivist artists such as the Guerrilla Girls and Bob and Roberta Smith, who ‘gig’ and effectively act as ‘politicians’, but also for Chetwynd, who needs to direct a large cohort of collaborators. The artists and their artwork cannot, therefore, for this reason alone, be mutually exclusive. Indeed, for as long as patronage systems have existed, artists have had to be persuasive and flattering. Court painters had to please their employers and sustain long-term relationships. Artists’ personalities are significant: perhaps not entirely significant in understanding their work, but in understanding why one artist might be more ‘successful’ than another. Networking is not a new invention that coincided with the advent of Holmes’ concept of arts neo-management, but a historical means of ‘getting ahead’ that has always been an intrinsic part of an artist’s living achievements. Artists are also charged with conveying life, from the genres of history painting to portraiture. Thus, empathy forms a part in their ‘skill set’ to do so. It was therefore important to speak with each artist/s, if possible. These conversations ranged widely and included interesting debates on artistic identities, the market and education, which are far more symbiotic than often realised. The interviews also illuminated other reasons for their various choices of artistic identity. Seeking the artists’ explanations might at first seem to be at odds with the aims of this project but, given their alternative authorships, their responses should be read as partial accounts and are most useful when understood as part of a larger discourse on authorship rather than as definitive sources or viewed as ‘proliferating all meaning’. Indeed, it was not the intention of my research to be dismissive of the artist or biography altogether. While the biography needs to be

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Conclusion critically questioned as fraught with myth, it is still an important aspect of understanding an artwork’s making and meaning. What should have been demonstrated is the extent to which the biography has become dangerously prominent in our appreciation of art, and how particular artists have attempted to challenge this. A lot of this research has been conducted using auction house results, private gallery press releases and public museum exhibition catalogues. It is important to realise the significance of these ‘capitalist machines’ in producing free educational resources. As an artist myself, who conducts workshops with and for some of these institutions, I must also admit that, at least in the UK, public museums provide free forums for creative discussions, debate and public outreach. Whether or not these institutions and their projects are aligned with corporate sponsors, self-interested philanthropists or a familiar canon of retrospectives, it would be unfair to only criticise them. Indeed, is not necessary for an artist to completely eschew the art market or artistic institutions in order to critique or reimagine their infrastructures. The growing number of international biennales and trading art fairs demonstrate an increasingly rapid-paced, global market. While this system is almost wholly reliant on the commodity art object and singular artist, it at least provides a funded fringe platform – in the mode of satellite exhibitions and events, such as Frieze Projects – for other, alternative and emerging artists to demonstrate new ways of self-identification and production. Such projects are often presented as ‘marginal’, exhibited geographically and conceptually as outsiders to the main spectacle of the fair. They are also, paradoxically, somewhat co-opted into the larger, homoginsed system and infrastructures of the art world through corporate marketing and sponsorship. Nonetheless, with the globalisation of the art world, and inaugural biennales and triennials popping up in all its corners, these traditionally ‘white-washed’ versions of cultural diaspora will, hopefully, over time, dominate slightly less and the Western art market will be forced to re-evaluate its Euro-centric notions of taste and ‘good’ art, to challenge the pervading status quo of the singular, white, male author. As a form of cultural expression, it is important that art continues to critique its own complex structures; an undeniable part of which is authorship. The artists presented here establish that authorship is not beside the point or an out-dated concern; authorship is political and,

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Death of the Artist moreover, one can negotiate contemporary art world pressures through authorship and its critique. Whether some of these artists live on in name, legacy, posthumous re-incarnation by other artists or as inspiration, each of them demonstrates an alternative artistic modus operandi that encompasses the reader more than the reigning art world would have us believe is possible. It is my hope that this book helps us picture how authorship might be reimagined for the benefit of a more diverse art practice and its future reception.

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Notes

Preface 1. Roland Barthes, ‘The Death of the Author’ in Image, Music, Text, trans. S. Heath (Fontana: London, 1977), pp. 142 –8, p. 128.

Introduction 1. See Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation (Vintage: London, 1994), pp. 3 – 14. 2. Ernst Gombrich, The Story of Art (Phaidon: London, 1950), p. 1. 3. For more on this, see Christine Battersby, ‘The Clouded Mirror’, in Gender and Genius: Towards a Feminist Aesthetics (The Women’s Press: London, 1994, first published in 1989), pp. 32 –40; excerpt reprinted in Steve Edwards, Art and Its Histories (Open University and Yale University Press: London and New Haven, 1999), pp. 129– 33. 4. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. Werner S. Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1978), 5:308. Page reference is to the Akademie edition. 5. To complicate the general interpretation of Kant’s genius, see Michael Haworth, ‘Genius is What Happens: Derrida and Kant on Genius, Rule-Following and the Event’ in British Journal of Aesthetics 54:3 (2014), pp. 323–37; and Bradley Murray, ‘Kant on Genius and Art’ in British Journal of Aesthetics 47:2 (2007), pp. 199–214. 6. Janet Wolff, ‘The Death of the Author’, in The Social Production of Art (New York University Press: New York, 1993), pp. 117 –36, p. 118. 7. Winjnand Adrian Peter van Tilbug and Eric Raymond Igou, ‘From Van Gogh to Lady Gaga: Artist Eccentricity Increases Perceived Artistic Skill and Appreciation’ in European Journal of Social Psychology 44 (2014), pp. 93 –103. Many thanks to Wijnand for his time in person, discussing this study and broader ideas relating to art and psychology. 8. Sontag implies that ‘The Artist as Exemplary Sufferer’ could be equated with the ‘legacy of Christian tradition of introspection, opened up by Paul and

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Notes to Pages 6 –15

9.

10. 11. 12.

13. 14. 15.

16. 17.

18. 19. 20. 21.

22.

23.

Augustine, which equates the discovery of the self with the discovery of the suffering self’. Sontag, ‘The Artist as Exemplary Sufferer’, in Against Interpretation, pp. 39– 48, p. 42. For an early critique of the mythology of the artist, see Ernst Kris and Otto Kurz, Legend, Myth, and Magic in the Image of the Artist: A Historical Experiment (Yale University Press: New Haven and London, 1979). Adrienne Sussman, ‘Mental Illness and Creativity: A Neurological View of the “Tortured Artist”’ in Standford Journal of Neuroscience 1:1 (Fall, 2007), pp. 21–4. Helena Reckitt, Art and Feminism (Phaidon: London, 2012; originally published in 2001), p. 12. For an interesting take on this, with relation to Diane Arbus as portrayed in Fur, see Monika Pietrzak-Franger, ‘“The Dark Lady of American Photography”: Steven Shainberg’s Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus’ (2006), in Invented Lives, Imagined Communities: The Biopic and American National Identity, ed. William Epstein and R. Barton Palmer (SUNY Press: New York, 2016). Griselda Pollock, ‘Artists Mythologies and Media Genius, Madness and Art History’ in Screen 21:3 (1980), pp. 57–96, p. 59. Pollock, ‘Artists Mythologies and Media Genius’, p. 63. Deborah Cherry, ‘“On the Move”: My Bed, 1998 – 1999’ in The Art of Tracey Emin, ed. Mandy Merck and Chris Townsend (Thames and Hudson: London, 2002), pp. 134– 54, p. 134. This quote is a paraphrase of Miwon Kwon’s argument put forward in ‘One Place after Another: Notes on Specificity’, in Space, Site, Intervention: Situating Installation Art, ed. E. Suderberg (University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis, 2000), pp. 52– 3. Cherry, “On the Move”, pp. 141– 2. ‘The Death of the Author’ was first presented at a seminar in 1967. It was published in English in the United Sates in Aspen 5–6 (1967, Winter issue) and then in French as ‘La mort de L’auteur’ in Mant
ela V (1968). ‘What is an Author?’ was originally given as a talk at the Soci
et
e Franc aise de Philosophie, and first published in the Bulletin de la Soci
et
e Franc aise de Philosophie 63 (Paris: 1969). Roland Barthes, ‘The Death of the Author’ in Image, Music, Text, trans. S. Heath (Fontana: London, 1977), pp. 142 – 8, p. 143. Barthes, ‘The Death of the Author’, p. 146. Ibid., p. 128. Michel Foucault, ‘What is an Author?’ in Art in Theory, 1900 – 2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas, ed. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood (Blackwell: Oxford, 2003), pp. 949–53, p. 952. For more on this, see a short essay by Marco Pasi, ‘The Hidden Hand’ in Tate Etc. 37 (Summer, 2016), pp. 88– 95. Sarah Thornton juxtaposes the work and profiles of Damien Hirst and Andrea Fraser, among others, in ‘Act III’ of her book 33 Artists in 3 Acts (2014) in a way that illuminates the complicated politics of an artistic identity at the height of one’s ‘success’ and also examines the artists’ relationships with the wider art world.

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Notes to Pages 15 –24 24. Shannon Jackson, Social Works, Performing Arts, Supporting Publics (Routledge: London, 2011). 25. Claire Bishop, Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (Verso: London, 2012), p. 2. 26. Claire Bishop (ed.), Participation (Documents of Contemporary Art) (Whitechapel: London, 2006), pp. 12 –13. 27. Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics (Blackwell: London, 1998). 28. For an interesting read on fan art, see Julian Hoeber, ‘The Fan Club’ in frieze (20 September 2015). 29. Henry Jenkins, Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture (Routledge: London, 1992). Jenkins also points out that De Certeau encourages an understanding of popular thought, opposed to institutionalised or professional training in interpretive practice. Michel De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). 30. John Roberts, ‘Collaboration as a Problem of Art’s Cultural Form’ in Third Text 18:6 (2004), pp. 557– 64, p. 557. 31. Bishop, Participation, p. 12. 32. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology, 1845 – 6 (International Publishers Edition: New York, 1970), p. 109. 33. Roberts, ‘Collaboration as a Problem of Art’s Cultural Form’, p. 562. 34. Okwui Enwezor, ‘The Artist as Producer in Times of Crisis’, lecture delivered at 16 Beaver St on 15 April 2004 for Artists Group, found online in Dark Matter Archives, February 2011, last accessed 2 September 2014, www.darkm atterarchives.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Enwezor.AuthorProd.pdf. 35. Enwezor, ‘The Artist as Producer in Times of Crisis’. 36. Ibid. 37. Alan Moore, ‘Artists’ Collectives: Focus on New York: 1975 –2000’ in Collectivism After Modernism: The Art of Social Imagination after 1945, ed. Blake Stimson and Gregory Sholette (University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis, 2007), pp. 193– 222, pp. 216–17. 38. Nor are the case studies presented here representative of a comprehensive history of pseudonymous or collective artworks. We can read more radical critiques of authorship through the history of mail-art, situationism and punk, and there are artists who elude authorship for legal reasons, who set themselves far more against the art world. During the course of my research I have become aware of other collectives and pseudonymous practices that deserve equal attention. The British artist, writer and activist, Stewart Home, for example, deliberately employs plagiarism and has also taken on group identities, including the collective moniker Monty Cantsin, as part of his practice. This is a multiple-use name associated with Neoism that other artists and writers are encouraged to adopt as parodistic and in a determination not to be categorised. Other examples include the collective monikers Luther Blissett and Karen Elliot. Other more radical rejections of recognisable authorship include the contemporary artists Janez Jansa, Janez Jansa and Janez Jansa, who subsumed

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Notes to Pages 24 –31

39.

40. 41.

42.

1

their former identities in 2007 to work under the name of the Slovenian Prime Minister at the time. Together they intend to disrupt notions of identity versus identification, the personal name as brand and the spaces between the personal and the political. A note about the interview process and the practice of Oral History: the practice of Oral History is inherently subjective or inter-subjective and is itself a biographically dependent account, which runs at odds with some of my research’s arguments. Accounts held by the British Library, for example, are unedited so as not to misquote the interviewee, whose authorial voice is deemed primary and definitive. One of their collections is even titled ‘Artist’s Lives’ (1990– present), a project run in conjunction with the Tate Archive, ‘rooting the speakers in the society which formed them rather than isolating them solely within the art world’. Ironically then, while the formal discipline of Oral History is relatively new, and formed in opposition to more traditional, written history, its appears not too dissimilar from Vasari’s account, in name and perceived biographical methodology. Oral History must therefore be met with mindfulness and each interview understood as one of many personal accounts based on independent experiences and the interviewee’s ability to remember or tell the ‘truth’, and is best heard in conjunction with the accounts of several other interviewees. The comparatively short and directed interviews in this book should perhaps be understood as journalistic references more than ‘histories’ per se. Every transcript has been approved by each ‘voice’ and so the deposited written accounts should be considered as collaborative thoughts between each artist and myself on the subject of authorship. Molefi Kete Asante, It’s Bigger than Hip Hop (St. Martin’s Griffin: New York, 2009), p. 29. Rodney Diverlus, ‘Re/imagining Artivism’, in Artistic Citizenship: Artistry, Social Responsibility, and Ethical Praxis, ed. David Elliott, Marissa Silverman and Wayne Bowman (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2016), pp. 189 – 212. Foucault, ‘What is an Author?’, p. 953.

Parodies of the Self

1. One such exception is the critical work of Tirza True Latimer. Her book Women Together / Women Apart: Portraits of Lesbian Paris (2005) includes a case study of Cahun and Moore that argues the partnership manipulated cultural codes of gender and sexuality to forge new, lesbian (and/or genderambiguous) identities. Latimer makes a strong case for their collaboration as the key element in their construction of their alternative identities. (Tirza True Latimer, Women Together / Women Apart: Portraits of Lesbian Paris (Rutgers University Press: New Brunswick, NJ, 2005), p. 74). In an essay for Louise Downie’s collection Don’t Kiss Me, Latimer also asks us to consider what artistic hierarchies are being preserved by subjugating Moore (Tirza True

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Notes to Pages 31 –37

2.

3. 4. 5.

6. 7. 8.

9. 10. 11.

12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

Latimer, ‘Acting Out’, in Don’t Kiss Me, the Art of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, ed. Louise Downie (Aperture: London, 2006), pp. 56–71). Another historian arguing for Moore’s recognition is Julie Cole (see ‘Claude Cahun, Marcel Moore, and the Collaborative Construction of a Lesbian Subjectivity’, in Reclaiming Female Agency: Feminist Art History After Postmodernism, ed. Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard (University of California Press: Berkeley, 2005), pp. 343 – 60). For example, see Katy Kline, ‘In or Out of the Picture: Claude Cahun and Cindy Sherman’ in Mirror Images: Women, Surrealism, and Self-Representation, ed. Whitney Chadwick (MIT Press: Cambridge, MA and London, 1998), pp. 66–81; and Shelley Price (ed.), Inverted Odysseys: Claude Cahun, Maya Deren, Cindy Sherman (MIT Press: Cambridge, MA, and London, 1999). Juliet Jacques writes a little about this with regard to transgender identity in contemporary art: ‘Translating the Self’, frieze 174 (October 2015). Arthur Rimbaud to George Izambard, 13 May 1871, in Arthur Rimbaud: Complete Works, trans. P. Schmidt (Harper Collins: New York, 1976), p. 100. For a discussion on this, see Mary Ann Caws Rudolf E. Kuenzli and Gwen Raaberg (eds), Surrealism and Women (MIT Press: Cambridge, MA, 1991); or Whitney Chadwick, Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement (Thames and Hudson: London, 1985). Gavin Parkinson, The Duchamp Book (Tate: London, 2008), p. 50. For more information on the Baroness, see Francis M. Nauman, New York Dada: 1915 – 1923 (Abrams: New York, 1994) pp. 168–74. ‘Parallel Lives: Claude Cahun and Marlow Moss’ was a survey exhibition comparing the artists’ works at Leeds Art Gallery, UK (6 June – 7 September 2014). Dikran Tashjian, ‘“Vous Pour Moi?” Marcel Duchamp and Transgender Coupling’ in Mirror Images, ed. Chadwick, pp. 36– 65, p. 39. Latimer, ‘Acting Out’, p. 57. Andr
e Breton to Claude Cahun, 17 April 1932. This is quoted and discussed by Franc ois Leperlier in his ‘Afterword’ to Claude Cahun, Disavowals, trans. Susan de Muth (Tate: London, 2007), p. 213. Laurie J. Monahan, ‘Radical Transformations: Claude Cahun and the Masquerade of Womanliness’ in Inside the Visible: An Elliptical Traverse of Twentieth Century Art in, of, and from the Feminine, ed. M. Catherine de Zegher (MIT Press: Cambridge, MA and London, 1996), pp. 125 – 35, p. 125. Amelia Jones, Postmodernism and the Engendering of Marcel Duchamp (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1995), p. 179. Leperlier, ‘Afterword’ in Disavowals, p. 215. Abigail Solomon-Godeau, ‘The Equivocal “I”: Claude Cahun as Lesbian Subject’ in Inverted Odysseys, ed. Price, pp. 111– 26, pp. 114– 15. Jones, Postmodernism and the Engendering of Marcel Duchamp, p. 150. Ibid., p. 163.

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Notes to Pages 37 –45 18. Sigmund Freud, ‘Five Lectures on Psychoanalysis, Leonardo da Vinci and Other Works’ (1910), in The Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. XI, ed. James Strachey et al. (Vintage: London, 2001). 19. Meyer Shapiro noted that Freud’s interpretation of da Vinci’s dream was based on a mistranslation of ‘kite’ for ‘vulture’. See Meyer Shapiro, ‘Leonardo and Freud: An Art Historical Study’ in Journal of the History of Ideas 17 (1956), pp. 147– 78. 20. Cahun’s official archives are held in the Jersey Heritage Museum, Jersey, UK, which I visited in 2005. Stories of local neighbours were displayed, including those discussing Cahun’s eccentric dress and that she used to walk a cat on a lead. 21. Leperlier, ‘Afterword’ in Disavowals, pp. 207– 15, p. 209. 22. See Judith Butler, ‘Performative Acts and Gender Constitution’ in Literary Theory: An Anthology, ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan (Wiley: Oxford, 2004), pp. 900– 11; Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (Routledge: New York and London, 1990), p. 141. 23. For more on this, see Jacki Willson and Nicola McCartney, ‘A Look at “Fishy Drag” and Androgynous Fashion: Exploring the Border Spaces Beyond Gender-normative Deviance for the Straight, Cisgendered Woman’ in Critical Studies in Fashion & Beauty 8:1 (1 June 2017), pp. 99 –122. 24. See, for example, Del LaGrace Volcano and Judith ‘Jack’ Halberstam, The Drag King Book (Serpent’s Tail: London, 1999). 25. Francette Pacteau, ‘The Impossible Referent: Representations of the Androgyne’ in Formations of Fantasy, ed. Victor Burgin, James Donald and Cora Kaplan (Methuen: London, 1986), pp. 62– 84, p. 78. 26. Exhibitions include ‘Acting Out: Claude Cahun & Marcel Moore’, Jersey Museum (November 2005 – January 2006); ‘Claude Cahun’ at Jeu de Paume, Paris (25 February – 3 June 2012); ‘Parallel Lives: Claude Cahun and Marlow Moss’ at Leeds Art Gallery, UK (6 June – 7 September 2014); ‘Magic Mirror: Claude Cahun and Sarah Pucill’ at Bow Arts Nunnery Gallery, London UK (17 April – 14 June 2015); and ‘Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia’, Tate Modern, London (February – May 2008). Recent monographs include Gen Doy’s Claude Cahun: A Sensual Politics of Photography (I.B.Tauris: London, 2007) and Gavin Parkinson’s The Duchamp Book (Tate: London, 2008). 27. Claude Cahun on Suzanne Malherbe’s photomontage, Claude Cahun, Disavowals, p. 183. 28. Latimer, ‘Acting Out’, p. 57. 29. Cole, ‘Collaborative Construction of a Lesbian Subjectivity’, p. 351. 30. Kristine Stiles, ‘Performance’ in Critical Terms for Art History, ed. Robert S. Nelson and Richard Shiff (University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 2003), pp. 75– 97, p. 75.

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Notes to Pages 46 –53 31. Sigmund Freud, ‘The Uncanny’ (1919) in The Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. XVII, ed. James Strachey et al. (Vintage: London, 2001), pp. 217–52. 32. Doy, Sensual Politics, p. 44. 33. Latimer, ‘Acting Out’, p. 56. 34. Sigmund Freud, ‘On Narcissism, An Introduction’ (1914) in The Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. XIV, ed. James Strachey et al. (Vintage: London, 2001), pp. 73–102; Jacques Lacan, ‘The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience’, in Ecrits, trans. A. Sheridan (Routledge: London, 2001), pp. 1–7. 35. For Rrose S
elavy, see Jones, Postmodernism and the Engendering of Marcel Duchamp; for ‘Cahun’, see Whitney Chadwick, ‘An Infinite Play of Empty Mirrors’, in Mirror Images, ed. Chadwick, pp. 2 – 35; and Jennifer Shaw, ‘Narcissus and the Magic Mirror’, in Don’t Kiss Me, ed. Downie, pp. 33– 45. 36. Sigmund Freud, The Ego and the Id (1923), trans. J. Riviere (Hogarth Press: London, 1947). 37. Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-analysis, ed. Jacques-Alan Miller, trans. A. Sheridan (Penguin: London, 2004), p. 268. 38. See Freud, ‘On Narcissism’. 39. Shaw, ‘Narcissus and the Magic Mirror’, p. 44. 40. Marcel Duchamp, The Essential Writings of Marcel Duchamp: Salt Seller ¼ Marchand du Sel, ed. and trans. Michel Sanouillet and Elmer Peterson (Thames and Hudson: London, 1975). 41. Rrose S
elavy, ‘Men Before the Mirror’, in The Essential Writings of Marcel Duchamp, pp. 188– 9. 42. Marcel Duchamp in interview with Katherine Kuh, in The Artist’s Voice: Talks with Seventeen Artists (Harper and Row: New York, 1962), pp. 81– 93, p. 83, found in Jones, Postmodernism and the Engendering of Marcel Duchamp, p. 154. 43. David Lomas, The Haunted Self: Surrealism, Psychoanalysis, Subjectivity (Yale University Press: London and New Haven, 2000), p. 1. 44. Susan de Muth, ‘Translator’s Notes’ in Disavowals, p. xix. 45. Cahun, Disavowals p. 185. 46. Jennifer Mundy, ‘Introduction’ in Disavowals, p. xvii. 47. Doy, Sensual Politics, p. 39. 48. Solomon-Godeau, ‘The Equivocal “I”’, p. 112. 49. Monahan, ‘Radical Transformations’, p. 133. 50. Parkinson, The Duchamp Book, p. 50. 51. Cahun, Disavowals, p. 83. 52. Tashjian, ‘Vous Pour Moi?’, p. 45. 53. Jones, Postmodernism and the Engendering of Marcel Duchamp, p. 66. 54. Whitney Chadwick and Isabelle de Courtivron, Significant Others: Creativity and Intimate Partnership (Thames and Hudson: London, 1996), pp. 9 –10. 55. Chadwick and de Courtivron, Significant Others, p. 11.

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Notes to Pages 54 –64 56. Anon, ‘Growing Up Absurd’, Weekend Review section, Observer, London, 19 June 1966, p. 23; in Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia, ed. Jennifer Mundy (Tate: London, 2008), p. 175. 57. Cole, ‘Collaborative Construction of a Lesbian Subjectivity’, p. 356. 58. Cahun, Disavowals, p. 136. 59. Latimer, ‘Acting Out’, p. 56. 60. Doy, Sensual Politics, p. 38. 61. Claire Follain, ‘Lucy Schwob and Suzanne Malherbe – Resistantes’ in Don’t Kiss Me, ed. Downie, pp. 83 –95, p. 83. 62. Cahun, Disavowals, p. 12. 63. Marcel Duchamp to Man Ray, 24 December 1944, NY, in The Selected Correspondence of Marcel Duchamp, ed. Francis Naumann and Hector Obalk, trans. J. Taylor (Ludion: Belgium, 2001), pp. 247 – 8.

2 Collective Practice 1. Charles Harrison, ‘Partial Accounting: Art & Language’ in The Life and the Work: Art and Biography, ed. Charles G. Salas (Getty: Los Angeles, 2007), pp. 97 –107. 2. Charles Harrison, Essays on Art & Language (MIT Press: London, 2001), p. 91. 3. It is also worth nothing that the less cited essay by Beardsley and Wimsatt also critiqued authorship prior to Barthes and Foucault. Their essay argued that the author was almost irrelevant to the interpretation of their work: ‘the design or intention of the author is neither available nor desirable as a standard for judging the success of a work of literary art.’ Taken from Beardsley and Wimsatt, ‘The Intentional Fallacy’ in The Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry (University of Kentucky Press: Lexington, 1954), pp. 3 –18. Originally published in Sewanee Review 54 (1946). 4. Art & Language, ‘Introduction’ in Art-Language 1:1 (May 1969), pp. 1– 10, p. 10. 5. Harrison, Essays on Art & Language, p. 69. 6. Ibid., p. 20. 7. Mel Ramsden, ‘Artist’s Language 1’ in Art-Language 3 (New Series, September 1999), p. 37. 8. For example, between 1998 and 1999, another British collective called BANK carried out a critical but amusing project called Fax Bak. They sent a series of press releases back to the respective galleries that produced them, complete with annotated grammatical corrections and marks out of 10 or suggestions for better logos. In 2012, the press release was criticised again for its dense and uniquely inaccessible language. Artist David Levine and sociologist Alix Rule wrote an essay on what they termed ‘International Art English’. They pick up on the baffling language as a form of elitism perpetuating its own insular world, which is needed to retain the small but

252

Notes to Pages 64 –69

9. 10. 11.

12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

24.

expensive cultural capital for the market to sustain itself. They also identify an authoritarian voice in the press release that originated in art schools of the 1960s and the inception of Conceptual Art. See David Levine and Alix Rule, ‘International Art English’ in Triple Canopy 16 (17 May –12 July 2012. Issue titled ‘They were us’), last accessed 9 September 2014, http://canopy canopycanopy.com/issues/16/contents/international_art_english. Art & Language, ‘Introduction’, p. 10. Brandon Taylor, ‘Textual Art’, in Artists’ Books (Arts Council of Great Britain: London, 1976), pp. 47 –60, p. 60. Blake Stimson and Gregory Sholette (eds), Collectivism after Modernism: The Art of Social Imagination after 1945 (University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis, 2007), p. xi. Gregory Sholette, ‘Calling Collectives’, letter to the editor in Artforum 41:10 (Summer 2004). Also published in Collectivism after Modernism, ed. Stimson and Sholette, pp. xii – xv. Brian Holmes, ‘Artistic Autonomy and the Communication Society’ in Third Text 18:6 (2004), pp. 547 – 55, p. 551. BP has since ended its sponsorship – something that must be attributed, at least in part, to the pressure put on by art collective Liberate Tate. Holmes, ‘Artistic Autonomy and the Communication Society’, p. 552. Ibid. Claire Bishop, Artificial Hells: Participatory Culture and the Politics of Spectatorship (Verso: London, 2012), p. 14. Harrison, Essays on Art & Language, p. 2. Joseph Kosuth. This essay was first published in The Fox 1:2 (1975), pp. 87– 96. This excerpt is reprinted in Harrison, Essays on Art & Language, p. 119. Harrison, Essays on Art & Language, p. 120. Ibid. Documenta is an international exhibition of modern and contemporary art that takes place every five years in Kasel, Germany. Terry Atkinson, The Indexing, The World War 1 Moves and the Ruins of Conceptualism (Cornerhouse: Manchester, 1992), p. 39. This was an exhibition catalogue that also travelled to Belfast, Manchester and Dublin (IMMA, Irish Museum of Modern Art). I am attracted to the idea of the archive being a bruise or mark on the institution that it must resentfully carry. This is a similar story to the copy of Art-Language that galleries resorted to framing out of desperation to appear up to date, despite undermining the purpose of the discursive, opening pages. As a previous founding member of the collective PAD, Sholette describes the production of his own dissident archive now held at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York: ‘I think of this other archive of critical, surplus cultural activity as a mark or bruise within the body of high-art. The system must wear this mark or difference in order to legitimate its very dominance’

253

Notes to Pages 69 –74

25. 26. 27. 28.

29. 30.

31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

38. 39.

40. 41.

(Gregory Sholette, Dark Matter: Art and Politics in the Age of Enterprise Culture (Pluto Press: London, 2010), p. 9). Atkinson, The Indexing, p. 13. Ibid., p. 7. Ibid., p. 22. Chris Gilbert, ‘Art & Language and the Institutional Form in Anglo-American Collectivism’ in Collectivism after Modernism, ed. Stimson and Sholette, pp. 77– 94. Gilbert further analyses Art & Language as a product of socioeconomic politics that created a bureaucratic, administrative society. He argues that collectives often operate positively, in the interests of the working class, which is arguably what the Coventry-based founders of Art & Language were. His other case studies include Fox, another journal created by Art & Language between 1975 and 1976, which lasted for three issues, and Blurting, a 1973 project led by Michael Corris and Mel Ramsden (a founding member of Art & Language), consisting of 400 or so statements that linked to each other with symbols, like Index 01. Gilbert, ‘Art & Language and the Institutional Form in Anglo-American Collectivism’, p. 83. I have a series of email correspondence between Lisson Gallery and myself over the last few years. I have ultimately failed to find out the answers to more nuanced, financial and politically inclined questions about Art & Language. Charles Harrison, Conceptual Art and Painting: Further Essays on Art & Language (Writing Art) (MIT Press: London, 2003), p. 195. Atkinson, The Indexing, p. 19. Ibid., pp. 12– 13. Peter Osborne, Conceptual Art (Phaidon: London, 2002), p. 33. Osborne, Conceptual Art, p. 34. Ibid. Harrison and Wood, introductory commentary to ‘Art & Language: Editorial to Art-Language’ in Art and Theory 1900 – 2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas, ed. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood (Blackwell: Malden, MA, 2003), pp. 942– 3. Editorial originally published in Art-Language 3:3 (June 1976). Charles Harrison, Art & Language. Confessions: Incidents in a Museum (Lisson: London, 1986), p. 5. Christie’s, ‘Lot Finder for Art & Language, Index: Incidents in a Museum VI’, Christie’s website, November 2011, last accessed 25 April 2014, www. christies.com/lotfinder/paintings/art-language-index-incident-in-a-5503194details.aspx?from¼searchresults&intObjectID¼5503194&sid¼844ac7ca-b8a049f1-89df-9a20fd596fd4. After my enquiring by email, conversation with the gallery in early 2014. Terry Atkinson, ‘From an Art & Language Point of View, Introduction’ in ArtLanguage 1:2 (February 1970), pp. 25 –60, p. 25.

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Notes to Pages 74 –86 42. Charles Harrison, ‘Partial Accounting: Art & Language’ in The Life and the Work: Art and Biography, ed. Charles G. Salas (Getty: Los Angeles, 2007), pp. 97– 107, p. 97. 43. Harrison, ‘Partial Accounting’, p. 107. 44. Art & Language, a radio interview for the Museum of Contemporary Art Barcelona (MACBA), 7 April 2011, last accessed 24 April 2014, http://rwm. macba.cat/en/sonia?id_capsula¼819. 45. Harrison, ‘Partial Accounting’, p. 99. 46. Harrison, Essays on Art & Language, p. 94. 47. Art & Language interview with MACBA. 48. Gregory Sholette and Blake Stimson, ‘Periodising Collectivism’ in Third Text 18:6 (2004), pp. 573 – 83, p. 575. 49. Sholette and Stimson, ‘Periodising Collectivism’, p. 582. 50. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (Hamish Hamilton: London, 2004), p. xiv. 51. Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. xv. 52. Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulations (MIT Press: Cambridge, MA, 1995). 53. As of June 2014. 54. V22 is an art organisation based in South London, UK, with a shared ownership structure, which specialises in the collection of contemporary art, the production of exhibitions, events and educational initiatives, and the provision of artists’ studios and artisans’ workshops. This information is taken from their website, last accessed 15 April 2014, V22collection/com/ about. 55. See James Early, ‘Socio-Art and the Art of Interaction’, an interview in this book. 56. James Early, ‘Socio-Art’. 57. Roland Barthes, ‘The Death of the Author’ in Image, Music, Text, trans. S. Heath (Fontana: London, 1977), pp. 142 – 8, p. 146. 58. Julian Stallabrass, Internet Art: The Online Clash of Culture and Commerce (Tate: London, 2003), p. 117. 59. Stallabrass, Internet Art, p. 120. 60. James Early, ‘Socio-Art’. 61. Michael Wesch, ‘Anonymous, Anonymity, and the End(s) of Identity and Groups Online’ in Human No More: Digital Subjectivities, Unhuman Subjects, and the End of Anthropology, ed. Neil Whitehead and Michael Wesch (University Press of Colorado: Boulder, 2012), pp. 89 –104, p. 101. 62. Wesch, ‘Anonymous, Anonymity, and the End(s) of Identity and Groups Online’, p. 93. 63. James Early, ‘Socio-Art’. 64. Wesch, ‘Anonymous, Anonymity, and the End(s) of Identity and Groups Online’, p. 89. 65. Michael Sanchez, ‘2011: On Art and Transmission’ in Artforum (Summer 2013), pp. 294–301, p. 297.

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Notes to Pages 87 –93 66. Through their 2007 series of aptly networked (short but interconnected) essays for The Exploit: A Theory of Networks, Alexander Galloway and Eugene Thacker argue that new technologies rely on increased communication to work, but that ‘double the communication leads to double the control’. Alexander Galloway and Eugene Thacker, The Exploit: A Theory of Networks (University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis, 2007), p. 125. Interestingly, they do nod towards the ‘multitude’ as a theoretically powerful mode of resistance organisation, because it is more than the sum of the individuals that comprise it, but they continue to compare facets of the internet’s networking system to the Orwellian surveillance of 1984. 67. Franco Beradi, ‘Interview with “Bifo”: Reactivating the Social Body in Insurrectionary Times’ with David Hugill and Elise Thorburn, Critical Legal Thinking, September 2012, last accessed 10 September 2015, http:// criticallegalthinking.com/2012/09/26/interview-with-bifo-reactivating-thesocial-body-in-insurrectionary-times/. 68. The essay was originally published under the title ‘The Ironic Dream of a Common Language for Women in the Integrated Circuit: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s or A Socialist Feminist Manifesto for Cyborgs’, and can be found in its final form in Donna Haraway, ‘A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s’, in Feminism/Postmodernism: Thinking Gender, ed. L. Nicholson (Routledge: New York, 1990), pp. 190 –203. 69. Angela McRobbie, ‘Reflections on Feminism and Immaterial Labour’ in New Formations 70 (2010), pp. 60–76, p. 74. 70. Harrison, Essays on Art & Language, p. 105. 71. Sholette and Stimson, ‘Periodising Collectivism’, p. 583.

Interview: Socio-Art & The Art of Interaction: James Early of LuckyPDF 1. This is an edited version of an interview that took place on 9 May 2013. It focuses inevitably on a limited number of works and, where possible, I have elaborated on these and other referenced artists and exhibitions in my notes, or at least indicated where readers might seek more information. 2. Documenta is an exhibition of modern and contemporary art that takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany. 3. Young London Collection was a fashion line for the namesake survey exhibition hosted by the publicly funded organisation V22. V22 is an art organisation based in South London, UK, with a shared ownership structure, which specialises in the collection of contemporary art, the production of exhibitions, events and educational initiatives, and the provision of artists’ studios and artisans’ workshops. Taken from V22 Web. Via: V22collection/com/about Last accessed 15 April 2014. See Figure 2.3.

256

Notes to Pages 104 –116 4. Chloe Sims is a main character in the ‘reality’ television show The Only Way is Essex, produced by Lime Pictures; released by ITV2 (2010 –14) and ITVBe (2014–present). 5. ‘Remote Control’ (3 April –10 June 2012) was a group exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London examining the impact of television upon contemporary culture in the advent of Britain’s switch over to digital television. 6. LuckyPDF worked with television when they produced Live from Frieze Art Fair this is LuckyPDFTV, a series of live daily broadcasts incorporating over 50 artists of their choice throughout Frieze Art Fair in 2011. 7. Do you mind my asking how old you are? I’m 27 and the others are 27, 27 and 26. 8. This moral fable tells the story of a King so gullible and vain that he buys an invisible robe sold to him by flattering traveling merchant tailors, which actually does not exist, and thereby embarrasses himself when he ‘wears’ it for the public, appearing nude. The moral is that those with too much vanity and money will eventually be found out, and their lack of skills and modesty, exposed. 9. James Early and Yuri Patterson spoke as representatives of LuckyPDF as part of the symposium ‘The Trouble with Artist Collectives’ at the Institute of Contemporary Arts on Wednesday 17 April 2013, which I attended. 10. I think James here is referring to the fact that both LuckyPDF’s own history and the narrative of each project, especially one intended to document an event, runs in tangent with many others. There is no singular history of LuckyPDF and their stories are one among many.

3 Anonymity and Feminism 1. As the article explains, ‘et alia’ refers to: ‘founding Guerrilla Girl Gertrude Stein in collaboration with Josephine Baker, Aphra Behn, Jane Bowles, Julia de Burgos, Minnette De Silva, Chansonetta Stanley Emmons, Eva Hesse, Alice Neel and Alma Thomas.’ This journal article is referenced as ‘Gertrude Stein’ et alia, ‘Guerilla Girls and Guerrilla Girls BroadBand: Inside Story’ in Art Journal 70:2 (Summer, 2011), pp. 88 –101, p. 101. 2. ‘Gertrude Stein’ et alia, ‘Inside Story’, p. 93. 3. ‘K€athe Kollwitz’ of Guerrilla Girls stated: First of all, maybe {this kind of demonstration} worked for the generation older than us, in the late ’60s and early ’70s, but now, in 1984, the old picket line wasn’t working for this issue, number one. There had to be a more contemporary, different, better way to get this message across. We weren’t convincing anybody at all.

257

Notes to Pages 116 –126

4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

10.

11. 12. 13.

14.

15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

‘Frida Kahlo’ and ‘K€athe Kollwitz’, ‘Oral History Interviews’ with various Guerrilla Girls, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 19 January– 9 March 2008, last accessed 9 September 2014, www.aaa.si.edu/collections/ interviews/G. Brackets indicate later edits and are AAA housestyle. ‘Frida Kahlo’, ‘Oral History Interviews’. ‘Kahlo’ explains that Ida Panicelli was editor of Art Forum at the time of her apology. ‘K€athe Kollwitz’, ‘Oral History Interviews’. ‘Gertrude Stein’ et alia, ‘Inside Story’, p. 93. Guerrilla Girls, ‘Guerrilla Girls Bare All, An Interview’, Guerrilla Girls, 1995, last accessed 9 September, www.guerrillagirls.com/interview/index.shtml. ‘Gertrude Stein’ et alia, ‘Inside Story’, p. 96. The Guerrilla Girls’ archives, dated from 1985 to 2000, are held at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, which I visited as a Getty Scholar in August 2013. I have decided to retain the anonymity of all Guerrilla Girls, whether they chose to have their names redacted as part of the archive or not, in the spirit of their ongoing practice. Hal Foster, ‘Subversive Signs’ in Conceptual Art, ed. P. Osborne (Phaidon: London, 2002), p. 285. Originally found in Foster, Recodings: Art, Spectacle, Cultural Politics (Bay Press: Seattle, 1985), pp. 98 –116. See ‘Feminist Avengers’, an interview in this book. Naomi Klein, No Logo (HarperCollins: London, 2000), p. 280. Drapier’s Letters is the collective name for a series of seven pamphlets written between 1724 and 1725 by the literary and political spokesman Jonathan Swift (1667 –1745). The series, discreetly published and distributed among the public, was written under the pseudonym of M.B. Drapier because of its sensitive and controversial nature. Swift’s protest against the imposition of a privately minted copper coinage in Ireland was ultimately a critique of British control over Ireland at the time. The scandal led to a nationwide boycott of the new coinage and the patent to make it was withdrawn. Swift, after being revealed as Drapier, is subsequently often thought of as a hero by independent Ireland. Joel Schechter, ‘Jonathan Swift and the Guerrilla Girls’ in Satiric Impersonations: From Aristophanes to the Guerrilla Girls (Southern Illinois University Press: Carbondale, 1994), pp. 20 –33. Schechter, ‘Jonathan Swift and the Guerrilla Girls’, p. 29. Ibid., pp. 27– 8. See Chapter 2, note 8. ‘Alma Thomas’, ‘Oral History Interviews’ with Alma Thomas and Jane Bowles, 8 May 2008. ‘K€athe Kollowitz’, ‘Feminist Avengers’, an interview in this book. Guerrilla Girls, Code of Ethics, last accessed 9 September 2014, www.guerrillagi rls.com/posters/codeofethics.shtml. Josephine Withers, ‘The Guerrilla Girls’ in Feminist Studies 14:2 (Summer, 1988), pp. 282–300.

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Notes to Pages 126 –136 22. Withers, ‘The Guerrilla Girls’, p. 289. 23. Guerrilla Girls, Hot Flashes 1:1 (1993), back page. 24. Both quotes from Hot Flashes 1:1 (1993). Newsletter opens up so there is no formal pagination. 25. The Skype conversation between this author and Guerrilla Girl ‘K€athe Kollwitz’ took place on 25 June 2013. 26. On the Public Art Fund website it states: ‘Public Art Fund is a 501(c)(3), non-profit organisation that relies on contributions from individuals, corporations, and foundations to support the development and presentation of our exhibitions and outreach programs.’ Public Art Fund, ‘About’, last accessed March 2014, www.publicartfund.org. 27. Guerrilla Girls, ‘Guerrilla Girls Bare All’. 28. Guerrilla Girls, ‘Guerrilla Girls at the Venice Biennale 2005’, last accessed 9 September 2014, www.guerrillagirls.com/posters/venicewallb.shtml. 29. ‘Liubov Popova’, ‘Oral History Interviews’ with Guerrilla Girls Elizabeth Vigee and Liubov Popova, 19 January 2008. 30. Guerrilla Girls, ‘Guerrilla Girls Bare All’. 31. A list of Guerrilla Girl activities and poster work can be found on their website. This quote accompanies the piece found at Guerrilla Girls, ‘Do Women STILL Have to Be Naked to Get into the Met Museum?’, last accessed 9 September 2014, www.guerrillagirls.com/posters/nakedthroughtheages. shtml. 32. Guerrilla Girls, Confessions of the Guerrilla Girls (Harper Perennial: New York, 1995), p. 8. 33. This letter is part of the Guerrilla Girls’ archives at the Getty Research Institute. In case the curator wishes to remain anonymous, I have not stated their name or institutional affiliation. 34. Helena Reckitt, Art and Feminism (Phaidon: London, 2012), p. 12. 35. Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock, Old Mistresses: Women, Art and Ideology (Pandora: London, 1981), p. 45. 36. ‘Alma Thomas’, ‘Oral History Interviews’. 37. Parker and Pollock, Old Mistresses, p. 45. 38. ‘Alma Thomas’, ‘Oral History Interviews’. 39. ‘Julia De Burgos’, ‘Oral History Interviews’ with Guerrilla Girls Julia de Burgos and Hannah Hoch, 8 May 2008. 40. Anna C. Chave, ‘The Guerrilla Girls’ Reckoning’ in Art Journal 70:2 (Summer, 2011), pp. 102–11, p. 108. 41. ‘Alma Thomas’, ‘Oral History Interviews’. 42. ‘K€athe Kollowitz’, ‘Feminist Avengers’. 43. ‘Alma Thomas’ in Hot Flashes 1:4 (1994), p. 2. 44. Reckitt, Art and Feminism, p. 13. 45. An interesting take on this can be found in Winifred Breines’ book, The Trouble Between Us: An Uneasy History of White and Black Women in the Feminist Movement (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2006). Breines explains

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Notes to Pages 136 –142

46. 47.

48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57.

58. 59. 60. 61.

that white people, though fighting alongside African-Americans for the same cause, could not possibly empathise with the cause itself, and that the sense of ‘success’ expressed by white women, in comparison to the disillusionment among the African-American community, might reflect a difference in goals; there is a huge discrepancy between integration and equality. On the other hand, Nancie Caraway’s account, Segregated Sisterhood (1991), warns of the dangers of ‘ethnocentrism’. While she acknowledges that an all-encompassing ‘Sisterhood’ fails to recognise individuals and that ‘middle-class white feminists have much to learn about the dynamics of oppressions and the expanded viewpoint of one who has survived hegemonic power’, she criticises prioritising race over gender among feminists. Nancie Caraway, Segregated Sisterhood (University of Tennessee Press: Knoxville, 1991), p. 181. Breines, The Trouble Between Us, p. 17. Joshua Williams, ‘Going Ape: Simian Feminism and Transspecies Drag’ in Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts 21:5 (2016), issue ‘On Trans/Performance’, ed. Amelia Jones, pp. 68– 77, p. 70. Guerrilla Girls, Confessions of the Guerrilla Girls, p. 9. ‘Liubov Popova’, ‘Oral History Interviews’. Guerrilla Girls, ‘Guerrilla Girls Bare All’. ‘Alma Thomas’, ‘Oral History Interviews’. ‘Gertrude Stein’ et alia, ‘Inside Story’, p. 98. Letter from the Guerrilla Girls dated 4 May 1994, held in the Guerrilla Girls archives at the Getty Research Institute. ‘Elizabeth Vig
ee Le Brun’, ‘Oral History Interviews’. ‘Gertrude Stein’ et alia, ‘Inside Story’, p. 97. Ibid., p. 98. Anyone concerned with the biography of individual Guerrilla Girls can read Jeffrey Toobin, ‘GIRLS BEHAVING BADLY’ in The New Yorker (30 May 2005), or access the official archive at the Getty Research Institute. I will not provide a direct link in the spirit of the Girls’ collective. For more information, see ‘K€athe Kollowitz’, ‘Feminist Avengers’. ‘K€athe Kollowitz’, ‘Feminist Avengers’. Toobin, ‘GIRLS BEHAVING BADLY’. Imelda Whelehan’s Modern Feminist Thought: From the Second Wave to ‘PostFeminism’ (University of Edinburgh Press: Edinburgh, 1995, p. 12) documents the struggle of large feminist acephalous groups attempting to undermine the notion of the singular male ‘genius’. She states: The Women’s Liberation Movement remained loosely structured and decentralized in its determination not to produce ‘stars’ or leaders to speak for its ‘members’. This was one of the most striking and positive features of sexual politics, as well as being, arguably, the cause of its later decline.

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Notes to Pages 142 –152 62. This followed their exchange during the previous year at a symposium on ‘Feminist Criticism’ for Cornell University. They also continued the debate via a series of letters to each other that they had agreed in advance would be published for the volume Conflicts in Feminism (1990). 63. Nancy K. Miller, ‘The Text’s Heroine: A Feminist Critic and her Fictions’ in Diacritics 12:2 (Summer 1982), pp. 48– 53, p. 49. 64. Peggy Kamuf, ‘Replacing Feminist Criticism’ in Diacritics 12:2 (Summer 1982), pp. 42– 7, p. 46. 65. Peggy Kamuf, ‘Parisian Letters’ in Conflicts in Feminism, ed. Marianne Hirsch and Evelyn Fox Keller (Routledge: New York, 1990), pp. 131 – 2. 66. For more on this, see Joan W. Scott, ‘Deconstructing Equality-VersusDifference: Or, the Uses of Poststructuralist Theory for Feminism’ in Conflicts in Feminism, ed. Hirsch and Keller, pp. 134 –48, p. 143. 67. Liz Bondi, ‘Locating Identity Politics’ in Place and the Politics of Identity, ed. Michael Keith and Steve Pile (Routledge: London, 1993), pp. 84 –101, p. 93. 68. Bondi, ‘Locating Identity Politics’, p. 95. 69. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (Hamish Hamilton: London, 2004), p. xiv. 70. Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. xiv. 71. Angela McRobbie, ‘Reflections on Feminism and Immaterial Labour’ in New Formations 70 (2010), pp. 60– 76, p. 62. 72. McRobbie, ‘Reflections on Feminism and Immaterial Labour’, p. 65. 73. Ibid., p. 69. 74. Silvia Federici, ‘Precarious Labor: A Feminist Viewpoint’. This particular extract is taken from a transcribed PDF of her eponymous lecture given on 28 October 2006 at Bluestockings Radical Bookstore in New York City, 172 Allen Street, as part of the ‘This is Forever: From Inquiry to Refusal’ Discussion Series. Found online via In the Middle of the Whirlwind, last accessed 14 September 2015, https://inthemiddleofthewhirlwind.wordpress. com/precarious-labor-a-feminist-viewpoint/ PDF, pp. 4/12. 75. Federici, ‘Precarious Labor: A Feminist Viewpoint’, pp. 6/12. 76. Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 349. 77. Whelehan, Modern Feminist Thought, p. 146. 78. ‘Gertrude Stein’ et alia, ‘Inside Story’, p. 101. 79. Ibid., p. 97. 80. Ibid., p. 101. 81. Ibid., p. 89. 82. Ibid., p. 101.

Interview: Feminist Avengers: Guerrilla Girls 1. This is an edited version of an interview that took place on 14 August 2013. It focuses inevitably on a limited number of works and, where

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Notes to Pages 152 –168

2. 3.

4.

5.

6. 7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

possible, I have elaborated on these and other referenced artists and exhibitions in my notes, or at least indicated where readers might seek more information. K€athe Kollowitz (8 July 1867 –22 April 1945) was a German artist who is best known for her expressions of the tragedy of war and the human condition. My research at the archives of the Guerrilla Girls in the Getty Research Institute, LA, revealed correspondence over authenticity between the Guerrilla Girls and another self-proclaimed group, Guerrilla Girls West. The Guerrilla Girls gave a lecture and hosted an activism workshop as part of Yoko Ono’s Meltdown Festival at the Southbank Centre on 15– 16 June 2013. In 2007 MoMA organised a symposium on the theme of ‘The Feminist Future: Theory and Practice in the Visual Arts’. Keynote speakers, panellists and respondents included: Lucy R. Lippard, Anne Wagner, Marina Abramovic, Guerrilla Girls, David Joselit, Griselda Pollock, Martha Rosler, Catherine de Zegher and Linda Nochlin among others. Speaker is referring to their retrospective: ‘Guerrilla Girls 1985 – 2013’ at Alhondiga Bilbao, Spain (3 October 2013 –19 January 2014). The NEA, National Endowment for the Arts, in an independent funding body that once supported the Guerrilla Girls before pressure was put on to censor their publication Hot Flashes. Between 2007 –8 the Archives of American Art conducted a series of Oral Histories interviews with various Guerrilla Girls who had been active members of the group at any point since its formation in 1985. These can read online via: http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews (last accessed 8 September 2014). Throughout these, there are discrepancies between members, the documentation of which somewhat overshadows the positive projects and legacy of the Guerrilla Girls to date. Spelman, Elizabeth, ‘The Ampersand Problem in Feminist Thought’ in Spelman, Inessential Women: Problems of Exclusion in Feminist Thought (Beacon Press: Boston, 1998), pp. 114 – 32. The issue of tokenism is discussed in the interviews with Archives of American Art and in my Chapter 3. One Guerrilla Girl of colour wrote a resignation letter that claims she felt she was asked to be a member because she ‘was not white’. Claude Cahun is the pseudonym of artist Lucy Schwab (1894 –1954). She worked in collaboration with her life partner Marcel Moore, the pseudonym of Suzanne Malherbe (1892– 1972). Both these artists are discussed in Chapter 1 with regards to authorship. Cahun is best known for a series of highly staged photographs of herself taken by Moore, which were discovered after both women’s deaths. In 1985 the Guerrilla girls curated an exhibition ‘The Night the Palladium Apologised’, an exhibit of 100 contemporary women artists at the namesake NYC nightclub.

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Notes to Pages 172 –182

4 Pseudonyms 1. See Bob and Roberta Smith, ‘Art Mythologies’, an interview in this book. 2. Bob and Roberta Smith, artists’ website, last accessed 8 September 2014, http:// bobandrobertasmith.co.uk. 3. Chisenhale Gallery, ‘Bob and Roberta Smith’, September – October 1997, last accessed 2 September 2014, www.chisenhale.org.uk/archive/exhibitions/index. php?id¼110. 4. Matthew Collins in Bob and Roberta Smith, Don’t Hate Sculpt (Chisenhale Gallery and The Pale Green Press: London, 1997), pp. 17 – 20. 5. Bob and Roberta Smith, I Should be in Charge (Black Dog: London, 2011), p. 49. 6. Roland Barthes, ‘The Death of the Author’, Image, Music, Text, trans. S. Heath (Fontana: London, 1977), pp. 142 – 8, p. 146. 7. Bob and Roberta Smith, ‘Art Mythologies’. 8. Bob and Roberta Smith, ‘Everything talks to Bob and Roberta Smith’, Everything, last accessed 8 September 2014, http://bak.spc.org/everything/e/ hard/texts2/1patbrill.html. 9. Horst Griese, ‘To Form the World According to One’s Own Rules’ in MAKE YOUR OWN DAMN ART, ed. Bob and Roberta Smith (Black Dog: London, 2005), pp. 1– 17, pp. 12 –14. 10. Bob and Roberta Smith, ‘Art Mythologies’. 11. Ibid. 12. Bob and Roberta Smith, I Should be in Charge, p. 72. 13. Ibid., p. 77. 14. Ibid. 15. Bob and Roberta Smith, ‘Art Mythologies’. 16. Bob and Roberta Smith, I Should be in Charge, p. 77. 17. Jacques Ranciere, The Emancipated Spectator, trans. Gregory Elliott (Verso: London and New York, 2009). See also Michel De Certeau (1984), The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). Claire Bishop also posits that Ranciere ‘has opened the way toward the development of an artistic terminology by which to discuss and analayse spectatorship’ (Claire Bishop, Artificial Hells: Participatory Culture and the Politics of Spectatorship (Verso: London, 2012), p. 18). 18. Janet Wolff, ‘The Death of the Author’, in The Social Production of Art (New York University Press: New York, 1993), pp. 117 –36, p. 118. 19. Michel Gove was replaced as Secretary of State for Education in a cabinet reshuffle on 15 July 2014. 20. Bob and Roberta Smith, artists’ website.

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Notes to Pages 183 –191 21. Bob and Roberta Smith, an interview with Laura Halvin, Dazed Digital, August 2011, last accessed 8 September 2014, www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/ article/10043/1/bob-and-roberta-smith-you-should-be-in-charge. 22. Bob and Roberta Smith, ‘Art Mythologies’. 23. Excerpt from The Art Party Political Broadcast (2012). DVD displayed at Hales Gallery as part of the exhibition ‘The Art Party Comes to the UK’ (9 October – 7 November 2014). 24. The Art Party was documented and has since been turned into an 80-minute eponymous feature film by Bob and Roberta Smith and director Tim Newton. It was released on 21 August 2014 and shown at a number of national arts and picture houses. Described as ‘Part documentary, part road movie and part political fantasy’, Art Party ultimately asks ‘how do you tell one man he’s got it wrong?’ on its publicity blurb. Institute of Contemporary Arts, ‘What’s On’, Institute of Contemporary Arts, August 2014, last accessed 21 August 2014, www.ica.org.uk/whats-on/art-partyscreening. 25. Bob and Roberta Smith, I Should be in Charge, p. 20. 26. Jerry Palmer, The Logic of the Absurd on Film and Television Comedy (British Film Institute: London, 1987), p. 199. 27. Bob and Roberta Smith, I Should be in Charge, p. 51. 28. Lust For Life is a 1956 film starring Kirk Douglas, which charts a particularly melodramatic account of Vincent Van Gogh’s (1853 – 90) life. Basquiat is a 1996 biopic written and directed by the artist Julian Schnabel (b. 1951). Equally as melancholy, it tells the story of artist Jean Michel Basquiat’s (1960 – 88) quick rise to fame, his relationship with Andy Warhol, and struggle with drug addiction. It was criticised for its authorial slant, relating more to Schnabel’s career than Basquait’s. It would be interesting to carry out more research on the role of artist biopics and their contribution to mythologising the life of the artist. 29. Bob and Roberta Smith, ‘Art Mythologies’. 30. Pollock, ‘Artists Mythologies and Media Genius’, p. 95. 31. Bob and Roberta Smith and Neil Lebeter (eds), How to Let an Artist Rifle Through Your Archive (New Art Gallery: Walsall, 2013), p. 102. 32. Smith and Lebeter, How to Let an Artist Rifle Through Your Archive, pp. 117– 18. 33. Ibid., p. 58. 34. Ibid., p. 125. 35. Ibid., p. 123. 36. This was on 7 July 2014 for the Mary Ward Centre, London, at October Gallery, funded by Royal Female School of Arts, and organised by Nicola McCartney, this author. 37. See ‘K€athe Kollwitz’, ‘Feminist Avengers’. 38. Bob and Roberta Smith, I Should be in Charge, p. 77.

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Notes to Pages 191 –198 39. Bob and Roberta Smith, ‘Art Mythologies’. 40. Carrie Lambert-Beatty, ‘Make-Believe: Parafiction and Plausablity’ in October 129 (Summer, 2009), pp. 51–84, p. 54. 41. Ibid., pp. 51– 84. 42. Bob and Roberta Smith, I Should be in Charge, p. 126. 43. I last saw this facility on the artists’ previous website in 2007. 44. Barthes, ‘The Death of the Author’, p. 146.

Interview: Art Mythologies: Bob and Roberta Smith 1. This is an edited version of an interview that took place on 18 February 2013. It focuses inevitably on a limited number of works and, where possible, I have elaborated on these and other referenced artists and exhibitions in my notes, or at least indicated where readers might seek more information. 2. Max Wigram (b. 1966) now runs a private gallery on London’s Bond Street. Adam McEwan (b. 1965) is a British artist and curator. He now lives and works in New York. Interestingly, he is best known for a series of false obituaries he wrote for Kate Moss, Jeff Koons, Richard Prince and Bill Clinton. Blurring the lines between history and fiction, McEwan’s obituaries encapsulate the instability of the biography and demonstrate contemporary obsessions with celebrity and a social consciousness of mortality as a legacy in the making. 3. In 1997 Bob and Roberta Smith exhibited ‘Don’t Hate Sculpt’ at the Chisenhale Gallery, London. The show consisted of six fictional characters responsible for diverse works such as concrete vegetables and orange environments. The show also comprised a large pile of raw materials for every visitor to create their own artwork out of. ‘Don’t Hate Sculpt’ toured to Japan but the artist could not be there in person so the show was organised and presented under his name. Because of the pseudonym and fictional, collaborative nature of the exhibition, concerns over curatorial authenticity and artistic intentions are relieved. It could therefore be argued that the artist need not travel with the exhibition at all. 4. Walter Mitty is a fictional character in James Thurber’s short story ‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’, published in The New Yorker on 18 March 1939. It was made into a film in 1947, with a remake in 2013. Mitty’s character has a vivid fantasy life. The name is now used to describe a person who indulges in daydreams of personal triumphs. Billy Liar is a 1959 novel by Keith Waterhouse, which was later adapted into a play, film, musical and TV series. The story is about William (Billy) Fisher, a working-class 19-year-old living with his parents in the fictional town of Stradhoughton in Yorkshire, UK. Bored by his job as a clerk for an undertaker, Billy

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Notes to Pages 198 –200

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

spends his time indulging in fantasies and dreams of life in the big city as a comedy writer. ‘Old Flo’ is the name Henry Moore’s (1898 – 1986) sculpture, Draped Seated Woman (1957 –8), is more affectionately know as. The artist sold the sculpture to the London County Council (LCC) in the 1960s at a greatly reduced price on the condition it was displayed within the area. The sculpture was sited within the Stifford Housing Estate, Stepney Green, where it was popularly known as ‘Old Flo’. After the estate was demolished in 1997 it was put on display at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, where it has remained ever since. London’s Tower Hamlets Council now plans to sell Draped Seated Woman to raise money towards its budget deficit. From artists to members of the local community, there has been strong opposition to this decision. The Museum of London has proposed that its London Docklands site display the sculpture, which not only concurs with the spirit in which the artist originally made the sale but also preserves it as a part of the capital’s cultural heritage. Bob and Roberta Smith, also a local resident, is at the forefront of the public campaign trying to prevent the sale of ‘Old Flo’. Hales Gallery in London no longer represent Bob and Roberta Smith but did at the time of this interview. ‘The Art Party of the USA is not a political party but a forum for explaining to politicians contemplating cutting the Arts why they should think again! It was launched by Bob and Roberta Smith at Peirogi Gallery in New York in 2011.’ (theartpartyoftheusa.org). Bob and Roberta Smith exhibited a video piece in which the artist delivered his Art Party Political Broadcast (2012), as part of his latest solo exhibition at Hales gallery, ‘The Art Party USA comes to the UK’ (9 October – 17 November 2012). The film includes the artist presenting a series of messages on the importance of art in education accompanied by his own texts and sign paintings, some of which were also in the exhibition itself. While the content is sincere the artist clearly parodies the language of political broadcasting with his own humour. The Tea Party is an American political movement that advocates strict adherence to the United States Constitution. It is considered partly conservative, libertarian and popularist. I am referring to an interview with online ‘zine’ Everything, in which the artist says: “there are now two people who are the Japanese Bob & Roberta Smith. They took the show up to Hiroshima and I wasn’t even present.” This available online via: bak.spc.org/everything/e/hard/texts2/1patbrill.html. Last accessed 29 March 2014. Bow Wow Wow was an English band created in the 1980s by Malcolm McLaren. Their label at the time, EMI, refused to promote their single, C30; C60; C90, Go!, because it allegedly promoted home taping, as Side B was blank. Its namesake refers to its own medium and the various minute lengths cassette tapes could record. When BRS refers to this as a ‘McLaren-ish gesture’

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Notes to Pages 200 –207

10.

11. 12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

I understand this to mean that the single’s release was a publicity stunt in order to generate more sales and not entirely sincere in promoting a DIY approach, probably because McLaren had a personal investment in the commercial success of the band. Frieze Art Fair is an international contemporary art fair held in London’s Regent’s Park every October. Amanda Sharp and Matthew Slotover, the publishers of frieze magazine, founded the fair in 2003. See Chapter 4 note 28. Pussy Riot is a Russian feminist punk-rock collective based in Moscow. They wear brightly coloured balaclavas and use only nicknames during interviews. They stage unauthorised performances in unusual public locations, which are edited into music videos and posted on the internet, relating to issues of gender, sexuality and politics. In 2012 several members were arrested because their actions were deemed to have undermined the moral foundations of Russia. Their arrest attracted international criticism and celebrities such as Madonna and Yoko Ono spoke out in support of Pussy Riot. Ai Weiwei (b. 1957) is a Chinese artist who has openly criticised the Chinese Government’s stance on democracy and human rights. On 3 April 2011 he was arrested at Beijing airport and held for over two months without any official charges. It was later alluded to that he was suspected of tax evasion, which many people deem an excuse. A flashmob is organised by mobile phone or social media and includes a group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual act for a brief time and then quickly disperse, often for entertainment, satire or artistic expression. In February 2013, Bob and Roberta Smith invited people to dress as ‘Old Flo’ via their Twitter account (@BobandRoberta) and assemble in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. ‘Light Show’ is an exhibition held at the Hayward Gallery, London, from 30 January – 6 May 2013. It showcases sculptures and artworks that use light in different ways since the 1960s. Ralph Rugoff is the Director of the Hayward Gallery (since 2006) and is known to have curated a number of thematic exhibitions exploring Conceptual Art. ‘Andy Warhol: A Retrospective’ was held at Museum of Modern Art, New York from 6 February – 2 May 1989 and was Organised by Kynaston McShine. Gustav Metzger (b. 1926) was born to Polish-Jewish parents in Nuremberg, Germany. He came to Britain in 1939 as a refugee child. He is argued to have invented the term Auto-Destructive art in the early 1960s with his article ‘Machine, Auto-Creative and Auto-Destructive Art’ in the summer 1962 issue of the journal Ark. From 1959, he had made work by spraying acid onto sheets of nylon as a protest against nuclear weapons.

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Notes to Pages 207 –209 19. Anne Bean (b. 1950) is an installation and performance artist born in Zambia. She lives and works in East London. In 2008 Bean was awarded the ‘Legacy: Thinker in Residence’ award by Tate Research. 20. Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929) is a Japanese artist who lives and works in Tokyo and spent a considerable time in New York. Well-known for her repeating dot patterns, she works with a variety of media, from painting to installation. In 2012 Tate Modern held the exhibition, ‘Yayoi Kusama’ (9 February – 5 June 2012) in which the artist’s biography and psychological state was presented as a significant part of her practice, articulated in the curatorial text panels throughout the galleries: ‘Since 1977 Kusama has lived voluntarily in a psychiatric institution, and much of her work has been marked with obsessiveness and a desire to escape from psychological trauma. In an attempt to share her experiences, she creates installations that immerse the viewer in her obsessive vision of endless dots and nets or infinitely mirrored space.’ (tate. org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/yayoi-kusama) 21. Jeny Holzer (b. 1950) is an American artist who lives and works in New York. She became a prominent conceptual artist in the 1980s and is primarily known for her innovative use of large-scale text projections in public spaces, appropriating the language and style of consumer culture and news-speak. Barbara Kruger (b. 1945) is an American artist working with language and sign. Like Holzer, she came to prominence in the 1980s. She is best known for her black and white installations, large-scale collage reproductions of massmedia text and imagery, which she appropriates to address issues of gender and identity. 22. Louise Bourgeois (1911 – 2010) was a French-American artist renown for her large-scale, biographical and anthropomorphic sculptures. Bourgeois’ works are interpreted as expressive of her relationship with her parents, femininity and, subsequently, her old age. She is perhaps best known for her spider-sculptures, Maman, which resulted in her being nicknamed the Spiderwoman. In 2011 one of her spider works broke the record for the highest price paid for a work by a woman artist. When Bob and Roberta Smith refers to Bourgeois as a ‘super mythological artist’, I presume he is referring to her long-spanning career and consequential media attention, which was increasingly obsessed with Bourgeois’ age and biography. A good account of this would be Griselda Pollock’s ‘Old Bones and Cocktail Dresses: Louise Bourgeois and the Question of Age’ in Oxford Art Journal (Vol. 22, No. 2, ‘Louise Bourgeois’), (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 73 – 100.

5 Performance and Collaboration 1. Her show at Nottingham Contemporary was an exhibition of ‘performance sculptures’ or sets and footage from previous events by the artist. Also on display

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Notes to Pages 209 –212

2. 3.

4. 5.

were some of Chetwynd’s paintings from her series Bat Opera (2002–present). Cousin Itt, of The Addam’s Family, who has also appeared in previous Chetwynd performances, acted as a guide to the exhibition. In addition, a new performance was commissioned titled The Green Room. This was themed around debt and included characters as diverse as Cat Woman and Chewbacca. For more information, see Nottingham Contemporary, ‘Marvin Gaye Chetwynd, Tala Madani’, Nottingham Contemporary, 25 January–23 March 2014, last accessed 11 August 2014, www.nottinghamcontemporary.org/sites/ default/files/NC%20Guide_Tala%20Madani%20and%20Marvin%20Gaye% 20Chetwynd.pdf. Claire Bishop, Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (Verso: London and New York, 2012), p. 3. This was an award for a larger sum than the Turner Prize but never achieved as much acclaim. It ran from 2000 to 2006 in association with the ICA and was sponsored by Beck’s Beer. ‘Lali’ Chetwynd was nominated in 2005, alongside Luke Fowler who, interestingly, was also one of her fellow 2012 Turner Prize nominees. Other 2005 artists included Ryan Gander, Daria Martin, Donald Urquhart and Christina Mackie, that year’s winner. Daniella Watson in conversation with this author, Nicola McCartney, via email in January 2012. The original proposal included: An evening of multiple pleasures hosted by the magnanimous Jabba. The actor is more like Stevie Wonder than his on screen – sexist slave trading stereotype. The performance is a form of ‘bottled mayhem’ similar to the Marx Brothers. A series of acts add up to an evening of entertainment. The props and scenarios are obviously put together. The cultural source material and information is diverse and engaging – ‘east meets west’. The spectacle is more involving than the theatre, similar to carnival or Brecht’s theatre in the round. The intention is to make an experience that includes the audience.

Thanks to Grace Ambrose and Yulia Kalinichenko of the ICA for their help with this research and sending a scan of the original proposal (correspondence between November and December 2011). 6. I attended her talk on 3 October 2012 in conjunction with the Tate Britain for the 2012 Turner Prize, at which she stated being influenced by Bakhtin’s theory of the carnivalesque. From here on in, please assume all quotations provided in context with this talk are paraphrased and taken from my personal notes throughout the talk. Given her degree in Anthropology, we can assume she has an academic understanding of Bakhtin and my contextualisation of her practice within this theory is not too far-fetched. Moreover, there are accompanying programmes to some of her performances citing Brecht and Bakhtin’s influence that I discuss later on.

269

Notes to Pages 212 –218 7. Marvin Gaye Chetwynd in ‘Marvin Gaye Chetwynd, Tala Madani (25 January– 23 March 2014)’, Found online via Nottingham Contemporary, www. nottinghamcontemporary.org/sites/default/files/ChetwyndExhibitionNotes.pdf, p. 11. 8. Guy Debord, Society and Spectacle (1967) (Zone Books: New York, 1997). 9. Walter Benjamin, ‘The Author as Producer’ in Benjamin, Selected Writings, Vol. 2:2, 1931 – 4 (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA, 2003), p. 777. 10. Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. H
elene Iswolsky (Indiana University Press: Bloomington, 1984), p. 4. 11. In the 1920s, Bakhtin even wrote an essay on ‘Author and Hero’. The essay is generally considered an analysis of the relationship between self and Other in the twentieth century. He says, ‘In my last word, I turn to the outside of myself and surrender myself to the mercy of the other’ (‘Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity’ in Art & Answerability: Early Philosophical Essays by MM Bakhtin, ed. Michael Holoquist, trans. Vadim Liapunov and Kennith Bronstrom (University of Texas Press: Austin, 1990), p. 128). This reminds us of the parallel concerns in Surrealism and psychoanalysis with self and Other, consciousness and subjectivity, discussed in Chapter 1. 12. Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (University of Texas Press: Austin, 1981), pp. 293– 4. 13. Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevosky’s Poetics, ed. and trans. Caryl Emerson (University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis, 1984), p. 7. 14. Deborah J. Haynes, Bakhtin and the Visual Arts (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2008), pp. 156 –7. 15. Haynes, Bakhtin and the Visual Arts, p. 172. 16. Performance programme as part of a collection from 2001 to 2007 (Migros Museum f€ur Gegenwartskunst: Zurich, 2007). 17. As part of Chetwynd’s show at Nottingham Contemporary she also exhibited a recreation of the Starship Troopers (film, 1997) character, the Brain Bug: a ginormous sluggish character with an orifice the size of a human. 18. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, p. 19. 19. Spartacus Chetwynd, in interview with Helen Sumpter, ‘Spartacus Chetwynd’, Time Out, October 2010, last accessed 3 September 2014, www.timeout.com/ london/art/spartacus-chetwynd-2. 20. Ben Luke, ‘Lali Chetwynd: I am Spartacus’, Evening Standard, 14 October 2010, last accessed 4 September 2014, www.standard.co.uk/goingout/exhibitions/ lali-chetwynd-i-am-spartacus-6524455.html. 21. The Hulk is a fictional superhero who appears in comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, and first appeared in The Incredible Hulk #1 (May 1962). 22. Jessica Lack, ‘Artful Bodger’, Guardian, Saturday 26 April 2008, last accessed 4 September 2014, www.theguardian.com/culture/2008/apr/26/art. exhibition.

270

Notes to Pages 219 –230 23. Tom Morton, ‘The Epic and the Everyday: Theatre, Bats, Puppets and Paintings’, frieze 107 (May 2007), last accessed 4 September 2014, www.frieze. com/issue/article/spartacus_chetwynd/. 24. Marvin Gaye Chetwynd was commissioned to exhibit with Studio Voltaire again in September 2014 for their twentieth-anniversary autumn programme. 25. Lack, ‘Artful Bodger’. 26. Morton, ‘The Epic and the Everyday’. 27. Chetwynd in conversation with Ben Luke, ‘Lali Chetwynd: I’m Spartacus’. 28. Her press officer at Sadie Coles informed me this was administered on 24 September 2013, and was not changed by deed poll, when I enquired by telephone shortly afterwards. 29. Paraphrased from What Do Artists Do All Day?: Marvin Gaye Chetwynd, television programme, BBC Four, Nottingham Contemporary, episode 10/12, March 2014. 30. Chetwynd initially refused to be interviewed by myself on the basis that her name is a ‘sensitive subject’. Since undergoing the production of this book, her representative gallery have said that she has changed her mind but we are yet to find a convenient date. 31. Lack, ‘Artful Bodger’. 32. Chetwynd, What Do Artists Do All Day?: Marvin Gaye Chetwynd. 33. Tate and Chetwynd and her participants in The Fall of Man (2006), ‘Tate Triennial 2006’, 23 February 2006, last accessed 9 September 2014, www.tate. org.uk/context-comment/video/tate-triennial-2006-lali-chetwynd. 34. Morton, ‘The Epic and the Everyday’. 35. Chetwynd, Marvin Gaye Chetwynd, Tala Madani (25 January –23 March 2014), p. 12 of the pdf format online. 36. Chetwynd and her participants in The Fall of Man (2006), ‘Tate Triennial 2006’. 37. Martin Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd (Pelican: London, 1980), p. 26. 38. Hugo Ball, an entry in his diary on 14 April 1917 printed in ‘Dada Tagebuck’, in Arp/Huelsenbeck/Tzara, Dre Gebir des Dada (Ache: Zurich, 1957) p. 139. This excerpt is cited in Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd, p. 355. 39. Shannon Jackson, Social Works, Performing Art, Supporting Publics (Routledge: London, 2011), p. 139. 40. Chetwynd, in her Turner Prize talk (3 October 2012). 41. Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd, p. 403. 42. For more on this critique, see Amelia Jones, ‘“Presence” in Absentia: Experiencing Performance as Documentation’ in Art Journal 56:4 (Winter, 2007. Issue titled ‘Performance Art: (Some) Theory and (Selected) Practice at the End of This Century’ and published by College Art Association), pp. 11–18. 43. Philip Auslander, ‘The Performativity of Performance Documentation’ in PAJ: The Journal of Performance and Art 28:3 (September, 2006), pp. 1 –10, p. 2. 44. There are two early exceptions. The first is the video documentation of Thriller, which the artist refers to as unsuccessful because of its stationary viewpoint,

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Notes to Pages 230 –240

45. 46. 47.

48. 49. 50. 51.

52.

from start to finish of the song, as discussed in her Turner Prize talk. This is ironic because, for most audience members, this is the only experience they have of a performance, often restricted from moving around an event. The second is the documentation of the Walk to Dover, which had no audience except for those that the artist and her friends encountered along their journey. Henry Jenkins, Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture (Routledge: London and New York, 1992), p. 4. Chetwynd, What Do Artists Do All Day?: Marvin Gaye Chetwynd. The artist seemed to be implying this was institutional feedback, or from her own dealer. This is because she argued, at the time of talking, that a video recording of a live performance, which her talk was to be considered as, carries a false air of dominance in being attributed the title of ‘document’. Chetwynd, paraphrased from her Turner Prize talk (3 October 2012). Chetwynd, What Do Artists Do All Day?: Marvin Gaye Chetwynd. Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd, p. 400. Janina Pedan, ‘Homemade, the South London Cultural Centre’, Dossier Journal (21 September 2009) (now removed from their content – Dossierjournal.com), contact this author, Nicola McCartney, for a PDF of the original article. Coline Milliard, ‘Spartacus Chetwynd at Monteverdi Tuscany, Castiglioncello del Trinoro, 2013’, ArtInfo, 24 September 2013, last accessed 4 September 2014, www.blouinartinfo.com/news/story/962788/spartacus-chetwynd-paintsbats-changes-name-to-marvin-gaye.

Conclusion 1. Isabelle Graw, High Price: Art Between the Market and Celebrity Culture (Sternberg Press: Berlin, 2009), p. 162. 2. Graw, High Price, p. 164. 3. Ibid., p. 97. 4. Ibid., p. 165. 5. Ibid., p. 114.

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Index

Page numbers in italics refer to figures. Italics are used in headings for names of artworks, exhibitions, publications, etc. Absurdist art, 226 –8 accreditation see attribution of works aesthetics of groups, 93–4 ambivalent authorship, 48, 224 androgyny, 33, 39–40, 39, 41 –2, 42 anonymity of Guerrilla Girls: appropriation of, 139 benefits of, 116– 17, 126, 135, 137–8 drawbacks of, 138– 9 inequality resulting from, 139 –40 myth of, 155–6 use of masks and pseudonyms, 116– 17, 133–4, 135, 137, 158, 164 Anonymous (website), 84– 5 Anthony, Saint, temptation of, 210–11 appropriation by artists, 16, 80, 82, 94, 119–20 Arbus, Diane, 8 Archives of American Art Guerrilla Girls interviews, 162 –3 archiving work and history, 164– 5 Art & Language: and art world, 26 attribution of works to, 61, 68– 9, 74 background, 21, 60– 1, 90 Collectivism of, 60 –4, 67– 72, 74– 6, 88 –9 logistical challenges, 67– 8 membership, 26, 60, 62– 3

work of, 27, 61–4, 72 –7 WORKS Index 01, 68 –72, 69 Index: Incidents in a Museum VI, 72 –4, 73 Art Car Boot Fair, London, 179 Art Party, The, 183–5, 185, 199 Artistic Multitude, 183 artists of colour, collection and display of, 124, 126, 127, 153 artists theorising their own work, 75 artivism, 25 Atkinson, Terry, 62, 68–70, 71– 2, 74 attribution of works, 14 to Art & Language, 61, 68 –9, 74 of Conceptual Art, 64 of Guerrilla Girls, 139 of LuckyPDF, 80, 83, 94– 5, 112 to Man Ray, 54 to Moore, Marcel, 54 –5, 57 of Smith, Bob and Roberta, 198 audiences, relationships with, 26, 100– 4 see also public participation Ault, Julie, 75 Auslander, Philip, 229– 30 authenticity: of artists, 6, 10, 28, 176, 198 of works of art, 14, 122

285

Death of the Artist authorship: case studies, introduction to, 20– 8 challenges to traditional concepts, 11 –20 traditional concepts of, 3– 11 Bainbridge, David, 62 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 213– 14, 216 Baldwin, Michael, 60, 62, 63, 74– 6, 77 Ball, Hugo, 226–7 BANK, 252n.8 Banksy, 241 Barlow, Phyllida, 179 Barthes, Roland, 3, 11, 12– 13, 46, 50, 175, 192, 214 Baudelaire, Charles, 12 Bean, Anne, 207 Beatty-Lambert, Carrie, 191 Beckett, Samuel, Waiting for Godot, 226 Benjamin, Walter, 120, 213 Beradi, Franco ‘Bifo’, 87 Beuys, Joseph, 174 bias in collections, 125– 6, 153 –4 biographies of artists, 3– 10, 24, 242–3 Art & Language, 74 Cahun, Claude, 31, 35, 49 –50, 57 Guerrilla Girls, 132–3, 138, 139, 164– 5 LuckyPDF, 85– 6, 111–14 S
elavy, Rrose, 31, 57 Smith, Bob and Roberta, 187– 9, 190– 1 Bishop, Claire, 15, 18, 66, 210 Blake, William, 13 Blissett, Luther, 177 Blum, Michael, A Tribute to Safiye Behar, 191 Bondi, Liz, 144, 145 Bourgeois, Louise, 208 Bourriaud, Nicolas, 15 Brecht, Bertolt, 212 –13 Breines, Winifred, 136 Breton, Andr
e, 32, 35 Brill, Fred, 197

Brill, Patrick, 22, 171, 172, 176, 186, 191, 193 see also Smith, Bob and Roberta Brill, Roberta, 172, 197 Brown, Diane, 117 ‘Burgos, Julia De’, 134 Butler, Judith, 40 Ca’ Pesaro International Gallery of Modern Art, Venice, 130 Cahun, Claude: androgyny of, 32– 3, 39 –40, 39, 41 –3, 42 background, 20, 29, 30 –1 collaboration with Moore, 31, 45– 6, 54 –5, 57 and feminist art theory, 36 gaze of, 45 humour, use of, 25 life on Jersey, 34 masks, use of, 41– 3, 42, 46 mirrors, use of, 47 rediscovery of, 35 as subject, 51 theatrical work, 34– 5 WORKS Aveux non Avenus (Disavowals) 41, 49 –50 capitalism and Collectivism, 18, 65 –6 carnivalesque, 23, 26, 213, 214, 216 ‘Carriera, Rosalba’, 119 case studies, introduction to, 20– 8 celebrity lives, 239 Chadwick, Whitney, 52, 137 chain letters, 183 Chaplin, Charlie, 34 Chave, Anna, 134 Cherry, Deborah, 10– 11 Chetwynd, ‘Lali’: Debt, A Medieval Play, 210–11 Evening with Jabba the Hutt, An, 211– 12, 213 Fall of Man, a puppet extravaganza, The, 223 –4, 226

286

Index Thriller, 217– 18 Walk to Dover, A, 219 Chetwynd, ‘Marvin Gaye’: and art market, 26 background, 193– 4 humour, use of, 25, 26 morality of practice, 232 name of, 25, 221 performance and documentation, 23, 218, 229– 32 shared authorship, 26, 222 text, use of, 27 WORKS Bat Opera, 235– 6, 235 Chetwynd, ‘Spartacus’: critique of institutions, 217 grotesque characters, 215–16, 218– 19 identities of the artist, 233 name of, 23, 219–20, 221, 236 powerful women, 217 public participation, 210 –12, 222, 229 and Theatre of the Absurd, 226– 7 work as ‘art’, 229 WORKS Frieze Project (2010), 216 –17 Giotto’s Play, 215 Home Made Tasers, 234 Odd Man Out, 222–3, 225 South London Cultural Centre, 233 Cole, Julie, 45, 54– 5 collaborative work, 17– 19, 53 Cahun and Moore, 31, 45 –6, 50 –1, 54 –5, 57 Chetwynd, 210, 217–18, 224, 232 Duchamp and Man Ray, 30, 43, 45 –6, 48, 50 –1, 54, 57– 8 Smith, Bob and Roberta, 203– 4 Collectivism: and Art & Language, 60– 4, 67– 72, 74 –6, 88– 9 and authorship, 59– 60 background, 17 –19

case studies, introduction to, 21, 26, 247n37 discussion, 65– 7 of Guerrilla Girls, 118, 160–1 and the internet, 77 –8, 85– 6 and LuckyPDF, 78–80, 88– 9, 108– 10 Collins, Matthew, 174– 5 Columbia College, Chicago, 159 commodification of art and artists, 11–12, 14, 79, 178, 228 compartmentalisation of roles, 95 –7 Conceptual Art, 17– 18, 61–2, 64, 71–2, 76 conflicts of interest, exposure of, 126 Consciousness Raising, 144 contracts, 95–6 copies, 120 copyright, 11, 83, 94– 5, 121 Cornell, Joseph, 33, 34 corporate language, 122–3 see also language of art corporate sponsorship, 66, 110, 127 Coventry School of Art, 62 craftspeople, 93 cross-dressing, 33, 34 see also drag, wearing of Crowe, Nick, SERVICE200, 83 Culture Jamming, 121– 2 curators: artists as, 76 –7, 224 response to Guerrilla Girls, 156, 159 role of, 63, 124–5, 206, 212 Dadaism, 32, 226 Daskalopoulos, Dimitris, 125 De Courtivron, Isabelle, 52 De Muth, Susan, 49 ‘death of the author’ idea of Barthes, 11, 12–13, 46, 50, 214 Debord, Guy, 15, 213 Dery, Mark, 122 Dickens, Charles, David Copperfield, 219

287

Death of the Artist discrimination in art collections, 124–7 Diverlus, Rodney, 25 documentation: by Art & Language, 68 –71, 69 of artistic practice, 20 of Guerrilla Girls, 142, 162–5 of performance, 23, 218, 229–32 self-documentation, 86 donated art, 125 Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 214 double, theme of the, 46– 7 Doy, Gen, 46, 50, 55 drag, wearing of, 33 –4, 40, 41, 43, 44, 137 Duchamp, Marcel: alternative identity as Rrose S
elavy, 43, 51 background, 20, 29, 30, 31 collaboration with Man Ray, 30, 43, 45 –6, 48, 50 –1, 54, 57– 8 dependency on Man Ray, 57 –8 gender fluidity, 32– 4, 37, 41 identity of, 31, 34, 38, 48, 51, 53, 54 rediscovery of, 35 WORKS Fountain, 32, 62 L.H.O.O.Q, 37 see also S
elavy, Rrose Duveen, Joseph, 125 Early, James, interview, 90– 114 eccentricity of artists, 5 –6 education in art, 174–5, 179– 83 Emin, Tracey, 10–11 employment conditions, 88 Engels, Frederick, 18 Enwezor, Okwui, 19 Epstein, Jacob, 187–8, 189 First Portrait of Esther (With Long Hair), 189 Everling, Germaine, 43 exhibition spaces, context of see space, context of

fan culture, 16 fashion project by LuckyPDF, 80, 81, 93–4 Federici, Silvia, 147 female artists, 6 – 7, 8, 12 see also women artists, collection and display of female stereotypes, 106, 132, 133 see also drag, wearing of female subjectivity, 33 feminisation of the workforce, 146 feminism: and racism, 135–6 of Smith, Bob and Roberta, 189–90 feminist art theory, 36 feminist positions on authorship, 142–3 feminist protests, 116– 17, 118, 123, 124–5, 127, 129– 30, 131, 132 fiction in art, 198 finances of collectives, 92– 3, 98 –9, 155, 166, 168 flashmobs, 177– 8, 205 Flavin, Dan, 126 Foster, Hal, 119 Foucault, Michel, 3, 11, 12, 13, 14, 28 Fraser, Andrea, 14– 15 Freud, Sigmund, 32, 46, 47 Freytag-Loringhoven, Elsa, 33, 34 funding of art, 101, 127, 128, 200–1 see also finances of collectives Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus (2006), 8 gaze of subjects, 45 gender equality, 190 gender fluidity, 30, 31 –2, 33– 4, 37–41, 38 gendered signatures, 142– 3 genius, concept of, 4– 5, 6, 7 –8, 12– 14, 53, 186, 215 Gilbert, Chris, 70 –1 Gilbert, Elizabeth, 14 Giotto di Bondone, 215

288

Index Gluck, Hannah, 33 Gombrich, Ernst, 3 Gove, Michael, 180, 184, 185– 6 Graw, Isabelle, 239 –40 Griese, Horst, 176 grotesque characters, 215–16, 218– 19 ‘Guerrilla Girl l’, 138 Guerrilla Girls: anonymity of, 116–17, 126, 133– 4, 135, 137– 42, 155– 6, 158, 164 archives and history, 142, 162– 3, 164– 5 and the art world, 26, 27, 126, 157– 60 authorship, 118, 148, 150 background, 21 –2, 152 Culture Jamming by, 121 –3 diversity and tokenism within, 133– 5, 163 feminism of, 116 –17, 118, 123, 124– 5, 132, 153– 4 funding of, 126–9, 168 humour, use of, 25, 124, 131–2 intellectual property, 140, 141 investing in art, 165 language used by, 123 membership, 26, 115, 118, 139– 41, 160, 161, 167 as a ‘multitude’, 145– 9 name of, 25, 123–4, 154, 156 posters and print, 27, 116 –17, 119– 21, 127, 130–1, 154, 155 roles within, 119, 160–1 success of, 150–1 talks and workshops, 117, 118 WORKS Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art, 132, 133 Bitches, Bimbos and Ballbreakers, 133 Code of Ethics for Art Museums 123, 124– 5 Confessions, 137, 138

Do Women Have to Be Naked to Get Into the Met. Museum?, 127, 131, 131 Guerrilla Girls’ Pop Quiz, 120, 121 Hot Flashes, 126, 128, 129, 135 Public service announcement. . ., 128 Where are the women artists of Venice? . . ., 129– 30 Guerrilla Girls BroadBand, 140, 142, 149, 161 Letters to Bad Bosses, 150 Guerrilla Girls, Inc, 140, 142 Guerrilla Girls On Tour, 140, 142, 161 Guerrilla Girls West, 139, 156 Guggenheim, New York, 126 Guggenheim, Venice, 130 Hales Gallery, London, 179 Haraway, Donna, 87 Hardt, Michel, 20, 78, 145– 9, 183 Harrison, Charles, 60– 3, 67– 9, 71–6, 88 Haynes, Deborah, 214 ‘Hesse, Eva’, 119 heteroglossia of Bakhtin, 213–14 hierarchy of popularity, 103 Hill, John, 78 –9, 91 Hiller, Susan, 179 Hirst, Damien, 14 Hoffman, Barbara, 138 Hogan, Ollie, 78– 9, 91 Holmes, Brian, 65– 6 Holzer, Jenny, 116– 17, 208 humour, use of by artists, 25– 6, 27 Chetwynd characters, 215 Guerrilla Girls, 124, 131– 2 Smith, Bob and Roberta, 172–3, 182, 185– 6, 187–8 Hurrell, Harold, 62 ICA, London, 104– 7, 104 Art & Language, 67, 74– 5 Cahun, Claude, 31, 35

289

Death of the Artist Chetwynd, ‘Spartacus’, 219–20, 233 identities of the artist, 3, 49– 51, 85, 144– 5 LuckyPDF, 94 Marcel Duchamp, 31, 34, 38, 43, 48, 51, 53, 54 Smith, Bob and Roberta, 197, 202, 207– 8 see also anonymity of Guerrilla Girls insider trading, 125– 6 Instagram, 86 Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 104– 7, 104 institutional support for art, 66, 110, 126–8 institutions, critique of, 73, 124– 5, 126, 129–32, 131, 157, 217 intellectual property, 140, 141 International Art English, 64, 252n.8 internet: accuracy of, 164– 5 and audiences, 102 and authorship, 60, 77–8, 80, 82, 84 –7 and commercial galleries, 83 downloadable art, 130 Letters to Bad Bosses project, 150 and museums, 83 see also social media; websites internet art, 102–3 Jackson, Michael, 217–18 Jackson, Shannon, 227 Jenkins, Henry, 16, 230– 1 Jones, Amelia, 36, 37, 53 Kahlo, Frida, 33, 34 ‘Kahlo, Frida’, 115, 141, 153– 4, 161, 162–3, 165 Kamuf, Peggy, 142– 3 Kant, Immanuel, 4 Klein, Naomi, 121, 150 Kokoschka, Oskar, Sphinx und Strohmann, The, 226– 7

‘Kollwitz, K€athe’, 117, 119, 120, 124, 126–7, 128, 134, 141, 155 Kosuth, Joseph, 67 Kris, Ernst, 215 Kruger, Barbara, 116–17, 208 Kurz, Otto, 215 Kusama, Yayoi, 207 labels, music, 99 –100 Lacan, Jacques, 47 Lack, Jessica, 218, 219, 221–2 language, appropriation of, 213– 14 language of art, 64, 107, 123, 252n.8, 257n.8 Latimer, Tirza True, 34, 45, 46, 55, 248n.1 learning through practice, 98, 111 Leonardo da Vinci, 37 Leperlier, Franc ois, 35, 36, 40 Levine, Sherie, 16 Lomas, David, 49 LuckyPDF: and art market, 26 attribution of works, 80, 83 –4, 94 –5, 112 audiences of, 100–4 background, 21, 60, 91 –2 biographies of artists, 85– 6, 111–14 collective practice, 26, 78– 80, 88–9, 108– 10 contracts, 95– 6 creative processes, 96 –7 finances of, 98– 9 history writing, 85 –6, 112– 14 institutions and the commercial world, 110– 11 membership, 78– 9, 91 role of, 87– 8, 92– 4 roles within, 96, 97 work of, 79, 80, 82, 90 WORKS Chloe Sims at Remote Control, 104– 7, 104 Lucky Pages, 79– 80

290

Index Young London Collection, 80, 81, 93 –4 Luke, Ben, 217, 221 Luther Blissett, 177 MACBA (Museum of Contemporary At Barcelona), 75– 6, 77 Malherbe, Suzanne see Moore, Marcel Man Ray: background, 20, 29 collaboration with Duchamp, 30, 43, 45 –6, 48, 50 –1, 54, 57– 8 WORKS Belle Haleine: Eau de Voilette, 37, 38 Rrose S
elavy, 43, 44 ‘Martin, Agnes’, 134 Marx, Karl, 18 masks: Cahun, Claude, 41, 42– 3, 42, 46 Guerrilla Girls, 116–17, 133– 4, 135, 137, 158, 164 mass-market model, 92 mass media, 119–20 McCarthy, Paul, Painter, 227 –8 McRobbie, Angela, 88, 146, 147 M
eaille, Philippe, 77 Metzger, Gustav, 207 Miller, Nancy K., 142 –3 Milligan, Spike, 185 Mirapaul, Matthew, 150 mirror play, 46– 7 MoMA, New York, 126, 153, 159 Monahan, Laurie, 35 monographs, role of, 9, 113– 14 see also biographies of artists Moore, Henry, Draped Seated Woman, 177–8, 265n5 Moore, Marcel: background, 20, 29, 30 –1 collaboration with Cahun, 31, 45– 6, 54 –5, 57 gaze of, 45 life on Jersey, 34

obliteration of, 54– 5 photographs by, 39– 40, 39, 41 –3, 42, 46, 49, 51, 52, 56, 57 shadow of, 55, 56 theatrical work, 34– 5 morality of practice, 232 Morton, Tom, 219, 220, 223–4 Moss, Marlow, 33, 34 Mount, Victor, 184–5 multiple authorship, 27, 53, 59, 65, 67 multiple identities, 144 multitude concept of Hardt and Negri, 145–9, 183, 232, 233, 241 Mundy, Jennifer, 50 Museum of Contemporary At Barcelona, 75– 6, 77 museums of art, 66, 82– 3 see also institutions, critique of names of artists see pseudonyms of artists names of authors as adjectives, 14 narcissism, 47, 48 National Endowment for the Arts, 128 National Gallery, Washington, 158, 159 ‘Neel, Alice’, 119 Negri, Antonio, 20, 78, 145 –9, 183 New Art Gallery, Walsall, 187, 188, 189 New York Public Art Fund, 127–8, 131 New York Times, 126 Nochlin, Linda, 6 online art see internet Only Way is Essex, The, 104– 7, 104 ‘Oppenheim, Meret’, 119 Oral History, 248n38 Osborne, Peter, 72 Pacteau, Francette, 40 Palladium, New York, 168 Palmer, Jerry, 185 –6 parafiction, 191 Parker, Rozsika, 132– 3 Parkinson, Gavin, 32– 3

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Death of the Artist parodies, 37, 41 participatory art see public participation Pattison, Yuri, 78 –9 performance art, 15, 23, 218, 229– 32, 234 see also flashmobs; Theatre of the Absurd; theatrical work performance artists see Chetwynd Perry, Grayson, 241 personality of the artist, 242 philanthropists, 125 photographers, 96 see also Man Ray; Moore, Marcel Picasso, Pablo, 187 political nature of authorship, 19–20, 25 political use of art, 180– 6, 185, 199, 202 political wit of Guerrilla Girls, 124 Pollock, Griselda, 7 –8, 8– 9, 132–3, 187 Pope.L, 227 ‘Popova, Liubov’, 131, 138 portrait photography, 34 posters by Guerrilla Girls, 116– 17, 120–1, 127, 154, 155 Prince, Richard, 16 print see text, as art medium privatisation of art, 66 protests, artistic see feminist protests pseudonyms of artists, 25, 247n37 Cahun, Claude and Marcel Moore, 31, 49 Chetwynd, ‘Spartacus’, 23, 219– 21, 236 Guerrilla Girls, 116, 118, 133, 142, 155 S
elavy, Rrose, 30, 48 Smith, Bob and Roberta, 22– 3, 151, 172, 176–7, 195– 7, 199, 200, 205 psychoanalysis, 32 public participation: Art & Language, 71 Chetwynd, ‘Spartacus’, 210– 12, 222, 229

internet art, 84 Smith, Bob and Roberta, 174, 176– 7, 177– 8, 192, 193, 197, 205 public service messages, 123 puppetry, 215, 216, 217, 223, 225, 232 race and tokenism, 163 racism in the USA, 135– 6 Ramsden, Mel, 60, 62 –4, 74– 6, 77 Ranciere, Jacques, 179 reality of art world, 107 –8 reality television shows, 104– 7, 104 Reckitt, Helena, 6– 7, 132, 136 Relational Aesthetics, 15, 17 reproductions, 120 Rimbaud, Arthur, 32 Roberts, Jon, 17 Royal Academy of Arts, London, 190 Rubin, Bill, 126 Rugoff, Ralph, 206 RuPaul’s Drag Race, 40 Sanchez, Michael, 85 Sanouillet, Michel, 48 Schechter, Joel, 122 Schwob, Lucy see Cahun, Claude S
elavy, Rrose: background, 29, 30 and feminist art theory, 36 gaze of, 45, 47 and gender fluidity, 31, 32– 3, 37, 41 identity of, 51, 53, 54 WORKS Belle Haleine: Eau de Voilette, 37, 38 Men Before the Mirror, 48, 49 Rrose S
elavy, 43, 44 see also Duchamp, Marcel self, concept of, 32 semiocapital, 87 service providers, artists as, 92 shadows, in artworks, 55, 56 Shaw, Jennifer, 47

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Index Sholette, Gregory, 19, 65, 77 –8, 150 Shrigley, David, 184 Sims, Chloe, 104–7, 104 Situationist International, 213 Smith, Bob and Roberta: alphabet of, 192 and art world, 26, 193 autobiographical work, 190– 1 on collaborations, 203–4 feminism of, 189 –90 on fiction in art, 198 flashmobs, 177– 8, 205 gallery exhibits, 178– 9 homages to Epstein, 187– 9 humour, use of, 25, 172– 3, 182, 185– 6, 187–8 on identity of the artist, 197, 202, 207– 8 influences on, 208 Leytonstone Centre for Contemporary Art, 171 media choices, 174– 5 money, making of, 200–1 name of, 25, 151, 172, 176– 7, 195– 7, 199, 200, 205 public participation, 174, 176–7, 177– 8, 192, 193, 197, 205 Royal Academy summer exhibitions, 190 sales of work, 179 shared authorship, 26 text, use of, 27 on thematic curation, 205–7 on truth in art, 175– 6 works of, 172–3 WORKS Art Party Conference, The, 184–5, 185 Art Party Political Broadcast, The, 184 Art Party USA Comes to the UK, The, 179, 180, 183, 187 Diary Paintings, 191 Don’t Hate Sculpt, 173– 4, 173, 176, 187, 265n3

Epstein’s Walk, 187–8 I Should Be In Charge, 178 If You Make Art, What Happens When You Die?, 188 Letter to Michael Gove, 180–3 Life of the Mind, The, 189 Save Old Flo, 177 –8, 205 Tate Modern, 193 You Should Be In Charge, 189– 90 social art, 15, 17, 210 social interactions, 98, 100– 1, 107, 109, 112 social media, 86, 160, 177, 229 see also internet Social Sculpture, 174 society and authorship, 12 –13 solitary genius see genius, concept of Solomon-Godeau, Abigail, 36 Sotheby’s, 126 South London Cultural Centre, 233 Southbank Centre, London, 127 space, context of, 223, 228 Spartacus, 220 see also Chetwynd, ‘Spartacus’ spiritual influences on artists, 13 Stallabrass, Julian, 82, 83 ‘Stein, Gertrude’, 118, 119, 138, 140, 149–50 Stella, Frank, 126 stereotypes, female, 106, 132, 133 see also drag, wearing of Stiles, Kristine, 45 Stimson, Blake, 19, 65, 77 –8 suffering artists, 6, 7 –8 Surrealism, 20– 1, 32, 33, 49 Tashjian, Dickran, 33, 51, 53 Tate, London, 159 Tate Britain, London, 223– 4 Tate Modern, London, 66, 193 Taubman, Alfred, 126 Taylor, Brandon, 64 television art, 104– 5, 104 text, as art medium, 27

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Death of the Artist Art & Language, 62 –3 Guerrilla Girls, 119–20, 121, 155 Theatre in the Round, 212– 13 Theatre of the Absurd, 226–8 theatrical work, 34– 5, 42, 43 thematic curation, 205– 7 ‘Thomas, Alma’, 124, 133, 134, 135, 138, 142 Thomson, Jon & Alison Craighead, Triggerhappy, 82 tokenism, 163 Toobin, Jeffrey, 140, 141, 161 Tower Hamlets Council, London, 177 TOWIE (The Only Way is Essex), 104–7, 104 transspecies drag, 137 travel, value of, 98 Twitter, 160, 177 Ulman, Amalia, Excellences & Perfection, 86 V22, 80, 93 value of art, monetary, 79 –80, 125 Van Gogh, Vincent, 8– 9, 186–7 Vasari, Giorgio, 3– 4 Venice Biennale, 129–30, 157, 204

‘Vig
ee LeBrun, Elizabeth’, 119, 139–40 visuality of art, 62 Watson, Daniella, 212 websites: Anonymous, 84 –5 of galleries and museums, 83 Guerrilla Girls, 125, 130, 149– 50 LuckyPDF, 79 see also internet Wesch, Michael, 84, 85 Whelehan, Imelda, 149 Whitechapel Gallery, London, 125, 127 Whitney Museum, New York, 72, 73, 124, 126 Williams, Joshua, 137 Withers, Josephine, 125– 6 Wolff, Janet, 5, 17, 179, 214 women artists, collection and display of, 124, 126, 127, 129–30, 131, 131, 153, 165– 6 women, emancipation of, 32 Women’s Studies programmes, 136–7 Wood, Paul, 72 Work Gallery, London, 189 working conditions, 88 Yes Men, 191 YouTube, 229

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