Learning Mind: Experience into Art 9780520944930, 9780520260764

Citation preview

Learning Mind

University of California Press gratefully acknowledges the generous contributions to this book provided by the Judy and Bill Timken Endowment Fund in Contemporary Arts of the University of California Press Foundation and by Rob Elder. The School of the Art Institute of Chicago gratefully acknowledges the generous support to this book provided by the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation, with additional contributions by the William and Anne Hokin Exhibition Research Fund and the William and Stephanie Sick Endowment at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Learning Mind Experience into Art

Edited by Mary Jane Jacob and Jacquelynn Baas

School of the Art Institute of Chicago University of California Press Berkeley  Los Angeles  London

Commencement, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 2008

This book is dedicated to Professor Tony Jones, CBE, Chancellor of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2008–9) and President of the School (1986–92, 1996–2008). His expansion of the School greatly increased its teaching capacity, enabling many to be artists; his parting project, the galleries in Louis Sullivan’s famed department store in Chicago’s Loop, is a place for many to experience art—now and in the future.

Contents

1

Introduction Mary Jane Jacob and Jacquelynn Baas

On the Being of Being an Artist 17

The Gap between Art and Life Arthur C. Danto

29

What Art Is and What Artists Do Jerry Saltz

35

Multiple Personalities: A How-to Manual for Artists and Other Creative Types Marcia Tucker

43

Meditation as Art/Art as Meditation: Thoughts on the Relationship of Non-intention to the Creative Process Mark Epstein

57

Our Barefoot Practice Ernesto Pujol

67

Making Not Knowing Ann Hamilton

75

Fate and Art Magdalena Abakanowicz

83

It is difficult Alfredo Jaar

89

Radical Agency–Massive Change: Social Agendas in Art and Design Kerry James Marshall and Bruce Mau with Lisa Wainwright

Commencement, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 2007

On Making Art and Pedagogy 107 Teaching Discourse: Reflection Strong, Not Theory Light Mika Hannula 117 Practicing Rauschenberg Lisa Wainwright 125 Pedagogy, Art, and the Rules of the Game David J. Getsy 137 Zones of Activity: From the Gallery to the Classroom Ute Meta Bauer 143 Toward a New Critical Pedagogy Lawrence Rinder 151 Fail Again. Fail Better. Ronald Jones 165 Coming Back to Our Senses Alice Waters in Conversation with Walter Hood

On Experiencing Art 177 Being with Cloud Gate Mary Jane Jacob 185 This Is Nowhere Christopher Bedford 195 The Look of the Artist Michael Brenson 207 Headless/Heedless: Experiencing Agora W. J. T. Mitchell 217 Unframing Experience Jacquelynn Baas 231 The Unknown Child: Art Mediation/Mediation Art Ulrich Schötker 243 Looking at an Exhibition Ronen Eidelman, Og˘uz Tatari, and Carolyn Bernstein 259 The Empty Conversation Jacquelynn Baas, Mary Jane Jacob, and Ulrich Schötker 272 List of Illustrations 277 Index

artway of thinking, “Co/Operare” workshop, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 2008

mary jane jacob and jacquelynn baas

Li Yang, Washing the Heart, 2008

Introduction Am I more than the sum of my experiences? There is time involved. It may crystallize into shapes or sounds. m a gd a l ena a b a k a now ic z

This book is dedicated to the aims of art: why we make it and why we share it. In our previous book, Buddha Mind in Contemporary Art, we provided a sampling of Buddhist perspectives in the art of our era. For this volume we have broadened our field of focus to analyze the nature of the art experience itself—its creation, its cultivation, its effects—bringing related cultural influences such as American pragmatism and analytical tools from theory to neuroscience into the mix. But this is not to leave the lessons of Buddhism behind. The Buddha may have been the world’s first performance artist, taking on “roles intuitively chosen to convey an experience that is more than the sum of the words that can be said about it,” as Kay Larson wrote in Buddha Mind.1 The historical Buddha seems to have been precisely the kind of teacher—or, more accurately, un-teacher—promoted by thinkers ranging from Socrates to Elizabeth Palmer Peabody to Jacques Rancière. 2

The epigraph is from Magdalena

Our title, Learning Mind, implies a recognition that the art process is transformational—whether one is making or experiencing art. Our subtitle, Experience into Art, is an obvious play on Art as Experience, the title of the pragmatist philosopher John Dewey’s influential book, published in 1934. According to writer Louis Menand, pragmatism—the most significant American philosophical movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century—“is about how we think, not what we think.”3 Its three primary exponents—the logician Charles S. Peirce, the psychologist William James, and Dewey— were all impressed by the experiential theory of the Buddha,4 traces of which are apparent in pragmatism’s basic ­tenants. These core beliefs are that (1) meaning and belief are fallible (fallibilism), liable to error

3. Louis Menand, Pragmatism: A

1

Abakanowicz, Fate and Art (Skira: Milan, 2008), 194. 1. Kay Larson, “Shaping the Unbounded: One Life, One Art,” in Buddha Mind in Contemporary Art, ed. Jacquelynn Baas and Mary Jane Jacob (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 64. 2. Elizabeth Peabody, Record of a School (Boston: J. Munroe, 1835); Jacques Rancière, The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intel­ lectual Emancipation, trans. Kristin Ross (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991).

Reader (New York: Vintage, 1997), xxvi. 4. Peirce and James were heirs to a Transcendental intellectual milieu informed by the first translation into English from a Buddhist sutra—the Lotus Sutra—published in The Dial in 1844 by Elizabeth Palmer Peabody. See Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, “Pedagogy of Buddhism,” in Touching Feeling: Affect,

Pedagogy, Performativity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 153–81; Rick Fields, How the Swans Came to the Lake: A Narrative His­ tory of Buddhism in America (Boston: Shambhala, 1992), 54–69

and thus subject to change; (2) inquiry is essentially experimental; (3) meaning and belief depend on the context of the community in which they are formed; (4) experience is the interaction of an organism with its environment; (5) all thinking is resolving doubts (Peirce) or solving problems (Dewey); and (6) all judgments of “truth” are fundamentally judgments of value.5

(he cites Thoreau as translator of the Lotus Sutra); and Raymond Schwab, The Oriental Renaissance: Europe’s Rediscovery of India and the East, 1680–1880 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), 200– 202. On Dewey and Buddhism, see Jacquelynn Baas, Smile of the Bud­ dha: Eastern Philosophy and Western Art from Monet to Today (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 58–59. 5. A pithy summary of pragmatism can be found in chapter 3 of Bruce A. Kimball, The Condition of Ameri­ can Liberal Education: Pragmatism

Dewey managed to incorporate all six of these points into his description of the artistic process: Life grows when a temporary falling out is a transition to a more extensive bal­ ance of the energies of the organism with those of the conditions under which it lives. . . . Equilibrium comes about not mechanically and inertly but out of, and because of, tension. . . . Order is not imposed from without but is made out of the relations of harmonious interactions that energies bear to one another. . . . ­Emotion is the conscious sign of a break, actual or impending. The discord is the occasion that induces reflection. Desire for restoration of the union converts mere emotion into interest in objects as conditions of realization of harmony. With the realization, material of reflection is incorporated into objects as their meaning.6

and a Changing Tradition (New York: College Entrance Examination Board, 1995), 17–27. 6. John Dewey, Art as Experience (New York: Minton, Balch, 1934), 14–15. 7. Louis Menand, The Metaphysical

The artistic process, like all human development, is an unbroken sequence of crises and resolutions. It is similar to walking: to move forward you push yourself to fall, then catch yourself. You catch yourself—“order is not imposed from without.” It’s a balancing act, this “temporary falling out” in order to “transition to” somewhere else; to maintain it, there has to be a relational exchange of energy.

Club (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001), 361. 8. First edition published from 1889 to 1891 by the Century Company of New York, available at http://www.leoyan.com/centurydictionary.com/index.html. 9. Philip W. Jackson, John Dewey and the Lessons of Art (New Haven:

A livelier example is Fred Astaire’s dancing—he needs the pull of gravity and the firm push-back of wall and chair to achieve those marvelous moments of stasis. So with the mind: distress wants resolution; to achieve it, the mind casts about for a tool or method. Then some object, some metaphor, some nugget of infor­mation offers what feels like a solution. We’re talking intuition here—we “know” the answer before we can depict or describe what it is. In this realm, Dewey concluded, “ideas and beliefs are the same as hands: instruments for coping.”7

Yale University Press, 1998), 5–6.

Dewey uses the word “realization” in the last line of his description in the sense of “making real,” making experience available to the senses. It is the basis for the word “aesthetic,” which Charles S. Peirce’s entry for The Century Dictionary says comes from a Greek word meaning “perceptible by the senses.”8 The “consummation” (Dewey’s term) of this experiential process is inherently pleasurable, and both subject and object emerge from it changed—the subject has experienced a transformation of the self, while the object has acquired new meaning.9 Although

Mary Jane Jacob and Jacquelynn Baas  2  

Dewey has not received adequate credit, his theories have returned in the guise of so-called “relational aesthetics.”10 We prefer to snare a prefix from Marcel Du­champ and call the process “infra-relational”—within relational, super-relational, completely married. (“I want to grasp things with the mind the way the penis is grasped by the vagina,” Duchamp said.11)

10. First expounded by Nicolas Bourriaud, Esthétique relationnelle (Dijon: Les Presses du réel, 1998); English transl. by Simon Pleasance and Fronza Woods with Mathieu Copeland, Relational Aesthetics (Dijon: Les Presses du réel, 2002).

This process of experience into art is what unites the essays gathered under our first heading, “On the Being of Being an Artist.” Philosopher Arthur C. Danto considers the German artist Jörg Immendorff, who, like other young artists of the 1960s and 1970s, “was less interested in making something new in art than in making a new world, for which art was to be a means.” Danto addresses the meaning and purpose of being an artist today, in a world where boundaries have disappeared, where (thanks to Duchamp and Andy Warhol) the difference between ordinary objects and art objects is not obvious, and “an immense number of young people want, like Immendorf . . . , to become artists.” What exactly is an artist now? A “soft guerrilla,” is Danto’s answer, someone who can act, through art, on consciousness: “By changing consciousness, reality may be changed from within.” In lively, almost comedic questions posed to the art student, critic Jerry Saltz asks whether art can change the world—can it stop the spread of AIDS, for example, or change a government? Art does change the world, he concludes, “incrementally and by osmosis, and it does it in ways that we can’t quite know.” For Saltz, art is both a way of seeing the world and what is seen; it is an “energy source that helps to make change possible.” And he instructs artists: “the number one thing is work. You have to work in times of doubt, in good times, bad times—work.” Museum director and curator Marcia Tucker takes an autobiographical approach in advising young artists on the necessity of change, reinvention, and fear in creating both their work and their lives. Art, she says, “can be a catalyst for change. It can change the way you see and therefore how you think, and then possibly the way you act.” The most valuable thing she has learned from the artists with whom she has worked, she insists, “is that confusion, disorder, mistakes, and failure—all the things that we encounter when we try something new—are essential to the creative process.” Psychiatrist Mark Epstein directly refers to the teachings of the Buddha in his auto­ biographical essay. “Artists,” he says, “like psychoanalysts and Zen teachers, are people who can fail and fail and go on.” Epstein cites Sigmund Freud, who cautioned therapists that the most important method is to “suspend judgment and give

3 Introduction  

11. From an interview with Lawrence Steefel, quoted in his 1960 Princeton doctoral dissertation, published as The Position of Du­ champ’s Glass in the Development of His Art (New York: Garland, 1977), 312. Duchamp’s term was “inframince” (infra-thin): “When the tobacco smoke also carries the scent of the mouth that exhales it, the two odors marry through infrathin” (View: Parade of the AvantGarde, ed. Charles Henri Ford [New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1991], 118; translation ours).

impartial attention to everything there is to observe . . . simply listen and do not bother about keeping anything in mind.” Epstein compares this advice with John Cage’s warning to musicians that “to refuse sounds that are not musical [is to] cut yourself off from a good deal of experience.” He credits Cage’s teacher, Buddhist scholar D. T. Suzuki, with helping to make this perspective available to the art world: “The people who heard him most easily were artists. The art that they made, and the artists they in turn have inspired, continue to carry his message, asking us to question ourselves instead of settling into complacency, to open ourselves instead of closing down around what we already know, and to embarrass ourselves instead of worrying what other people think.” Like Tucker, Epstein suggests that this freedom is at the core of the artistic process. In “Our Barefoot Practice,” artist and educator Ernesto Pujol shares a personal statement, telling of his ongoing journey as an artist. In his view, the path taken to become an artist must be a transformational one. Moreover, he asks us to contemplate, “What should American art education look like during this time of conflict, during this time of war?” He suggests that to cultivate an art practice today requires us to “rescue the definition of art from a shallow environment of entertainment, a distraction from reality and the deeper self.” He asks nothing less than that we “reclaim art education as a profound, subtle, but complex meditation on our past, our present, and our possible future: on where we come from, who we are, and what we are becoming.” It is worth risking art-world dismissal, Pujol avers, for the rewards of being “truly engaged in an ethical, compassionate art practice that is transparent, generous, and kind.” In her essay, “Making Not Knowing,” artist Ann Hamilton addresses trusting intuition and frames the act of making in terms of the act of speaking. “How can words be acts of making?” Hamilton asks, and describes various art acts she devised to explore this territory. She concludes that one thing art and speaking have in common is that “one doesn’t arrive—in words or in art—by necessarily knowing where one is going . . . you work from what you know to what you don’t know.” Thus the inventive act of speaking suggests that a life of making is an everyday practice—a practice of questions more than of answers. In the remarkable text “Fate and Art,” sculptor Magdalena Abakanowicz demonstrates how powerful personal experience enters art and is even necessary to cope with experience. She relates memories from a Polish childhood marked by war and fragmented bodies, and a young adulthood filled with oppression, creativity, and companionship. While waiting in endless lines for the necessities of life, she wrote about her childhood and her art—“not to describe but to find its context.” One con-

Mary Jane Jacob and Jacquelynn Baas  4  

text was the crowds whose shifting moods still inform her art. “I wanted to confront man with himself . . . I wanted to bewitch the real crowd.” Her final image is of the Milky Way: “violent, brutal stream of comets and meteors, deriving from the unknown reaching the unknown.” The artist Alfredo Jaar is several generations younger than Abakanowicz. Yet the signposts of his life, like hers, have been revolution and war: from the upheavals of 1968, when he was a child of twelve in Santiago, Chile; to September 11, 1973, when he saw fighter jets bomb the quarters of President Allende; to more recent horrors like the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, to which he bears eloquent witness. Of greatest importance, he tells us, is “the future for artists now, the order of reality that they must change now, that is all around us.” For a politically engaged artist like Jaar, changing reality by creating art is difficult; he says he has been making art for thirty years and it has never gotten any easier. Jaar writes that the artist could disengage: “you can hold back from the suffering of the world,” as Franz Kafka put it, “but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering that you could have avoided.” This first section concludes with a discussion that inaugurated the William and Stephanie Sick Distinguished Professor Lecture at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In this exchange, led by educator Lisa Wainwright, artist Kerry James Marshall and designer Bruce Mau engage in a lively, probing debate about what artists and designers have in common, how they are different, and what each contributes to society. Wainwright’s questioning leads Marshall and Mau to reveal how they came to art and what role education played. While academic institutions question what artists, architects, and designers need to know, Mau suggests that art education may be the ideal mode of education for everyone. “I think there is an underlying power and positive effect of invention and creation,” Mau asserts. “We underestimate how important art is. If you could put everyone in society through art school, think about how different it would be to have a general population that . . . embraces the capacity of art to affect the way we see the world.” The Marshall-Mau discussion is a launching point for part two of Learning Mind, which shifts the focus to pedagogy. Charles Peirce’s entry in the Century Dictionary tells us that the word “educate” comes from the Latin root educare, related to educere, in “a sense derived from that of ‘assist at birth.’ ” Socrates described his own obstetric approach to education as the “maieutic method”: a process of assisting a person in bringing into consciousness his or her own latent conceptions. Peirce’s entry on pedagogy cites its origin from the Greek and defines it as “the training or guiding of boys . . . instruction; discipline.”12 The more contemporary Wikipedia defines

5 Introduction  

12. Kenneth Laine Ketner, His Glassy Essence: An Autobiography of Charles Sanders Peirce (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1998), 11–12.

13. See Sedgwick, “Pedagogy of Buddhism.”

pedagogy as “the art or science of being a teacher,” adding that pedagogy “is also sometimes referred to as the correct use of teaching strategies.”

14. John Dewey, Democracy and Education (New York: Macmillan, 1916); Paolo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972); Rancière, The Ignorant Schoolmaster. In his 1938 book Experience and Education (New York: Touchstone, 1997), Dewey critiqued “progressive education,” a movement that resulted (in part) from his own theories, arguing that it was too reactionary and took a “free” approach without really knowing how or why freedom is useful in education. He further

The concept of pedagogy clearly has evolved since Peirce’s day—if evolution is even the word for a development that evokes nothing so much as the “skillful means” that the Buddha urged upon his followers.13 It is a development that has been much influenced by John Dewey’s educational theory of “learning by doing” with others, and by activist writers like Paolo Freire and Jacques Rancière, who have promoted minimalist liberation pedagogies similarly defined as relational activity.14 As infra-relational activity, art making is inherently pedagogical because it dissolves restricting mental barriers, thus opening the mind to further experience. “Every experience,” Dewey wrote, “both takes up something from those which have gone before and modifies in some way the quality of those which come after.”15

asserted that a thorough understanding of the nature of human experience must underlie any effective theory of education. 15. Dewey, Experience and Educa­ tion, 35.

In the first essay in this section, “Teaching Discourse: Reflection Strong, Not Theory Light,” curator and educator Mika Hannula reframes the daunting, often opaque relationship of theory and practice by granting young artists freedom to choose those with whom they wish to build a dialogue and then find those authors, texts, or even words within a text that speak to them, connecting to their own work. “We must try to articulate what we are for, instead of merely define what we are against,” Hannula argues. “Such articulation can be achieved only within a practice that is open-ended, self-critical, and reflexive, in constant search for ways of doing what we do.” Lisa Wainwright’s essay “Practicing Rauschenberg” complements Hannula’s. Her title plays upon the multiple meanings of art “practice”—(1) to act, as opposed to believing or professing; (2) to work at or pursue; (3) to learn by doing; (4) to put to practical use; (5) to act upon by artifice so as to induce or cause to believe—in proposing Robert Rauschenberg’s open, experimental, and above all social approach to art making as a model for young artists seeking a language of their own. “To ‘practice’ Rauschenberg,” Wainwright suggests, “to weave his model into the curriculum of art and design schools, is to provide a creative sampling of media possibilities, highlight material processes, and teach the histories of art and design while staying alert to the present moment.” Art historian David Getsy writes in his essay, “Pedagogy, Art, and the Rules of the Game,” about how he creatively engages young artists in the classroom by taking seriously the claim that being an artist is a kind of game. “How are rules determined?” Getsy asks. “When are they limiting? When do they encourage creative

Mary Jane Jacob and Jacquelynn Baas  6  

solutions? When and how are they broken? . . . These are not idle questions. For better or for worse, an elaborate, ever-changing rule system sets the parameters for art practice, the art market, art institutions, and writing about art.” Getsy suggests that the supposed non-seriousness of games is exactly what enables their serious potential and practical outcomes. A similar claim, he says, can be made about art. Like Getsy, curator and educator Ute Meta Bauer describes the art world as “a complex system, a field of constellations and interrelations—some friendly to each other, some antagonistic.” She advises that “some knowledge of systems theory, some reading of Pierre Bourdieu, Richard Rorty, and Niklas Luhmann . . . does not hurt in becoming aware of our own entanglements.” Why, she asks, have a number of high-profile curators recently accepted leading positions at art schools and universities? One reason, she suggests, is “the increasing commodification and instrumentalization of the position of curator for all sorts of agendas and desires. . . . Art schools today seem to offer a kind of temporary refuge for those with a desire to sustain a more critical and discursive practice.” For Bauer, “it is also about the challenging possibility and responsibility of transmitting one’s specific understanding and notions of critical artistic and cultural practice to a younger generation” of art students, and the possibility of hope for our cultural future. Lawrence Rinder is an example of the phenomenon Bauer cites. A former curator of contemporary art at two museums and now a museum director, Rinder interleaved his museum positions with stints at the California College of the Arts—first as gallery director and then as dean of the college. Simultaneous with these administrative and pedagogical roles, however, has been his practice as a writer, a practice honed by contact with art students: “The challenge of putting words to their work, constructing a discourse around practices that are not only in the process of for­ mation but often desperately need clarification and guidance, is closely related to the problematics of art criticism and reveals a troubling lacuna in contemporary art language.” In his essay “Toward a New Critical Pedagogy,” Rinder analyzes trends in recent criticism, concluding that what would best serve both academia and the field of contemporary criticism is an exploration of comparative aesthetic philosophies. Artist and educator Ronald Jones widens the discourse around issues of pedagogy in the arts with a rigorous reconsideration of just what an expanded field of art practice might mean, clarifying in valuable ways the distinction of multi-, inter-, and transdisciplinary ways of working, and the value of moving beyond an art-centered perspective. Ideally, art schools are “learning cultures” that constantly reinterpret

7 Introduction  

16. Dewey, Art as Experience, 347. 17. From “The Creative Act,” a talk given by Duchamp to the American Federation of Arts in 1957, first published in Robert Lebel, Marcel Duchamp (New York: Paragraphic Books, 1959), 78. 18. Peirce used the same trope in his first published essay, “The

the world and their relationship to it. Learning cultures see failure as an advantage, one that opens up the capacity for change and transcendence. The key to potential transcendence is, counterintuitively, failure: “Fail again. Fail better,” Jones urges, quoting Samuel Beckett. Jones sees too many educational institutions imitating success elsewhere, without assuming the risk of innovation and the promise of failure. “Could it be true,” Jones asks rhetorically, “that significant precincts in the art and design world . . . have been left on the other side of the widening gap between developed and developing disciplines?”

Fixation of Belief” (1877): “Of all kinds of experience, the best, [Roger Bacon] thought, was interior illumination, which teaches many things about Nature which the external senses could never discover, such as the transubstantiation of bread.” In 1878 he translated the essay into French for the Revue Philosophique de la France et de l’Étranger. See Chance, Love, and Logic: Philosophical Essays (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1923), 8.

A good example of transdisciplinary practice has been chef and educator Alice Waters’s project, the Edible Schoolyard. “Coming Back to Our Senses,” a dialogue between Waters and landscape architect and educator Walter Hood, moves through the intertwined terrains of art, education, and society. Their discussion of nurturing children by helping them acquire skills and attain a sense of values through gardening and cooking looks to an education that fuses an understanding of beauty in diversity with the interrelationship of all forms of life. “Food is our common language,” Waters says. “We all eat. We all eat every day. And if we’re eating with intention, and we’re eating real food, and we’re connecting with where that food comes from, and we’re involved in the process of making it and offering it to our classmates . . . and gathering around the table, then these ideas of community just emerge very naturally.” Hood expands upon her thoughts, commenting that this “enmeshing” concept allows us to “go beyond a single dimension and begin to weave everything into our communal experience. All of these things that we do as artists together can create this open-ended environmental system.” The third section, “On Experiencing Art,” comprises essays, conversations, and reflections on the effect of art “making” within the mind of the viewer or participant. “Works of art are means by which we enter, through imagination and the emotions they evoke, into other forms of relationship and participation than our own,” Dewey wrote. “This insensible melting is far more efficacious than the change effected by reasoning, because it enters directly into attitude.”16 As for the “effect” of this process on the artwork, Duchamp famously opined that in response to the “realization” of a creative act by the artist, “the spectator experiences the phenomenon of transmutation: through the change from inert matter into a work of art, an actual transubstantiation has taken place.”17 (Note that Duchamp uses “realization” in the same sense as Dewey: making experience available to the senses.) Duchamp’s allusion here is to the Eucharist, wherein what looks and tastes like bread and wine is experienced as the body and blood of Christ.18 It is a brilliant elaboration on Dewey, who, twenty-three years earlier, had written, “A work of art . . . is actually, not just

Mary Jane Jacob and Jacquelynn Baas  8  

potentially, a work of art only when it lives in some individualized experience . . . as a work of art, it is re-created every time it is esthetically experienced.”19 The section opens with a cluster of essays analyzing the experience of specific works of art in the context of the environment they create. Mary Jane Jacob describes Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate, a monumental sculpture at Chicago’s Millennium Park, which she encounters every workday. She finds Cloud Gate “an engaging, relational experience that transcends its objectness,” a true gateway, a liminal realm that captures and holds, enabling viewers to focus on the nature of reality. What the polished surface of Cloud Gate reflects, Jacob notes, is beyond self and place and is located in an understanding gleaned through its presence in everyday circumstances. While its materials and site have both been transformed, it is, Jacob asserts, “our own experience that undergoes the greatest transformation” within the enveloping form of Cloud Gate. In his essay, “This Is Nowhere,” curator Christopher Bedford discusses the lack of critical understanding the work of Robert Irwin encountered until relatively recently. Now we are, however briefly, “able to see and write about Irwin’s work for what it is: a theoretically invested practice, but not a theory-dependent experience.” Irwin believes that “the critic’s only valid function is to clear away the extraneous considerations and return us, naked, to the experience before us.” Drawing on the artist’s own published writings, critical texts, and the work of phenomenologists and aestheticians that Irwin values, Bedford illuminates the relationship of theory to Irwin’s work, with particular attention to how this relationship has affected the experience of seeing, writing about, and evaluating the artist’s achievements. “What are you looking at?” critic and art historian Michael Brenson heard the sculptor Juan Muñoz “declare” to be his first artistic question. For Brenson, ­Muñoz’s question raised a host of others: “Who are you? . . . But also—who the hell are you? And what are you doing here? What right do you have to look? What are your plans for what you are looking at?” Brenson’s essay on the questing “look” of the artist leads him to examine how, in looking, artist and audience share the same inquiry, engaged in an act of making, remaking, and learning. In the end, Brenson concludes, we will always need “artists who remember history . . . and who are willing to take the risks of looking back.” Theorist and educator W. J. T. Mitchell writes on his experience and associations with Abakanowicz’s Agora. A grouping of 106 over-life-size, cast-iron, headless, hollow bodies, this installation calls up for Mitchell the terra-cotta army excavated near Xi’an, from the tomb of the first Chinese emperor. On the other hand, Aba-

9 Introduction  

19. Dewey, Art as Experience, 108.

kanowicz’s images strike him “as an apparition of the historical present, as if her figures had somehow congealed in their molten forms some essential intuition into the dominant ideologies and images of our time.” This agora, Mitchell concludes, could represent “a common humanity that knows no borders, presents no stereotyped or lying faces, and is thus heedless of the racial, sexual, and religious divisions that plague our species.” Jacquelynn Baas uses a recent exhibition of artistic depictions of emptiness to launch a discussion of a phenomenon she calls “Unframing Experience.” Baas brings both the Buddhist conception of emptiness and recent developments in evolutionary neuroscience to bear on a discussion of consciousness, and suggests an inverse relationship between the degree of framing or categorization with which perception “makes sense of” sensation, and the effectiveness of art experience. Art intended to generate this expanded field of perception links maker, viewer, and environment within continuous, multidimensional reality. As examples she cites the work of Duchamp and his godson, Gordon Matta-Clark, along with more recent work by Olafur Eliasson, Ai Weiwei, and Ann Hamilton. The final essays in this section all reference the most recent documenta, in 2007 in Kassel, Germany, thus constituting something of a “case study” of art experience. In “The Unknown Child” Ulrich Schötker, who has worked on the past three installments of documenta, relates how, for the past fifteen years, the notion of art mediation (Kunstvermittlung) has referred to a field of artistic agency in Germanspeaking countries. Schötker holds up as a theoretical model Georges Bataille, for whom “non-productive self-expenditure” promised an emotive form of communication that can be cultivated toward the formation of a society based on difference. The “unknown child” became one significant member of the exhibition’s large and varied public, who here, for the first time, was treated as an “expert” and agent of his or her self. The studies of artists Ronen Eidelman, Ovuz Tatari, and Carolyn Bernstein developed as part of a class excursion to both documenta 12 and the nearby Skulptur Pro­ jekte in Münster. Based on first cultivating a greater awareness of their own experience of art and the conditions that foster it, these young artists were asked to analyze the various ways in which different publics experience art. Directly observing others’ experiences, they attempted to glean a sense of how the public looks at a work of art and considers its meaning, form, content, and context. Perceptive and animated writings by Eidelman and Tatari bring us into the experience of others through their personal descriptions. Eidelman describes, in words and sketches, the types of visitors to such large, international shows. Tatari links his experience

Mary Jane Jacob and Jacquelynn Baas  10  

and those of others in Kassel and Münster, reflecting beyond specific places and moments as he unframes his own experience. Meanwhile Bernstein created an evocative suite of photographs that offers a sense of the totality of experience in the galleries at documenta 12. Finally, “The Empty Conversation” is the edited transcript of a public discussion at documenta 12 between Schötker, Baas, and Jacob around questions having to do with the Taoist/Buddhist concept of emptiness, art mediation, and the ideal state of mind with which to view an exhibition. Schötker is interested in understanding art as a negative space, especially with regard to Theodor Adorno, Niklas Luhmann, and George Spencer Brown. Jacob and Baas focus on Buddhist philosophy—the dissolution of self, and emptiness as a motif in Buddhist mind-training techniques. Turning time and again to documenta 12, they look to the works exhibited there, the mode of installation and use of space, and even the absence of art and artifice, examining how all contribute to the experience of art and its potential for self-transformation. While books about art are not the art, we imagine that this anthology may both instruct on experience and be an experience. In an essay in our earlier book, Buddha Mind in Contemporary Art, poet Linda V. Bamber suggested that “maybe all reading— all absorbed and impassioned reading, that is—is reading as a Buddhist, whether you’re a Buddhist or not.”20 With the present book, we ask you, the ­reader—no matter who you are—to read as an artist, whether you normally think of yourself as an artist or not. It could prove to be a useful practice, for these essays imply that there may be no such thing as art experience separate from experience in general or—put another way—from so-called everyday life. Dewey wrote that “in order to understand the meaning of artistic products, we have to forget them for a time, to turn aside from them and have recourse to the ordinary forces and conditions of experience that we do not usually regard as esthetic.”21 Abakanowicz suggests something similar in our epigraph, where she responds to her own question, “Am I more than the sum of my experiences?” with, “There is time involved.” One thing books do have in common with works of art is that we can revisit them over time—re-read or allow them to “crystallize into shapes or sounds” in the course of lived experience. We offer this book with the hope that it will become part of your experience.

The thought that preceded words on the page was the product of many dialogues between colleagues and with faculty and students at the School of the Art Institute

11 Introduction  

20. Linda V. Bamber, “Reading as a Buddhist,” in Buddha Mind, 147. 21. Dewey, Art as Experience, 2.

of Chicago. We were fortunate in this process to be a part of the Emily Hall Tremaine University and Art School Initiative, devoted to developing tools for young artists to make their way in the world. With Tremaine support, we brought minds to this task that had in their own ways struggled with these questions on phys­ ical, metaphysical, conceptual, and practical levels. The essays of Jacquelynn Baas, Arthur Danto, and Mark Epstein were first lectures, and Marcia Tucker’s text was a symposium keynote address. On other like occasions, thanks to the Tremaine Foundation, the writings of Ute Meta Bauer, Michael Brenson, and Larry Rinder were also first lectures given at the School. Guided by Dean Carol Becker and then Lisa Wainwright, the intellectual community of the School joined in the process. As the life of the artist is at the core of the SAIC mission, the writings of Ann Hamilton, Alfredo Jaar, and Jerry Saltz began as dialogues with the student body from the commencement podium, while the dialogue of Kerry James Marshall and Bruce Mau with Wainwright was a special school program. Additionally, one of our active academic partners, Liz Bachhuber at the Bauhaus Universität Weimar, provided an energizing context that led to the work of Ronen Eidelman, Ovuz Tatari, and Carolyn Bernstein. This last piece of the book originated in Germany, as an assignment came to life in the course of our joint study trip to Münster and Kassel, where the “Empty Conversation” also originated. In classes, discussions, and personal moments with students, we began to see how these texts-in-formation could contribute profoundly to art students’ thinking about themselves and the world. A wide-ranging publication such as this is the work of many hands. In Chicago, assistant curator Kate Zeller monitored its development on every front; her constant care and attentiveness do not go unnoticed in this and all tasks she undertakes. Thanks to Jessica Mott Wickstrom of Jess Mott Design, this book emerged visually as well as textually. With her usual creativeness, Jess contributed the overall design concept, and patiently worked through many revisions that enabled us all to see what this book could be. Deborah Kirshman of University of California Press, with whom we had the pleasure of working on our earlier book, Buddha Mind in Contemporary Art, was again an essential collaborator. It is a special pleasure to thank Deborah for her advice and keen guidance through the multi-year process of shaping, writing, and bringing this book to fruition. We also want to thank our skillful editor, Sue Heinemann, as well as our copyeditor, Mary Yakush. UC Press’s Eric Schmidt and Erica Lee provided valuable administrative support, while compositor Suzanne Harris helped give the book final form and Pam Augspurger facilitated production. We do not want to overlook the debt of gratitude we owe our anonymous readers for UC

Mary Jane Jacob and Jacquelynn Baas  12  

Press, who offered encouraging words and perceptive comments that helped shape this volume. It is, of course, the authors to whom we owe our deepest thanks—for thinking with us and conveying their concerns and inspiring words. And finally, we wish to acknowledge the support of the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s William and Anne Hokin Fund, and additional support from the William and Stephanie Sick Endowment, without which we would not have been able to share these thoughts with you.

13 Introduction  

danto saltz tucker epstein pujol hamilton abakanowicz jaar marshall mau wainwright

Robert Irwin, Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow & Blue3 , 2006–7

on the being of being an artist

arthur c. danto

Arthur C. Danto is Johnsonian Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Columbia University and art critic for The Nation. His books include Mysticism and Morality (Penguin, 1976), The Transfiguration of the Commonplace (Harvard University Press, 1981), Beyond the Brillo Box (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1992), Embodied Meanings (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994), and Encounters and Reflections (University of Cali­fornia Press, 1997). He won the National Book Critics Circle Prize in Criticism for After the End of Art (Princeton University Press, 1998) and the 2003 Prix Philosophique for The Madonna of the Future (Uni­versity of California Press, 2001).

The Gap between Art and Life

In 1972 the German artist Jörg Immendorff painted an autobiographical work in several panels, done in a crude comic-book style. The first panel shows the artist sitting in a garret by candlelight in front of a bare canvas. Above the image he has written, “Ich wollte Künstler werden” (I wanted to become an artist). And below the image is this legend: “Ich träumte daron, in der Zeitung zustehen, von vielen ­Ausstellungen, und natürlich wollte ich etwas ‘Neues’ in der Kunst machen” (I dreamt of being in the newspapers, having a lot of exhibitions, and naturally I wanted to make something “new” in art). He concludes, “Mein Leitfaden war der Egoismus” (My guideline was egoism)—wryly because by the later panels he will have found ways of using art for social change. Immendorff went on to make posters, for example, in connection with revolutionary causes. The very use of vernacular art is already a sign that he wanted his work to be read and understood by ordinary men and women. He had benefited, one might say, from the pop revolution of the sixties, but he was not part of it, in the sense that it was not his agenda, as it was for Roy Lichtenstein, to overcome the gap between fine and popular art. Instead his aims, like those of many young German artists of the era, were radically political. He was less interested in making something new in art than in making a new world, for which art was to be a means. This was already true when he was a student activist at the Art Academy in Düsseldorf in the mid-sixties. I very much doubt whether egoism ever entirely disappeared from Immendorff’s artistic personality, but even when the objective political situation changed in Germany, his artistic aim was to awaken moral consciousness in those who saw his art. Immendorff’s panel strikes me as a pretty good “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man or Woman” today, when the life of the artist consists in the pursuit of fame, connected with “making something ‘new’ in art,” and where egoism can hardly be discounted as a drive. Many young artists, like Immendorff, are keen to make some further difference—to effect some sort of social change—though the struggles

17

t­ oday would generally be rather different than the “class struggle” in which he became an activist. Today’s struggles have more to do with gender or ethnicity, both of which subsume the economic and political changes one aspires to help bring about, but usually within the framework of a society that the artists of Immendorff’s generation were eager to dismantle in a radical way, as they were Marxists and believed in a final victory of the working classes. Still, in my view these later orders of struggle owe a conceptual debt to the artistic struggles that surfaced in the early sixties, namely, to overcome, to use the slogan of the time, “the gap between art and life.” The form that Immendorff ’s art took—the comic-book image—had already been legitimized by pop art. This and the other major movements of the ­decade—Fluxus, minimalism, and conceptualism—were all different aspects of the same general effort to overcome the boundary between art and life (whatever exactly that may mean). Each of them involved the enfranchisement of one or another domain of ordinary life as art, with quite radical consequences for the “outward” appearance of works of art. And in particular it entailed considerable consequences for the philosophy of art as well as the practice of art criticism. This effort remains the key not only to the form that art making continues to display, but helps answer some larger questions as to the meaning and purpose of being an artist today, and the function of finding “something ‘new’ in art.” I was invited to serve on a panel of critics during an evening of musical performances at Columbia University, called “Creativity and New Frontiers.” The linking of these two concepts—artistic creativity and frontier—prompted me to reflect on a narrative of the history of art as the history of frontiers. I found a valuable analogy in the narrative of the history of freedom as conceived by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: from an era in which one person is free, to one in which only some persons are free, and finally, to one in which all are free. It was a history of forms of the state—from monarchy to oligarchy to democracy. Hegel saw political equality as the prevailing and final episode of the narrative ushered in by Napoleon and the French Revolution. Teaching at the University of Jena in Germany when the French arrived, Hegel was radicalized by the ideal of a society governed by “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”—a very different trinity than the Jeffersonian values of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” that prevailed in the United States.

Jörg Immendorff, I Wanted to Become an Artist, 1972

The corresponding model for the history of art, as I conceived it that evening at Columbia, is this: one frontier, many frontiers, and finally—the condition in which we find ourselves as a result of the sixties—all frontier, the frontier in effect being everywhere. The whole of present artistic production is (the implied metaphor is somewhat inexact) cutting edge. The one frontier in what used to be called the history of visual art was the conquest of appearances. This was the history of art as conceived of by Giorgio Vasari and, nearer to our time, by Ernst Gombrich in his masterpiece, Art and Illusion (1960). It was a progressive model under which, according to Vasari, no further progress could be made, since it was now known how to achieve so considerable a likeness to visual reality that genuine illusion was possible. The experience of looking at a painting was little different from looking through a window at an actual scene that the painting depicted. The painting was to present the eye with the same array of data as the actual scene might have done. It was, as we know, difficult for Gombrich to fit modernism into his account, since it appeared indifferent to the goal of visual similitude. As I view it, modernism was the period of many frontiers, in the sense that creativity now meant creating a new movement. Picasso is the paradigm of the modern artist, against which every modern artist had the burden of creating a movement, which usually meant composing a manifesto, whether explicitly written or not, of what art should be or do. (The manifesto also often implied a new organization of the society for which the art was to be created.) The tradition of progressive verisimilitude did not require such a manifesto, though it would have been valuable had anyone explained the purpose of verisimilitude. Picasso did not write a manifesto for cubism, nor did Matisse write a manifesto for fauvism, but there were futurist, dada, surrealist, and hundreds more manifestos. It is significant that the manifesto has largely vanished from the art scene, along with the phenomenon of the art movement, which last flourished in the 1960s. Clement Greenberg’s 1960 essay “Modernist Painting” was really a manifesto of purification: each of the arts was to be defined by its medium and the agenda was to discover what belonged to that medium and to no other.1 In the case of painting this meant abstraction and flatness. When video became a medium, the critical problem was what is essential to video. Of course there were conflicts. Greenberg zealously tried to keep surrealism out of the modernist canon because it relied on illusory depth for its effects, as in the work of Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, and Yves Tanguy. Greenberg’s tragedy, such as it was, was that his manifesto appeared at the turn of the decade that brought modernism to an end. Neither as theorist nor critic was he able to deal with the movements of the 1960s, more or less dismissing them as “novelty art,” never realizing the conceptual depth of the art of the new decade, which I choose to think of as the “new” era.

19 The Gap between Art and Life  

1. Clement Greenberg, “Modernist Painting,” in Forum Lectures, “Voice of America” (1960).

Our contemporary era began in the 1960s, though there were anticipations via Marcel Duchamp, whose originality was masked by the misperception that he was part of a modernist movement, namely dada. Around the time of World War I he established that there need be no outward difference between artworks and ordinary things. When one thinks about it, this sounds quite close to the goal of overcoming the difference between appearance and reality, the frontier implied by the “conquest of appearances”—the defining goal of traditional art. At one point in The Republic, Socrates flashes a mirror around, effortlessly replicating the appearances of the world. Why bother with anything else if you are interested in duplicating the world? Duchamp merely took an object that exemplified a given type and declared it a work of ready-made art, which obviated the need to make an image at all and which was as good as you can get from the perspective of conquering appearance. Duchamp had somewhat stringent criteria as to the type from which the work was selected, but left unresolved the question of whether the other members of the type were works of art or not. In any case, through Fluxus, pop, and minimalism, different sectors of reality were in some way turned into art with the result that anything could be a work of art, which raised the radical question of why anything was. This situation of radical pluralism put an end to the creation of movements and raised, in an acute form, the question of what the philosophical definition of art could be. Everything was now possible as art, which is what I meant by saying that the frontier is everywhere. A friend sent me a passage from the Gospel of Thomas, which moved me profoundly: “His disciples said to him, ‘When will the kingdom come?’ It will not come by watching for it. It will not be said, ‘Look, here,’ or ‘Look, there.’ Rather, the Father’s Kingdom is spread out upon the earth, and people do not see it.” It is no longer easy—it is no longer possible, really—to know when one is in the presence of art. Art may not look like art as understood under one or another of the previous stages. That is the condition in which we find ourselves. We have to imagine the possibility that whatever we are looking at or listening to is art, and proceed on the assumption that it is art. We will soon enough find out if we are right or wrong. Modernism, as theorized by Clement Greenberg, consisted in creating boundaries— between painting and sculpture, for example—each of the media having its own frontier, which divided it from the rest. This balkanized the world of art, which helps us understand how the Balkans themselves, with their drive toward ethnic cleansing, exemplified modernist politics in the late twentieth century: no Serbs in Croatia, no Croatians in Bosnia, no Kosovars in Kosovo. Our era—­postmodernist not in style but in historical chronology—consists, by contrast, in dissolving boundaries. That is what makes Duchamp its prophet, since he overcame the boundary

Arthur C. Danto  20  

between art and commonplace objects, at least in principle. In actual practice he was interested only in certain kinds of commonplace objects, those bereft of any aesthetic distinction. That is because he was bent on the de-aestheticization of art. He was eager to do away with aesthetic gratification as the point of art; instead, he wanted to inspire intellectual gratification, as with chess, at which he was a master. Part of his agenda was to render taste irrelevant, another was to render skill irrelevant. Pop, then, dissolved the boundary between art and vernacular images; minimalism between art and industrial objects. Few figures were more radical in dissolving boundaries, both in art and in life, than Andy Warhol. As a speculative parenthesis, I believe that the overcoming of boundaries that initially took place in art began to occur everywhere in society as the sixties advanced. 1964 was the “Freedom Summer”—a collective effort to ensure that blacks enjoyed the same voting rights as whites. Radical feminism emerged after 1968. In 1969 the “Stonewall Resistance” began to break down the boundaries between gay and straight. The difference between liberals and conservatives—between the red states and the blue states—is a matter of which boundaries to preserve and which to overcome, but the same spirit animates both positions. In my view, periods of social change are heralded by changes in the conception of art—but this is something I cannot further pursue here. By the beginning of the seventies in the art world, one could no longer teach the meaning of art by examples, for the possibility of counterexamples had vanished. One knew in advance that anything could be a work of art, so it was pointless to ask whether this or that could be. A woman’s dress could be a work of art, as could a dish of green curry. This had already been achieved in the fifties with music, largely through John Cage’s efforts to demonstrate that all sounds are musical sounds. He had overcome the boundary between music and noise. Most of the members of Fluxus were students in Cage’s seminar in experimental composition at the New School. They were composers who became engaged with overcoming the boundary between music and visual art. That musical evening at Columbia was part of this movement, which is why I felt able to be on the panel as a critic. I could not be a music critic in the ordinary sense in which one writes reviews of performances or concerts. But for the kinds of performances that were to be put on that evening at Columbia, I felt that I had as much to say as an ordinary music critic might, or was perhaps even better prepared because of my engagement with the philosophical issues raised by avant-garde art in the sixties. We were in a situation, I now appreciate, exactly opposite the one depicted by Greenberg. There were no boundaries on what could be art. Literature, theater, sound, dance could all be components in the same work. Purity of medium was no longer a governing critical premise.

21 The Gap between Art and Life  

Before moving to my main concern, there is one more preliminary point I would like to make: the exciting exhibitions of the sixties were those that showed, as works of art, objects that looked just like those that were not works of art. My favor­ ite example, of course, was Warhol’s exhibition of shipping cartons. I also remember The New Realists show at the Sidney Janis Gallery in 1962, which included Claes Oldenburg’s sculptures of the most ordinary of objects, including a motel room. Lichtenstein showed advertisements and comic-strip panels. The gap between art and life was to all intents and purposes invisible. So what then was the difference? Why not make a show of anything: clothespins, matchboxes, underpants? It seemed to me, when I first confronted this problem in the mid-sixties, that there had to be a difference, even if it did not meet the eye. Duchamp showed us two things of immense importance—the difference did not have to be an aesthetic difference, so one could drop aesthetics from consideration, and it did not have to be a matter of craftsmanship. Ready-mades required no craftsmanship on the artist’s part, nor did ready-made sounds require musicianship. So what is the difference? I was immensely lucky to have been confronted with this question in the sixties when stark, simple cases were at hand. Until then, works of art were very different from things found in ordinary life. I had been prepared for the question through the kind of philosophy that interested me—the theory of knowledge, for example, or the theory of action (at the time I was writing what eventually became books on both of these). Here is the problem that interested me in action theory: What is the difference between raising an arm, which I called a basic action, and my arm going up without my raising it? Between winking and blinking? What remains, Ludwig Wittgenstein asked, from the fact that I raise my arm, my arm goes up? There are parallel questions in perception: What is the difference between seeing a spot and seeming to see a spot when none is there? Or what is the difference between “a” causing “b” to happen, and “a” happening and then “b” happening, without any causal connection? The differences in all these cases exist, but they are not part of the experience. Only in the 1960s did the art world/real world differences become really clear. The problem of what is art differs little from the problem of the external world or the problem of skepticism. These are not problems that training in art history will help solve. I had the feeling that the history of art had evolved to the point where it was clear that the difference between art and reality was a question of the difference between causal episodes and mere conjunctions of events. All philosophical questions have the same form, and what had happened, finally, was that the philosophical nature of art had emerged in the course of its history. I thought: that is the end of art, but it is the beginning of the philosophy of art. I was in position, you might

Arthur C. Danto  22  

say, to help with that beginning. The question of “What is art?” was at least as answerable as the question of “What is a cause?” “What is an action?” “What is a perception?” I think that in art, all the answers before the sixties had to be beside the point. It was like trying to define wine only with reference to the greatest of vintages, rather than vin ordinaire. The sixties was a wonderful moment if you were a philosopher interested in the question of the nature of art, just as Manhattan was just the right place to be. Wherever one looked, the questions were being raised in this remarkably clear way. The philosophical face of art was exposed as never before or never since. New York in the sixties was like a philosophical laboratory. Things today are immensely more complicated. The art world is now entirely global. There are, I have been told, two hundred international art events every month—art fairs, biennials, triennials. Cultural centers are being built everywhere in the world. As I write this, I read that in Hong Kong a vast complex is under consideration, with four major museums, theaters, and concert halls. Where will all the art come from to fill these museums and the other museums being built everywhere else? Who will see it? In 1933 a presidential commission reported: “For the overwhelming majority of the American people, the fine arts of painting and sculpture, in their non-commercial, non-industrial forms, do not exist.”2 The same would have been true everywhere else in the world. Such museums as did exist in 1933 were for the most part empty most of the time. Now everyone knows about art, and museums everywhere are thronged. One is certain that this will be as true in Hong Kong as it is at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts, where an industrial wasteland was transformed into a museum complex. People travel great distances to see art at MASS MoCA. Thousands came to New York in February 2005 to see Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s massive work in Central Park and never questioned if it was art, though few were able to explain why it was. And beyond that, an immense number of young people want, like Immendorf in 1972, to become artists. In every college, the number of fine arts majors has grown at an astonishing pace. Every major art school has hundreds of applicants every year. These are no longer academies, with studios where just painting and sculpture are taught. Students are treated as artists already, with the schools existing mainly to help them to find their own way. There is no prescribed way of making art. The pluralism of the sixties has dissolved all boundaries. Or, if you like, the boundary is everywhere. The question now is: “What is all this immense activity about?” What—in being an artist—is one, in fact? Becoming an artist at my university, Columbia, means incurring a huge debt. It costs the same as becoming a lawyer or a doctor. Why should people pay money for what you make? Why should they even look at it? What will people see that makes it worthwhile traveling to see it? The philosophical question of what is art largely leaves all this out. My philosophy of art might tell you why a

23 The Gap between Art and Life  

2. Quoted in Richard D. McKinzie, The New Deal for Artists (Prince­ ton: Princeton University Press, 1973), 4.

3. Roger Schank, “God (or Not), Physics and, of Course, Love: Scientists Take a Leap,” New York Times, January 4, 2005, Science section.

signed Campbell’s soup can is art, but why should someone own it? Why should anyone care, even if what you make is “something ‘new’”? I want to approach these questions by returning to the beginning of philosophical speculation on the subject. An early passage that moves me deeply is the curious myth with which Plato concludes Book X of The Republic, which began with the discussion of art. Socrates tells of the adventures of a soldier, Er, who is left for dead on the field of battle. In the myth Er is allowed to follow the souls of the recently dead through the underworld, in the course of which they learn—and presumably unlearn—a great deal that they had picked up in life. At the end a variety of lives are spread out on a meadow, and these souls choose lots to determine the order in which they select the life they will live when reborn. The idea of choosing one’s life is what I find moving. Recently I read something by the psychologist Roger Schank about making such complex decisions: I do not believe people are capable of rational thought when it comes to making decisions in their own lives. People believe they are behaving rationally and have thought things out, of course, but when major decisions are made—who to marry, where to live, what career to pursue, what college to attend, people’s minds simply cannot cope with the complexity. When they try to rationally analyze potential options, their unconscious emotional thoughts take over and make their choices for them.3 Schank speaks of making decisions in their lives, but Plato was thinking about the decision of a life, almost like choosing a dish from a menu, which is why he discusses the problem from within a myth in which the lives are all laid out and the soul has to decide which one to live. He is dramatizing the fact that the question of what kind of life to choose is the most important question anyone faces, and that the whole point of philosophy ought to be to help us with this. But the first soul to make a choice, in Plato’s myth, makes a terrible selection. He chooses the life of a despot. That is the situation in Hegel’s scheme in which just one person is free and, on the surface, it seems like a wonderful life—you get all the power, and so you can demolish your enemies, get as much sex, as much property, as many of the good things of life as you want. But when the man sees what he has chosen for himself in reality, he screams in anguish. He realizes that he is in for a terrible life, but the choice is irrevocable. By contrast, the hero Odysseus, after looking very carefully, finds just the life he wants—a life of quiet obscurity. Soc­ rates describes a number of other cases. Plato ends the myth by saying that it will save us if we believe it, for if it is true, we will sooner or later have to choose a life for ourselves, and since we shall then have to live it, we want to make sure we make the right kind of life, even if such choosing is the kind of thing Roger Schank says it is.

Arthur C. Danto  24  

There does not seem to be an artist’s life lying about in the meadow. One man, Epeius, who appears to have designed the Trojan horse that led to the Greek victory in the great conflict that defined ancient thought, the Trojan War, chose the life of a craftsman, which, given present-day values, is a remarkable decision for a man to make. But if we consider the section of The Republic that ends with “The Myth of Er”—Book X—it is easy to see why Epeius made a wise choice. Book X begins with one of the most powerful attacks on art ever written. It is about as thorough a disenfranchisement of art and artists as has ever been written. The upshot of the whole book is that art, understood mimetically, is at once useless and dangerous. It is dangerous because impressionable young people are likely to imitate what they read about or see in mimetic art, namely plays and those parts of epic poems in which the poet, rather than describing what characters say, actually uses the words they use. The best thing is to suppress the use of these texts, Socrates and his friends agree. In Book X Socrates argues that artists lack the knowledge that crafts­ people possess. A craftsperson is a useful member of society. He or she can build the things society needs—weave clothing, build houses, construct furniture. Artists can create imitations of these, but what good is an imitation house, or imitation food, or a picture of a coat? Why would we need people like that? What is the good of imitations anyway, when we can have the real things? So Plato designs a universe in which artworks as imitations are at the very lowest level of objects, and designs a society in which nothing useful is done by artists. It is a powerful indictment. Who would want to be an artist given that account? Who wouldn’t choose instead to be a craftsperson? One thought The Republic leaves us with is that the kind of life we choose cannot be separated from the kind of society in which that life can be lived. When Socrates and his friends start building the just society in their discourse, various kinds of life are discussed. One kind is the life of a soldier. Another is the life of people who make the kinds of things people who live in the society need—farmers and carpenters and weavers. Another is the life of a ruler. Each of these has a part to play. At one point Socrates asks where a just person would fit into the scheme of things, and concludes that justice is not a specialty—it is something everyone has to have. Part of being just is doing the kind of thing one is supposed to do, given the life one has, and not trying to do or be something else. (That is not unlike Greenberg’s idea of not mixing media). So where does the artist fit? What is the artist’s place? Who ­really needs imitations? There have been two such disenfranchisements in the history of philosophy. The second one came in the first third of the nineteenth century, when Hegel declared that art was a thing of the past and the future lay with philosophy, such as he practiced it. In both Plato and Hegel, it is striking that art is to be replaced by

25 The Gap between Art and Life  

­ hilosophy—something difficult to explain if art is as trivial as Plato makes it out p to be and philosophy as important. Hegel never thought that art was trivial. Art, and particularly poetry, was believed to meet the highest spiritual needs of men and women. Hegel wants to say that only philosophy can now meet these needs. But in Greece, poetry was credited with this very power. Plato had to diminish art to make way for philosophy’s ascent. In The Republic, the ruler is to be a philosopher. And the educational system is to be philosophical, rather than poetic. One will have to abolish Homer and put Plato in his place. Actually, there are poets and playwrights in many of Plato’s dialogues. They discuss the central questions of life with Socrates. In The Statesman, a late dialogue, they discuss who should rule. Not the artists, Socrates says, they only provide entertainment. He proposes weavers who know how to weave strands of different sorts together to make a piece of cloth the way Socrates, in The Republic, weaves a social fabric out of the different sort of lives a state needs—soldiers, farmers, businessmen, etc. Let’s go back to the mirror that Socrates flashes around, saying how easy it is to make imitations. Who needs artists if we already have mirrors? Here is a response to that argument. A mirror tells us something we would not know without it, namely, what we ourselves look like and, hence, how others see us. It shows us what others see and we cannot without the use of mirrors. When Hamlet says that art is a mirror, he is about to use a play to reenact his father’s murder by his uncle, to show his uncle that he, Hamlet, knows his uncle’s crime. The Greek play was a lot like that. A play is the imitation of an action, and in taking its audience through the action, there is a cleansing. It is therapeutic. Art in Greece was about the viewers. It held a mirror to the lives of the viewers. People saw their lives through the medium of art. In the theater they could actually relive the lives of despots and see that it was no picnic to be Agamemnon or Oedipus or Orestes. It was about them, or could be made to seem to be about them. Artists were not making imitations for the sake of illusions; they were making imitations to give people a sense of what their own lives were about—like movies today. Plato himself had to emulate art in doing philosophy, to use the imagination of readers to lead them through the issues that concerned them: love, knowledge, justice, courage, friendship. When I started looking for some criterion for distinguishing between artworks and the ordinary things they resembled to any required degree, the first thing I hit on was that to be art it had to be about something, represent something, have meaning. To understand it one had to grasp the meaning. The art of the sixties was about the things that mattered to people—food, clothing, comfort, their bodies, the things that bothered them, the things that helped them out. No one was more alive to this than Warhol! He saw the pathetic agonies of ordinary people in the cheap newsprint advertisements with cures for acne, baldness, bad breath, loneliness, fat. Oldenburg monumentalized hamburgers and ice cream cones. Lichtenstein immedi-

Arthur C. Danto  26  

ately saw that the comics addressed the little tragedies and comedies of daily life. Small wonder that pop art was popular! I think the great erasure of boundaries was a way of making art applicable to everyone’s life. This rescued art from the elites who had made it their own. That is why there are so many museums now, and why they are full, and why so many people want to become artists. In the end Warhol and his peers were dealing with the same kinds of issues that Sophocles and Euripides were. Touching people’s lives in ways that neither religion nor philosophy—the other two moments of Absolute Spirit that Hegel recognized—could. What closing the gap between art and life achieved was to widen immensely the means of art, to make anything available to artists to address the immense range of issues in life as they emerge into consciousness. In 2005 I saw a work that greatly impressed me in an exhibition of young Iranian artists at the Apexart Gallery in Tribeca.4 The piece, by Shahab Fotouhi and Neda Razavipour, is titled A Few Centimeters above Sea Level. It consists of a bathtub filled with black, inky water. Hanging by wires from a rod over the bathtub are six or seven bottles, spaced at regular intervals. They are immersed in the water. Each has in it a goldfish, swimming in the clear water the bottle contains. The work is exceedingly suggestive, but its meaning is not immediately apparent. The director explained to me that it is a statement about the condition of women in Iran. The lovely goldfish are metaphors for the beautiful women who are bottled up, so to speak, in the household. They cannot see through the walls, they are “protected” from the dark world outside, which in reality means that they are effectively imprisoned in their households. Animal activists may ask if it is cruel to keep fish in such constrained spaces, but that suggests the large question that the artists are raising about freedom and women’s lives. Obviously such works create problems for criticism. Pictorial perception uses the same neural pathways that perception itself uses, and the meaning of a picture is easily made out. But this takes us only so far with a work like this. The task of the critic is to explain what such works mean, and the eye alone is of limited use. Had the artists not explained, through the gallerist, how to interpret what we see, their work might simply be seen as a bathtub, some bottles, some wires, some black fluid, some fish. Will this work change the world, as Immendorff intended his art to do? The show has the words “soft guerrillas” in its subtitle. One could fight a war to shatter the glass houses and liberate the women of Iran, I suppose, but soft guerrillas act through art on consciousness. In its own metaphorical way, the work functions the way the play functions in Hamlet’s strategy of catching the consciousness of the king. By changing consciousness, reality may be changed from within. Engaging consciousness is ultimately the means of overcoming the gap between art and life.

27 The Gap between Art and Life  

4. The exhibition at Apexart, New York, January 5–February 9, 2005, was titled Too Much Pollution to Demonstrate: Soft Guerrillas in Tehran’s Contemporary Art Scene.

jerry saltz

Jerry Saltz is adjunct assistant professor of art history, theory, and criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the art critic for New York magazine. He is also a visiting critic at Columbia University and Yale University and a contributor to numerous other periodicals, including the Village Voice (where he was senior art critic), New Art Examiner, Art and Auction, Flash Art, HG, Atelier, Japan, and Forum International. Known for his passionate opinions, lively, no-nonsense writing, and insights about contemporary art, he is the author of Seeing Out Loud (Figures, 2003) and the co-editor of Sketchbook with Voices (Van Der Marck, 1986).

What Art Is and What Artists Do

Can art change the world? Can art stop the spread of AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa? Can it increase crop yields in Asia? Could it change the government? Well, it can’t stop global warming. It cannot do those things. But I think that in concert with other things, art does change the world incrementally and by osmosis, and it does it in ways that we can’t quite know. I’m trying to develop my own theory of art. I think of it as a holistic theory because art, I believe, is part of a universal force. It sounds a little messy and embarrassing to admit that, but I don’t think it has any less meaning or purpose than science, religion, politics, philosophy, or any other discipline. Art is a way of knowing. It’s a medium of thinking, and it’s one that grants pleasure—and this has been forgotten in the West. So it is an extraordinarily important form of knowledge. Art is as good a way and as much a way of knowing as a first kiss, a last good-bye, or an algebraic equation. Art is an energy source that helps to make change possible. Art sees things in clusters and constellations rather than in rigid systems. When you have a rigid system, art will almost, 99 percent of the time, break that system. This is my new theory of art. I have taught theory. I like theory. I have loved theory. I know people who have one theory about art: “Abstraction? I do not like abstraction.” The art world can seem like a bunch of undertakers: “Painting is dead; the novel is dead; photography is dead; the author is dead.” I believe this cloaks an unexamined romantic tendency, which is that we all want to believe we’re living in a momentous time; that this is the moment when this died and that began. But that happens incrementally, and by osmosis. Take Descartes. A pithy little thing he said: “I think, therefore I am.” We’ve been taking that to the bank since whenever. But think about what the Marquis de

29

Sade would say; think about that yell that came up from the bottom of the Bastille, one of the loudest yells ever heard in the history of humankind: “They’re abusing prisoners down here. It’s time to riot.” They did not believe, “I think, therefore I am.” They believed, “I experience, therefore I am.” The art world has practiced this mind/body separation, but it is a complete abstraction, because all thinking is fed by feeling and vice versa. No thinking exists without feeling and no feeling exists without thinking. In the East there’s no mind/body split, and the art shows it. My theory tells me what to like. As you grow older, and you’re looking right down the barrel of a gun, you think: “My system’s not working; I’m going it alone.” It’s the same when you have to stand alone in front of a painting—with or without your system. Every single work of art ever made, every work of art that you make, is a theory. And it’s a theory about the way art should or should not look. Art history is like a long freight train, and when artists make paintings they actually put them on the back end of the train to become part of art history. “Work comes from work,” Bruce Nauman said. Artists: the number one thing is work. You have to work in times of doubt, in good times, bad times—work. In a way, you don’t do your work. Can you pick your style? It partly picks you. There are certain things you decide, but certain things you don’t. In a way, art is working through you. In a sense, you don’t exist; your art exists. So you have to get out of its way and work. Every opinion is interesting. When somebody tells you you’re doing something bad, it doesn’t mean that you’re doing something bad; it means that they don’t like what you’re doing, and that it should have either no bearing on what you’re doing, or a lot of bearing. It depends. So make more of what you’re already making. That doesn’t mean don’t change your work. But you don’t know if you’re making something now that’s going to take you to someplace later. Don’t be discouraged. Take chances. Have fire in the belly. Take risks. Beckett said, “Fail, fail again, fail more, fail better.” Failure is the only way to succeed. You have to fail. You have to be able to accept embarrassment on stage and off. You have to be able to do that. You have to define success differently. You have to work for what we’re all working for—credibility. You must be able to define success, not as money or love, but as time: time to make your work and keep working. And don’t take no for an answer. There are those beautiful, sexy, thirty-month careers when an artist’s work is seen in a gallery, or the artist is lucky enough to be in a group show or in a museum

Jerry Saltz  30  

show somewhere, and people like the work. But, artists, what’s important is the thirty-year career, to be in the family of art, the hive mind, the group mind of art, when art speaks through you. And it will do that if you simply let it. You have to be your own harshest judge—and you have to be delusional. If you’re not delusional, you can’t work all the time, and if you’re not working all the time, you won’t be an artist. Be delusional, but be your own harshest critic. Dog owners know that when you call a dog, he comes over, puts his head right in your lap, and you have had a remarkable experience—a direct communication with another species. Cat owners know that when you call, “Come here, Fifi,” Fifi might look up, twitch a little, maybe walk to the couch and scratch . . . and then go back

Bruce Nauman, The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths (Window or Wall Sign), 1967

over to where she was. Artists are cats, because they put a third thing between themselves and the audience. To me, artists are cats; but art is a dog. So, artists, you are cats, putting the couch between yourself and the world, but you are making dogs. That is, while you’re communicating indirectly—putting this third thing ­between you and the world—that thing is like a dog because you just never know how it’s going to behave when there are people around. Art has purposes that are very hard to put into words. As one powerful example, consider the comments of an Italian jurist who headed the international tribunal convened in The Hague to try those accused of human atrocities during the Bosnian war in the 1990s. Lawrence Weschler asked the judge how he could stand to

Johannes Vermeer, View of Delft, 1660–61

hear these stories, day after day, for years.1 The judge replied, “Ah, you see, as often as possible I make my way over to the Mauritshuis museum, in the center of town, so as to spend a little time with the Vermeers.” Weschler imagined this was because they were very beautiful, but the judge said no, it was because they radiated “a centeredness, a peacefulness, a serenity.” So Vermeer was invented to heal pain, fulfilling an ancient purpose and a function that art was once made to serve. Art is a bridge to a vision and art is the vision. It lets you see something, and then it is what you see. It’s a medium through which people see the world. I don’t know what else is quite like that. Art is not optional. Art is necessary. Art is never as simple as you think it is.

33 What Art Is and What Artists Do  

1. Lawrence Weschler, Vermeer in Bosnia: A Reader (New York: Pantheon Books, 2004), 14. In the lead essay for this book, the author tells of meeting Antonio Cassese, head jurist for the Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal and the case of Duêko Tadig (pp. 12–26).

marcia tucker

Marcia Tucker was a writer, lecturer, and art critic. From 1977 to 1999, she was the founder and director of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York. There she organized such major exhibitions as The Time of Our Lives, A Labor of Love, and Bad Girls. She was the series editor for the museum’s Documentary Sources in Contemporary Art, which comprises five books of theory and criticism. As a curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, she organized major exhibitions of the work of Bruce Nauman, Lee Krasner, Joan Mitchell, Richard Tuttle, and others. She was the 1999 recipient of the Bard College Award for Curatorial Achievement and the Art Table Award for Dis­ tinguished Service to the Visual Arts in 2000. Marcia Tucker died in 2006. Her memoir, A Short Life of Trouble: Forty Years in the New York Art World, was published by University of California Press in 2008.

Multiple Personalities a how-to manual for artists and other creative types

“Risk, creativity, shift; change, reinvention, fear.” None of it sounds comfortable. Doing things differently involves a high degree of discomfort, which is why most of us prefer not to. I’m no exception: one day, early in my marriage, I came home to discover that my husband had moved a table in my loft from the place it had occupied for quite a long time. I was devastated and immediately sat down on the floor and started to cry. When he asked me what on earth was wrong, I sobbed, “The only thing I ever want to change is my mind, not the furniture!” Like most people, I’ve also spent huge stretches of time doing one thing, like being a parent, a museum director, or a writer. I lived in the same place for thirty-six years, and one of my closest friends and I have been together from the time we were ten. The greater part of my lifetime, though, has been spent trying to figure out who I am, only to find out, to my great relief, that it doesn’t matter at all. Whoever you think you are isn’t who you are, because who you are changes all the time. As Lewis Carroll put it in Alice in Wonderland, “I knew who I was when I got up this morning, but I must have changed several times since then.” I remember years ago visiting an important donor to the New Museum at her house, where she gave me a tour of her collection and a privileged glimpse into her identity. When we got to the kitchen, she showed me the gleaming counters and shelves and appliances, and then she opened her refrigerator, whose near-naked shelves contained a box of crackers and a lone squat container. She leaned toward me conspiratorially and solemnly announced, “You know, I’m a cottage cheese person.” Well, everybody’s like that to some extent. How many times have you heard someone say, “I’m not a sandals person,” or “I don’t do sports,” or—holding up an article of clothing, “It’s just not me”? Definitions of all kinds can be dangerous, because

35

then you can see only what falls within that definition. If you know who you are, then why do anything that messes with it? On the other hand, the only thing we know for sure is that everything changes. As one pundit put it, “Change is inevitable—except from a vending machine.” Nothing stays the same, from our very cells to the physical environment around us. That’s hard for us to accept, because our brains are programmed to avoid change, to treat change defensively. But in order to stay alive, we have to constantly adapt to changing circumstances, both internal and external. This creates a basic paradox: while human beings are programmed to resist change, if we don’t change it means that we’re dead—literally. Think about it. We spend most of our time worrying that if things are good, they’ll change for the worse. If things are bad, we spend all our energy trying to make them better. We don’t spend much time living in the present, being available to what’s happening right now. The experience of art—for some people, at least—offers that possibility, because when you identify with a work, you become completely absorbed by it in a way that makes time seem to stop. What intrigues me is that in the moment of being open and available to the experience, art—especially contemporary art—can be a catalyst for change. It can change the way you see and therefore how you think, and then possibly the way you act. Perhaps that’s the reason that contemporary art is so difficult for some people: they simply do not want to change. We actually spend enormous amounts of physical and psychic energy resisting change: trying to keep ourselves young through any means at our disposal—or alive, through cryogenics; using tried and true methods to solve problems rather than looking for more interesting solutions; trying to prevent our children from thinking or acting in ways that are very different from our own—to name only a few. As individuals, one way of resisting change is to work from our successes rather than our failures, to become “virtuosos” or “experts”; in my view, an expert is someone involved with what they already know, and I don’t want to be one. Today there’s upheaval in virtually every part of the world, and even the future of the world itself is uncertain. We’re coping with natural disasters on an enormous scale, with war, poverty, starvation, AIDS. In America, terrorism is at our doorsteps and dire warnings appear on the front pages of our newspapers daily. There’s a staggering discrepancy between rich and poor; and we are witnessing the disastrous failure of vision and ineptitude of our government and its leaders. We need to adapt continuously to changing circumstances in order not just to survive, but to get anything done, and to keep ourselves from falling apart.

Marcia Tucker  36  

Given the paradoxical and painful nature of change, and the risks for those who initiate it, why should we ever want to do it? Well, there’s the very human need and desire to surprise oneself, something artists struggle toward constantly. I remember when I organized the first major exhibition of the work of Lee Krasner at the Whitney, we battled over who would install it—her or me. I won. I did let her come in a day early to see it and to make any changes she really thought necessary. The appointed day and hour arrived, and she swept imperiously past me into the galleries, swathed in fur, refusing to say a word. I finally caught up with her in one of the small back galleries, leaning against the wall. “You know,” she was murmuring to herself, “I’m a pretty damn good painter.” Surprise! I always thought that unselfconsciousness was a state of grace. You know how little kids are when they’re playing, or dancing, by themselves? It’s so beautiful. But as adults, we can’t just decide to be unselfconscious. We can only put ourselves in situations where that’s likely to happen. Take, for instance, when you’re trying to do something that you’ve never done before. That’s when you’re apt to surprise yourself or, in some cases, scare yourself silly. It’s also when you’re bound to disappoint or upset others by following your own path. When I was fifteen, I sat my parents down in our avocado and burnt-orange living room in New Jersey and told them that I had decided to become an artist. My mother looked as if she’d been hit on the head with a frying pan, and my father lit a second cigar with the first one still in his mouth. “What will you have to fall back on?” my mother wailed. “Who’s going to take over my law practice?” my father asked, genuinely distressed. After college, when my series of paintings of one-eyed prostitutes failed to find an audience—or even garner any enthusiasm from my friends—I gave up making art and resigned myself to being a secretary. I was working for a famous portrait painter whose studio and townhouse were a block away from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University’s graduate school in art history. I applied to audit several courses there, but it turned out that I had inadvertently enrolled. I did well, too, for the first time in my academic life, because no one was watching or cared, other than myself. When I got out of grad school, I earned a living cataloging private art collections, because I decided that it made more sense financially to provide a service for the wealthy than for the poor. And all I needed was a pencil, some index cards, a ruler, and a skirt (in order to use the Frick research library you had to wear a skirt).

37  Multiple Personalities  

In 1968 I was hired as a curator by the Whitney Museum because I’d spent so much time around artists and collectors, and had an art history degree. But I’d always been interested in theater, and at the time they hired me I had just begun working with Richard Schechner at the Performing Garage, where I was a member of his second-string troupe. Richard was challenging the boundaries that separated audience and actor as well as redefining what performance meant, and it was exhilarating to be part of that. I was learning to do flying somersaults and hang from ceiling-high scaffolding and to use my body and voice in ways that nice Jewish girls from the Jersey suburbs were simply not cut out for. The four- to five-hour workshops were at night, so I just kept quiet about it at the museum and continued to do both. Then Schechner wanted us to perform—without pay—while his main troupe, the Wooster Group, was on tour. So we left in a huff. It seemed to me that the essence of theater was making something out of nothing, an idea that I found irresistible and addictive, and I didn’t want to give it up. So, with a few of the people from Schechner’s workshop and some artists and friends I conned into joining, I started a small group called Mighty Oaks Theater ­Company—​assuming that we wouldn’t be little acorns forever. I kept myself educated in this new field by taking lessons at the Actor’s Studio and by using my museum ­vacations—four weeks a year—to take workshops in circus skills, story telling, and vocalization. During the summer I was fortunate to be able to study with well-known directors like Herbert Blau, whose method was to exhaust his students with the most demanding physical exercises imaginable and let them wreak deep psychological havoc on each other. He then turned this into theater. After years of studying with different teachers, I began teaching theater to visual artists myself, including a three-week summer workshop at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the mid-1970s. Mighty Oaks lasted ten years. We met in my loft and created three pieces over that period—what one friend called “the longest rehearsals in history”—which we performed at some wonderful venues and festivals, although we got mixed reviews. The Best of Death, a full-length musical, was panned by the Village Voice (the reviewer didn’t like our song and dance version of “I’ve Got Sixpence,” which began, “I’ve Got Cancer, Deadly Deadly Cancer”), but my elderly Aunt Mollie loved it. Her only complaint was that we should have offered senior-citizen discounts. That’s when my own multiple personality problems began to surface. One day I was sitting in the hot tub at the gym, and a handsome young guy kept staring at me, making me really uncomfortable. Finally, he said, “You’re an actress, aren’t you?”

Marcia Tucker  38  

“No,” I said, “I’m not.” “Come on. Yes, you are,” he insisted. “No, I work in a museum,” I said curtly. “Geez, I could have sworn I saw you at a theater festival on Long Island,” he said, puzzled. “You were Catherine the Great.” Boy, was I embarrassed. That was me, all right, in the touring version of The Best of Death, screaming in agony from behind the curtain, “A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!” as I perished.

“Miss Mannerist is the maven of mores and manners for career-

Mighty Oaks broke up because my boyfriend—now my husband—lost his studio. I wanted him to be able to use the space, and none of the other members was willing to host the group. But the experience of doing a musical had been really fun, and ever since I was little, I had desperately wanted to be able to sing. Unfortunately, I was one of those kids who had to mouth the words in the school chorus. So I started an a cappella vocal group called “The Art Mob,” after a song by Terry Allen, and I started taking voice lessons. I still am, twenty-five years later, and some day I might even get good at it. “In the beginner’s mind are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few,” says Suzuki Roshi. Anyhow, the Art Mob is still going strong after twenty-six years and performs to decent crowds without any advertising, except for email announcements. The fact that there are no professional singers in it is fine, because people love listening to something that might not be perfect, something that’s human and vulnerable, where a mistake could actually happen (and often does!). I spent eight very happy years at the Whitney Museum as curator of painting and sculpture, thinking that finally my life was on an even keel, that I had found my true calling, and I was even making a living at it. Then a new director came along and I was fired. I never found out the real reason why, but it happened right after I had organized a controversial exhibition of the work of Richard Tuttle. People hated the show because the work was so modest in scale and used ordinary materials like wire, cloth, pencil lines, and small pieces of wood. Clearly not art. Being fired is instructive. It’s sort of like having leprosy—no one wants to get too near you, although they really would like to be kind and helpful, in my case by telling me I’d never find another job that was as good as the one from which I’d just been dismissed. When I began to talk about wanting to start a museum, they were

Marcia Tucker as Miss Mannerist, 1999

impaired artists, visually challenged curators, and artistic ‘bigfish-in-a-small-pond’ wanna-bees of all kinds” (Marcia Tucker).

1. The autobiography has since been published: Marcia Tucker, A Short Life of Trouble: Forty Years in the New York Art World, edited by Liza Lou (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008).

positively enthusiastic. The most common response was “You can’t do that.” “That’ll never work” came second, followed by “You’ve gotta be crazy.” The point I want to make here is that if you’re kicked out of or can’t get into an arts institution, a choral group, a motorcycle club, or a class in ikebana, or if there’s something you desperately want to do, like track UFO sightings with other like-minded believers, and there’s no existing structure in which to do it, then go form one yourself. Another real plus is that once you do, they can’t throw you out. My job at the New Museum lasted twenty-two years, and along about the nineteenth year, when the museum had grown enough to become insanely stressful, my husband gave me a birthday present. He’d never been much good at presents (for our twentieth wedding anniversary he gave me an indoor/outdoor thermometer), but this time he checked my calendar and secretly signed me up for a course at NYU—in stand-up comedy. That got my mind off work. I was old enough to be everyone else’s grandma, for one thing, and for another, comedy is hard. But our final exam was an appearance at the Comic Strip. I shook the whole way through my six-minute schtick, but I was hooked. I never told anyone at the museum what I was doing. Actually, it was my daughter, Ruby, who gave me my stage name, “Mabel McNeil,” and who kept me company and cheered me on when I performed at some very sketchy clubs. I lasted about five years, but I quit because I couldn’t stay up that late anymore. I retired from the New Museum in 1999, before it got tired of me or I got tired of it, and I spent a lot of time wondering what I would do next. I thought maybe because of my acting and comedy experience I’d work on a solo performance piece, but in order to do that you have to write it first. Which I started to do. Writing autobiographically, though, is so different from art criticism or expository writing that I had to learn it from scratch. Three-and-a-half years and five hundred pages later, I had written a memoir and had permanent bruises on my forehead from banging it repeatedly against the wall. No, in case you’re wondering, it hasn’t been published.1 Still trying, but as I was reading over my journals when I was doing research for the memoir, I came across the following statement, written in 1963: “Whatever I do, I will never, ever write fiction. It is simply too hard.” So I’ve almost finished a collection of short stories—also unpublished—and have started work on a novel, which I have no idea on earth how to write. It’s scary. I hate being faced with my own inadequacy, my fear that I’ll never learn how to do it; that even if I do, I won’t be any good at it; that even if I’m good at it, no one else will think so; that at sixty-five it’s too late to start a whole new vocation. We all ask ourselves, at one time or another, “What if I try something new, and I don’t succeed?” Which is where fear comes in, because we’re afraid of losing con-

Marcia Tucker  40  

trol. Which, of course, is exactly what happens when you don’t know how to do something but are trying anyhow. It seems that everything I’ve ever learned and grown from involved fear. But fear never really motivated me. Desire, on the other hand, could get me to do just about anything. And no matter what it was—riding a motorcycle, cooking an Indonesian dinner, having a baby late in life, or going to a Baptist singing convention in the Deep South, there was always some helpful person telling me, “You just don’t know what you’re getting into!” So true. And why should I want to know in advance? It doesn’t leave much room for adventure, does it? Or fun, for that matter. The impetus for change and growth always comes as a shock, always wrests us out of complacency. Artists have taught me many things, but the most valuable is that confusion, disorder, mistakes, and failure—all the things that we encounter when we try something new—are essential to the creative process. Artists have also taught me that being creative means working without knowledge of the outcome, with one’s attention focused instead on the process, the meaning, and the pleasure of the work itself. Even if you’re not “successful” at what you’re doing, you might surprise yourself. George Eliot, who changed her name in order to have her work accepted, was right when she said, “It is never too late to become what you might have been.” Or, even better, to cultivate the multiple personalities already within each of us. One of my favorite quotes is from Stephen Leacock’s Gertrude the Governess, written in 1911: “Lord Ronald . . . flung himself upon his horse and rode madly off in all directions.”2 I personally embrace the idea of being an amateur, a dilettante. If you parse the word “dilettante,” you find that it comes from the present participle of the Italian delittare and from the Latin delectare, “to delight.” It’s the frequentative of delicere, “to allure,” from de- + lacere, “to entice.” Sounds good to me. As soon as we insist, “I don’t like this,” or “I don’t do that,” we’ve shut ourselves off from other kinds of experience. But if we allow ourselves to detach from our preferences, from our habits, we can begin to notice that things are continually shifting and changing, including our own taste. I’d even go so far as to say the same thing about beliefs. I wonder if the nature of belief, which is fixed, solid, unchanging, and unassailable, actually prevents us from experiencing anything outside of it. Elaine Scarry says, “Belief is what the act of imagining is called when the object [created by the imagination] is credited with more reality . . . than oneself.”3 Beliefs strike me as prescriptive rather than descriptive, and very different from, say, “knowing,” or “experiencing” something as it happens, which opens us to change. Thoughts are not facts. Feelings are not facts either.

41  Multiple Personalities  

2. Stephen Leacock, “Gertrude the Governess: or, Simple Seventeen,” in Nonsense Novels (Whitefish: Kessinger Publishing, 2004), 31. 3. Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 205.

mark epstein

Mark Epstein explores the common ground of Buddhist thought and Western psychotherapy. A psychiatrist in private practice in New York City, he is the author of Thoughts without a Thinker (Basic Books, 1995), Going to Pieces without Falling Apart (Broadway Books, 1998), Going on Being (Broadway Books, 2001), and Open to Desire: Embracing a Lust for Life: Insights from Buddhism and Psychotherapy (Gotham, 2005), and a contributing editor to Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. Epstein is a graduate of Harvard College and the Harvard Medical School, and clinical assistant professor of psychology at New York University.

Meditation as Art/Art as Meditation thoughts on the rel ationship of non-intention to the creative process

When I was first learning about Buddhism I was in college, and I approached it the way I approached most things then. I knew how to go to school and I knew how to study, and I figured that I could master meditation the same way I could any other course. I went to a Buddhist “summer camp” in Boulder, Colorado—Naropa Institute—where scholars and writers and artists and meditation teachers gathered in what was to be the first of many such summers introducing Buddhism into Western culture. I took many courses that summer, in Buddhist meditation, psychology, philosophy, and culture while secretly searching for a topic for my upcoming senior thesis in psychology, but I became increasingly frustrated at my failure to master the meditation techniques I was being taught. My roommates at Naropa, randomly assigned to me by the institute, were two twins from Long Island whose parents, Holocaust survivors, ran a fruit and vegetable business in their hometown. These twins took a dim view of most of the teachers at Naropa. They were put off by the teachers’ self-importance and grandstanding, and after a bit of time they began making early-morning trips to Denver’s wholesale fruit and vegetable markets, bringing back cases of fresh cherries, peaches, and other produce, which began to fill our townhouse apartment. They watched me in my fruitless pursuit of wisdom until one day one of the twins pulled me aside and offered to teach me to juggle. He handed me a couple of oranges and we got to work. After several days of steady practice, I managed to get the hang of it. Keeping three oranges in the air, I noticed a change in my mind. It was relaxed, yet awake. Open and alert. Not lost in thought, but very aware. My arms moved without me, the oranges orbiting my gaze. Suddenly, all of the meditation instruction began to make sense. My introduction to Buddhism was under way.1 There is a famous Tibetan story about a woman named Manibhadra who attained enlightenment while carrying water from the village well back to her home. Dropping her pitcher one day and seeing the water gush out of the broken gourd, she was suddenly liberated. Like water breaking forth, her consciousness flowed out and merged

43

This essay is reprinted by permission from Mark Epstein, Psycho­ therapy without the Self: A Buddhist Perspective (New Haven: Yale ­University Press, 2007), 228–48; © 2007 by Mark Epstein, M.D. 1. See Mark Epstein, Going to Pieces without Falling Apart (New York: Broadway Books, 1998), 29–31.

2. Sigmund Freud, “Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-Year-Old Boy,” in The Standard Edition of the Com­ plete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. James Strachey, vol. 10 (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000), 23. See also Sigmund Freud, “Recommendations to Physicians Practicing Psycho-Analysis,” in Stan­

with all of reality. This jarring loose, or breaking free—this going to pieces without falling apart—is what Buddhism acknowledges as one of the self’s secret needs—to be released from the grip of the known. This shift in consciousness is one thing that links the otherwise disparate worlds of art, therapy, and meditation, three areas of human endeavor in which process is as important as product, where the ability to willingly enter psychic territory that most people would rather avoid tends to pay off, where “identity” can be more of an obstacle than an achievement.

dard Edition, vol. 12, 111–12. 3. Wes Nisker, “John Cage and the Music of Sound,” Inquiring Mind 3, no. 2 (1986), 4. 4. Joseph Goldstein, The Experience of Insight (Santa Cruz, CA: Unity Press, 1976), 20.

To give you a couple of examples of how helpful this release can be, listen first to Freud. In his most explicit instructions to physicians practicing psychoanalysis, he cautioned that the most important method was to: “Suspend judgment and give impartial attention to everything there is to observe . . . simply listen and do not bother about keeping anything in mind.”2 Freud was trying to loosen up his followers, to get them to listen with their “third ears” rather than with their thinking minds so that they could make intuitive leaps rather than ponderous progress. The composer John Cage said the same thing in completely different words in his advice to musicians and composers, “If you develop an ear for sounds, it is like developing an ego. You begin to refuse sounds that are not musical and that way cut yourself off from a good deal of experience.”3 Cage was trying to free musicians from their ideas of what music was, just as Freud wanted his analysts to listen without trying to fit what they heard into a preexisting schema. James Joyce described the optimal mental state of a person regarding a work of art in similar language. His description applies as much to the making of art as the appreciating of it, and its relevance to the meditative state is something I hope to make clear. He used the word “beholding” to describe what he was after. If you pull an object too close, he said, the experience of it becomes like pornography, while if you distance yourself too much, it becomes like criticism. His “beholding” is analogous to what is required in meditation, best described in an ancient Japanese haiku: The old pond A frog jumps in “Plop.” 4 The old pond is the mind. A frog jumping in is like a thought or a feeling passing through the mind. “Plop” are the reverberations it creates, “beheld” by the observer/ participant who is able to give impartial attention to everything there is to observe. When I first stumbled across Buddhist thought and practice, I did not know very much. I was still in college, was interested in psychology, but found Freud, at that time, to be too difficult, too far outside of my own experience to be readily intelligible. Buddhism, on the other hand, spoke clearly and succinctly about my problem. Life is filled with a sense of pervasive unsatisfactoriness because of the way we

Mark Epstein  44  

cling, the Buddha proclaimed in his first teachings of the Four Noble Truths. The only way to deal with this dissatisfaction is to learn how not to cling. Changing the way we relate to experience, learning how not to refuse sounds that are not musical, learning to behold objects rather than grasp at them or push them away, is the key to the Buddha’s path. And meditation is the way this change is practiced and learned. When I met my first Buddhist meditation teachers, I was not yet twentyone years old. I was good at writing papers and taking tests—I knew how to solve math problems and do research in the library—but in meditation I found something new. I often think that the way I responded to meditation is similar to the way artists feel when they are first exposed to their craft, one that they will make use of for their entire lifetime. Meditation gave me something to throw my whole self into, the way one has to do when painting or taking photographs or making ceramics or playing music. It is a formless art, but one that requires the same diligence, patience, experimentation, immersion, and risk of failure as any other. I was seduced by meditation. It gave me something to engage with, practice, hone my skills with and explore, and it required everything of me—the more of myself I put into it, the more I could lose myself in it, the more it gave me back. When I met my wife, who is a sculptor, it was immediately clear to me that although she did not have a formal meditation practice, her time in her studio was her version of meditation. The way that her process required her to be open to herself, to find a balance between control and surrender, to push into the unknown while being mindful, or conscious, of her reactions but not subservient to them, all spoke of what I knew from meditation. It turns out that this confluence of Buddhist thought and Western artistic process is something that has been of interest to artists since Buddhism was first introduced to the West. What I would like to do here is to give you some sense of this by tracing one particular arc, one that began in the 1940s and 1950s with the travels of D. T. Suzuki, a Japanese writer and lecturer on Zen Buddhism, to New York City, where he gave a series of lectures at Columbia University attended by a number of soon-to-be prominent artists, writers, musicians, critics, psychoanalysts, poets, and philosophers. They would influence, in a mostly hidden way, the course of modern art and culture. Let me quote rather liberally from the art critic Arthur Danto’s description of Suzuki’s influence: The class met one day a week, in the late afternoon, in Room 716 Philosophy Hall, where departmental seminars were held. There was a very long table. Dr. Suzuki sat at the head of the table, with a blackboard to the left and behind him, though I don’t remember him using it. Those who did not find a seat at the table sat in un­ comfortable wooden chairs around the wall. In those days, not only was smoking allowed, it was expected. Dr. Suzuki did not, obviously, address hordes. My sense, inevitably vague, is that there would rarely have been as many as forty auditors. Many of those who came were artists, like the sculptor Ibram Lassaw and his wife,

45  Meditation as Art/Art as Meditation  

5. Arthur C. Danto, “Upper West Side Buddhism,” in Buddha Mind in Contemporary Art, ed. Jacquelynn Baas and Mary Jane Jacob (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 54–56.

or Philip Guston and John Cage, who used to come together. But these are things I learned after the fact. At the time I knew no one who belonged to the Suzuki crowd. Some intellectual historian must one day try to identify the attendees, as has already been done with Alexandre Kojeve’s course on Hegel, at the Collège de France. I think Suzuki’s course played a role in New York much like Kojeve’s did in Paris. It helped redirect the way those who were thinkers actually thought. Someone may have kept track of attendance. It would be of interest to know, for example, if J. D. Salinger actually attended, since he is said to have been influ­ enced by Suzuki. Thomas Merton was definitely there. I cannot pretend to have known Dr. Suzuki himself at all well. He was not an inspiring speaker, however inspired one might have been by his subject matter. He was not especially saintly in manner, but rather urbane, which was just what one might expect, given the values of Zen. But he did look like a Japanese painting of a monk, though he dressed in what is referred to as “business attire” on invita­ tions. Neither was he a witty person, despite his knowledge of koans and what one might term their logic. . . . From what people told me, Dr. Suzuki kept saying pretty much the same things each time he offered the course—he was, after all, a professor. But that did not keep people from coming back, year after year, to hear it all again. Maybe, in the end, repetition was the point. . . . I am sure that there were not only artists in Dr. Suzuki’s course, but in a way I think I understand what they were after. Let me say, though, that in the 1950s I would naturally have thought in terms of New York School painting when I thought about Zen. Zen went with the gestural way that painters engaged with their work at the time. Today, I can recognize that Zen was more a matter of attitude than performance. . . . It was not, however, until the 1960s that the wider meaning of what I learned from Dr. Suzuki—if not from his lectures, then from his books—found its way into my philosophy. I would not have been able to see this in terms of 1950s para­ digms. The direction of art history itself changed in what I think was a radical way. Whether Dr. Suzuki helped cause this change, or merely contributed to it, is not something anyone can say with certainty. But the people who made the changes were themselves Suzuki’s students one way or another. In any case, the meaning of Zen for me came when I had in a way begun to outgrow it. I am thinking of John Cage and, in particular, of Cage’s effort to overcome the differences between music sounds and mere noise.5 Suzuki introduced a generation of artists to Buddhist ideas: in particular, to the Buddhist notion that it is possible to train the mind to overcome its usual prejudices, its

Mark Epstein  46  

John Cage, A Dip in the Lake: Ten Quicksteps, Sixty-two Waltzes, and Fifty-six Marches for Chicago and Vicinity, 1978

6. Erich Fromm, D. T. Suzuki, and Richard DeMartino, Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis (New York: Harper Colophon, 1960), 30–31. 7. Stephen Batchelor, Verses from the Center (New York: Riverhead Books, 2000), 21. 8. Nisker, “John Cage and the ­Music of Sound.”

habits, its conditioning, its preconceptions, and its obsessive preoccupation with language. While appealing to his audience’s intellects, Suzuki encouraged them to be suspicious of those very intellects—to find ways of reaching into their unconscious, into the realm of pure subjectivity that we think of as inner space. “Let a man once look within in all sincerity,” Suzuki wrote, “and he will then realize that he is not lonely, forlorn, and deserted; there is within him a certain feeling of a royally magnificent aloneness, standing all by himself and yet not separated from the rest of existence. This unique situation, apparently or objectively contradicting, is brought about when he approaches reality in the Zen way. What makes him feel that way comes from his personally experiencing creativity or originality which is his when he transcends the realm of intellection and abstraction.”6 Suzuki gave his listeners the Zen ball and they proceeded to run with it. He let them see that they could make art when they took their selves out of the equation, that the cultivation of non-intention did not inhibit creative production but set it free. He laid the foundation for Cage’s exploration of chance operations, for Robert Rauschenberg’s combines, and for pop art’s (in Danto’s words) transfiguration of the ordinary. This ability to be present while getting the self out of the way is the great discovery that meditation makes possible. We think that we are necessary but are startled to find out that we are not. Meditation teaches us how to put ourselves aside, and it shows us that when we achieve this we do not disappear, but we open to a more creative relationship with our minds, our feelings, and the world. In Buddhist language, the experience that becomes available when we learn to put ourselves aside is called emptiness, but it is not an empty emptiness or a void. It is, rather, a full emptiness; the word itself derives from the Sanskrit term for a pregnant womb. As the Buddhist writer Stephen Batchelor has described it, “Emptiness is not a state but a way. Not only is it inseparable from the world of contingencies, it too is ‘contingently configured.’ To experience emptiness is not a descent into an abyss of nothingness nor an ascent into a separate realm. It is a recovery of the freedom to configure oneself as an intentional, unimpeded trajectory through the shifting, ambiguous sands of life.”7 This freedom to configure oneself unimpeded by repetitive cycles of obsessive habit is one of the foundations of the artistic process. John Cage listened to D. T. Suzuki’s lectures and proceeded to adapt what he heard to the composition of music. He learned to take his own likes and dislikes out of the creative equation so that he could more fully attend to the cycles of nature. “I have always tried to move away from music as an object,” he said, “moving toward music as a process, which is without beginning, middle, or end. So that instead of being like a table or chair, the music becomes like the weather.”8 In his later descriptions of his own process, he sounds like a most

Mark Epstein  48  

a­ ccomplished teacher of meditation. He managed to forge an integration between art, life, and meditation that has reverberated throughout the culture. As Cage described it: The great Buddhist scholar D. T. Suzuki came to Columbia to teach [in 1951] and I went for two years to his classes. From Suzuki’s teaching I began to understand that a sober and quiet mind is one in which the ego does not obstruct the fluency of the things that come in through our senses and up through our dreams. Our business in living is to become fluent with the life we are living, and art can help this. . . . In the early 1950’s, I began using chance operations to write my music, and after I became acquainted with the I Ching (the Chinese Book of Changes), I used it extensively. I apply chance operations to determine the frequency, ampli­ tude, timbre, duration and placement of different elements in my music. The chance operations allow me to get away from the likes and dislikes of my ego, so that I can become attentive to what is outside of my own psychology and memory. By using chance operations I am accepting what I obtain. Instead of expressing myself, I change myself. You might say I use chance operations instead of sitting meditation practice. . . . I have never engaged in sitting meditation practice. My music involves me always in sitting so that any more sitting would be too much. Furthermore, by the time I came in contact with Zen I had already promised Ar­ nold Schoenberg that I would devote my life to music which is concerned with the sense perceptions. So my meditation has been through my music, where I am try­ ing to get rid of my likes and dislikes and open myself to the flow of experience.9 Cage’s experiments with what Buddhists call “bare,” or naked, attention had a profound influence on the cultural landscape. In a subtle but irrefutable way, he introduced Buddhist thought into artists’ consciousnesses. He opened up the idea of an inner creative process in which an artist learns to give way to his or her art, becoming fluent, as Cage said, with the life he or she is living. Listen, for example, to the following description of the poet John Ashbery’s process: There have been many times in his life when he felt completely stuck, when the poetry seemed to dry up completely, but the longest and worst began shortly after he graduated from college and lasted more than a year. Then he happened to go to a John Cage concert and heard “Music of Changes”—nearly an hour of banging on a piano alternating with periods of silence, as dictated by a score that Cage had put together using the I Ching so that it would be determined by chance rather than by his choice. The music seemed to him to be full of powerful meanings and the idea of composing by chance made him think about writing in a completely different way. It made him want to go right back home and start work. Ever since, he has felt that what he calls “managed chance” is the right method for him. . . .

49  Meditation as Art/Art as Meditation  

9. Ibid.

10. Larissa MacFarquhar, “Present Waking Life,” New Yorker, November 7, 2005, 88, 96.

Ashbery compares his poems to environments, the idea being that an environ­ ment is something that you are immersed in but cannot possibly be conscious of the whole of. They are akin in this sense to environmental art, where, as he puts it, “You’re surrounded by different elements of a work and it doesn’t really mat­ ter whether you’re focusing on one of them or none of them at any particular moment, but you’re getting a kind of indirect refraction from the situation that you’re in. . . . This is not modesty—he doesn’t want people not to pay attention. Rather, he’s trying to cultivate a different sort of attention: not focused, straight-ahead scru­ tiny but something more like a glance out of the corner of your eye that catches something bright and twitching that you then can’t identify when you turn to look. This sort of indirect, half-conscious attention is actually harder to summon up on purpose than the usual kind, in the way that free-associating out loud is harder than speaking in an ordinary logical manner. A person reading or hearing his language automatically tries to make sense out of it: sense, not sound, is our default setting. Resisting the impulse to make sense, allowing sentences to accu­ mulate into an abstract collage of meaning rather than a story or an argument, requires effort. But that collage—a poem that cannot be paraphrased or explained or “unpacked”—is what Ashbery is after.10 We can feel the Buddhist influence in Cage in his music, and in Ashbery in his poetry. What about painting? Let me quote from two other artists who attended Suzuki’s lectures, who both configured their own unimpeded trajectories after ­being introduced to Buddhist thought, Philip Guston and Agnes Martin—two artists who, at first glance, could not be more opposite. First, Philip Guston, lecturing at the University of Minnesota in 1978, more than twenty-five years after attending Suzuki’s Columbia lectures: I would like to make some comments, but not about what my paintings mean. That’s impossible, totally impossible for me to do. I’m certain that professional art writers could do it much better than I could. Besides I have developed a tendency to disbelieve what artists say in their official statements. Nevertheless I will try to be as candid as I can be. I feel that strongly believed in and stated convictions on art have a habit of tum­ bling and collapsing in front of the canvas, when the act of painting actually be­ gins. Furthermore, I have found that painters of my generation are more candid and provocative in their casual talk and asides, and funnier too. Mark Rothko, after a mutual studio visit said, “Phil, you’re the best storyteller around and I’m the best organ player.” That was in 1957; I still wonder what he had in mind. So many articles appeared with words like sublime, and noble, and he says he’s the best organ player around. Franz Kline, in a very easy bar conversation in the

Mark Epstein  50  

­ fties said, “You know what creating really is? To have the capacity to be embar­ fi rassed.” And one of the better definitions about painting was Kline’s. He said, “You know, painting is like hands stuck in a mattress.” In a recent article which contrasts the work of a colour-field painter with mine, the painter is quoted as saying, “A painting is made with coloured paint on a surface and what you see is what you see.” This popular and melancholy cliché is so re­ mote from my own concern. In my experience a painting is not made with colours and paint at all. I don’t know what a painting is; who knows what sets off even the desire to paint? It might be things, thoughts, a memory, sensations, which have nothing to do directly with painting itself. They can come from anything and any­ where, a trifle, some detail observed, wondered about and, naturally, from the pre­ vious painting. The painting is not on a surface, but on a plane which is imagined. It moves in a mind. It is not there physically at all. It is an illusion, a piece of magic, so what you see is not what you see. . . . I think in my studies and broodings about the art of the past my greatest ideal is Chinese painting; especially Sung painting dating from about the 10th or 11th

Agnes Martin, The Field, 1966

11. “Philip Guston Talking” (lecture transcript, ed. Renée McKee), in Philip Guston: Paintings 1969–1980, ed. Nicholas Serota (London: White­ chapel Art Gallery, 1982), 49, 55. 12. Batchelor, Verses from the Center, 24.

c­ entury. Sung period training involves doing something thousands and thousands of times—bamboo shoots and birds—until someone else does it, not you, and the rhythm moves through you. I think that is what the Zen Buddhists called satori and I have had it happen to me. It is a double activity, when you know and don’t know, and it shouldn’t really be talked about. So I work towards that moment and if a year or two later I look at some of the work I’ve done and try to start judging it, I find it’s impossible. You can’t judge it because it was felt. What measure is there, other than the fact that at one point in your life you trusted a feeling. You have to trust that feeling and then continue trusting your­ self. And it works in a reverse way. I know that I started similar things in the past, 20 to 25 years ago, and would then scrape them out. I remember the pictures I scraped out very well, in fact some of them are sharper in my mind than the ones that remained. Well then, I would subsequently ask, why did I scrape them out? Well, I wasn’t ready to accept it, that’s the only answer. This leads me to another point: it doesn’t occur to many viewers that the artist often has difficulty accepting the painting himself. You can’t assume that I gloried in it, or celebrated it. I didn’t. I’m a night painter, so when I come into the studio the next morning the delirium is over. I know I won’t remember detail, but I will remember the feeling of the whole thing. I come into the studio very fearfully. I creep in to see what happened the night before. And the feeling is one of, My God, did I do that? That is about the only measure I have. The kind of shaking, trembling of . . . “That’s me? I did that?” But most of the time, we’re carpenters, we build and build, and add and prepare and when you drag yourself into the studio, you say, “Oh, that’s what I did. It’s horrible. All of it has to go.” This is one of the last minute touches. Often at the moment you’re playing your last card and are ready to give up, another kind of awareness enters and you work with that moment. But you can’t force that mo­ ment either. You truly have to have given up. And then something happens.11 Another kind of awareness. A double activity. Both Guston and Ashbery describe something that meditation makes possible: a kind of attention that emerges when the impulse to make sense is resisted, when feelings of embarrassment are not suppressed, when the random events of ordinary life are noticed rather than screened out, when the proscriptions of language and conceptual thought are circumvented. The Buddhist writer Stephen Batchelor describes it in his analysis of a second-century Indian poet named Nagarjuna: “As a poet, Nagarjuna gives voice to the freedom of emptiness from within. He is not interested in confirming what is safe and familiar, but in exploring what is unsettling and strange; the letting-go of fixed opinions about oneself and the world can be both frightening and compelling. Although such emptiness may seem an intolerable affront to one’s sense of identity and security, it may simultaneously be felt as an irresistible lure into a life that is awesome and mysterious.”12

Mark Epstein  52  

From the perspective of the psychotherapist, an analogous method has emerged as the cornerstone of psychoanalytic listening. While it has been cultivated outside of the rubric of Buddhist thought, it too is predicated on the ability of the mind to attend outside of the matrix of linguistic fixation. This is described very clearly by one of Britain’s most influential psychoanalysts, W. R. Bion, in his monograph Taming Wild Thoughts: Freud was extremely impressed with Charcot’s state­ ment that when you do not understand a situation, when you cannot perceive what the diagnosis is, you should go on until the obscurity begins to be penetrated by a pattern, and then you can formulate what the pat­ tern is that you see. With regard to ourselves, we are confronted with what seems to be a single individual. Our attention is usually focused on a recently developed capacity of the human being, namely his capacity to elaborate and use articulate speech. It is obviously a very powerful and useful achievement. But while we are in the frame of mind in which it is possible to command the use of relatively recently developed techniques like articulate speech, we also have to contend with the many obscuring words, thoughts, sounds, physical feelings, physical symptoms, in order to excavate the underlying, basic, and fundamental feature. . . . We do not in fact know who the person is today, tomorrow, with whom we are meeting. What we already know and what the patient already knows is of no con­ sequence or importance, the past is past, and anyhow that term is part of the con­ venience of articulate expression.13 This willingness to be befuddled seems to be one of the most common marks of the enlightened consciousness. You can hear it in Guston’s shaking and trembling “That’s me?” as well as in Bion’s frank admission of ignorance in the face of a seemingly single individual. In the words of Agnes Martin, it shows up in a different form. Martin was yet another pioneering artist whose vision was irrevocably altered through her attendance at Professor Suzuki’s class. She was much more of an ascetic than Guston, or even Cage, but she too recognized in her artistic process something akin to the Zen consciousness that Suzuki lectured about. “The intellect is a hazard in artwork,” she wrote. “I mean, there are so many paintings that have gone down the drain because somebody got an idea in the middle.”14 The artist works by awareness of his own state of mind. In order to do so he must have a studio, as a retreat and as a place to work. In the studio an artist must have no interruptions from himself or anyone else. Interrup­

Arlene Shechet, Mind Field Series: Borobudur Awash (Borobudur & Kalachakra Mandala), 1997

13. W. R. Bion, Taming Wild Thoughts (London: Karnac Books, 1997), 38. 14. Agnes Martin, Writings (Winterthur and Ostfildern-Ruit: Kunstmuseum Winterthur and Edition Cantz, 1992), 165.

15. Ibid., 93, 135–36.

tions are disasters. To hold onto the “silver cord,” that is the artistic discipline. The artist’s own mind will be all the help he needs. There will be moving ahead and discoveries made every day. There will be great disappointments and failures in trying to express them. An artist is one who can fail and fail and still go on. . . . Happiness is unattached. Always the same. It does not appear and disappear. It is not sometimes more and sometimes less. It is our awareness of happiness that goes up and down. Happiness is our real condition. . . . When we see life we call it beauty. It is magnificent—wonderful. We may be looking at the ocean when we are aware of beauty but it is not the ocean. We may be in the desert and we say that we are aware of the “living desert” but it is not the desert. Life is ever present in the desert and everywhere, forever. By awareness of life we are inspired to live. Life is consciousness of life itself.15 There is a way of understanding the making of art that links the worlds of psychoanalysis and meditation. At its root is a conception of the unconscious as something other than just the repository of forbidden libidinal urges. The Buddhist unconscious, pointed to by D. T. Suzuki in his lectures and picked up on by Cage, Guston, Ashbery, and Martin, is defined by its lack of attributes and seeps seamlessly into the mystery of aliveness. That is why “emptiness” is the safest descriptive term for it: it is easiest to define by what it is not. The experience of this unconscious is something that meditation aims for, but it is just as retrievable through the modality of art, or even psychotherapy. Listen to the contemporary British psychoanalyst Adam Phillips: Freud’s description of the unconscious suggests that we are lost in thought, and yet people come for psychoanalysis to find out where, or who, they are. . . . With the post-Freudian Freud they are likely to be at cross purposes. Adults, after all, don’t tend to go out with the intention of getting lost (though it’s not obvious why they don’t). Nor do people want to pay good money to realize how clueless they are. Being all over the place, or being seen to be, is traditionally considered to be some­ thing of a drawback. Symptoms, like insights—pieces of self-knowledge—at least allow one to identify oneself, to make “I am the kind of person who . . .” state­ ments. But if, as Freud suggests, to “have” an unconscious is to be, or to make oneself, radically odd to oneself—to be always in and out of character—what is

Mark Epstein  54  

the analyst supposed to be doing to (or for) his patients? To make them more knowing, or enable them to tolerate, or take pleasure from, their clouds of unknow­ ing? Show them that they are afloat on their ignorance, buoyant sometimes, or help them swim for shore? “To improve society spend/more time with people you haven’t/met,” John Cage advises. You can’t help but do this, Freud says, because the person one hasn’t met is also always oneself.16 The person one hasn’t met is also always oneself. Suzuki was a messenger from another time and place who reminded a generation of this basic truth. The people who heard him most easily were artists. The art that they made, and the artists they in turn have inspired, continue to carry his message, asking us to question ourselves instead of settling into complacency, to open ourselves instead of closing down around what we already know, and to embarrass ourselves instead of worrying what other people think. Artists, like psychoanalysts and Zen teachers, are people who can fail and fail and go on.

55  Meditation as Art/Art as Meditation  

16. Adam Phillips, Terrors and Experts (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), 15.

ernesto pujol

Ernesto Pujol is an artist with an interdisciplinary practice. He is currently a performance studio instructor at Parsons the New School for Design, New York, in addition to continuing to develop a series of site-specific performances based on the notion of mourning through silent contemplative walks. Pujol has been the recipient of fellowships from Art Matters, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Joan Mitchell Foundation. He completed undergraduate work in humanities and painting at the University of Puerto Rico and graduate work in education at Interamerican University, San Juan, followed by studies in art therapy at Pratt Institute and media theory at Hunter College in New York. He earned an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Our Barefoot Practice In the days ahead, it will be increasingly difficult to insist on the distinction between acts of creation and identities. Pe g gy Phel a n

Form is emptiness and emptiness is form, according to ancient Buddhist texts. Therefore, it follows that artists should be able to perform absence through presence. But how can art embody a redemptive absence? In other words, how can artists perform enlightenment? Can an evolved group consciousness be staged, so that it blurs the boundary between art and spiritual practice, and manifest loss is transformative for performers and audience, for artists and nation?

Epigraph from Peggy Phelan, Mourning Sex: Performing Public Memories (London: Routledge, 1997). 1. Heirs’ property is land that has been passed down for generations without the benefit of clear title. All the heirs own the property equally,

Over the past decade, much of my artwork has been dedicated to loss and mourning. However, in a consumer society based on waste, the challenge has been to mani­fest loss without confusing it with nostalgia. Nostalgia often seeks to reclaim power and possessions, whereas art that manifests the redemptive mourning of a denied ­absence should result in rightfulness, in a transformation that leads to greater consciousness.

regardless of whether they have lived on the land, paid its taxes, or ever set foot on it. If one heir decides to sell, the land must be sold unless everyone can agree on its use and ownership. Frequently, disagreements lead to forced sales in the courts and the land is lost forever. From the website of the

To further complicate this challenge for artists practicing in America, in terms of popular notions of redemption, there is the religious fundamentalist misunderstanding that consciousness is a form of capital, in terms of individual and communal higher spiritual status as evidenced through material wealth—abundant assets—regardless of environmental sustainability. That has often been the challenge for artists working in disenfranchised communities, particularly in the South, among rural African Americans living on fragile heirs’ properties encroached on by upper-middle-class suburbs with their tiring displays of trophies.1 It is challenging to be an emissary of austerity to them, because these are groups that have always been austere, albeit not by choice.

57

Coastal Community Foundation of South Carolina (http://www .ccfgives.org/about_initiatives .html).

2. This work was executed by a collaborative team: poet and writer Kendra Hamilton, landscape architect Walter Hood, artist Frances Whitehead, and myself. 3. This team consisted of Hamilton, Hood, and myself. 4. The garden was undertaken as part of the Spoleto Festival USA’s renovation of a 1939 civic auditorium as a festival and community theater. It was dedicated in May 2008, at which time I performed Baptizing the Garden. The team included the Charleston-based architectural firm of Huff + Gooden (Ray Huff and Mario Gooden) as well as Hamilton, Hood, and myself. For the purposes of this project, we assumed the collective name “Places with a Future Collaborative.”

Artists with evolved practices can run the risk of being perceived as preaching poverty to the poor. That was my recent experience in Charleston, South Carolina, while working with the Phillips Community. An initial interdisciplinary arts group created a site-specific, large-scale, ephemeral installation entitled Water Table for the 2004 Spoleto Festival USA, consisting of a rice grass garden that became the site for evoking the colonial agricultural economy that created the city’s wealth on the backs of slaves.2 In 2005, a second, reconfigured interdisciplinary creative team was invited by the community’s resident association to act as a cultural advocate for the survival of their community, as embodied in their dream of a community center.3 We coordinated a series of small informal conversations and large formal workshops that, while seeking to be inclusive, came to sample the thoughts of both the churchgoing and the wayward, sometimes respectfully challenging Christian patriarchal authority for the sake of eliciting the quieter voices of women and adolescents. By 2006 we had designed a series of ecologically sensitive structures that would put the community at the forefront of environmental stewardship. But our Low Country frugal designs, with their light organic materials, ran counter to everything heavy and dense—what is popularly desired in a world where humility is misunderstood as weakness not wisdom—and so they remain a shelved dream. However, our interdisciplinary corps, now including a few more architects, continued to work in Charleston, finally inaugurating, in spring 2008, the Memminger Garden in the heart of this peninsula city’s downtown.4 We remain convinced of the importance of working in the public sphere, exercising our citizenship, engaging contemporary art with society, placing artists in otherwise secular processes, opening and transforming them. Our garden design calls to mind the endangered surrounding topography of the wetlands, challenging the tradition of the gated colonial garden. While acknowledging (as cultural institutions must) the estate gift of one lady, Countess Alicia Spaulding Paolozzi, it memorializes the Charleston’s famous Flower Ladies: the strong African American women who raised large families and who, through their entrepreneurial skills and interconnectedness with the land, challenged the system long before the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. The descendants of these brave women can still be found in the city’s tourist markets selling their baskets. Yet there is an absence that must be redemptively marked, in terms of what can still be saved in the culture, not so much by long-gone bodies as by the vanishing natural spaces that they occupied. The denial of past, present, and future absences, in terms of looming crises, looks different across the country. This denial demands different art gestures to manifest and thus recover aspects of reality as forms of humanistic redemption. For

Ernesto Pujol  58  

Ernesto Pujol, Memorial Gestures: Mourning and Yearning at the Rotunda, 2007

5. The Grand Army of the Republic was the primary veterans’ association for the Union troops. This site was federally owned land, designated for the military and occasionally serving as a parade ground, a use resonant with this work. When in 1897 a library was built there, part of the planning negotiations involved designating a space for the Grand Army within the library.

example, I spent the summer of 2007 walking along the Boston waterfront, taking ferries to several of the harbor islands through five performances entitled The Wa­ ter Cycle, in memory of the city’s history of labor and leisure on the water, while thinking of pollution, global warming, and the fresh drinking water wars of the future. Past and future absences were pointed to by my five hours of silence during each journey across the public sphere, the silence transforming my walks into pilgrimages, and by the familiar but nevertheless awkward costuming of New England historical reenactments (as a concession to the public), and my own experimentation with hybridizing conceptual art through popular forms. When I am invited to visit a new place, I strive to enter it naked, surrendering to its messages, not just through its landscape and people, but also particularly through architecture as the embodiment of hardship and dreams. Parallel to the ongoing private challenge of sustaining and deepening this invisible act of absorbent humility, which is the result of a lifetime of quiet sacrifices and training that should begin in art school, is the public challenge to edit respectfully such architecture back to its ideological backbone—to truly see it. I seek to strip off its latest layer of cosmetics and clutter or, as is often the case in the American South, guilt over the past. It is important to understand that this process is ultimately about joy, because there is great interior reward in such absorptions and cleansings of place, which lead to the significant and even transformative art we ultimately want to create. Every time I begin the challenge of a project, I draw comfort from the knowledge that it will further mold me. Ever since the war in the Middle East began in 2003, my art practice has focused on individual and communal mourning more than ever before, out of the conviction that there is a complicated growing absence that we Americans must mourn, or it will destroy what is left of our morality. During the fall of 2007 I created a site-specific durational performance entitled Memorial Gestures: Mourning and Yearning at the Grand Army of the Republic Rotunda, for the School of the Art Institute of Chicago at the city’s Cultural Center. It consisted of sixteen performers, mostly graduate students from the school. They gestured, uninterrupted, for twelve hours, sitting and standing in silence, moving in and out of light and shadows within a vast, empty room under a stained-glass dome, a mausoleum that publicly acknowledged absence (unlike today), built by unapologetically grieving Union veterans, widows, and orphans of the American Civil War.5 Because of the urgency I felt to stage a community in mourning repeatedly at this time in history, I had been dreaming of forming a sustainable group of young performers that could be selectively activated based on sporadic project funding. I desired to create a string of works that act as temporary schools, as ongoing formative experiences for young artists who seek meaningful work.

Ernesto Pujol  60  

I preceded the new piece with a weekend workshop on performing enlightenment, from the purely technical to the personal, in terms of the embodied mind, without dualisms. I risked a lot in the making of Memorial Gestures, because it seemed as though we did not have enough funds or enough time to prepare. In the end, the template worked because of unconditional trust, freely given and generously returned. We even began to experiment spontaneously with the piece during its run, successfully complicating our choreography. I have never allowed fear to dictate anything I do, and there are crossroad moments when one must risk failure, real professional failure, in order to break through a barrier and perhaps achieve the unimaginable. I also practice with the belief that there is enough art, feeling no pressure to create more art, so that what excites me is to create something ambiguous, something liminal, that has the effect of art, regardless of its final label. Aside from the complicit commercialism and vain cynicism of so many of the agents of art, when it comes to our younger artists, much contemporary American art seems to be about experiencing and conveying fun. It looks like a poorly created playground populated by reckless children and feels like work constructed by a people without history. Moreover, even when it is triggered by an idea, it falls simplistically flat, like textbook art, memorized but not digested, without sufficient lifeexperience layers. Therefore, as an artist whose conceptual practice is engaged in education as part of a wider legacy, and in terms of reshaping the art world as a

Ernesto Pujol, Memorial Gestures, 2007

venue for influencing society, I am constantly asking myself: what should art education be right now? What should American art education look like during this time of conflict, during this time of war? Perhaps the answer is reclamation and reparation. Our first pedagogical gesture for the early twenty-first century should be to rescue the definition of art from a shallow environment of entertainment, a distraction from reality and the deeper self. American art schools, as institutions with mission statements, exercising their citizenship as visionary communities of cultural workers, and art educators as people of conscience, if not individuals with prophetic vocations, should reclaim art education as a profound, subtle, but complex meditation on our past, our present, and our possible future: on where we come from, who we are, and what we are becoming. Once rescued, art education should be repaired to trigger again a strategic discomfort, carefully taking the student into a safe place of not knowing that replaces postmodern stasis, noise, and consumption with authentic movement, silence, and humble scholarship. It means cleansing education to bring it back into the realm of proactive contemplation as a subversive act, with the art school as an urban, secular, interconnected monastery that acts as a conduit to interiority, where all larger narratives are anchored in the socially responsible but independent individual. But in a society where exercising the deeper self has been confused with flexing the rights of the consumer, with consuming as a self, it is important to understand that the deeper self is a place of no-self, of true self-knowledge that leads to generous selflessness. Here globalism is not seen as a consumable landscape of sameness or flattened diversity, but of connected trusting intimacies that recognize themselves as both other and the same, all part of the human condition, achieving the coexistence of different but interconnected imaginations. Reality is the space most under threat today, but such an art education as I propose here would be a true portal to that reality. Of course, such an art education starts with internal disarmament, as the Dalai Lama has pointed out. So I seek to enter an institutional classroom or a series of projectsas-classrooms as a leader without ego who has embraced teaching as nothing less than a prophetic vocation. Art education, art projects, and the liminal union of the two, particularly when of a great scale, require strong leadership. Yet our challenge is to exercise curatorial and choreographic leadership without ego. Because the total absence of ego—in the professor, the student, the curator, and the performer—is key to the manifestation of absence in the experience of the resulting work of art. Otherwise, there will be a theatricality of absence but not the transformative experience of absence—for either the performer or the public. Moreover, performance art is about experience, not about mirage, no matter the technique a work may require.

Ernesto Pujol  62  

The admission of vulnerability, when coming from a place of intelligent and thus humble self-knowledge, which is to say, wisdom, is one of the tools for dismantling the ego of the teacher and the student. Vulnerability requires individual revelation, not through an inappropriate psychological striptease and thus voyeurism, but as an act of self-less, if not self-sacrificing, generosity far beyond professional transparency. Indeed, this is not just about the transparency of educational processes, in terms of accountability, disempowerment, collaboration, and authorship, but about the very selective strategic opening of the personal as a tool for triggering group vulnerability on the part of artists and audiences. The American workplace marks a boundary between the personal and the professional, but that is not the case in many other cultures, where the boundary is either more permeable or there is none. In much of the so-called Third World (which comprises most of humanity) the fact of family, in all the intimate details of its daily life, is part of the office, laboratory, classroom, studio, and stage. One flows into the other, supporting and competing and, yes, celebrating and sabotaging. This is something, too, for young artists to learn to balance early on, since being an artist is supposed to be about having a seamless life rather than a job—identity and practice as one and the same. As an artist-educator, I find that too many make the mistake of separating the two-year graduate educational process from their lifelong

Ernesto Pujol, Memorial Gestures, 2007

artistic practice, as if the practice began after school, suddenly triggered by an MFA degree. I believe that the practice must begin at school, in the classroom and studio, already operating within that wholeness, that dignity. Education is most successful when a teacher does not enact an armored institutional notion of what it means to be a teacher, in terms of bureaucracy, of endless defensive barrier regulations, but when the artist-educator comes to the classroom to practice. Most institutions fight this, fearing too much subjectivity in art education, and that is understandable, because we run the risk of only teaching personality, in terms of a charismatic salesmanship that is formed ahead of content. Such subjectivity also runs the risk of not teaching any technique and generating an unskilled conceptualist elite, a bunch of entitled producers who hire technical servants for their every gesture; an egotistical minimalist elite that will depend on capital for everything and, ultimately, become very conservative. Given the quick pace of our evolving culture, accelerated by technology, no area should be regarded as untouchable and inflexible in contemporary art education, from the curriculum to the way relationships are structured. An ideal art education should be tailored to the individual based on private exchanges through a process of assigned mentorships. Nothing compares to the depth that such oneon-one relationships forge. But the problem is that an art education based on mentorship is an art education that takes time and thoughtfulness; mentorship should not be mistaken for mimicry or assistantship. And while artistic training was historically based on talent and initiative, tuition-driven schools have allowed for the capitalist notion that any consumer capable of paying for something, such as an art degree, has the right to obtain it. In my experience, after an intense decade in American classrooms, I believe that we need more academic counseling and better flow between departments for young artists to reassess their initial choices, and to change according to growth. Our educational experience also needs to provide ways to establish an ongoing balance between interiority and the public sphere. Students need the experience of communicating publicly and developing basic ideas, learning to think out loud flex-

Ernesto Pujol, Memorial Gestures, 2007

ibly, becoming ego-less, unafraid of contradictions, of changing course in midpoint, maturing their ideas through airing processes such as critiques, collaborations, and teacher-led projects, while always leaving room for the exceptionally gifted that can be trusted to do it solo. They need to stage their first insights about issues, testing their novice art practices in safe environments. A constantly supervised relationship with the real world throughout art school is one of the most important ways to maintain interiority without narcissism, additionally offering a means of quality control in art education. Finally, silence must also be a part of the checks and balances of an evolved art education. My own ongoing experience emphasizes the healing effects of silence. Most Westerners have stopped experiencing silence in private and public spaces since their former church-attendance and cathedral-pilgrimage days, and since museums have become malls of activity. Having been a Cistercian (Trappist) cloistered monk, a contemplative, during the early 1980s, and still living very much in silence, I always go back to a private world of silence after teaching, lecturing, and performing. It is my refuge. That opening of the internal vista is what silence does to postulants and novices when they enter a monastery. That usually invisible dimension, that interiority, is a factor of silence, lost to urban secular life and contemporary education. Indeed, I find that much of my performance work becomes an excuse to create roads back to silence. This is not a facile practice. At the end of the day, if we are really practicing and not simply using Zen Buddhism as a replacement for art theory, if we are truly engaged in an ethical, compassionate art practice that is transparent, generous, and kind, then we must risk a certain amount of art world dismissal and invisibility, if not ridicule. We should regard ourselves as the writers of novels for smaller but more substantial audiences, even as we would like to make them accessible and meaningful to all. We must risk and endure misunderstanding, even by those who supposedly support us, which is the most painful of all misinterpretation, because we still create and promote all this mainly through art world channels. As interdisciplinary as we may try to be, we too belong to a guild from which we want respect. We are artists practicing within an art business world where such nonprofit gestures may not be taken seriously, regarded as too pedagogical, therapeutic, social work-like, not formal enough, even misinterpreted as self-absorbed rather than reflective. However, we must keep in mind that this is an art world of presences without absences, an art world of clutter and hollowness rather than emptiness. We must continue to remember who we really are and feel a deep joy in what we do; we must remember that ours is a barefoot practice.

65 Our Barefoot Practice  

ann hamilton

Ann Hamilton is professor of art at Ohio State University, Columbus. She received an MFA in sculpture from Yale University School of Art and a BFA in textile design from the University of Kansas. Her hybrid installation/performance works, created on site, are physically ambitious in execution and richly metaphoric in result. An ongoing thematic concern for Hamilton is the manner in which knowledge and experience are apprehended and constructed through the senses: how we learn through our skin and the inability of language to adequately articulate experience. Hamilton is the recipient of a Mac­ Arthur fellowship and in 1999 was the American representative at the Forty-eighth Venice Biennale.

Making Not Knowing

In this ongoing, unfinished story of all possible future-making, students hold the potential for a lot of future. That makes me feel optimistic and grateful, though I don’t think this is an optimistic time. When I am asked to speak to students, the question arises: What is speaking? What is this orphic machine of the mouth, opening and closing to make sounds, vowels, and consonants, of letters filling into words, and on down the road into sentences and meanings? And looming even larger, in a haunting sort of way: What is being said? What are the forms and ­possibilities of saying? I think about the space of someone speaking and someone listening—a situation of response. I begin to think about words: What can words do? How can words be acts of making? And I begin to ask myself: What words need to be said now? What can words say now? Through what process might I find words that are up to the task of all the things that need saying now, when cultures fight cultures, when invention and reciprocity seem on the decline, when listening hasn’t kept pace with speaking? As a maker, more comfortable with a line of thread than a line of writing, I begin to wonder how words might become the material of my making. I recently learned to speak a short text in classical Arabic and French. This act of learning brought me to thinking about how our mouths, like other parts of our bodies, form muscle memories; how the sounds that shape the words we unconsciously make every day are formed, over and over again, by the way the tongue pushes against the front of the mouth or retracts to let a particular sound form: the repetitions, a thousand times a day, of these subtle formings in the mouth’s hollow cavity, this orifice which is a place formed internally by use. And I began to think about how learning another language—before it is about learning grammar and vocabulary and syntax, before it is about gaining an entirely new set of metaphormaking possibilities—is, first, a newly acquired muscle memory of the mouth. To learn another language is to re-form the shape habits of one’s speaking, to take on those of another; to take on another’s language is to take on another culture and all

67

1. Salman Rushdie, “The Pen and the Sword,” New York Times Book Review, April 17, 2005; http://www .nytimes.com. In the original essay Rushdie uses the term “literary art” as opposed to the term “art.”

the accumulations of its history into the body. One is touched, and in being touched, one is changed. Then empathy and understanding have a chance. In entering the dense, layered challenges of translation—of one language to another language, of one body to another—in finding these newly forming sounds coming from my body, I began to think about what a small percentage of poetry and fiction published in my country is translated from other languages. Salman Rushdie wrote: It has perhaps never been more important for the world’s voices to be heard in America, never more important for the world’s ideas and dreams to be known and thought about and discussed, never more important for a global dialogue to be fostered. [Never more important] to believe in . . . art as the proper counterweight to power, and to see . . . art as a lofty, transnational, transcultural force that, in [Saul] Bellow’s great formulation, “open[s] the universe a little more.”1 This celebration of art as the “proper” counterweight to power implies responsibility, a responsibility that comes with the artist’s power to exercise a free imagination. So I began thinking about the situations we have made for public speaking, opportunities to speak together, to speak in unison, contexts that aren’t professionalized. Where does this speaking happen? What does it sound like? What is being said? You can hear a unison voice in a political rally; you can hear this voice in church, but where else? I didn’t come up with much, and I began to think about how our first accountability is tied to the way we exercise the actions of our voices. How might we find a way to speak together, to be a chorus of speakers summoning together a need to say? And I tried to imagine what that space might be, and what might be said. One doesn’t arrive—in words or in art—by necessarily knowing where one is going. In every work of art something appears that does not previously exist, and so, by default, you work from what you know to what you don’t know. You may set out for New York, but you may find yourself, as I did, in Ohio. You may set out to make a sculpture and find that time is your material. You may pick up a paintbrush and find that your making is not on canvas or wood but in relations between people. You may set out to walk across the room, but getting to what is on the other side might take ten years. You have to be open to all possibilities and to all routes— circuitous or otherwise. But not knowing, waiting and finding—though they may happen accidentally— aren’t accidents. They involve work and research. Not knowing isn’t ignorance. (Fear springs from ignorance.) Not knowing is a permissive and rigorous willing-

Ann Hamilton  68  

ness to trust, leaving knowing in suspension, trusting in possibility without result, regarding as possible all manner of response. For the responsibility of the artist, as Gertrude Stein has said, is neither historical narrative nor descriptive mimesis but immediate engagement and response: “each of us in our own way is bound to express what the world in which we are living is doing.”2 Our task is the practice of recognizing. We honor this practice of art—of a life of making. A life of making isn’t a series of shows, or projects, or productions, or things; it is an everyday practice. It is a practice of questions more than of answers, of waiting to find what you need more often than knowing what you need to do. Waiting, like listening and meandering, is best when it is an active and not a passive state; it is helpful to know that “wait” and “hope” share the same root in Spanish, and to remember that not acting can also be

Ann Hamilton and Meredith Monk, Songs of Ascension, 2007

2. Gertrude Stein, “Portraits and Repetition,” in Lectures in America (1935; New York: Virago, 1985), 176–77.

3. Charlie Thomas, “US Army Major Refuses Order to Seize Iraq TV Station,” Asheville Global Report, no. 226 (2003).

an action, as in the story of Charmaine Means, who refused direct orders to shut down the TV station in Mossul, Iraq, on the grounds that she was not in the army to suppress freedom of speech.3 I asked my ten-year-old son, Emmett, what he thought art was for and he said, “Nothing.” He said, “It isn’t good for anything.” And as he saw my eyes roll back in my head, thinking, this is what you get from a kid whose parents are both artists, he quickly added, “Art just is.” He said “Art just is” with an assumption that, like breakfast on the table, it will always be there—a given of culture. In my head, I could hear a voice saying in response to his confidence, “Yes, but . . .” Can I really believe, like Rushdie, that all the collective acts of making carry a weight that can counter the acts of unmaking that accrue daily? For acts of making to be acts of resistance and tools for remembering, this given-ness has to be made and maintained, and to have room made for it. Our culture has always beheld with suspicion unproductive time, things not utilitarian, and daydreaming in general, but we live in a time when it is especially challenging to articulate the importance of experiences that don’t produce anything

Ann Hamilton and Meredith Monk, Songs of Ascension, 2007

obvious, aren’t easily quantifiable, resist measurement, aren’t easily named, are categorically in-between. Peter Sellars gave a talk in London entitled “The Culture of Democracy,” in which he reminded his audience that, in Plato’s Dialogues, truth exists not on one side or the other but in between. “When two people are talking, when two groups are engaging, the truth is present but is owned by neither.”4

4. Proms Lecture given on August 3, 2003, at the Victoria and Albert Museum Lecture Theater, London. Published as “The Culture of Democracy” in Grantmakers in the Arts Reader 15, no. 1 (Winter 2004): 7–10.

So, if our great inheritance from classical Greece is truth that is made present not from monologue but through dialogue, we have part of the answer to our question: What is art for? Sellars spoke, too, of how the Greeks created an entire culture to make spoken dialogue possible. He noted that the first step in democracy is to learn to listen, and that Greek theaters were giant ears carved into the sides of mountains. He spoke of how most Greek choruses were made up of foreigners. So Greek theater gathered everyone in one place, into a giant ear to listen—“let’s hear what they have to say . . . let’s hear what the old people have to say, the young people, the people we never hear from.”5 Greek theater was a place where what was not allowed to be spoken in public was spoken. How? It was spoken in visual art, in dance, in music, and in poetry. Where is that place now? To leave Greece and come forward to now, this question seems important to what Emmett’s answer, “Art just is,” could mean, how it might be recognized. Every act of making matters. How we make matters. I like to remember, and remark with regularity, that the word “making” occupies seventeen pages in the Oxford English Dictionary, so there are multiple possibilities for a lifetime of making: make a cup, a conversation, a building, an institution; make memory, make peace, make a poem, a song, a drawing, a play; make a metaphor that changes, enlarges, or inverts the way we understand or see something. Make something to change your mind—acts that amplify. Remember the butterfly effect—the flap of a wing on one continent changing the weather on another? That is how a metaphor travels: the initial act may be small, but it can change things. We have the butterfly effect because scientists found that the minutest variations—almost undetectable phenomena, things hardly ­registering—can cause entirely different weather patterns to emerge. Ann Lauterbach, poet, essayist, and writer, remarks in her book The Night Sky: Imaginative work is grounded in thinking about and thinking through the im­ mediacy of events both private and public, in order to draw from them objects, materials rendered into forms that bring us closer to our sense of connection, our personal agency. Art asks to be interpreted not just consumed; it asks us to sus­ pend our judgment while we engage our senses. Art is a language which anneals individuals to each other through experiences that are uniquely human, that

71  Making Not Knowing  

5. Ibid.

6. Ann Lauterbach, The Night Sky: Writings on the Poetics of Experience (Toronto: Viking Adult, 2005), 248. 7. Jonathan Schell, The Unconquer­ able World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People (New York: Henry Holt, 2003). 8. These thoughts are given per-

demand connection at the level of making mean­ ing. If we lose our ability to make meaning— that is to interpret, to find form in the raw ­m aterials of life—then we stand in danger of having meaning made for us, a rupture between what is said and what is done, between false intentions and disastrous consequences. 6

mission by Rebecca Solnit’s book Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities (New York: Nation Books, 2004). 9. Nadine Gordimer, The Essential Gesture: Writing, Politics and Places, ed. Stephen Clingman (London: Jonathan Cape, 1988), 277.

A key recognition in Jonathan Schell’s book, The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People, is that the change that counts in revolution takes place first in the imagination.7 This foundational change, the one from which all else issues, is the hardest to track. Sometimes change gathers over five years, over a generation, and then finally the wall comes down or a country is formed. But before the wall comes down, there are symbolic and cultural acts, uncountable small acts, that can shift the world, make political power, spread ideas, shape imaginations. That is what art is for—it is to remind us of our power to make the world. 8 Some of my own makings as an artist have met with initial resistance from my son. A few years ago, when I wanted to think about the relationship between vision and language, I made a series of pinhole cameras that I could set into the hollow interior of my mouth in order to make the mouth opening a way of seeing rather than a way of saying. At first my son said, “I hate it, Mom, when you do these weird things.” But then, in time, a little more proudly, I heard him say in an aside to a friend, “My mom takes pictures with her mouth.” The conflation of speech and vision had registered in his imagination. It isn’t necessarily the objects of art in their many forms that we are here to support, it is the possibility of art, the question of art, the place it makes in the culture for those acts which “just are” and, in their being just for the sake of themselves, can open worlds in which we might listen differently. All things are possible. According to Nadine Gordimer: “The people know what to do before the leaders.”9 I would add that perhaps it is the task of artists to know before the people. It is the task of the artist to make material form, to give it presence, to

Ann Hamilton  72  

make it social; it is the task of the artist to lead the leaders by staying at the threshold; to be an unsettler in the tradition of Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of our first public tricksters: “Let me remind the reader that I am only an experimenter. Do not set the least value on what I do, or the least discredit on what I do not, as if I pretended to settle any thing as true or false. I unsettle all things. No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker with no past.”10

Ann Hamilton and Meredith Monk, Songs of Ascension, 2007

10. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays and English Traits, ed. Charles W. Eliot (New York: P. F. Collier, 1909), 164.

magdalena abakanowicz

Magdalena Abakanowicz was born in 1930 and studied at the Academy of Art in Warsaw. Her early, revolutionary Abakans, as the critics called them, redefined the sculptural use of fiber, winning the Grand Prize at the São Paulo Biennial in 1965. Today her early work is considered a landmark of female expression. In 1982 a retrospective organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, brought her figurative and abstract work to American audiences for the first time. Today her art is known the world over. Her work in public spaces, which she describes as “Spaces to Contemplate,” finally came to Chicago in 2007, with the completion of Agora. The artist continues to live and work in Warsaw.

Fate and Art Necessity

The urge to have around me, to touch, to hoard—twigs, stones, shards, and bark— continued. They embodied stories with which I wanted to live. Later, I carved out faces with a knife. I wanted them to resemble people. They did not. I watched mud settle after treading in it with a bare foot, rising between my toes, greasy, soft. I squeezed clay—too obedient in the face of my lack of decision. Near the alley of chestnuts, by the pond, in a yellow pit, there was a lot of it. I stood there, checking my desire: I was not allowed to get dirty, yet I needed to fill my hands with it. The heads I molded dried, cracked, and disintegrated. Father once brought me some plasticine from town. I molded faces, placing one next to another. All were in profile. But no one liked them—profiles did not look like this. I continued to mold and to carve, although sometimes everything had to be thrown away when the children’s room was being cleaned. I went to the rubbish heap to look for what could be retrieved. Began anew. War

I was nine. It was autumn. On the very edge of the park, along the allée of alders German tanks were coming.1 We stood on the terrace, taken by surprise, watching. They were looking at us, stiffly upright, as on parade, and abruptly they fired directly at us—but probably missed on purpose. I stood fearless, humiliated by this violence, helpless in the face of injustice and the impotence of my parents. Some years later the whole country was occupied by Hitler’s army. Underground activity had developed. Father taught me to shoot, to clean and assemble weapons. At night, robbers or partisans, Russians or Poles, struck the windows, pounded the door of our house. They took what they needed, our clothes, our food. The forests were huge; there was space for them. The house ceased to be a shelter. My sister

75

1. On the first of September 1939 the German army invaded Poland. This was the beginning of the Second World War.

and I slept completely dressed, listening to every noise. Uncertainty became the per­ manent companion of existence. Mother

They came at night in 1943, drunk. They bashed at the door. Mother rushed to open it. We opened the door to everyone. She did not make it: they began to fire. A dumdum bullet tore her right elbow. It severed her arm from the shoulder, wounded her left hand. The capable, wise arm suddenly became a piece of meat, separate, on the floor. I looked at it with amazement. I had seen dead bodies, but they somehow had always preserved their completeness in front of others. Father stopped the blood stream bending the veins and arteries with cords and bandages. We had to wait until the dawn to go by carriage to the nearest village where there was a doctor. She survived in spite of a terrible loss of blood and excruciating pain. She returned home maimed.

Magdalena Abakanowicz, Runa, from the series War Games, 1995

1944

Things became more and more frightening. The front line approached. The Soviet army—fighting the Germans brought revolution, imprisoned landowners, confiscated private properties. They stopped at the Vistula River.

2. This was the deadly two-monthlong, hopeless fight of Warsaw’s inhabitants and the Polish underground, known as the Home Army, against the German occupiers. No

Father ordered the horses harnessed. We left for Warsaw in hopes of being safer there. As our home and the countryside receded, I felt increasingly hollow. As if my insides had been removed and the exterior, unsupported by anything, shrank, losing its shape.

help came from the Soviet Army standing at the Vistula River, or from the Western Allies. About a quarter-million Poles were killed, among them the best of Poland’s young people and intelligentsia.

The Warsaw Uprising, August 1944

We had a house in Warsaw—but before we got there: I do not remember the beginning, there was firing from all sides, Mother and the two of us lying in the street. 2 Later, everyone was running, we too. Suddenly, I was alone in a crowd of people. Strange faces. I shouted: “Mama, Terenia!” Impossible to turn back, only forward. But I saw Terenia. She grabbed me: “Where is Mama?” Finally, the two of us with Father in a suburban town. Mother cut off from us somewhere in Warsaw. The city closed. At night the sky bright with flames, in daytime a mushroom cloud of smoke. The Polish population, youth, adults, children against the German regular army. We were helpless, waiting in the distance. I do not remember what happened during the long wait. I dreamt of Mother. About her not maimed. I willed her to have hands again, so that what had happened would be undone. I thought about it intently and continuously, demanding that time be reversed, wishing her to return to us as before. Two months later, she arrived. Embracing her, thin and shrunken, I could feel her infirmity very precisely. An empty sleeve. The Boy

They were bringing the wounded from Warsaw. A makeshift hospital was set up in the school and in some other buildings and barracks. I went there to help. I was taller than my peers, and nobody could tell that I was only fourteen. I carried water and stretchers. I remember one day they brought someone with his face completely burned. He screamed all the time from his open mouth while on the stretcher, and later, when laid on the floor, until he died. Constantly new people, always horribly wounded. There were neither anesthetics nor disinfectants. Lice thrived. I killed them on a comb. Lack of beds. Too many wounded people. I do not think I talked to anybody. Only once was it different, and this has stayed with me. I remember it still so precisely that even now I could draw the face and the hands of that boy. He started

77 Fate and Art  

The surviving population was deported by the Germans to prison camps. The city was systematically demolished through the bombing and burning of house after house until all that was left was a heap of ruins. This was Hitler’s order: The city should disappear.

talking to me as soon as they brought him in. He had a fever and flushed cheeks. I sat on his bed. I felt that I should listen quietly. Jurek Godlewski—a pseudonym. A soldier with the Polish underground army, he was eighteen. He talked about what he wanted to do in the future and of the time when he was small and lived with his parents. I listened, hiding my chapped hands under my apron. He talked to me as if he knew me, looked at me, and smiled as if I were someone close. Afterward, I came to sit at his bed every day. On leaving him, I thought about him joyfully and in my dreams he was with me in my childhood forest. I do not remember how many days passed, such long days, filled with words and dreams. When he died, he seemed very small: both his legs had been severed by shrapnel. Home

The state regulated the fate of each citizen, was obliged to grant everyone a flat, limiting its size to seven to nine square meters per person. It took Jan and me two years to obtain that one-room apartment with a shower, a toilet, and a gas stove in the corridor near the entrance. We were so happy it was ours, independent. Old, large apartments were divided among several families, new ones were built small for economic reasons, but also following the principle that all people must have equal spaces to live. So-called socialism proved difficult to introduce under Soviet orders in a constant economic deficit. Many people moved from the country to cities in search of work and a better life. We were surrounded by a crowd that did not know how to arrange their existence in a town, under new conditions. They would keep chickens on the balcony and pigs in the bathroom. Money had no great meaning. The number of things one could purchase was limited by shortages and restrictions. We were standing in long lines to get whatever. Only our intellectual level distinguished us from the strange mixed population around. The resistance against the pressure of the regime occurred in the domain of culture. We, our friends, and friends of friends kept close together, encouraging and supporting each other. Many things happened in a constant silent struggle with authorities in a kind of not-declared underground. Communist propaganda was omnipresent. Every occasion was used to dictate how we should think and act. We escaped mentally. There were outstanding personalities in culture that constituted our support. The film director Krzysztof Teodor Toeplitz created the film school in {ód¶ that soon became world famous. Roman Polanski, Andrzej Wajda, Krzysztof Kieélowski, and other great individuals studied there. The performing artist Jerzy Grotowski moved a whole generation in Europe and America with his actions and ideas about relations

Magdalena Abakanowicz  78  

­ etween humans. The theater of Tadeusz Kantor was another symbol of creative b power. The noncommercial poster as an art form changed the image of the street, introducing metaphoric information followed by “space conceived as art” in exhibition rooms and outdoor statements. Writing

In my country the shortage of consumer goods persisted. The state-planned economy was negligent of the needs of the population. Moreover, many commodities were exported to the Soviet Union, which continued to exercise control. Standing in line became like a training in inner discipline. Facing the back of the person in front of me, I realized that for everybody the person ahead is an enemy ready to get the last sausage or car or pair of shoes or the last available flat. No smile, no trust, no kindness. Queuing, I always had a small piece of paper and a pencil. The time was there. I wrote. In an uncomfortable position, one has to choose carefully words that really mean. No possibility to erase, to cross out. I wrote about my childhood, my art, not to describe but to find its context. I was alone with only myself as observer and critic. The crowd in a line could have unpredictable reactions, an anger, both sinister and ominous. The exasperated crowd burst out in aggression. Ultimately they were ­defending themselves and their families against the lack of what was needed. People around me stood silent. I wrote my statements as if in complete solitude. The words had to resonate. Crowds

I immerse in the crowd like a grain of sand in the friable sands. I am fading among the anonymity of glances, movements, smells, in the common absorption of air, in the common pulsation of juices under the skin. I become a cell of this boundless organism of the crowd, like others already integrated and deprived of expression. Destroying each other, we regenerate. Through hate and love, we stimulate each other. m a gd a l ena a b a k a now ic z, 19 93

Quantity, a large number constituting a single work, was unusual in sculpture practice at that time. I felt a mistrust. I was asked: “Is this an edition? How do you intend to number them?” I replied: “Don’t you see that each is an individual, different in expression? Their bodies are similar, but their surfaces are like wrinkled faces conveying particular information.” Once art critics judged ability and technique. Today they seem to judge the imagination of the creator, knowing in advance how art should look.

79 Fate and Art  

Is my art not like sweat, the symptom of my existence? Taking the decision to create groups, I wanted to question sculpture as a single object easily turned into decoration. I wanted to confront man with himself, with his solitude in multitude. I wanted to show the populated space. I wanted to bewitch the real crowd. In my childhood I witnessed how masses worship on command and hate on command. Herodotus observed already several centuries before Christ that it is much easier for a leader to convince a crowd than an individual. Fascinated by quantity, I continued to cast human bodies in burlap, later in aluminum, bronze, and iron. Headless, shell-like, often only with legs, carrying the meaningful trunk, or with arms hanging like unnecessary tools, or with hands strong and aggressive. No face—it would eliminate all mysteries of the body. The number of figures grows year after year. The entire population of sitting, standing, walking, and dancing figures, the Crowds, Flocks, Hurma, and others would be enough to fill a large public square. Today there might be more than two thousand, but they have never been seen together. Some of the groups can be found in museums and public collections in different parts of the world. They constitute an interrogation, a sign of lasting anxiety, a warning. I do not make editions, copies of one form. Every figure is an individuality. A shape obedient to my hands is obedient to my desires. Quantity has its laws in the behavior of nature: I once observed mosquitoes swarming. In gray masses. Host upon host. Little crea­ tures in a slew of other little creatures. In incessant motion. Each preoccupied with its own spoor. Each different, distinct in details of shape. A horde emitting a com­ mon sound. Were they mosquitoes or people? I feel overawed by quantity where counting no longer makes sense. By unrepeat­ ability within such a quantity. By creatures of nature gathered in herds, droves, species, in which each individual while subservient to the mass retains some distin­ guishing features. A crowd of people or birds, insects or leaves, is a mysterious assemblage of variants of a certain prototype. A riddle of nature’s abhorrence of exact repetition or inabil­ ity to produce it. Just as the human hand cannot repeat its own gesture. I invoke this disturbing law, switching my own immobile herds into that rhythm. m a gd a l ena a b a k a now ic z, 19 85

It has taken me years to create this barrier of my crowds, between me and man, any man that I was frightened of. Man whose history consists of senseless killing and

Magdalena Abakanowicz  80  

destruction, without concept and any objective, without rational order. Behind the barrier of all the created figures I feel secure. Some years ago a child came to my studio and desired to be cast in plaster. He was a boy. Then came a girl who wanted also to become my model. I observed with amazement this fragile anatomy. A year passed and they grew. I cast them again. This was the beginning of my large groups: Ragazzi, Infantes, Puellae, Bambini. Imagination is stronger than reality or rather replaces it. I remember the severe winter of 1942. The Germans occupied Poland. The war of Hitler with Russia continued. A transport of children from Poland to Germany, where they would be turned into Germans, was stopped by accident for a day and a night. The train was not heated. Hundreds of blond, blue-eyed children in the unheated cattle carriages frozen to death. When finally soldiers opened the doors, the bodies fell out, stiff and hard like sculptures. I wasn’t there. The person telling me about this built images in my young ­memory— clear, strong and lasting. m a gd a l ena a b a k a now ic z, 19 9 2

the Artist

Would I have invented headless “crowds” if it were not the result of my experience of crowds or desire to communicate my statement about expanse? When I was nine years old and war broke out, was I thinking that I would live surrounded by wars? Tormented each day with information about how many people were killed and how they died. In my Warsaw home I saw on the television screen an airplane crushing against the wall of a skyscraper in New York. People running in despair. Where are areas of calm? The sky—the refuge of gods? In 1975 during the opening of my exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London, I met Stephen Hawking. Fascinated by his cosmic discoveries, I could not stop asking questions. The dramatic image of the universe opened to me: inaccessible to my imagination, with its size, powers, and laws, frightening more than any human statement could. The Milky Way—violent, brutal stream of comets and meteors, deriving from the unknown reaching the unknown . . . I escaped. Am I more than the sum of my experiences? There is time involved. It may crystallize into shapes or sounds.

81 Fate and Art  

alfredo jaar

Alfredo Jaar, born in Santiago, Chile, is an artist, architect, and filmmaker who has lived and worked in New York since 1982. His work has been shown extensively around the world—at the Venice, São Paulo, Johannesburg, Sydney, Istanbul, and Gwangju biennials, as well as documenta in Kassel. He has created more than forty public interventions around the world. His 2006 film Muxima focuses on Angola. Jaar received a Guggenheim fellowship in 1986 and a MacArthur fellowship in 2000.

It is difficult

Every time I start writing an essay or a speech, I am reminded of Paul Valéry’s words, “Optimists write badly,” to which Maurice Blanchot replied, “But pessimists do not write.”1 So, badly, but with optimism, I address your future of art making.

1. Paul Valéry, Cahiers/Notebooks, trans. Norma Rinsler, Paul Ryan, and Brian Stimpson (New York: Peter Lang, 2007); Maurice Blanchot, The Writing of the Disaster

I have been making art for thirty years and, to tell you the truth, I still find it difficult. Very difficult. Why? Perhaps because, as Chinua Achebe brilliantly articulates it, “Art is man’s constant effort to create for himself a different order of reality from that which is given to him.”2 What order of reality was I given? If I had to revisit the last fifty years of contemporary history to analyze the order of reality that I was given and select from my timeline the events that marked my life, and that of my generation, I would perhaps start with May 1968. I was only twelve then, but very aware that the generation preceding mine was revolting in the streets of not only Paris, but also Mexico City, New York, Amsterdam, Berlin, Rome, Buenos Aires, Warsaw, and Prague. They loved it so much: the revolution. I joined them, but only in spirit, of course, as I was twelve years old. Honestly, as events have unfolded since then, one more tragic than the other, one more revolting than the other, one more unjust than the other, I sometimes look outside my window and search for signs of a new revolution. I was in Santiago, Chile, on Tuesday, September 11, 1973, when the Chilean military overthrew President Salvador Allende, who died during the coup. General Augusto Pinochet, sponsored by the CIA, seized total power and established a brutal military dictatorship. How can I forget the vision of tanks and infantry troops surrounding the palace of La Moneda? Hawker Hunter fighter jets bombing the president’s quarters? President Allende, besieged in the palace, refusing to surrender and addressing the nation for a last time in an unforgettable farewell speech minutes before dying? Thousands of desaparecidos, a million exiles? How do I change that order of reality?

83

(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995), 113. 2. Chinua Achebe, Hopes and Im­ pediments: Selected Essays (New York: Doubleday, 1989).

I was in Ntarama, forty kilometers south of Kigali, Rwanda, on August 29, 1994, in the aftermath of a genocide, the third of our century, that claimed one million lives— one million lives—in the face of the criminal, barbaric indifference of the so-called world community. How can I forget the vision of five hundred corpses on the ground, rotting under the African sun? How do I change that order of reality? I was in the Pillar Point Refugee Center in Hong Kong the morning of a day in September 1991, surrounded by approximately 150 children, all born in this refugee camp. Some 30 children are born every month in these camps occupied by more than 80,000 so-called boat people from Vietnam. These children were born there, live there, and have never seen the outside world. How do I change that order of reality? But my past is not important. What is the future for artists now, the order of reality that they must change now, that is all around us? These are dark times; these are difficult times. A few words are enough to convey the times we live in: names of places like Darfur, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Guantánamo, North ­Korea. Names of people like Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, the leader of a peaceful, nonviolent struggle against a repressive, criminal military junta in Burma, a regime that holds more than 1,100 political prisoners, including Aung San Suu Kyi and other key civil society leaders. More than one million Burmese have fled to neighboring countries. Names of people like Zackie Achmat, South

Alfredo Jaar, A Logo for America, 1987

Africa’s foremost AIDS activist, leader of Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), the country’s leading AIDS activist group. In South Africa every day approximately 600 people die of AIDS-related illnesses while an additional 1,500 to 1,600 are infected with the HIV virus. The numbers for the entire African continent are staggering. Nelson Mandela said: “AIDS is one of the greatest threats humankind has faced: Let us not equivocate, a tragedy of unprecedented proportions is unfolding in Africa, one in two, that is half of our young people, will die of AIDS.”3

3. Nelson Mandela, closing address, Thirteenth International AIDS Conference, Durban, South Africa, July 14, 2000. 4. Susan Sontag, “Regarding the Torture of Others,” New York Times, May 23, 2004. 5. Adrienne Rich, “Credo of a Passionate Skeptic,” Los Angeles Times

These are dark times; these are difficult times in which American culture has rapidly shifted toward what Susan Sontag termed an “increasing acceptance of brutality.”4 These are dark times; these are difficult times in which our society, as Adrienne Rich said, “is still trying to grapple with the hectic power of capitalism and technology, the displacement of the social will into the accumulation of money and things.”5 Accumulation of money and things: is this the society we want? A society of the spectacle and consumption where every sign around us asks us to consume, consume, consume? Accumulation of money and things: is this the world you want? As a Norwegian philosopher once wrote: “We have everything, but that’s all we have.”6 How do we make art when the world is in such a state? How do we make art out of information that most of us would rather ignore? How do we make art in the midst of so much pain and suffering surrounding us—as John Berger put it, amidst “the pain of living in the present world”? 7

Book Review, March 11, 2001. 6. Thomas Hylland Eriksen, “We have everything, but that’s all we have: Outsourcing the Welfare State,” in Art of Welfare: Verksted 7, ed. Paul Brewer, Marta Kuzma, and Peter Osborne (Oslo: Office for Contemporary Art, 2006). 7. John Berger, “Written in the Night: The Pain of Living in the Present World,” Le Monde diploma­ tique, February 2003. 8. Anna Akhmatova, “The Sentence,” in Poems of Akhmatova, trans. Stanley Kunitz and Max Howard (London: Harvill Press, 1998), 109. Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Ltd.

Art is the home of these questions. We make art because we have to. The extra­ ordinary Russian poet Anna Akhmatova wrote: So much to do today: kill memory, kill pain, turn heart into a stone, and yet prepare to live again. 8

9. Christian Wiman, Ambition and Survival: Becoming a Poet (Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 2007), 120. 10. William Blake, “Jerusalem,” in Complete Writings, ed. Geoffrey Keynes (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), 629.

We make art because we have to. Art is the place where we go to so that, as Christian Wiman said, “We might more fully inhabit our lives and the world in which we live them, and that if we more fully inhabit these things, we might be less apt to destroy them.”9 Art is the place that offers us the last remaining space of freedom. That freedom is precious. Young artists need to take it. Use it to dream. Use it to fly. That freedom lies in a system that you will create. As William Blake said, “I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man’s.”10 Artists need to create their own system, invent their own world, and always connect. Connect with another human being. Create bridges because art is connection, art is communica-

85 It is difficult  

11. Emile M. Cioran, On the Heights of Despair, trans. Ilinca ZarifopolJohnston (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 105. 12. E. M. Cioran, quoted in “E. M. Cioran: To Infinity and Beyond,” Spike Magazine. http://www. spikemagazine.com/1197cior.php.

tion. And never forget that communication does not mean to send a message. To send a message is not communication. Communication occurs only when you get an answer. An answer means you are communicating. An answer means you are connecting. I would argue that art is that answer. That answer is precious, and it is worth all the effort in the world. So young artists need to provoke these answers, search for them, where they are or around the world.

13. From “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower.” By William Carlos Williams, from The Collected Poems: Volume II, 1939–1962, copyright © 1944 by William Carlos Williams. Reprinted by permission of New D ­ irections Publishing Corp.

I am an optimist who writes badly, and pessimists do not write, they say. But it is not entirely true. My favorite pessimist writes incredibly well, and I need to share him with you. His name is Emile Cioran. This is my preferred quote from him: I am lured by faraway distances, the immense void I project upon the world. A feeling of emptiness grows in me; it infiltrates my body like a light and impalpable fluid. In its progress, like a dilation into infinity, I perceive the mysterious presence of the most contradictory feelings ever to inhabit a human soul. I am simultaneously happy and un­ happy, exalted and depressed, overcome by both pleasure and despair in the most contradictory harmonies. I am so cheerful and yet so sad that my tears reflect at once both heaven and earth. If only for the joy of my sadness, I wish there were no death on this earth.11 Cioran is the writer of solitude and pain, of sleeplessness and lyricism, bicycling between heaven and hell. “Melancholy redeems this universe, and yet it is melancholy that separates us from it,” he also wrote.12 Are we condemned to melancholy? The answer is no. Art is a reason to believe. I believe, thanks to Cioran and many artists and intellectuals whose work has been not only an important source of inspiration and knowledge but also much more than that—an essential part of my life. These intellectuals have charted the world’s moral landscape with imagination and courage, with a thirst for justice, and a quest to change our world. Art is a reason to believe. William Carlos Williams gave me a reason to believe when he wrote: It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.13

Alfredo Jaar  86  

There. Where is that place called “there” in this magnificent poem? This “there” has to be created by each generation of artists and intellectuals. That is the extraordinary task and privilege. They will create that there. They will create that place with poetic imagination, with social justice, and above all, with creativity. How far the new fascism expands will depend on how committed they are to defeating it with culture, with cultural artifacts, with cultural productions, with cultural writings, with cultural strategies, with cultural programs. When I think about our minuscule, insular, and impotent art world, I think of Antonio Gramsci in his cell, writing his extraordinary notes from prison. But I ask myself: who is writing the prison notes today?

Alfredo Jaar, Muxima, 2005

14. Franz Kaf ka, The Great Wall of China and Other Pieces, trans. Edwin and Willa Muir (London: Martin Secker, 1933), 283.

I am not advocating for the art world to correct the dire imbalances of the real world, but I would like to suggest that every effort should be made not to replicate so perfectly those imbalances. “You can hold back from the suffering of the world, you have free permission to do so and it is in accordance with your nature,” Franz Kafka said, “but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering that you could have avoided.”14 I am arguing for the inextricability of ethical and aesthetic values. As Jean-Luc ­Godard said: “It might be true that we have to choose between ethics or aesthetics, but it is also true that, whichever one we choose, we will always find the other one

Alfredo Jaar, Lament of the Images, 2002

at the end of the road.”15 Artists are now ready to take this road. It is the road of the dreamers. You are not alone. You are ready to create a different order of reality for all of us. It is the road of the dreamers. I wish you a fantastic journey into this road, in these dark times. When asked if art could bring peace in a world of wars and conflicts, the great poet Robert Lowell answered: “Art does not make peace. That is not its business. Art is peace.”16

15. Jean-Luc Godard, quoted in Susan Sontag, Styles of Radical Will (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969), 147. 16. Robert Lowell, in 1977, in J. D. McClatchy, Twenty Questions (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 51. 17. Mahatma Gandhi, quoted on http://www.thinkexist.com.

Art is peace. To end, please allow me to paraphrase, badly, but with optimism, ­Mahatma Gandhi: First, they will ignore you. Then, they will laugh at you. Then, they will fight you. Then, you will win.17

89 It is difficult  

kerry james marshall and bruce mau with lisa wainwright

Kerry James Marshall, born in 1955 in Birmingham, Alabama, and raised in Los Angeles, received his BFA in 1978 and an honorary doctorate in 1999 from the Otis Art Institute. He was a professor at the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois, Chicago, from 1993 to 2006. In 1997 he was awarded a MacArthur fellowship. Marshall’s work has been included in such group exhibitions as the 2003 Venice Biennale, the 1999/2000 Carnegie International, the 1997 Whitney Biennial, and docu­menta 10 (1997) and 12 (2007). In 1998 his work was the subject of an exhibition organized by the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, which traveled to such venues as the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Institute for Contemporary Art in Boston. Bruce Mau is the chairman, CEO, and creative director of Bruce Mau Design, a studio established in 1985 that uses design to revolutionize technology, brand identity, and corporate strategy. Mau and his studio have collaborated with both Fortune 500 companies and educational agencies on such projects as the postgraduate design program Institute without Boundaries. The first alumni of the Institute without Boundaries worked with Mau on the internationally acclaimed exhibition Massive Change, an examination of how design and technology can be used to develop a better future for all of mankind. Well respected for broadening the idea of design, Mau has worked with Guatemala to envision its future. He worked at the Fifty Fingers Design Group (New York), Pentagram (UK), and Public Good Design and Communications (Toronto), and served as creative director of ID magazine from 1991 to 1993.

Radical Agency—Massive Change Social Agendas in Art and Design

Lisa Wainwright: Both of you practice with a social agenda in mind: Kerry by addressing issues of class, race, justice, memory, and political agency, and Bruce by engaging systemic sustainable design questions. In 2008, an election year, when change is the operative word, do we really believe that art and design can effect change? Kerry James Marshall: The thing that never gets talked about in using the term “change” is, change from what to what? What kind of change are we talking about? We are, I think, in the midst of some incredibly momentous changes in the fine arts world. The platinum diamond-­ encrusted skull by Damien Hirst, stainless steel balloon dogs of Jeff Koons: those works have had a tremendous impact on the current climate. You could say those works have effected change in the way artists conceive of themselves, in what they do. When we talk about change for artists, the only real change is generational. It’s how they organize their ambition; how they organize their hopes, their dreams, their aspirations, what they want to do. Such works are outsized in terms of their relationship to the marketplace and this creates this incredibly distorted mirror or lens through which artists view themselves. You have

91

to come to terms with that work—you can’t just ignore it. When you have artists now working alongside hedge fund managers, investment bankers, and venture capitalists, producing objects of stunning beauty and massive scale and refinement, then that’s something. It’s one of those cases where you ask, “How do you go back to the small-scale, intimate, impoverished kinds of works that a lot of artists do at the beginning of their careers? How do you go back to seeing yourself producing these kinds of works in an environment where those kinds of works exist?” I feel particularly challenged by them, and I’m sure everybody else who sees or encounters those things must feel challenged by them, too. I want to read a quote that encapsulates what this means. It’s from an essay by Okwui Enwezor in October magazine [no. 123, Winter 2008], in which he responded to a questionnaire formulated by Benjamin ­Buchloh asking respondents to meditate on the kinds of works artists were making in a climate where the Iraq war was the dominant force in people’s consciousness. Okwui quotes Kynaston McShine, from the 1970 catalogue essay for the Information show at the Museum of Modern Art, about the Vietnam era,

but I think it relates quite perfectly to the current moment: “If you are living in the United States, you may fear that you will be shot, either in the universities, in your bed, or more formally in Indochina. It may seem too inappropriate, if not absurd, to get up in the morning, walk into a room, and apply dabs of paint from a little tube to a square of canvas. What can you do as a young artist that seems relevant and meaningful? ” I think those are questions that people have to ask themselves all the time, and this comes back to the question of meaningful and relevant for what— for what kind of change, for what kind of action, for what kind of agency? What kind of agency are we talking about?

LW: Much of your work is about giving voice to an African American audience, raising people’s awareness around issues of race and class. From that point of view, there is a belief on your part that that isn’t a noble duty. Isn’t one of the roles of art to put out into the public space questions about the existing conditions? KJM: I think my work is less about the kind of social narrative and more about establishing a presence for a certain kind of image that has ­almost always been absent in the field. I see ­myself making available—to museum-goers, ­gallery-goers, and people who look at art history books—a certain kind of image that they would

Kerry James Marshall, Many Mansions, 1994

almost never encounter. In museums you don’t see a lot of images of black-skinned people until much later, chronologically, and you don’t encounter work that’s being produced by people of color until you get to the nineteenth or twentieth century. So in the imaginations of people who go through most museums, it seems like black people didn’t produce anything that was of any value until then. And even when you do get to the late twentieth century, there’s scant representation of works by African Americans or other people of color. So I saw it as my mission to make available, at least to do the best that I could to make available in the museum context, a certain kind of image that you wouldn’t encounter otherwise. LW: Bruce, part of your raison d’être is to visualize: to put out into the field visual material that will get people to rethink the conditions of their existence. Bruce Mau: Not in quite the same way. I think there is an underlying power and positive effect of invention and creation, and I think in the arts we don’t often acknowledge that very basic idea of the capacity to produce and invent, to solve problems and create things. In some ways, that’s the most powerfully resonant frequency of the production of work. I’ve seen it quite specifically and powerfully when we’ve been involved with projects where we produce something new. It wasn’t the actual thing that was the most powerful; it was the potential for solving something collectively—to learn that we could actually collaborate, make solutions, develop new ideas, and put those ideas out, make them actionable and effect change in a positive way—that showed people that their lives could be part of that narrative, that their lives could be part of a narrative of invention and creative cul-

93 Radical Agency—Massive Change   

ture and production. When you look at children, their capacity to invent is so radical and so brilliant. But we somehow learn that we can’t do it rather than learning that we can. So one of the principal functions of the work is to demonstrate that possibility in the broadest way. KJM: I agree about the capacity of people to imagine themselves as producers. Every human being has the capacity to generate ideas and to produce meaningful objects and experiences within the environment they live in. The history of the production of people who live in what we think of as impoverished regions is a testament to that. But the obstacles to productivity in some places are so enormous; it’s not so much a question of people learning that they cannot or should not be the ones who produce, but rather of somebody introducing the possibility of that kind of productivity to these people in the first place. In a series of photographs I took in the neighbor­ hood that I live in, on the South Side of Chicago, it’s just astonishing to see how impoverished, how vacant the neighborhood is, and has been for a very long time. I was imagining while I was shooting some of these photographs—less than two miles from the Art Institute of Chicago— and watching kids go to school: What is it like to walk through neighborhoods where 40 percent of the lots are empty, and have been empty for the lifetime of many kids who started kinder­ garten and graduated from high school, if they even did graduate from high school? What impact does that have on the imagination of a kid who has to experience that? What capacity might they imagine themselves having, to be able to effect some kind of change? In the housing development boom earlier this decade, some of the projects started and then stopped. So even ­people who seem to have the capacity to do things and make change, fail. What does that do to kids who

have been walking past those spaces all that time? So I’m thinking to myself that it’s virtually impossible to imagine yourself being able to transform your neighborhood from inside it when you’ve been conditioned, essentially, to take for granted that this is the way it’s supposed to be: predominantly vacant lots, empty buildings, trash on the streets all the time. And I’m wondering: where’s the inspiration to consider yourself a producer supposed to come from, when the environment that you’re surrounded with seems to reinforce the fact that you cannot? BM: What was your experience? Where did it come from for you? KJM: I didn’t grow up in Chicago; I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. I think, for me, it came in a couple of ways. I was fortunate enough to have a mother who had ambitions to be something. She always wanted to be a singer and a songwriter; at various times in her life, though it never went anywhere, she made attempts to make that happen. My father was one of those guys who would take anything apart and try his best to fix it; he bought a lot of used stuff and would always be tinkering. So I saw people tinkering, and I saw people trying to write music. I also saw a bunch of pictures in a scrapbook that my kindergarten teacher had, and it made me think that’s what I want to do—I want to make pictures like those. I grew up in an environment in which that kind of activity was not encouraged—certainly not in the community at large—but I was lucky enough to see things on television that reinforced that idea, and also to have a teacher in third grade, and then others in seventh grade and high school, who were also people who had had ambi-

tions to be artists, though they ended up teaching in public schools because that was where they could make a living. LW: Both of you have backgrounds that inspired you and at the same time you surpassed them. Bruce, you’re from a tough northern Canadian mining town, and, Kerry, from an equally tough upbringing, although it sounds as if you had mentors. Both of you came from these worlds of—“hardship” might be too strong—but does hardship came into play? Is there some story you’re telling and retelling about your own climb out of the situation? KJM: Some of it had to do with the way the education system was organized at the time; it provided access to experiences with processes that a lot of kids don’t get now. For instance, in the summer between fifth and sixth grade, you could go to the junior high school and take classes in industrial arts. You could learn how to do plastics, woodworking, metals; you could learn how to do all of those things—and it was free for any kid who lived in the neighborhood. You could come to the shop, and it was open all day. You could learn that things can be made from raw material. I did that and then when I started junior high school, I took the full complement of industrial arts classes, where I learned about these processes. LW: Bruce, one of your design projects is around education: how to “design” education is the question for you. BM: That’s the underlying concept and ambition of the Center for Massive Change in Chicago. It is something I’ve been thinking a lot about: how do you produce more people who can think and act in this way? I think back to my

Kerry James Marshall and Bruce Mau  94  

own experience because it was very ­different—​design was not a possibility, nor was art. In an industrial resource town, art and culture were completely marginalized. I didn’t hear the word “design” until I went to college. When I think back, I realize there were two things that were quite important there, for me. One was that it was generally an unregulated condition. To some degree it was lawless; we just did whatever we wanted to. My wife and I have young children, and they have all kinds of programs, and I joke with her that when I was a kid, there were only two programs. One was “You kids get outside,” and then there was an afternoon program called “I thought I told you to get out.” In retrospect I realize that I grew up in an environment where there were very few restrictions on what you could do. You invented everything. You

had to invent your own games and methods and the stuff that you wanted to do. I think that really programmed the brain in a way around invention. Now we know that doing those things actually does change the brain; it changes your capacity. So I think that was a really powerful effect. For me, the other thing that got me out of there was television. In northern Ontario when I was a kid—and people will probably be shocked to realize this—we didn’t have running water during the winter. It was a really tough area. And so one of my jobs during winter was to get water for the house. That was kind of the general condition. We had two television channels, French and English, and it was on television that I saw other worlds. It was sort of like saying, “You know what? This is a way of living that isn’t what I want to do. I don’t know what it is, but I know

Bruce Mau Design, Inc., New Tokyo Life Style Think Zone, 2001–2

that I have to go from here and do something else.” It was as if, one night, a switch was flipped. Then I was fortunate enough, like Kerry, to have a few teachers who really made a difference and put me on my course.

in universities and colleges and art schools, there’s a steady stream of new artists year after year after year, but the venues available to artists to show their work doesn’t match the number of artists looking for places to show.

LW: It sounds to me as though you both had a similar development, though it took different directions into art and into design.

BM: Your argument assumes that finding an audience for the work is the purpose of the process. What if you said that having an aesthetic experience, contemplating reality, understanding more deeply our society and our culture, is the real purpose of the work?

BM: I think the creative economy of these two practices is radically different. My work is principally collaborative. I don’t do anything unless the phone rings. I wait for the phone, and if it doesn’t ring, I don’t do anything at all. I go to bed. I watch TV. I think about other things. But when someone calls and says, “Look, we’ve got this problem, and we’d be interested in what you think about it,” I work. An artist has a push economy, where they get up in the morning and say, “I’m going to do this no matter what.” And they’re going to do that thing come hell or high water. So what you want to do is encourage. You want to make a fertile ground for those people to realize their dreams and ambitions, because they stand a chance of contributing a lot to our society, to show us what our society is. I think that’s a big part of the role of art, whereas in design we’re not so much a mirror. Design is almost always about changing things. It’s usually things that I never would’ve thought of myself. KJM: But there’s a higher risk for self-delusion in the fine arts than there is in the design world, because in design people actually want what you do. In the art world, though it is a push economy, the vast majority of work that people produce is stuff that nobody wants. If you think about it for a moment, with the rise of graduate art programs

KJM: But this experience has to be affirmed by somebody else—the audience. Think about singing. I sing a lot, I like singing, but I don’t ever expect to be a singer; singing is a big part of how I express myself on a personal level, and it’s part of the joy of life. But its value has to be confirmed by the audience. You don’t go to school to learn how to make art so that you can express yourself. We go to school because we really want to be a part of a much larger dialogue that has a relationship to the history of other people who have done things like that. If all we wanted to do was express ourselves, we could just do that. But we don’t really appreciate or celebrate that kind of productivity, because that making is in the capacity of everybody. BM: If you think about people who are changing things, art plays a big part in their way of interacting with the world; they think and work like artists. Look at Jaime Lerner in Curitiba, Brazil, who was trained as an architect and became a politician. He was probably one of the best political people Brazil ever produced because he had culture in his toolkit. He had culture and art, the best human culture can produce, in his vocabulary, as opposed to just a political vocabulary. He had vision in his vocabulary.

Kerry James Marshall and Bruce Mau  96  

I think we underestimate how important art is. If you could put everyone in society through art school, think about how different it would be to have a general population that understands culture and embraces the capacity of art to affect the way we see the world. So I think, actually, that we have to broaden our scope and the perspective in terms of what we are trying to produce as an educational institution. I would much rather produce cultured people who are in political office and who are in the corporate suite, cultured people who are taking those considerations into decisionmaking that is affecting all sorts of things that we live with every day. KJM: But that poses a binary situation between the cultured and the uncultured, because culture itself is a kind of profession. It is still measured against the people who supposedly don’t have it. I know that even among homeless people or street people, you can sit down and have a conversation and some of them will surprise you by saying things that people you meet in universities would never think of. What we’re talking about here, on the other hand, is a very specialized and specific kind of thing. When we talk about art, or when we talk about music, or when we talk about design, we’re talking about them in a very specific kind of way—a professionalized and academic way. BM: Well, it can be, or it can be consciousness, awareness, sensitivity, sensibility. KJM: Religious objects have a real function to focus the devotee’s attention on a certain idea, and they’re often used as a tool to gain access to higher consciousness. But this brings us back to the point about the need for an audience—a discerning audience—that has the training, skill, perception, all those things to be able to see what

97 Radical Agency—Massive Change   

the artist has put in. And then you have to consider another question: does the artist know enough to be able to put those meaningful things into the work? This is what learning about art history is for. This is what learning about the cultural landscape is all about. It’s to make the most sophisticated treatment of a subject you can so that it draws attention to itself because there’s something peculiar about its presence or its existence as a thing. BM: I’m actually proposing that we talk about them in a more colloquial way. For instance, in design I think we talk more intelligently when we talk colloquially than when we do professionally. We talk about design more broadly in our normal language than we do in the professions. Once you get into professions, you’re talking about very specific boundaries between one practice and another. When you listen to people working every day, people who would never describe themselves as designers and are not trained as designers, they say, “I’m designing this program; I’m designing this solution; I’m designing this event.” They talk about it in a much more intelligent way. If you could give more people access to better tools, better principles, and ways of understanding that are more aesthetic and more considerate, they would be able to think about the inputs and outputs of all the things they’re doing and the complexity of their challenges. KJM: Everything you’re saying requires training. BM: Yes. Education, exposure—the kinds of things that you had early on. KJM: But the moment a certain specialized kind of training is required in order to engage in a

certain process or a practice or way of thinking, that professionalizes the activity and reinforces the structure that already exists, because social organization requires agreement. Even in the art world, which is supposed to be organized around radical individuality, where individuals are supposed to be able to do anything they want, we don’t have a wild and crazy range of things going on. It’s all corralled and controlled by a set of ideas that everybody who goes to school is conditioned to think through.

My personal experience with art has been quite the opposite, because I was fortunate to work with some of the most inventive and creative people in the world, great inventors: Richard Hamilton, Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas. These are people who are challenging how things are done, doing what you would imagine an artist is meant to do. So, for me, it’s been a process of understanding how art fits into and informs our practice, and how art ways of thinking can be used to solve the kinds of problems that we face.

LW: Let’s consider the professional artist and professional designer, and how they work differently and in the same way. You said that the designer is a collaborator, Bruce. And Kerry, you talked about radical individuality or the hope for it. But, Kerry, in some of your paintings, there’s architecture, public housing projects, interior design; so you use design, if you will, in your art. Bruce, do you use art in your design?

KJM: I would say that design or the built world is part of the environment we live in and experience, so it’s unavoidable. But I do make choices about the kinds of things I use in pictures because I understand that there’s a certain agreement about what those things represent and what kind of meanings they can make in the context of the other things I put with them. So it’s not a random selection of things. I’m making very specific choices because I mean to have a specific outcome in terms of the relationship between the work and the audience that perceives it.

BM: Art is a very important dimension and it has been a powerful influence on my work. I’ve worked with many artists, and those experiences have set the agenda for me in certain ways. When I first started working, I thought art and art institutions would be the most radical territory that I could find—a place where I would find the most innovation and real change happening. I was surprised how conservative it was. There was a certain amount of invention, but often it was a moment of invention followed by a career of repetition that became a kind of logo: doing something and then doing that over and over for decades. I was shocked, because I thought it would be the opposite. This was true especially where a lot of money is involved; the moment you have huge investments, there’s a lot at stake, and a general condition of confirmation of the status quo.

Yet we’re still trapped within these categories: the designer who uses art and the artist who uses design. This means that there’s a boundary line where, if you don’t want to, you can come up to the edge and not go over to the other side because if you do, people might think you’re a designer and not an artist. That’s what artists like Jorge Pardo do. Richard Serra would say to Frank Gehry, “That ain’t art. I don’t care how many weird shapes you make a building, that building still doesn’t become art because architecture can’t be art.” So where’s the place you draw the line? What’s the kind of thinking that an artist has and a designer doesn’t have, or vice versa?

Kerry James Marshall and Bruce Mau  98  

BM: Serra famously had a big fight with Frank and said, “If it’s got plumbing, it’s not art.” I actually think that he was wrong. But, Kerry, you pointed to something that I think is, in some ways, at the heart of it. What I take from art is choice. From very early on, that’s what I took from art. I didn’t necessarily take a formal language, but I took this idea that you could have a practice and you could have a life of intellectual development and exploration of culture and aesthetics; you could actually control your body of work— which is not a radical thing for an artist, but is quite radical for a designer. A lot of people who do the kind of work that I do, don’t behave as if it were their practice, their work. They see it as service done for the client. In my office we provide that service, but we also see it as a body of work and as a practice. When I meet young designers working in the field, they look at me and I can see that the real question for them is: “How do I get from here to there?” They are thinking: “I’m not working that way now because I have a job and a business; I have to do this stuff; it’s a conventional commercial model instead of my voice.” But I think no matter how collective and collaborative your practice is, it can still be your voice, your body of work. It’s your contribution, and you’re responsible for it. You’re responsible for the upside and the things that you contribute, but you’re also responsible for all the garbage, and you think about the implications of your work. KJM: Let’s go even further with the distinction that Serra was making between his work and an architect’s. Can it be because we question what the province of art is? What are the issues or kinds of questions that artworks provoke or evoke? Take the trajectory of modernism, which culminated (or was supposed to have culminated) in the development of “conceptual art,”

99 Radical Agency—Massive Change   

where the domain of art is questions about the nature of art itself as a kind of philosophical proposition. So the question always is: “What is art?” Or in Serra’s case: “What is sculpture?” Over time, the questions that an artist asks have to do with the nature of the thing that the artist is doing, whereas in architecture there’s always a consideration of function that has priority in the conception and construction of the object. Artists are not bound by any consideration of functionality whatsoever, except as it relates to the domain of objects that are like that. So what is the domain of painting? It’s paint. And you can stop there. Then you say, “Well, how do we treat paint?” And you can do a lot of things within that domain. LW: But this is not what you follow. You’re a radical agent! KJM: Right, because my project is retrospective in a sense, or I have a retroactive kind of a practice, through which I try to fill in some gaps that I think were left vacant. I’m operating strategically to provide for that, and you could say this is a service: to provide a set of images to an audience that I think needs to see them. That’s how I see myself. How do you get an audience’s attention? How do you earn that? I don’t think artists are just trying to express themselves; they have to filter their subject through some kind of treatment that draws attention to them, because the consequence of not having that attention is to have no career as an artist at all. The survival rate for artists who graduate from school with an MFA and are producing work five years later is less than 1 percent. What about that other 99 percent? What about them? Do we even care?

LW: As Bruce said, some of them may find a place in law, medicine, and politics, and those areas can benefit from having people who have a conceptual way of approaching the world because they have these degrees in art. BM: This 1 percent thing is really bothering me. It’s an amazing idea, because that means 99 percent of artists can do other things. So can we use them as designers, for instance? Certainly part of our work is to work with artists who have become designers. The question I have is: “Is there really a need for more than 1 percent or is that all we need?” KJM: I remember Peter Schjeldahl once said, “Well, they have more than enough paintings al-

ready in existence to keep me busy for the rest of my life, so I don’t need to see another person paint another painting from now on.” And that’s true. So what do we do with all this stuff ? LW: Although Schjeldahl clearly has plenty to write about, we need new work. We need new generations of artists because society changes. We need new mirrors to see what we’re doing. I don’t think that we repeat the past or absorb the past, but rather we update it, and if new work isn’t generated, then what vehicles do we have to consider the present? We don’t want to look at work from the 1970s to consider our thinking and acting today. So I think we always need new art activity within the society in order to be cognizant of what we’re doing.

Kerry James Marshall, Souvenir I, 1997

BM: I think the idea that we constantly need new interpretation is more critical than ever. The change we’re living through is quite radical. So the capacity to actually articulate our context, our society, what’s evolving and changing and developing, is more pressing than ever because of the rate at which we are developing new possibilities and new capacities. I believe this is why art and design practices are suddenly so valuable; it has to do with the rate at which things are transforming. People are looking for ways of seeing, and that’s going to accelerate. It’s not going to slow down. KJM: We live in some terrifying times, and design has a function or plays a role in that, too. C-SPAN is one of the greatest inventions of all time. I was watching a conference set up by the big defense contractor General Dynamics. The American project now is for a thing they call “Full Spectrum Dominance,” in which they are trying to set up a situation in which nobody else in the world can compete with the United States—certainly militarily. There was one guy after another from General Dynamics on CSPAN making presentations on this integrated system to control land warfare, sea warfare, and air warfare with all of these robotic instruments and stuff. That was the most terrifying thing that I ever saw in my entire life because what it suggests for us as citizens in this democracy is that there’s a kind of runaway military enterprise. They are thinking about designing the world in a way, too, but the lethality with which they’re talking about shaping the world trumps the dimensions of our program. BM: For me, the principal difference between their way of thinking about design and what we’re doing is that we’re driven by values and purpose. You organize your enterprise around

101 Radical Agency—Massive Change   

that purpose according to certain values: “What is the purpose of our work, and what are we actually contributing to society, and what is the opportunity in this case?” The kind of person that you need for that work is very different. Buckminster Fuller called them “comprehensivists.” There’s also a term floating around right now called “art scientist,” which is a person who looks at the full possibility of engagement and practice and creative production, including science and art, and asks: “How can we use this broad spectrum of possibility to address a particular challenge, and if we use the best of what we have, what can we contribute?” So, for me, that’s the underlying methodology that we’re developing at the Center for Massive Change. We need to look at attaching practice to real challenges, because we have real challenges. One of the things that happened to the academy over the last couple of hundred years is that it became disconnected from those challenges. We need to reconnect it and say, “Look, we have real challenges in our society.” Why wouldn’t we use this extraordinary moment in people’s lives—when they’re young and engaged—and connect them to the challenges that we have, and use that energy to effect change? KJM: For an artist to be in a position to effect social change, the first thing the artist has to do is survive. You’ve got to live and not only live, but you’ve got to be able to produce the work. It’s no small achievement. Once you have achieved a certain understanding of what it is you’re doing, then you can start thinking about how to transfer that understanding to other people. At least for me, until I’ve got it down myself, I’m not going out talking to anybody.

predisposed—it was wide open. Anybody who applied to have a part in that project got a chance to compete by playing games. Most of those kids had never been to the Wexner before, didn’t even know where it was. Now they’re calling up the Wexner Center, trying to find out what else is going on there. So I think that’s the only kind of real change I think I can effect. Those are the kinds of things I think about and, for me, are the kinds of thing I think an artist can do: introduce people to an arena in which they might not ever be engaged.

Everything has to be dealt with in terms of sustainability. Once I reach a certain threshold of sustainability in terms of my own livelihood, then my focus can change. I’m interested in the redistribution of wealth and opportunity, so at a certain point, once I get to a certain place, then I take the opportunity to do it for as many people as I can bring into it as possible. So at the Wexner Center [at Ohio State University], instead of doing a self-indulgent kind of residency, I took the opportunity to invite twentythree high school kids to be a part of the project, and they all got paid. Instead of going through an audition process of selection—weeding out people and trying to find people who are already

One thing is guaranteed in the world: change. Now the challenge we face is who drives that change and how are things changing. Are the changes on your terms, or are you having to deal with changes on somebody else’s terms? Those are the only things that I think really matter. When you look out in the world and see how power is distributed, the people who have the most power are driving the most changes. So then the question becomes: how do you get in the game with them? How do you compete with those people in the game of trying to effect the kind of changes you want to see, as opposed to the kinds of changes they want to see? Because we are not always going to agree on the kinds of changes that are worthwhile, and circumstances conspire sometimes to allow some people to make change more than others. We can sit around and moan about it, or we can try to think and operate more strategically, and look for weaknesses in the existing regimes, and figure out where to attack, to disrupt that field in order to create a space in which some other kind of change can take place. That’s the way I see it. BM: Marshall McLuhan talked about the idea that technologies are an extension of our nervous system. In our work, we met Ray Kurzweil,

Bruce Mau Design, Inc., Panamarama, 2002

and he talked about how fast we’re developing new capacity. He was an inventor himself, and he discovered that about 90 percent of all inventions fail, and they fail because the context isn’t ready for these new things. People are making new things, but all the other things that the new thing would require in order to succeed are not yet in place. So he started to study how fast we’re developing new capacity and found an absolutely radical and startling thing: we’re doubling our technological capacity every twelve months, doubling our capacity to move information and images, to shape the world, to make machines and to make machines that make machines. Doubling every twelve months sounds absolutely staggering, but when you think about what’s happening over time, you’re doubling the double every year. He said, “What happens when you put twenty of those together, you have a million-fold increase in our capacity to shape the world.” So that’s what we’re living through. He recently described that the twenty-first century would be like living through sixty thousand years of human progress. That’s what’s happening! The way I see it is that there has never been a better time in human history to be alive and working, and the possibilities are greater than at any time in the history of humankind. So if you

103 Radical Agency—Massive Change   

think about what people today know how to do, the tools that they have at their disposal, and how they can, not so much attack, but actually go the other way and cooperate. Instead of thinking about competition, think about collaboration, cooperation, connectedness, collective entities, collective action: how we can put things together in new ways. The opportunities have never been greater in the history of humankind. That’s what we have in front of us. I think it was Al Gore who recently said that in thirty or forty years, when we look back at this time, there are going to be two questions that we ask ourselves. One is: “What were you thinking?” The other: “How did they do that?” I think that those are the questions we face. We have these absolutely staggering possibilities, and a lot of people are simply not embracing them. They’re not seeing their own potential in the situation, and therefore they’re not seeing the possibility for action. For me, that’s the most critical thing. If there’s one thing we can do, we can say, “Look, you have power beyond the power of most royals for most of history. Most kings and queens couldn’t do what you can do with a kind of relatively ­inexpensive laptop computer.” That’s a fact we can live with, and the possibilities are just accelerating.

hannula wainwright getsy bauer rinder jones waters hood

Alfredo Jaar, The Skoghall Konsthall, 2000

on making art and pedagogy

mika hannula

Mika Hannula is professor in artistic research at the Faculty of Arts and Design, University of Göteborg, Sweden. He was professor for art in public space at the Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki, as well as its director from 2000–2005 and chair of KUNO, Nordic Network of Art Academies. His publications include Rock the Boat: Localized Ethics, the Situated Self, and Particularism in Contemporary Art (Salon Verlag, 2003); Artistic Research: Theories, Methods and Practices (Kuvataideakatemia and Göteborg Universitet, 2005); and Politics of Small Gestures: Chances and Challenges for Contemporary Art (Art-ist Publishing, 2006). He also co-edited Self-Organization: ­Counter-Economic Strategies (Sternberg Press, 2006). Hannula ­curated the exhibition Songs of Freedom and Love for Platform Garanti Contem­porary Art Center in Istanbul and the Estonian Pavilion at the 2007 Venice Biennale. Hannula, born in Turku, Finland, holds a PhD in ­political science and lives in Berlin.

Teaching Discourse Reflection Strong, Not Theory Light

What is it that we do when we do what we do?

1. Aristotle, Ethics (London: Penguin Classics, 1976).

This opening sentence is not a riddle. Nor is it a tautological dead end. Instead, it serves as a very practical way, a guide, for those of us in any given field or domain of action and expertise to find the necessary focus in our activities. With its emphasis on pushing something forward, the question is meant to function as a welcome wake-up call for each of us, in our specific site and situation, to think through critically yet constructively what we do, why, how, with whom, and for whom. Putting aside taken-for-granted boundaries and habits and seriously taking up the challenge of communication, we can approach the performative act of doing things with words with an open playfulness. Obviously, there are other ways to describe this needed process of framing and concentration. My aim here is not to attempt a full-scale survey of potential strategies, but to address the issue in a productive fashion for this book. This pragmatist’s credo translates into the concept of “A Good Practice”: an Aristotelian idea of defining what we do through acts of doing and experiencing; an idea of knowledge produced in and through a practice that seeks to be open-ended, reflexive, self-­ critical—a practice that looks for confrontations and challenges.1 So this opening “serves” us with a complex demand. We are both lured and forced to define how we want to, need to, and wish to articulate these central concepts in and through our activities: What is good in what we do, who defines quality, and what exactly is this practice in which we actively participate? A third way to describe the scope of this essay draws upon the simplifications of sports idiom: nothing more and nothing less than keeping our eye on the ball. This

107

2. Ute Meta Bauer, ed., Education, Information, Entertainment: Cur­ rent Approach of Higher Artistic Education (Vienna: Edition Selene, 2001); Gavin Butt, ed., After Criti­

common saying allows us to ask what kind of ball we are talking about, generating in the process a conceptual precision regarding differentiations within a given frame—let’s say, with a game of pool, whether it’s snooker, eight ball, or acrobatic tricks on the billiard table.

cism: New Responses to Art and Per­formance (London: Routledge, 2005); Irit Rogoff, “Academy as Potentiality” in Academy, ed. Bart De Baere et al. (Frankfurt: Revolver Books, 2006). 3. Suzanne Lacy, ed., Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art (Seattle: Bay Press, 1995); Nick Kaye, Site-Specific Art: Performance, Place, and Documentation (London: Rout-

The focus here is not on a ball or a puck, but on the theme of what it might mean to try to teach theory in art academies and, more precisely, how we should go about it. A set of questions with theoretical and practical implications are currently anxiously being asked in a large number of institutions providing higher education in the fine arts and visual culture.2 This is a theme that has social and cultural, hence political, implications. I would classify it as an honest dilemma, and it is a theme to which there cannot be a single all-encompassing answer, but always particular working solutions in constant need of revisiting and rethinking.

ledge, 2000); and Miwon Kwon, One Place after Another: Site-Spe­ cific Art and Locational Identity (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002). 4. Irit Rogoff, Terra Incognita (London: Routledge, 2000); Grant H. Kester, “Community and Communication in Dialogical Art,” focas: Forum on Contemporary Art and Society, vol. 4 (2002). 5. Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic, Modernity and Double Consciousness (London: Verso, 1993); Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994); Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (London: Routledge, 1999); Maeve Cooke, “Questioning Autonomy: The Feminist Challenge and the Challenge for Feminism,” in Ques­

The background of the shared dilemma is somewhat unchallenged. We have the historical change and shift in both what artists do and how they define what they do as artists. We also have the vastly altered scope of media accepted as art and available for artists. Art is no longer limited to activities within the studio but allows, for example, walks in a park or socially engaged activities.3 There has been a huge increase in artistic activity, as seen in the number of students, schools, and professional artists, and simultaneously, a paradoxical fragmentation of individual artistic practices, along with approaches that seem apparently interdisciplinary in character.4 Finally, we have a true plurality of discourses, ranging from the re-visioning and reinterpretation of art history through, for example, feminism and postcolonialism, to active inclusion of cultural identity politics and the politics of representation.5 There is no longer one clear center, no permanent king of the hill in terms of style, geographic area, medium, or theoretical approach. All this dramatic change (or mess, if you like) signals a need to think through what kinds of theoretical views and tools are adequate and, consequently, how should we teach them.

tioning Ethics: Contemporary De­ bates in Philosophy, ed. Richard Kearney and Mark Dooley (London: Routledge, 1999).

What this apparent and (I hope) cherished plurality implies is a need to open up the discourse in a productive and intellectually honest way. A broad view is required, one that will allow us to get out of the cul-de-sac of vehemently debating, for example, whether to have art history at all, or whether to introduce critical post– World War II thinkers into the curriculum. The scope and demands for artists and students of art are so wide and at the same time so specific that we must admit that no answer fits them all. Instead of hunting down the all-encompassing truth like good old John Wayne, we must first recognize and then respect the fact that there are no universal answers to this dilemma, just contextual, localized versions of interpretations of what, how, where, and when.

Mika Hannula  108  

Based on my experiences of teaching theory and practice for more than a decade, mostly in various Nordic art academies, the essential question is not whether to have this approach or that. Nor is it about deciding once and for all whether we should do art history from the beginning to the end or in reverse. Nor is the question about swapping art history or the theory of representation, for example, with the theory of network sociology or the theory of urban gentrification. As someone with a background in classical Aristotelian ethics, I realized how unproductive and silly it was to pretend to be playing along these constructed juxtapositions while repeating the old prejudices and tunnel visions. We have a wide variety of experiences that are all potentially valuable. There cannot be any a priori hierarchy between approaches and views. Anything we try to do, if (as I certainly think we should) we take pluralism seriously, cannot be about what it is, but how it is done, here and now, linking it to the past, present, and future. One wholesale perspective is never enough; but we must recognize that we can only have one credible view at a time. To quote a modern classic: “To say that you can ‘have experience,’ means, for one thing, that your past plays into and affects your present, and that it defines your capacity for future experience.”6 Any one of these potential theoretical and historical approaches is an attempt to describe and define reality. Not more but not less, either. Sometimes one of them makes sense; sometimes we have to be awake enough to recognize when one of these approaches, even if it worked amazingly well in a previous case, is no longer helpful at all. We have to trust the strategy of being particular, specific, and situated. We must keep our eye on the practice—what it opens, introduces, and requires. We must learn how to listen, to listen carefully and with patience, and act accordingly. Listening is a time-consuming strategy, but it also both allows and forces us to get out of the blame-game. We must try to articulate what we are for, instead of merely define what we are against. Such articulation can be achieved only within a practice that is open-ended, self-critical, and reflexive, in constant search for ways of doing what we do within a flexible frame and in a bit pleasanter and better way. One of the practical ways to proceed in finding an anchoring approach to the question of “what is it that you do when you do what you do?” is to distinguish between the means to and the end in itself for a given activity. This distinction should help us focus on what “it” is about and, ultimately, what’s going on in our practices. In terms of the practice of teaching theory to students in the fine arts and, in a broader sense, visual culture, I believe it is important to be very rigid in the initial approach to this subject. This does not imply that we must pin down all the content of concepts we use forever and ever; on the contrary, we have the responsibility to

109 Teaching Discourse  

6. C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination (London: Oxford University Press, 1959), 196.

provide contextually specific definitions right here and now. Versions are challenged and continuously renegotiated through a self-critical and open-ended practice of using and defining the content of concepts. A lot of the unnecessary confusion about how to deal with theory in art education starts with how this practice is named. For various reasons, this part of the curriculum tends to be labeled “theory.” But theory of what and for what? I want to argue that this dilemma can be resolved by naming it the teaching of discourses, not theory, and to suggest bringing in discourses from any field, be it art history, political psychology, or sports journalism. This solution may seem a rather “cheap” conceptual trick. While it is true that by changing the naming concept we do not change the content of the practice, we nevertheless win the ability to direct and redirect our focus. At the same time, although anything may be possible, not everything that is possible will prove to be meaningful as an approach, view, or strategy. But why discourse instead of theory? First, let us recall what this is all about. To do this, we need to answer the question: for whom are we offering and doing this? Granted, one of the inherent characteristics of students of fine arts and visual culture is their plurality. The scope of what these students want to study and what is expected from them is multifaceted, as is what they end up doing as their profession. The range of activities starts from painting and goes all the way to sound art. In terms of art school graduates, we have some surviving as artists and others opting for an array of other professions—from teachers and social workers to management consultants. Regardless of this plurality, what unites all these students is their primary interest in the processes of making and shaping visual information as pictures, images, objects, or processes. Their practice is visual ­communication—a statement that should not be read as reductive but as a setting of priorities. What these students are taking part in and with is not theory an sich. That focus is found in other disciplines, and cruel or not, if students want to study theory, they should go to institutions that specialize in theory. I have the feeling I must proceed slowly and carefully here. The reason I insist on the need to find a focus and make a decision on one’s priorities about what one wants to do is not to deny that whatever we do is connected and cannot be autonomous or seen in isolation from similar views and actions. Obviously, whatever we do in the fields of knowledge production is inherently linked through backgrounds, contexts, motivations, comparisons, and competitive drives. But the point I am trying to make is that before you can even start to link yourself to something—X, Y, or Z—you must have a certain idea of what you want to link these views and versions of reality to. You need to have a clear-enough base from which to speak and act.

Mika Hannula  110  

We are now back at square one, keeping our eye on the ball. And while doing this, while keeping the process going, the initial distinction between means and end becomes handy. It allows us to find the combination between theoretical and practical ways of relating and shaping our ways of being-in-the-world. And yes, because this “dirty” concept of being-in-the-world has slipped out, let me take a short detour before continuing. This detour is important because it allows us to think about the presuppositions of the whole issue, not only combining but also productively cherishing the interconnectedness of practice and theory. The notion of our being-in-the-world is not an essentialist or existentialist statement—at least that’s not how it’s understood here. This notion underlines two things: (1) We are what we are as parts of the physical, mental, and emotional reality that is formed and maintained collectively. We are never completely outsiders or insiders; we are both/and, in and out, constantly having an effect on the world and being affected. We are part of the mess, part of the problem. The question always is, not what we are, but how we are. (2) The realities we inhabit—and to which we are embedded in the simultaneous sense of the triad of timeframes of past, present, and future—are plural, insecure, and without guarantees. But our view of “reality” and our position in it, which constructs what we see and what we expect, cannot be multiple—we can only experience one reality at a time. In the words of Maurice Merleau-Ponty: “We have no way of knowing what a picture or a thing is other than by looking at them, and their significance is revealed only if we look at them from a certain point of view, from a certain distance and in a certain direction.”7 But let us get back on the track. Through my practice of teaching discourses of ­contemporary art during the last decade, I have learned by trial and error, both overreaching and underperforming. One helpful starting point is to distinguish between seeing theoretical ways as tools and as means. Whatever these theoretical ways are, they are there to help us relate to and reflect on who we are, where we are, how we are, and with whom we are. Thus, they are the means to achieve an internal connection to our ways of being-in-the-world. This again forces us to ask: how do we teach these discursive means (because that’s what they are)? They are plural and they are constantly shifting and changing. The starting point is to come to terms with the uncertainty and impermanence inherent in this continuing, unending process. Discourses are not things sitting on a shelf; they become, they are actualized and situated. This implies our responsibility to participate. Rather than seek to pin them down and conquer them, the task is to find ways to take part in the shaping and making of these discourses. It is not about having it right, but about getting into the groove. This task cannot be grounded on

111 Teaching Discourse  

7. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenom­ enology of Perception (London: Routledge, 2002), 449.

some solid-gold position that insists on being neutral or natural, but rather on a constantly evolving, reflective, critical yet constructive, questioning, redefining, continuing, and fully value-laden process. It is a process only possible if and when we localize and situate ourselves, talking and acting in and through a specific site, not a generalized domain or area. The central question, then, is: what discourses do you wish to be part of and how can you participate in them? The first part of this question is something none of us can determine by ourselves. We all come from somewhere, but the point is how we deal with the past, and how we attach to or detach from the articulations and utterances that occur within the context in which we wish to be included. The second part deals with the practicalities of being able to address and articulate through our own version of values, wants, aims, wishes, and fears how we want to work and with what and with whom. This does not happen via abstract notions, but only through our personal experiences and processes of thinking and acting. The somewhat perplexing aspect of discourses is that, in the end, it does not really matter which one you want to actively be part of. This is not to say they are all the same, but to underscore that while a prioritizing approach is important, any coherent and consistent approach has potential. The most significant fact is that you must start from somewhere, go and throw yourself into the issues, take up chances and challenges through a given discourse. You have to make a commitment and an ­effort. And since the end is not to become a philosopher or a sociologist, you treat these discourses as a means to thinking. It is not about mastering the discourses, but using or not using them. These tools are available for critical reflection, as with a trampoline, not to stay captivated by them, but to do and say something with them— again in connection to your practice (a notion to which we will shortly return). The task is not to figure out what a given concept in and of itself means or what’s the truth in this or that claim, but to bring you close to the concept that plays a role in the discourse you want to participate in, to think with it, and to provide your version, your reading of it. This process cannot be done alone. You need a group context within which and through which you can debate your same or similar-enough practices to arrive at what makes sense and what does not, working through what is meant in each case in regard to the central concepts such as empowerment or subjectivity. Unless you do this collectively, together with others, not only do you stay a tourist in the game but you also feel as if you have been left out in the cold—on your own, in the dark. This change of perspective should benefit from the fact that you cannot and should not try to understand it all. We do not need to tackle the whole library or the entire

Mika Hannula  112  

book. It is enough to focus on a specific substantial essay, and to read and re-read it. We can then, in practice-based fields, take smaller, meaningful steps rather than grand leaps. Since we do not want to tackle the complete writings of, let’s say, Michel Foucault or Judith Butler, we have the alternative of shifting from the macro to the micro level. As a result, we may concentrate on certain key concepts (here respectively, for example, eventualization or performative gender difference), opening the door through them, and going into the details and nuances that way. This route has the advantage of letting us proceed slowly and carefully, paying attention to the connotations and implications of these concepts. It is a route that also allows us to highlight the origin of each concept—to see that each has a distinct past, present, and potential future. We also become aware of the differences and conflicting versions of the same concepts based on their specific background and situation. 8 Even if you and nobody else ends up deciding which of the hundreds of potential discourses to focus on, you never participate in them alone. The process is about how to create and generate collective sites of exchange—to have a discussion with the author, with the text, as well as to find others who touch on this discourse in their way, too, or whose discourses elaborate or clarify your own. It is about give and take, push and pull. In any circumstance, you have the chance to affect the discourse. At the same time, others have an effect on it, and the discourse has effects on its participants. Another important aspect of a reflective process of discourse is that it is never ready or done. It is a process that must have the ability to be openended, a process that has to be able to allow and cherish internal conflicts and doubts. It cannot take itself too seriously or for granted. But how can we help students choose the discourse appropriate for them? Besides the obvious rule of needing to see what makes sense for each individual based on his or her needs and demands, the relevance of a discourse is determined by what the person is trying to do. We are back to the very basics of the whole issue. We are at the intersection where one has to be able to provide a working solution to the question: what is your practice? And yes, by stating that you are a video artist, you are not yet saying anything at all. The statement remains hollow and empty until you make yourself accountable by articulating what kind of a video art and artist you have in mind, what part of the history and tradition of video art you connect to, where you locate yourself right now, and where you want to go. In one sense, the practice of a student is the factuality of being a student. A not-soelegant sentence, yet one that embodies an important claim. We have to be very careful not to limit the scope of activities beforehand for our students. They must be able to try out and experiment with different themes and media—creating a huge copy machine of an art academy for an endless series of one-trick ponies is not a good idea.

113 Teaching Discourse  

8. See Mika Hannula, Everything or Nothing: Critical Theory, Contempo­ rary Art and Visual Culture (Helsinki: Academy of Fine Arts, 2005).

9. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (London: Duckworth, 1985), 187.

At the same time, and here comes the central content of teaching discourse through an evolving idea of a practice: we must push students to take initiative and to define what they want, how, and why, not in universal themes, but through their own choices and focus, not in a closed-up, narcissistic fashion, but by linking themselves to works of art, to artists, to discourses, and to exhibitions. It is the task of deciding how to relate to the past of the site where you act, and also to create self-reflective and self-critical versions of the practice that are pushed forward by your own actions and articulations. This is to ask how a practice is defined and who defines it. All of this deals with and is about (I can’t emphasize this strongly enough) being a practicing professional artist. A practice that, first of all, is not that of a theorist out there, but of an artist or a group of artists to whom one must find ways to get next to. This act of “getting closer” does not necessarily happen through personal encounters (maybe not at all), but through the experience of works by artists. And it occurs not only through works, but also through words—words not perhaps so much uttered by others (critics, curators, etc.) but by colleagues and by the artists themselves about their works, the content, scope, and framing. We find works and words in direct and fruitful interplay in reflections by Bruce Nauman, Adrian Piper, or Gerhard Richter, to name some of the well-known artists articulating their practice and the discourses in which they participate. But how should we understand a practice? It would be disastrous to expect each individual to invent the analytical frame and tradition of a practice. What we have is an abstract version of it—a version to lean on, to talk with, and with which each of us can define our own interpretation—a definition that emphasizes how our actions are context-bound and site-specific. As Alasdair MacIntyre phrased it: “By a ‘practice’ I am going to mean any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve excellence, and human conceptions of the ends and the goods involved, are systematically extended.”9 What we are after is not a theory of a certain practice, such as narrative video installations or figurative paintings. That would be asking for a solution to a dilemma that has no solutions, no stopping point, but is rather an ongoing process, and where the importance lies in how to keep the process, the carousel going on. Without a priori answers, knowledge is shaped and made in and through the particular processes. It is a personal journey, but something that must find its way into articulation so that it is available and comprehensible to others working in the same field or in a similar fashion.

Mika Hannula  114  

But once again, this act of defining the production of knowledge in and through acts of practice does not happen in a vacuum or in isolation. There is no void, and we should not have any illusions about inventing the practice from the scratch. Instead of believing the hype about the latest new thing, or following the trendy flavor of the month, we must value practice-based, practice-bound activity, with its benefits of slowness and stamina. Who, we must ask, is doing the talking? Who uses or abuses the power to describe and to redescribe? Changing our perspective and rephrasing the task to teach theoretical tools within art academies as discourses, rather than as clear-cut theories of this or that, enables us to reflect realities as intersecting, overlapping, and contradicting. Our being-inthe-world is described as both/and, not either/or. We are in a mess, but it is our mess, and the ultimate task is to make that dilemma into a productive dilemma. If we throw Jacques Derrida or Gilles Deleuze at the students, we have to make sure we are there to help them catch this. Not just once, but through a long-term commitment in which knowledge does not evaporate into thin air but has the possibility to build and accumulate. It is, yes, about sharing and caring, which are both on the agenda and which are both pursued because it’s in the deepest self-interest of anyone wishing and willing to maintain and develop a self-critical and reflective practice. Teaching the ways to learn the tools of how to participate in discourses is not about discrediting the contents or potentialities of any given theory. Nor is it to make a pre-given hierarchy between various approaches. Teaching discourse is not a lame simplification. It is not a watered-down version of the “real” thing. We are not talking about using an analogue from another field, of a wine that has been robbed of all its alcohol. Teaching discourse is not Bordeaux light; it is not a no-version of anything. It is something different, something else. And yes, this something else is our awareness of being-in-the world. In one word, it’s about reflexivity. It is not about who goes home after a hard day’s work with a theory of correct and right practice in his or her back pocket. It’s about the necessity for each of us to participate in the framing and focusing of the context we are part of. Teaching discourse is reflection strong, not theory light. A decisive distinction that is not an answer but an opening, a beginning of a beginning, a chance to take seriously the task of thinking with and thinking through who we are, where we are, how we are, and with whom we are—and not to forget where we want to go next. We are not talking about free-floating avatars that may last for the next twenty-two seconds. No, it’s about of the lifelong project of a situated self with the freedom and responsibility to participate in defining and redescribing the content of concepts and the elements of the practice within which you are and wish to be engaged when you keep on keeping on doing what you do when you do what you do.

115 Teaching Discourse  

lisa wainwright

Lisa Wainwright is dean of graduate studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and professor in the Department of Art History, Theory and Criticism. Currently, she also serves as SAIC’s interim dean of faculty. She frequently lectures and serves as a guest curator. Her recent publications include John Wilde: Things of Nature/The ­Nature of Things (University of Wisconsin Press, 2006). She is completing a book on found object art in the twentieth century entitled The Readymade Century. Wainwright received her PhD from the ­University of Illinois, undertaking significant work on Robert Rauschenberg.

Practicing Rauschenberg

It is difficult to accept the end of Robert Rauschenberg’s prodigious output in painting, print media, sculpture, art and technology, photography, performance art, and hybrid media—or “combines” as he named them. For more than sixty years, Rauschenberg was the great chronicler of our time, creating majestic documents of his life and the society that informed it, while offering viewers access to a way of looking and thinking unimaginable before him. Using the found bric-a-brac of his immediate postwar world and images from a mass media that explosively rose around him, Rauschenberg formulated ideas around identity, spirituality, politics, and art that still resonate today. Coming of age as an artist during the radical shift from the modern to the postmodern period, Rauschenberg took modernism’s ­commitment to form and process, as well as its optimistic belief in progress, and bridged this sensibility to the deconstruction and appropriation strategies, semiotic plays, and fractured narratives of postmodernity. Like no other artist, he exemplified the curious transition from one episteme to the next. Rauschenberg was immensely influential, and his work had an impact on art and artists around the world, but his example also has much to teach those of us who educate artists and designers. To “practice” Rauschenberg, to weave his model into the curricula of art and design schools, is to provide a creative sampling of media possibilities, highlight material processes, and teach the histories of art and design, while staying alert to the present moment. It is to encourage the study of the great humanist themes, keeping the ethos of art making positive and forward-looking. These lessons are part of the vast legacy of Rauschenberg’s artistic production. Robert Rauschenberg’s commitment to craft and process is once again de rigeur as schools of art and design move beyond their heavy focus on theory. With these critical lessons integrated into curricula, making and its attendant knowledges have moved back into the foreground. Rauschenberg indulged in processes of all kinds—

117

from painting to kinetics. He was hungry for it all, extroverted in his search for material and form. And so, the sheer breadth of Rauschenberg’s practice reminds us of the inherently valuable idea of an open and experimental curriculum in art and design schools today. To keep our art and design studios in proximity and relatively porous—physically and curricularly—is to allow for the kind of experimental bri­ coleur activity that Rauschenberg engendered. He spoke of collaborating with materials, of finding the meaning in the process of making—an approach surely indebted to his early association with the New York School. But after he absorbed the lessons of ­Marcel Duchamp and John Cage, the world opened up, his palette enriched by the quotidian as well as the deep subconscious. Rauschenberg’s protean model is a useful one for education. Like Black Mountain College as Rauschenberg experienced it in the late 1940s and early 1950s, surrounded by and in collaboration with diverse practitioners and thinkers (dancers, ceramicists, fiber artists, poets, architects, photographers, painters, and composers), a broad liberal arts education with studio at the core provides a rich arena for creative development. Like Rauschenberg, students should experiment with as many material options as possible and engage in the widest range of liberal arts studies. Content and form must intermingle in acts of free association, then allowing students to move forward with decisive direction and intent. An open ­curriculum that encourages lateral moves across disciplines while ensuring a depth of knowledge in each is challenging but vital to the success of a discursive, Rauschenberglike practice. Only those students who understand the complexities of thinking and making—and how to navigate these matrices—will be able to help refashion the world around them, as Rauschenberg did. Even incessant questions about the role of technology in art and design education can be tempered through a Rauschenbergian application, for he offers the op­tion of understanding technology as merely another tool to be played with, disas­ sembled, unpacked, and remodeled. Digital craft—a low-grade tinkering aesthetic ­using high- and low-end parts—is now very much an aspect of contemporary art. Rauschenberg’s early forays into mechanized and electronic arts remain useful prototypes. In 1973 he asserted that “part of the responsibility of an artist is to acknowledge the resources of his own time. We are surrounded by materials and

Robert Rauschenberg, Coexistence, 1961

technologies that are too refined to be commonly known . . . the motivation for [my] works has been to use technology without letting technology be the theme itself: it doesn’t control the work.”1 Rauschenberg’s McLuhanesque understanding of ­media—the idea of turning technology’s advances inside out in order to gain insights into the impact of technology in general—must remain a critical lesson in advanced education.

1. Barbara Rose, Rauschenberg: An Interview with Robert Rauschenberg (New York: Vintage Press, 1987), 49. 2. Walter Hopps, Robert Rauschen­ berg (Washington, DC: National Collection of Fine Arts, 1976), 45. 3. Quoted in Richard Kostelanetz,

Rauschenberg’s desire to understand the place of technology within modern society prompted his collaboration with the research scientist Billy Klüver, the artist Robert Whitman, and the engineer Fred Waldhauer in founding Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) in 1966. According to Rauschenberg’s most important biographer, Walter Hopps, the organization’s objective was to create collaborative work “which is not the preoccupation of either the engineer, the artist, or industry but a result of the exploration of the human interaction between these three areas.”2 Rauschenberg’s real, direct engagement with industry is also a model to be emulated in the design arenas as well as in art, preferably through some admixture of the three. Rauschenberg asserted, “Science and art—these things do clearly exist at the same time, and both are very valuable. We are just realizing that we have lost a lot of energy in always insisting on the conflict—in posing one of these things against the other.”3 Similarly, schools of art and design are developing partnerships with industry and city planners with the idea of embedding artists and designers into the industrial and community fabric. The emphasis is on collaboration around the generation of ideas, not simply fabrication and production. What are the critical societal questions that need to be asked, and how can such ideas be creatively managed and addressed? This is in the domain of art and design education today. Rauschenberg’s sense of agency, whether in terms of technological knowledge, ­political change, or simply modeling ethical human behavior, must be conveyed in every classroom and studio in every school of higher education—art and otherwise. A true democracy relies on such practices. Rauschenberg was unafraid to take on the big themes, to reflect on the condition of humanity and stake a claim around what he observed and believed. The history of art gave him many examples of the power of the visual in shaping a society’s consciousness. Rauschenberg knew his history well, frequenting museums around the world, and he brought this repertoire of narratives and motifs to bear on his contemporary musings. This is why art and design students must know their art and design histories, why global surveys of art history must be included in the curriculum, and advanced studies in art and design history maintained during the entire course of the student’s career. Art and design students must look at and study the great models of their practice and build from that foundation—for, as Rauschenberg knew, it is hugely empowering to use the large space of history as a resource in constructing new ideas.

119 Practicing Rauschenberg  

The Theatre of Mixed Means (New York: Dial Press, 1968), 98.

4. Lisa Wainwright, “Robert Rauschenberg’s Fabrics: Constructing Domestic Space,” in Not at Home: The Suppression of Domestic­ ity in Modern Art and Architecture, ed. Christopher Reed (London: Thames and Hudson, 1996). 5. Kenneth Bendiner, “Robert Rauschenberg’s Canyon,” Arts 56 (1982), 57–59. See also Jonathan Katz, “The Art of Code: Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg,” in Significant Others: Creativity and Intimate Partnerships, ed. Whitney Chadwick and Isabelle De Courtivron (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1993). 6. Ibid. See also Lisa Wainwright,

Rauschenberg took on the tough themes: sexual identity, politics, and God (sometimes all in the same work),4 and his conviction to place such private journeys into the public sphere proves again an important lesson for those making art and design today. Rauschenberg was perhaps most visually intrepid as a gay man. His clandestine vocabulary of gay images allowed him to express and affirm his homosexual self in the context of an otherwise threatening environment.5 Gay bashing was severe in the 1950s when Rauschenberg first played out this theme, and his ongoing commitment to the struggles and the profundity of modern homosexual life was courageous. He teased out gay tropes in the history of art and in popular culture, and highlighted them in his art in order to help normalize a sense of sexual difference. And he commemorated his own relationship with another man, the artist Jasper Johns, through a poetry of form that will endure for all to consider and rejoice over. 6 While much has been written about the gay subject matter in Rauschenberg’s work, it was his sheer willingness to take on this topic that we can hold up to our young students as an example of creating things that matter.

“Reading Junk: Thematic Imagery in the Art of Robert Rauschenberg from 1954 to 1964” (Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois, 1993). 7. See Carol Becker, “The Artist as Public Intellectual,” in Becker, Surpassing the Spectacle: Global Transformations and the Changing Politics of Art (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002). 8. Dorothy Seckler, “Interview with Robert Rauschenberg,” Oral History Program, Archives of American Art, December 21, 1965.

Rauschenberg’s many references to American politics showcase the notion of the artist as a public intellectual—a critical position for art and design students to consider.7 Along with gay iconography, Rauschenberg suffused his work with nationalistic motifs such as George Washington, Robert Kennedy, the bald eagle, the Statue of Liberty, the United States Capitol, Boy Scout parades, and Apollo space rockets. But he leavened these with army helicopters and trucks, helmeted policemen, and images of the Ku Klux Klan. Rauschenberg stayed alert to his moment and reflected the twists and turns of its unfolding—both good and bad—through an indeterminate but persistent iconography that asks the viewer to read the work in individually nuanced ways. In 1965 he noted, “The one thing that has been consistent about my work is that there has been an attempt to use the very last minutes in my life and the particular location as the source of energy and inspiration, rather than retiring to some kind of other time, or dream, or idealism.”8 The idea for Rauschenberg was to reorient visual culture so one could readily behold it and thereby consider the implications. He was a visual and critical studies student avant la lettre, before this pursuit became an academic discipline, and framed a way of making that took in the tremendous challenge and potential of our media-­ saturated world. Teaching students how to jostle with the omnipotence of media representations remains a critical responsibility for those of us in art and design education. Finally, Rauschenberg’s willingness to explore the spiritual dimension of existence brought him first through a history of art steeped in Christian imagery—which he appropriated in his work—and then out the other side into a theology of the everyday. The manner in which objects and images make up ritualistic belief across

Lisa Wainwright  120  

Robert Rauschenberg, Retroactive I, 1963

9. Lisa Wainwright, ““Rauschenberg’s American Voodoo,” New Art Examiner (April 1998).

cultures—both religious and secular—was of great interest to Rauschenberg, and traces of this foundational use of art appear throughout his work. Asking students to contemplate the philosophical dimension of their work and practice, as it pertains to the larger systems of belief that surround them, must also be a criterion of advanced humanist education. Religion exercises a powerful hold over many around the world today: what this means and how belief is instrumentalized in the context of a society of the spectacle remain vital to analyze and pursue. Rauschenberg’s willingness to go there, to take on the subject of Christian iconography and more,9 was a means of not only understanding this long tradition in art, but also updating its ethos to accommodate a more Buddhist sensibility, where kindness and mindfulness is everywhere you make it. Rauschenberg’s exploration of religion and the empathy for others that it can foster must not be lost on successive generations of young artists and designers. Again, the idea that one can employ profound personal belief in one’s work—that this is noble and important—requires encouragement and careful refinement. That Rauschenberg sought to express the self, while remaining cognizant of outside forces shaping this process, speaks to his curious commitment to both mod-

Tennis game in Robert Rauschenberg’s Open Score at 9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering, October 1966 (photo by Peter Moore)

ern and postmodern conceits. Rauschenberg acted out a welcome marriage of these slippery terms, insisting on the value of the individual voice, but one enacted through various forms of cultural appropriation. This is a huge lesson for students today, who have inherited from the twentieth century a major paradigm shift that requires a means of sorting through the contradictions and connections. Already in 1972 the art historian Leo Steinberg had employed the term “postmodern” to describe Rauschenberg’s permissive manner of sampling the dizzying array of material and visual data of contemporary experience.10 But this did not preclude intention of idea, for Rauschenberg believed in the cathartic experience of visualizing the totems of one’s culture while acknowledging the social construction of such images and icons. To understand the archetypes proffered by the mass media and to engage with them through broken narratives, always open to reuse and reinterpretation, remains a valuable method for artists and designers alike. Rauschenberg’s dual commitment to formal invention and cultural appropriation is analogous to his famous maxim of working in the gap between art and life. In a dialectical way, Rauschenberg recast life into art, working in a manner where what is imagined and what is real become confounded, and from there the possibilities are endless. That this mode of inquiry and action could be global in reach is also Rauschenberg’s great gift. Cultural appropriation for Rauschenberg increasingly meant moving through different countries and working with what he found there—on the streets and in collaboration with local artists. Rauschenberg’s Overseas Culture Interchange (ROCI) was an early venture into the globalism that can inform all art and design practice today. Robert Rauschenberg had a hand in shaping myriad trajectories of contemporary art. His palimpsests of contemporary life remain for us to study and learn from, and his model—as it informs pedagogy—has the potential to benefit future generations of engaged and meaningful art and design practice. Schools of art and design have an enormous responsibility in educating those who can build a new world and communicate valuable ideals. Practicing Rauschenberg shows us a way.

123 Practicing Rauschenberg  

10. Leo Steinberg, “Other Criteria,” in Steinberg, Other Criteria: Con­ frontations with Twentieth-Century Art (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975).

david j. getsy

David J. Getsy is the Goldabelle McComb Finn Distinguished Chair in Art History and associate professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His research focuses on the history and theory of modern sculpture from its nineteenth-century origins to its legacies in contemporary art practice. He is the author of Body Doubles: Sculpture in Britain, 1877–1905 (Yale University Press, 2004), and his publications include essays on Auguste Rodin, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Harry Bates, Alberto Giacometti, David Smith, John Chamberlain, and Ernesto Pujol. He is the editor of Sculpture and the Pursuit of a Modern Ideal in Britain, c. 1880–1930 (Ashgate Press, 2004) and of the anthology From Diversion to Subversion: Games, Play, and Twentieth-Century Art (Pennsylvania State University Press, forthcoming). His current work deploys queer, feminist, and transgender theories to interrogate the vexed status of the human figure in the history of modern and contemporary sculpture.

Pedagogy, Art, and the Rules of the Game

In this essay I am not concerned with play as content or games in the classroom. Dashing your hopes for fun at the start, I will instead briefly discuss the applicability of some methodologies emerging from game design and “game studies” to the teaching of art and art history. Certain tools borrowed from game design allow us to rethink the pedagogical scene and its cultivation of a dynamic understanding of the practice and history of art. They do this by tracking the ever-changing rules of art in history and by conveying a critical understanding of these rules as an arena for creative engagement by young artists today. There are pedagogical benefits, in other words, that result from taking seriously the claim that being an artist is a kind of game. Clearly, I do not consider games as frivolous or secondary but rather as complex sites of bracketed identification, engagement, tactical adaptation, and creativity. Ultimately, the supposed non-seriousness of games is exactly what en­ ables their serious potential and practical outcomes. A similar claim can be made about art. A primary pedagogical aim in the teaching of art and art history is to address what one could see as the two main (and sometimes contradictory) needs of the art student. The first is a critical, active engagement with the known histories, conceptual vocabularies, and conventions that make one’s art practice legible as art. This is the crucial role of the art historian for the artist: the facilitation of an understanding of shared questions and divergent answers around the production of visual and conceptual art. Young artists often have an antagonistic relationship to art history ­fueled by the creeping fear that everything they could do has been done before. Rather than encourage students to feel this debilitating weight of history, the pedagogical remit of the art historian is to show how earlier art worked within and beyond its specific contexts and constraints. In so doing, the art historian can demonstrate how formally or conceptually similar work nevertheless operates differently,

125

1. Of course, many histories could be written

Rules of Play Anthology (Cambridge: MIT

of work that strayed too far in one or the other

Press, 2006); Ian Bogost, Persuasive Games:

of these directions, only to be later made

The Expressive Power of Videogames (Cam-

visible and urgent as the conditions and con-

bridge: MIT Press, 2007); McKenzie Wark,

ventions of art practice allowed the previously

Gamer Theory (Cambridge: Harvard Univer-

ignored work, often at some significant his-

sity Press, 2007); Steven E. Jones, The Mean­

torical remove, to be newly read as

ing of Video Games: Gaming and Textual Stud­

significant.

ies (New York: Routledge, 2008); Melanie

2. For a useful historiographic assessment of game studies that discusses its relation to narratology and to game theory, see Jan Simons, “Narrative, Games, and Theory,” Game Studies 7, no. 1 (2006). On ludology, see Gonzalo Frasca, “Simulation versus Narrative: Introduction to Ludology,” in The Video Game Theory Reader, ed. Mark J. P. Wolf and Bernard Perron (New York: Routledge, 2003), 221–35. Game theory, a branch of ap­

Swalwell and Jason Wilson, eds., The Plea­ sures of Computer Gaming: Essays on Cultural History, Theory, and Aesthetics (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2008); Zach Whalen and Laurie N. Taylor, Playing the Past: History and Nostal­ gia in Video Games (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2008); Mark J. P. Wolf, The Video Game Explosion: A History from PONG to Playstation and Beyond (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2008).

plied mathematics, is a predictive methodol-

4. Juul provides a concise summary of the

ogy that should not be confused with game

major taxonomic frameworks in the study

studies, even though there are points of inter-

of games and proposes his own in Half-Real

section. The foundational text of game theory

(29–43). It should be remembered that the

is John von Neumann and Oskar Morgen-

problem of defining games is also a basic

stern, Theory of Games and Economic Behavior

concern in Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophi­

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953).

cal Investigations, 3rd ed. (New York: Mac-

3. The launching of the peer-reviewed journal

millan, 1973).

Game Studies in 2001 was just one indication

5. Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A Study

of the early coalescence of this interdisciplin-

of the Play-Element in Culture (1938; London:

ary field. See http://gamestudies.org. The

Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1949); Roger

continued development of “game studies”

Caillois, Man, Play, and Games, trans. Meyer

is evidenced in the number of recent titles,

Barash (1958; Urbana: University of Illinois

though the majority of new work tends to be

Press, 1961).

focused exclusively on video and online gaming. See, for instance, Mark J. P. Wolf, The Medium of the Video Game, 1st ed. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002); Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman, Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004); Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan, eds., First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004); Jesper Juul, Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005); Joost Raessens and Jeffrey H. Goldstein, Handbook of Computer Game Studies (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005); Ian Bogost, Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006); Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman, eds., The Game Design Reader: A

David J. Getsy  126  

depending on the when, the where, and the why of its production and reception. Questions may be shared across historical or geographical distances, but the answers will always mean differently owing to their distinct contexts (even if those answers look the same). The second main need of the art student is to develop an individual approach to answering these questions. Like it or not, innovation and novelty have been the principal criteria used to evaluate art over the last century. Whether in the realms of art history, criticism, or collecting, that which can be understood as new has been consistently sought out and valued. Herein lies the contradiction with the first need: the young artist must make work that speaks to the discursive conditions and histor­ ical conventions of art practice if the work is to be legible as “art” and at the same time develop a unique and unprecedented (it is hoped) break with these conventions. Work that too highly weights one imperative will be read as either hopelessly derivative and dated or unintelligible as art (at least for the time being).1 If these are art students’ needs—to grasp and also depart from the accumulated conceptual and technical parameters of art—then how can the pedagogical scene encourage a set of tools through which emerging artists can learn and adapt to the ever-changing priorities of the art contexts in which they position themselves? Here is where I think a discussion of games can be useful, for games require a deep understanding of rules as the precondition for creative strategies and sustained engagement. Games have for a long time been a site of inquiry for such fields as philosophy, mathematics, and cultural anthropology, and an extensive body of literature seeks to understand their enduring appeal. With the increasing popularity of video games (and the exponential growth of the video game industry as a contributor to popular culture), these disparate areas of study have coalesced into a field sometimes referred to as “game studies” (or “games studies and ludology”—not to be confused with game theory as practiced in mathematics and economics).2 Game studies increasingly has its own journals and conferences and often blends approaches learned both from game design and from the interpretation of games as cultural texts.3 Games are notoriously difficult to define, and much of the literature has focused on questions of taxonomy.4 This is the case with one of the central texts in game studies, Johan Huizinga’s 1938 Homo Ludens, and its primary interlocutory text, Roger Caillois’s 1958 Man, Play, and Games. 5 In turn, play has been the subject of much inquiry, specifically as a component of cultural production, creativity,

127 Rules of the Game  

6. Play has been studied from many perspec-

8. In turn, these alternate zones and tempo-

tives, especially with regard to child develop-

rary worlds of games and play can have real-

ment. Significantly, play emerged as a central

world consequences or provide critical en-

theme and method in British psychoanalysis,

gagement with actual events and situations.

as evidenced in the work of Melanie Klein and

See, for instance, the discussion in Clifford

D. W. Winnicott. See, for instance, Melanie

Geertz, “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese

Klein, “The Psycho-analytic Play Technique:

Cockfight” [1972], Daedalus 134, no. 4

Its History and Significance [1955],” in The

(2005), 56–86, in which Geertz argued that

Selected Melanie Klein, ed. Juliet Mitchell (New

the cockfight served an “interpretive” func-

York: Free Press, 1987), 35–54; D. W. Winni-

tion as “metasocial commentary” on status

cott, Playing and Reality (London: Routledge,

hierarchies within Balinese culture (82).

1971). Within anthropological studies of play, the work of Brian Sutton-Smith has been fundamental in defining and categorizing the cultural relevance of games and play. See Brian Sutton-Smith, The Ambiguity of Play (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997); Elliott M. Avedon and Brian Sutton-Smith, eds., The Study of Games (New York: John Wiley, 1971); Brian Sutton-Smith, ed., The Psychology of Play: Studies in Play and Games (New York: Arno Press, 1976); Anthony Pellegrini, ed., The Future of Play Theory: A Multi­ disciplinary Inquiry into the Contributions of Brian Sutton-Smith (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995). For further discussions of play, see Mihai Spariosu, Dionysus

9. This is the territory charted by my forthcoming anthology From Diversion to Subver­ sion: Games, Play, and Twentieth-Century Art. Some recent discussions of games and art include Laura Steward Heon, Game Show (North Adams: MASS MoCA, 2001); Susan Laxton, “The Guarantor of Chance: Surrealism’s Ludic Practices,” Papers of Surrealism, no. 1 (2003); Larry List, The Imagery of Chess Revisited (New York: Isamu Noguchi Foundation, 2005); Nike Bätzner, Faites vos jeux!: Kunst und Spiel seit Dada (Vaduz: Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, 2005); Andy Clarke and Grethe Mitchell, Videogames and Art (Bristol, UK: Intellect, 2007).

Reborn: Play and the Aesthetic Dimension in

10. Griselda Pollock, Avant-Garde Gambits,

Modern Philosophical and Scientific Discourse

1888–1893: Gender and the Color of Art His­

(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989); Mi-

tory (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1993).

chael Apter, Reversal Theory: Motivation, Emo­

Another important application of games

tion, and Personality (London: Routledge,

as art historical methodology is Hubert

1989); Tilman Küchler, Postmodern Gaming:

­Damisch, Moves: Playing Chess and Cards

Heidegger, Duchamp, Derrida (New York: Peter

with the Museum (Rotterdam: Museum Boij-

Lang, 1994); Jacques Derrida, “Structure,

mans Van Beuningen, 1997).

Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences” [1966], in Derrida, Writing and

11. Pollock, Avant-Garde Gambits, 14.

Difference, trans. Alan Bass (London: Routledge, 1978), 278–94; Michael Apter, “A Structural-Phenomenology of Play,” in Adult Play, ed. J. H. Kerr and M. J. Apter (Amsterdam: Swets and Zeitlinger, 1991). 7. Huizinga, Homo Ludens, 10. Salen and Zimmerman prefer Huizinga’s phrase, the “magic circle” of play. They note, “The term is used here as shorthand for the idea of a special place in time and space created by a game”; Salen and Zimmerman, Rules of Play, 95.

David J. Getsy  128  

and aesthetic experience. 6 The specifics of the taxonomies will not be rehearsed here, in part because they are often excerpted from the larger arguments of these books without attention to the nuances and contexts (Caillois’s book, for instance, is deeply indebted to his own involvement with the surrealism of the Documents group). What is common among most of these taxonomies, however, is the idea that games are important cultural and developmental activities because they provide a surrogate arena for interactivity and absorption. At base, games are representational. Play occurs in the alternate zone established through the parameters of the game, and players identify with and project themselves into this game space, regardless of the degree of verisimilitude of the game or the formality of the rules that make it up. As Huizinga notes, games and play are “temporary worlds within the ordinary world, dedicated to the performance of an act apart.”7 Being “caught up” in a game results from the players’ psychological immersion in that temporary world-apart and the consequent fueling of identification with its constituents. From a game of chess, to a soccer match, to less formal (but no less engaging) games that sometimes emerge in social interactions (office politics, public flirtation, and so on), participants’ heightened engagement becomes possible because of this bracketing within the normal and the everyday of an alternate time and space of game/play in which participants can and do act and identify differently and more intensely.8 This potential has been recognized throughout the history of modern art. Consequently, games have been used as a component of art practice, as the content of art, as a metaphor for criticism and engagement, and as a means to reconsider the role and persona of the artist. Some examples include the surrealists’ use of games (such as the exquisite corpse), Duchamp’s famous abandonment of art for chess, the influence on British sculpture and criticism of psychoanalytic models of play taken from Melanie Klein and D. W. Winnicott, and play in performance art, happenings, and Fluxus. These are just some of the many moments in the twentieth century when games and play have been taken up, directly and indirectly, by artists.9 Beyond this, games and game analogies have also proved useful as methodological tools. One of the most significant of these is Griselda Pollock’s Avant-Garde Gam­ bits, in which the competitive system of reference, deference, and difference was used effectively and polemically to explain the rapidly changing art scene of latenineteenth-century Paris.10 As she states, “This trilogy proposes a specific way of understanding avant-gardism as a kind of game-play.”11 I would argue that games cannot be taken for granted. In particular, game designers’ techniques for facilitating play can be useful in rethinking the practice of art.

129 Rules of the Game  

12. Salen and Zimmerman, Rules of Play, 31–36.

How, one might ask, are rules determined? When are they limiting? When do they encourage creative solutions? When and how are they broken?

13. Ibid., 122–24. I have relied upon Salen and Zimmerman’s account because of its accessibility, but there are many different frameworks for interpreting games from a design perspective. For instance, for an extensive account of rules (that includes a response to Salen and Zimmerman), see Juul, HalfReal, 55–120.

For the practice of art, these are not idle questions. For better or for worse, an elaborate, ever-changing rule system sets the parameters for art practice, the art market, art institutions, and writing about art. I was shocked to discover that my students found Griselda Pollock’s Avant-Garde Gambits frighteningly familiar. Her analysis of such “gambits” as Paul Gauguin’s attempts to trump Édouard Manet’s version of modern painting spurred a range of comparisons to the current art market and to students’ own experiences in their studios and classes. We pushed this idea further by thinking, abstractly, about how one must look for and understand the rules in a given system. We did this by establishing an analogy to the parameters and priorities that game designers bring to their creation. Rules determine the direction of play, but they should be open enough to allow for creative and strategic operations within the space of play bounded by them. That is, the rules in a game create the preconditions for engagement and creativity. They constrain the players, but that constraint itself provides the opportunity for adaptive and innovative activity. In short, the alternate or virtual zone of relationality that rules establish provides a means to focus creativity into problem solving, strategy, and identification within the game. This is the source of games’ appeal— whether for participants in simple childhood games or for spectators of professional sports. In order to facilitate what Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman call “meaningful play” (engaged, long-term operation within a game), the establishment of a coherent system of rules is fundamental.12 In their innovative and important book on game design, Salen and Zimmerman note these basic qualities of rules: (1) rules limit action; (2) rules are explicit and unambiguous; (3) rules are shared by all; (4) rules are fixed; (5) rules are binding; (6) rules are repeatable.13 For a game to function well, for it to be enjoyable and coherent, the rules must be applied equally and consistently. In short, rules give meaning to the action within the bracketed space and time of game-play. To push a little red or black disk is inconsequential in one’s mundane day-to-day activities, but in a game of checkers it can mean triumph or defeat. Outside the exigencies of game design, in practice, rules are often made to be broken. In the history of modern art, this is probably the foundational rule: art, at least as practiced under the rubric of such notions as the avant-garde or of modernism more generally, has been valued by how well it breaks its own rules. Indeed, a defining trait of modernist art has been this negation of the importance of shared traditions, and this “rule” to break the rules has carried through into modernism’s

David J. Getsy  130  

aftermath (including those moments of historical revivalism or citation that contemporary artists sometimes employ in order, themselves, to do something new). Clearly, I am simplifying a complex set of historical and historiographic trajectories in order to make my case, but this simplification is in large part necessary because, in the end, it is one of the clichés that many young artists bring to their self-­ fashioning and that must, consequently, be addressed. One can, in the starkest and most reductive terms, use Salen and Zimmerman’s six traits to understand and to engage critically with the presumptions of many art students. In order to become “important” artists, they must follow the founding rule of rule-breaking. It follows that (1) this rule limits action: they must do something different; (2) this rule is explicit: they know (and are taught) that they should be striving for the individual and the new; (3) this rule is shared by all: their peers know this rule, and all concerned mutually reinforce each others’ obedience to it; (4) this rule is fixed: this imperative has been fairly consistent within the dominant narratives of modern and contemporary art, and even those artists who appear to disobey it do so in the name, ultimately, of being non-conformist in their conformity; (5) this rule is binding: to stop obeying this rule (at least without irony) is to be cast out of the “real” art world; (6) this rule is repeatable: infinitely. With this in mind, we could use Salen and Zimmerman’s perspective as methodol­ ogy in constructing a historical narrative of modern and contemporary art. This would not aim to offer a recipe for success, but rather a way of creating productive exchanges between the history of art and art students’ assumptions and aims. Such an approach could work on two different levels. First, we could tell a story based on a broad framing of the entire history of modern art as one rule-system played, successfully or not, by artists since the early twentieth century. Perhaps more interesting is the second register, in which the smaller, local rule-systems could be framed. Each new, minor move in the conventions of art breaks the established system and puts forth a new standard against which subsequent modifications must be defined. These games all operate differently and with their own local rules—even as they all fulfill the overriding imperative of modern art (rule-breaking). Through these local games artists articulate their answer to the two needs of the art student, as noted earlier—working with the conventions and introducing innovation into them. Keeping these two, nested levels of game-play and rules-systems in mind, the historian and the teacher could track, on the local level, how the established conventions become modified by the new game played by the up-and-coming artists. Art students in turn benefit by learning not the weight of history but an accessible group of tactics for working within and against established modes of art practice. A caveat is necessary: using this method to chart a history of art—whether for research or teaching purposes—is not sufficient alone, as it risks reinstalling a her-

131 Rules of the Game  

metic and unilinear formalist narrative of art. The local conditions of each rulesystem need to be put into perspective through an analysis of intellectual, social, political, economic, and philosophical contexts in order to fully understand the meanings of these works and their history. The rule-system approach I have outlined above is merely a way of understanding one set of underlying mechanisms that seem to have been crucial and self-replicating in the history of modern art. If any narrative is a necessary evil owing to its exclusions and partiality, then at least this perspective offers one way to order it so that it is neither crushing in its historical weight nor made to appear as an evolutionary and teleological progress or refinement. Instead, it proposes only a new skeleton for understanding the story of art as a series of local adaptations to rule-systems that neither represent the erosion of a category nor build toward a singular culminating state. The benefits to the student are the tactics and tools gained from understanding the ways in which earlier artists have worked within and against their immediate contexts in order to install new rule-systems that, in turn, become the target of their peers and successors. In this way, the historical and contextual content of art history is augmented through a perspective that emphasizes tactical and creative problem solving. This makes a place for teaching creativity as strategy within an account of the history of artists, objects, institutions, and contexts. When this framework is deployed, the local scene of artistic creation—the artist’s decision-making process, the contexts and conceptual vocabularies determining that process, and the realization and dissemination of the resulting work—comes into focus. In class discussions, it is this scene that young art students find most urgent and compelling as a site of identification. Building upon this, a game studies perspective can engage students in understanding the history of art because it focuses on what they already suspect (or they wouldn’t be in art school): that making art is a path that demands critical strategy as well as talent. This rule-based account of modern and contemporary art’s narrative allows them the opportunity to think tactically and in an engaged fashion both about art history and their place in it. Only after they grasp the importance of understanding art as a series of superseding games will they see the urgency in knowing the specific conditions (cultural, political, economic, social, etc.) that make it possible to successfully play those games and install new rule-systems. A brief example may help elucidate the usefulness of this approach in teaching. Robert Rauschenberg’s Erased de Kooning is a notoriously difficult object to explain to students. In 1953 Rauschenberg approached Willem de Kooning, whom he did not really know at the time, with a proposal to erase one of the esteemed painter’s heavily worked drawings. While many would quickly dismiss this as a sort of anti-

David J. Getsy  132  

art or dada gesture, it was, according to Rauschenberg, respectful of de Kooning even as it attempted to think about how one could draw differently. The destroyed work of art was replaced with a new work that performed erasure as a positive act. Rauschenberg’s new “drawing” required an amount of skill and manual labor equal to that expended by de Kooning on the original drawing. De Kooning, in fact, offered a particularly dense and layered drawing as his challenge to Rauschenberg’s proposal. The Erased de Kooning sparks resistance in many undergraduates who want to rush to see it as a joke or as vandalism. Even art students, who are by and large sympathetic to such moves by artists, may be put off by what seems to be a simple negation of skill and a destruction of art.

Robert Rauschenberg, Erased de Kooning Drawing, 1953

14. For a different and compelling reading of this work in relation to the particulars of the medium of drawing, see John Paul Ricco, “Name No One Man,” Parallax 11, no. 2 (2005), 93–103.

At the time Rauschenberg felt that he could no longer produce drawings in the traditional manner. If we reinterpret his stance though a game studies lens, we could say that Rauschenberg saw the medium of drawing as obeying a set of rules that gave it its definition. Accordingly, we might propose a set of operative rules for drawing at the time: (1) it should be handmade; (2) it should be made through the use of graphic implements, such as pencils, crayons, or charcoal; (3) the pigment and shade applied by these implements should be solid rather than liquid before application; (4) the marks should be made on a paper ground; (5) often, but not exclusively, the artist should attend primarily to the figure in the figure-ground relationship, leaving the ground as untouched or barely inflected paper; and (6) the drawing should demonstrate the artist’s ability either to capture intricate detail or to use a minimum of marks to suggest a more complex movement, scene, or body. If these were more or less the rules of drawing, then Rauschenberg set out to isolate and break some but not all of them. He followed certain rules: (1) the Erased de Kooning is handmade, (4) its ground is paper (a precondition for erasing), and (5) he was primarily concerned with the figure and left the ground. He broke the core defining rules 2 and 3: it was not made through the application of pigment or shade. Finally, he modified rule 6 by choosing a process that would intricately erase rather than lay down these marks on paper. In this framework, Rauschenberg kept enough rules for his work to be legible as a drawing (would it have been the same had it been on canvas, for instance?).14 Against the retained rules, he set his rule-breaking: erase rather than draw. This is an example of a strategic engagement with and modification of an existing rule system as the framework through which artistic innovation becomes legible and possible. A similar defiance of drawing could have been proposed at a different time (earlier or later), but it was the specific historical juncture that gave this work its relevance. It required, for instance, a background of the abstract expressionists’ valorization of the individual mark as expressive; Rauschenberg’s tactical reaction to the self-revelatory rhetoric of abstract expressionism (shared with his peers such as Jasper Johns, Cy Twombly, and John Cage); and the economic, political, and cultural conditions of the New York art world in the early 1950s (itself an effect of World War II and the GI Bill, for instance). Applying a rule-based perspective to Rauschenberg’s Erased de Kooning is just one of many exercises illustrating how students can learn through the study of games, play, and rules. The teaching of art history (especially to art students) cannot be just a narrative recounting of events. It must also be seen as a series of strategic conceptual and technical moves made by individual artists and collaborative endeavors in response to the artistic conventions and cultural conditions in which

David J. Getsy  134  

they are working. The teaching of art with lessons gained from game design offers a site of entry for many art students into both the history and the theory of art. In this way, one can facilitate the development of analytic tools that will allow students to reconsider their own practice in relation to its historical and contemporary contexts. By better understanding these contexts and their rules, they can develop their priorities and the tactics they will use to make their first moves.

135 Rules of the Game  

ute meta bauer

Ute Meta Bauer is associate professor and director of the Visual Arts Program in the School of Architecture and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, having served as professor of theory, practice, and mediation of contemporary art at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and as founding director of the Office for Contemporary Art Norway in Oslo. She was artistic director for the 3rd berlin biennial for contemporary art and co-curator for the exhibitions documenta 11, Architectures of Discourse (Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona), and First Story—Women Building/New Narratives for the 21st Century (European Cultural Capital Porto, Portugal). She is a member of the International Board, Bauhaus Foundation, Dessau, and of the LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial, Gijon, Spain.

Zones of Activity From the Gallery to the Cl assroom

The art world is and has always been a complex system, a field of constellations and interrelations—some friendly to each other, some antagonistic. The field of criticism defines itself as distinct from the commercial sector, but it is nevertheless part of an interconnected system in which each of us acteurs decides where we position ourselves and in which direction we move. These are not fixed configurations; an institution does not represent the same thing today as twenty years ago. Alternative or out-of-the-mainstream spaces nowadays are not necessarily more political than museums, or vice versa; it depends on how and by whom a space or institution is run. To assume there are clear divisions would be a simplified reading, a black-andwhite understanding of this complex system. Some knowledge of systems theory, of Pierre Bourdieu, Richard Rorty, and Niklas Luhmann, and of Bourdieu’s field theory, does not hurt in becoming aware of our entanglements. Alex Farquharson’s analysis of curators reentering art institutions raises the question of why some curators, especially those in high-profile positions, have recently accepted leadership positions at art schools and universities.1 From my perspective, one reason is the increasing commodification and instrumentalization of the position of curator for all sorts of agendas and desires. A second reason is that, in contrast to the past, nowadays a director of a museum or a Kunsthalle is more involved with management and fundraising activities than with exhibitions or working directly with artists. Art schools today seem to offer a kind of temporary refuge for those with a desire to sustain a more critical and discursive practice. I do not wish to criticize my colleagues in art museums and other spaces. On the contrary, I want to express something I share with a number of them: a strong feeling of unease about the economic and political pressures that those who run major

137

1. Alex Farquharson, “Bureaux de Change,” Frieze Magazine, no. 101 (September 2006), 156–59; http:// www.frieze.com/feature.

art-exhibiting institutions increasingly face. To spend most of one’s time satisfying trustees and/or local politicians, rather than in research (in fields that might not be that popular), is not everyone’s cup of tea. Moreover, one should not underestimate the potential and pleasure of working with students, the inspiration gained from contact with other related research fields, and the relief of escape from the pragmatics of running the day-to-day business of a museum. Renegotiating the role of art through an expanded notion of art education allows a certain distance and independence from the commodified field that art has become—and not only in the Western hemisphere. After studying art and then doing postgraduate work in art theory, I am quite aware of the influence of teachers and the impact of innovative institutional leadership on students in higher education in the arts. In my case, a male-dominated European art school setting—though very open and liberal—made me want to understand not only art theory, but also the social topography of the art world at-large, leading me to shift from practicing art to working as a curator and educator. The exclusion of a younger generation of artists—particularly women artists—from mainstream art institutions drove me and some artist friends to form the artist group Stille Helden (Silent Heroes). We were not completely opposed to art institutions, but we were aware that no exhibition space was available to us and that what we saw exhibited often did not address what mattered to us, nor was it linked to our discussions about art. Instead of complaining about this situation, we simply created our own formats and spaces and generated our own audiences, at the same time exploring visual arts as well as performance, theater, film, music, and poetry. It was not until later that I understood that art history wasn’t written in the garage. The authority of the art historical canon was still in the hands of major museums and their trustees, and based on their collections. Once I realized this, I felt I had to enter the museum history-producing apparatus; I still saw certain gaps within art history that mattered to my generation, such as the previously mentioned lack of attention to women. In art history it remains an ongoing task to review and correct public collections. It is important not only to address cultural diversity and gender, but also to renegotiate issues of class. These issues of representation are, of course, being debated within universities and other social institutions, and include a critique of the museum as well as opinionmaking exhibitions such as documenta and the Venice and Whitney biennials. The discussion has to happen there because, one should not forget, these institutions are the ones with the budget, the infrastructure, and the media power to “correct” and rewrite art history on a symbolic level.

Ute Meta Bauer  138  

Teaching is a practice in line with my curatorial work, and for both I keep in mind a healthy mix of the BBC’s founding mandate—“Education, Information, Entertainment.” Exhibitions are opportunities to test situations and combinations, and to explore thoughts. For me, they are dispositifs, in a Foucauldian sense, and carry the potential to construct architectures of discourse. From my perspective, exhibitions are equal to seminars; both produce a space for communication through artistic and intellectual means. This attitude stems from my work with Stille Helden, when belonging to an artists’ collective saved us from being pigeonholed, and ­being unpredictable prevented us from getting co-opted. That experience made me sensitive to being identified with museums and encouraged a critical view and distinct practice apart from them. If one faces, on one side, a powerful art market with a large cash flow and, on the other side, increasing numbers of temporary exhibitions—such as the various biennials now held throughout the world—it can be advantageous to “duck and cover” for a while within an educational structure. Here one should not forget that a number of conceptual artists, such as Hans Haacke at Cooper Union and Michael Asher at CalArts and Martha Rosler at Rutgers, could only sustain their practices through teaching positions that offered a certain degree of independence. Of course, teaching is not only about having a financial base; it is also about the challenging possibility and responsibility of transmitting one’s specific understanding and notions of critical artistic and cultural practice to a younger generation. So I have opted to find “company” to explore, to discover, to reflect, to analyze, and to share what I perceive in order to intervene. The conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth observed that “an audience separate from the participants doesn’t exist.”2 I consider myself the first audience for my projects. As an audience, you must engage in what you perceive; you have to participate in order to produce a discourse and to understand an artwork. One of my professors in art theory at the academy in Hamburg, Michael Lingner, claimed that only the combination of an artwork, its perception, and the communication about it generates what we recognize as art. During the years that I directed an artist-run space in Stuttgart,3 I e­ ngaged in a practice involving the audience as informal participants, sharing experiences and debating ideas. To be able to generate a space that is constituted by reflections rather than representation still matters to me. Later on, working as a curator on large-scale exhibition projects such as documenta 11 or the 3rd berlin biennial for contemporary art, my motivation and interest in art differed from my self-understanding and way of working as a practicing artist just out of the art academy. In entering institutional spaces it is essential that I do not become too comfortable within them, that I continue to challenge myself. To move on when things are done

139 Zones of Activity  

2. Joseph Kosuth, Art After Philoso­ phy and After: Collected Writings 1966–1990 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991). 3. I was at the Künstlerhaus in Stuttgart from 1990 to 1994.

4. “Platform 5,” the exhibition documenta 11, in Kassel in 2002, had around 650,000 visitors.

keeps me alive and sensitive to cultural and societal developments elsewhere. I am interested in ephemeral formats and process-oriented work, and I understand curating as a similar practice: a kind of laboratory. To raise theoretical questions through artistic and curatorial work is one of my driving forces. The awareness of colonial, postcolonial, gender, and class debates fosters my thinking and reflections as a “producer.” I am inspired by the Italian philosopher and political theorist Antonio Gramsci and his notion of the artist as an organic intellectual whose role is not to act subordinate to those in power or to serve a system, but to raise a critical and independent voice negotiating civil society. This understanding has been continued by recent politically active intellectuals such as Toni Negri. We should not fall into the trap of considering art, artists, curators, museums, or art schools as fixed entities. They are in constant flux, and the speed of transformation has increased, along with consumption. In recent years the market has been in power. In the 1990s curators and critics were the strong players in the field. And before, it was museums that were the opinion-makers. Power positions are not stable or written in stone; they are constantly shifting. But what is new is how the field has expanded from a limited number of localities in the Western hemisphere to a global dimension. Globalization does not stop when it comes to art. Art, like everything else, takes part in economic and political reconfigurations on this planet. Thus, art and culture are co-opted from a number of sides, and the power of display becomes the display of power. Returning to the topic of curators at art schools, documenta 11 featured five “platforms,” involving public discussions and programs on different continents. The opening event, “Platform 1,” took place in March 2001, eighteen months before the exhibition (“Platform 5”), at an art school—the Academy of Fine Arts in ­Vienna. It consisted of a series of talks, workshops, and other programs on the subject of “Democracy Unrealized.” Some of my colleagues on the faculty at the Vienna academy had an immediate reaction. They wondered why debates on democracy should take place in an art school. A number of art critics, art dealers, and collectors asked, “Why does a globally relevant exhibition like documenta 11 have its opening event in an art school context, and why start with a topic not related to art?” This controversy indicated that some antagonism was already in play. What I shared with Okwui Enwezor and my curatorial colleagues at docu­ menta—Carlos Basualdo, Susanne Ghez, Sarat Maharaj, Mark Nash, and Octavio Zaya—was the vision of documenta as a knowledge-production machine, an educational apparatus. An exhibition like documenta reaches many people,4 some of whom encounter contemporary art for the first time. It isn’t a bad thing either for professionals in the field to encounter art anew. It’s not like curators are aware of everything. There are different bodies of work, art from different cultural set-

Ute Meta Bauer  140  

tings, and art from different political topographies. Curators have to do their homework, too. One criticism of documenta 11 was that it seemed like a seminar for higher cultural education. But why not curate an exhibition as an expanded seminar? To make such an exhibition, we had to learn a lot ourselves, taking this enterprise on as serious challenge, not forgetting that documenta is called a “world exhibition.” We situated the five platforms in different localities: from Vienna to New Delhi to the Caribbean to Lagos and, finally, Kassel. Platforms 1 through 4 correlated with discourses that engaged the artists exhibiting in Kassel. In order to focus on the specifics of those discourses, we traveled to the places of origin or of relevance for the topic. To debate créolité in Kassel does not make sense, but if you debate it in St. Lucia, a place in the Caribbean with an everyday experience of this fairly recent academic discourse, it feels quite normal. There the critical reception and discussions will be with people who share this specific cultural experience and know in their hearts what is being addressed. One needs to interact with a critical mass when raising such questions. This is absolutely crucial in establishing a serious dialogue that moves deeper into a topic. An exhibition is a zone of activity, a space for communication that one must produce; it is not a given. An exhibition has to clarify what questions are being raised and share this process with the audience, rather than condescend to them. Such a “zone of activity” repays the effort it takes to create a discursive field. As curators, we must generate such fields by putting artworks and artistic positions next to each other, and situating them in specific “locations” in time and place. Museums were once the place for extensive historical research. Today, many can survive only as destinations for cultural tourism and by becoming fundraising machines. Curators are under pressure to produce one art show after another to attract media attention and large numbers of visitors, leaving little, if any, time for research. No wonder curators are migrating to educational institutions in order to continue their work. As museums withdrew more and more from analysis and questioning, curatorial discourse and research seemed better situated within an art school context. Students and teachers have the opportunity to look back to artistic practices of the last century, and to art movements in which artists were their own producers, their own curators and, in the case of dada, even their own critics.5 It is good to review history once in a while. Luckily, times change. The percentage of female artists shown at museums has increased.6 Progress and change are possible, and don’t require an official mandate. Interfere and act up!—as a student, as a member of the audience, as a curator!

141 Zones of Activity  

5. Raoul Hausmann, who in 1920 initiated the Erste internationale Dada-Messe in Berlin, together with George Grosz and John Heartfield, reviewed the exhibit before its opening. 6. This change was evident at the exhibition WACK! Art and the Femi­ nist Revolution at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, March 4–July 16, 2007, and an earlier related conference at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, “The Feminist Future: Theory and Practice in the Visual Arts,” January 26–27, 2007, as well as Global Feminisms at the Brooklyn Museum, March 23–July 1, 2007.

lawrence rinder

Lawrence Rinder is director of the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. He was dean of the college at the California College of the Arts, where he was founding director of the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, and curator of contemporary art at the Whitney Museum of American Art, as well as curator at the Berkeley Art Museum. Rinder has taught at the University of California, Berkeley, Deep Springs College, and Columbia University. His essays on art are compiled in Art Life: Selected Writings 1991– 2005 (Gregory R. Miller, 2005). Rinder received a BA in art from Reed College and an MA in art history from Hunter College.

Toward a New Critical Pedagogy

During my tenure at the California College of the Arts, I spent quite a bit of time doing studio critiques with graduate and undergraduate students. The challenge of putting words to their work, constructing a discourse around practices that are not only in the process of formation but often desperately need clarification and guidance, is closely related to the problematics of art criticism and reveals a troubling lacuna in contemporary art language. How many times have I felt my mind suffused with a gaseous fog as I sat before some poor student’s creative endeavor? Or, conversely, how many times have I seen a student’s expression shift from attentive to perplexed as I confidently reeled off some ad hoc theoretical mumbo jumbo? Among other things, the need to put words to art in academia has resulted in an inflation in the value of analytic language and a deflation in the value of emotive or intuitive terminology. Although the vast majority of students, as far as I can tell, work in a largely intuitive fashion, they would never be so bold as to admit this fact in a studio critique. In any case, whether artists’ work originates intuitively or analytically, it is the critic’s job (whether in the studio or in the pages of Artforum) to discern evidence of quality and to attest to the work’s relevance. But whose quality? Relevance to what? These are questions that in the past were addressed by art historical methodologies. But over the past twenty years there has been a growing tension between traditional art history and the emerging fields of visual and cultural studies. The differences between these disciplines are nuanced and complex. Traditional art history, as the discipline’s name suggests, takes as its object of study the work of art. It generally takes for granted that the work of art is a discrete form, categorically different from, say visual phenomena in popular culture. As a type of history, this field has traditionally examined matters of development and change in art over time, deriving general principles for the underlying mechanisms of such change, principles that are often borrowed from other fields, especially history, religion, and economics. Visual and cultural studies (the two

143

This essay has been adapted from “Look Again: Some Thoughts on Contemporary Criticism,” presented April 5, 2005, as the Annual Elaine Horwitch Lecture in Contemporary American Art Criticism, Arizona State University, Phoenix.

1. Clement Greenberg, “AvantGarde and Kitsch,” Partisan Review 6 (1939): 34–49. 2. Lane Relyea, “Allover and At Once,” X-Tra 6, no. 1 (2003), 6.

fields are closely related) challenge the categorical separation of the work of art from other, diverse visual phenomena. Rather than focusing on questions of change and development within particular artists’ oeuvres or artistic genres, visual and cultural studies explore contemporaneous relationships among artistic practices and the broader social, political, economic, and cultural arena. Strongly influenced by structuralism and semiotics, visual and cultural studies typically subsume visual art into an overarching conception of the cultural “text.” The differences between these fields, though, cannot be reduced to a simple contrast between diachronic and synchronic approaches, or between the analysis of fetishized art objects versus the study of diverse visual and cultural effects. In fact, much of twentieth-century art history—from Aby Warburg to Svetlana Alpers—is strongly influenced by approaches that consider precisely the position of the work of art in a contemporary social or economic context. Conversely, the fields of visual and cultural studies are powerfully influenced by Marxist theories of historical change. Regardless of what art history is actually up to, its detractors often fault it for isolating works of art from diverse cultural currents, and establishing standards and laws of change from within the history and practice and even the medium of art itself. This last problem—the Greenbergian angle—became a particularly salutary whipping boy among self-styled progressive academics. More recently, there has been a backlash against the backlash against Clement Greenberg. Promoting what might be called neo-formalism, critics such as Lane ­Relyea, Rosalind Krauss, Benjamin Buchloh, and Hal Foster have argued that the loss of medium specificity in the visual arts (facilitated by the development of “interdisciplinarity” in art school curricula) amounts to a capitulation to the homostatizing forces of global capit­ alism. According to this view, which strongly echoes Greenberg’s own quasi-progressive (or at least left-sympathetic) political views as articulated in his 1939 essay “Avant-Garde and Kitsch,”1 the autonomy of the artwork and the independence of the various media are necessary preconditions for cultural resistance to insidious reactionary forces in the economic and political realms. The neo-formalists are especially concerned about the ways in which cultural phenomena are devolving into what Lane Relyea called a “totally designed experience, the world as pure non-medium.”2 In an article he quotes,

Luc Tuymans, Superstition, 1994

as a cautionary example, the former provost of the Art Center College of Design, Ronald Jones, who wrote that the main concern among artists these days is “no longer the infiltration of disciplines. It is about designing experience. Art and design and architecture and entertainment and media and literature have begun to feather into one another at their edges, creating an experience unselfconscious of traditional distinctions and disciplines. . . . The innovative curriculum of Art Center . . . is designed to educate designers and artists to move between and across disciplines in order to design the experience of our culture.”3 By way of comparison, Relyea points to the dust jacket of one of the most popular recent books to address this tendency from the perspective of business, The Experience Economy: Work Is Theater and Ev­ ery Business Is a Stage, published by the Harvard Business School: “Today’s successful companies—using goods as props and services as the stage—create experiences that engage customers in an inherently personal way. Experiences—immersive, richly textured, commercial events—are the foundation for future economic growth, and The Experience Economy is the playbook from which managers can begin to direct new performances.”4 Those who, like Relyea, connect the dots between MBA “experience designers” and interdisciplinary curricula, worry that art schools are inculcating a new generation of zombie capitalist art managers. But I think they give art schools too much credit. Rhetoric like Jones’s is perhaps not so much a cutting-edge pedagogical mission statement as a faltering effort to accommodate the ways in which artists are already working. Art schools are invariably playing catch-up with new modes of practice. An exhibition in 2005 in the graduate student gallery of the California College of the Arts, for example, set out to demonstrate ways in which the works being produced by CCA’s graduate students in fine art and design are indistinguishable, not because of but despite the curriculum. The recent academic “invention” of “social practices” is, similarly, a belated attempt to catch up to widespread relational and interdisciplinary practices that have gone by many names but for too long have lacked organized curricula or degrees. The neo-formalists are nostalgic for a more certain time, a time when aesthetic standards were held to be a common currency. Yet the particular standards to which these thinkers aspire have been mortally discredited as part and parcel of a bourgeois, Western-centric myth of universality, transcendence, and individual genius. With the fading of Greenbergian formalism, the world of art criticism—at least those parts of that world concerned with contemporary practice—has fractured into two primary camps. On one side are many of the leading mainstream art critics, who write passionately but essentially without critical bearings, adrift in a sea of subjective personal response at best and, at worst, in the thrall of the newest trends, market mandates, or peer pressures.

145 Toward a New Critical Pedagogy  

3. Ronald Jones, quoted in ibid., 5. (Editors’ note: See also Ronald Jones’s essay in the present volume.) 4. B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore, quoted in Relyea, “Allover,” 6.

On the other side are academics whose study of contemporary art is adamantly divorced from such commonplace indices of popularity, so much so that they sometimes seem to live in a parallel universe. How often are Matthew Barney’s videos seriously discussed in an art history program? What about the work of Damien Hirst, Takashi Murakami, and Luc Tuymans? While their work is not the stuff of graduate art history seminars, these artists have been among those most often referenced in art school critiques, most frequently discussed in art magazines, and most sought after in the marketplace. It is the rare art history program that devotes much effort to understanding why. Artists themselves move on, even as critics and academics go their separate ways. What is an art school professor to do? What is the best way to teach critically in such a complex and dynamic environment? Unlike many of my art school colleagues who tended to develop syllabi on a foundation of theory, I began with art that I found the most compelling, often developing a course or lectures around an eclectic range of virtually unknown artists. Yet the danger of teaching solely on the basis of personal taste is equal to the danger of writing criticism on the basis of personal taste. It can result in something that may be excusable in the Village Voice, but not in an art school: an absence of usable tools. Those tools are the critical or aesthetic models by which a work is judged. We live in a time when such models are hard to come by or highly contested. The imperative to discover new languages to communicate about art—essentially a new mode of art criticism—is even more urgent, I believe, in art schools than in art magazines. For it is in art schools, in the form of the critique, where the most fundamental practice of art education occurs. If a teacher and his or her students are unable to find a common language to describe and render relative judgments, then there is little hope for understanding and advancement. My work at CCA led me to believe that what is needed now in academia—and perhaps among art critics as well—is a return to the study of aesthetics. But not the singular thread of Western-based aesthetics that I was taught, which has been convincingly shown to be inadequate to the task of adjudicating the complex artistic culture of our time. Rather, I believe that what would best serve both academia and the field of contemporary criticism is an exploration of comparative aesthetic philosophies, drawing lessons from all of the world’s cultures in order to achieve, not a Hegelian synthesis, but rather what the Greek skeptics called epoche, a suspended state of productive potentiality. This attitude of engaged uncertainty should extend to the pedagogical relationship itself. Without the need to insist on a single prescribed standard—or, for that matter, the compulsion to look outside the studio to current art magazines and the like for guidance—the teacher-student relationship can develop out of a sense of shared discovery and spontaneous necessity.

Lawrence Rinder  146  

I developed, for example, a graduate seminar that inverted my standard progression of course development. Rather than start with a syllabus, I began by visiting each student’s studio. Based on the students’ work and their interests, I put together a reader that would be relevant to their creative aims. The students’ work was so diverse that it seemed beside the point to put forward a single aesthetic or theoretical perspective—as I might well have done if I had organized the course in a more conventional sequence. Instead, in response to their work, I selected several radically diverse texts that approached the definition and description of art and artistic quality from vastly different perspectives. In part because of the kinds of work they were doing, but also because of their diverse cultural backgrounds and frames of reference for their work, I cast about across history and geography to engage aesthetic theories from a variety of cultures. Among other texts, we read Susan Sontag’s “On Style,” which is a defense of formalist aesthetics; Michael Kirby’s “Manifesto of Structuralism”; Federico García Lorca’s “Play and the Theory of Duende,” which concerns the aesthetics of flamenco and bullfighting; and Zeami’s “Nine Stages,” a six-hundred-year-old discussion of the aesthetics of Noh theater. Naturally, such an approach leaves one open to charges of cultural relativism or, worse, cultural tourism and exoticization. I grudgingly recognize what the Village Voice critic Jerry Saltz identified as my Dick Cheney-ish tendency to open art’s territories to culture drillers from far and wide (he compared my curating of the 2002 Whitney Biennial to the vice president’s drive to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration). Yet my own students reported that the texts from their reader that were most meaningful to them were not those of fashionable figures such as Georges Bataille and Paul Virilio, but the selections from Zeami and Lorca, who explored art forms at best marginal in our own culture.

Suzan Frecon, Composition with Red Earth and Red Earth, 2005

5. Federico García Lorca, “Play and the Theory of Duende,” In Search of Duende (New York: New Directions, 1955), 49.

Why were these texts so resonant? Interestingly, Lorca himself writes that the aesthetic he calls “duende,” epitomized by the aura of death surrounding the bullfight and flamenco, is not exclusive to these forms or to Spain, but can be found in any art and any country. “All that has black sounds has duende,” writes Lorca, “These ‘black sounds’ are the mystery, the roots fastened in the mire that we all know and all ignore, the fertile silt that gives us the very substance of art. The duende does not come at all unless he sees that death is possible.”5 Zeami, meanwhile, had nothing other than Japanese theater in mind when he wrote the “Nine Stages.” Yet, the core of his aesthetic theory, a quality known as yugen, bears striking similarities to Lorca’s duende. Here is a short explication of this subtle term by Toshiko and Toyo Izutsu: “Yu, the first component of the word yugen, usually connotes faintness or shadowiness, in the sense that it rather negates the self-subsistent solidity of existence, or that it suggests insubstantiality, or more

Rosie Lee Tompkins, Three Sixes, 1987

accurately the rarefied quality of physical concreteness in the dimension of empirical reality. Gen, the second component of the word, means dimness, darkness, or blackness. It is the darkness caused by profundity; so deep that our physical eyesight cannot possibly reach its depth, that is to say, the darkness of a region unknowable to profundity.”6

6. Toshihiko Izutsu and Toyo Izutsu, The Theory of Beauty in the Classical Aesthetics of Japan (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1981), 26. 7. Zeami Motokiyo, quoted in ibid., 99.

Zeami not only offers the notion of yugen as an aesthetic goal, but also proposes nine stages of aesthetic embodiment, each of which is carefully defined according to poetic descriptions such as the following: “The state in which one gives an exhaustive account of what is indicated by the clouds on the mountain, of the moon shining upon the ocean, of blue mountains lying one upon the other as far as the eye can reach and the immense scenery of the whole universe.”7 More significant for the present purpose than the internal subtlety of the nine stages or the remarkable resonances between Lorca’s and Zeami’s aesthetic theories is their applicability to works of contemporary art—from the videos of Ara Peterson to Suzan Frecon’s drawings, from a quilt by Rosie Lee Tompkins to a painting by John Currin. With Lorca’s and Zeami’s texts in mind, it begins to become possible to see these pieces in ways that are neither rote-analytical nor obscurely personal nor couched in modernist self-referentiality. One of the most pressing needs right now in art schools is the identification of aesthetic languages related to new ways of working. The choice is not between modernist and postmodernist criticism, between criticism that relies on absolute formal criteria and criticism based on textual not visual conditions, that is, a criticism of discourse. Rather, the challenge is between critical models as such and a more fluid experience of the cultural field that reengages the aesthetic, albeit within an expanded range of theories and practices. From my perspective, the problem lies not in art practice (only an art critic could see the transgression of medium-specific boundaries as a “problem”), but in art criticism itself. It is in art criticism that the lack of transgression, specifically a lack of cultural transgression, has left the entire field open to absorption into the broader fields of visual and cultural studies. Are we really willing to abandon the project of a field of inquiry pertaining to the phenomenon of art per se? If not, then we must rediscover an appropriate vocabulary and mode of discourse that is elastic enough and rich enough to address the radically diverse and ever-changing field of contemporary art. I believe that the way to accomplish this is through the study of comparative aesthetics, a practice that will foster a fluency in a culturally diverse array of theories of artistic quality. Not to match cultural production to cultural product, but rather to expand our capacity simply to see differences among works, and to be able to articulate those differences by any means necessary.

149 Toward a New Critical Pedagogy  

ronald jones

Ronald Jones is professor of interdisciplinary studies at Konstfack, University College of Arts, Crafts, and Design, in Stockholm, Sweden, where he leads the Experience Design Group and co-directs WIRE, the MA program in curatorial practice and critical writing. He is guest professor in experience design at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, India. Jones holds a PhD in interdisciplinary studies from Ohio University, Athens. A practicing artist, Jones has exhibited internationally and his work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Guggenheim ­Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and Moderna Museet, Stockholm, among others.

Fail Again. Fail Better.

The last few decades have belonged to a certain kind of person with a certain kind of mind: computer programmers who could write code, lawyers who could craft contracts, accountants who could crunch numbers. The future, however, belongs to a very different kind of person with a different kind of mind. The future belongs to creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers and meaning-makers. These people—artists, inventors, designers, storytellers, caregivers, con­solers, big picture thinkers—will now reap society’s richest rewards and share its greatest joys. Da niel H. Pink

Intellectual Ventures is housed in a large warehouse in Bellevue, Washington, where Nathan Myhrvold, its CEO, often hosts “invention sessions.” Topics for these sessions vary, but they always bring together a cross-disciplinary array of thinkers, from physicists to neurosurgeons, from biomechanical engineers to chemists. “There really aren’t any rules,” Casey Tegreene, an electrical engineer who holds a law degree, announced as one session began in November 2007. “We may start out talking about refined plastics and end up talking about shoes, and that’s OK.”1 The starting point that autumn day was “the future of self-assembling technology,” but before the session ended the group had moved on to X-rays and then how to better protect soldiers from brain trauma with advanced designs for battlefield helmets. Myhrvold worked at Microsoft for fourteen years, founded their first research group, served as their first chief scientist, and left the company in 1999 believing that breakthrough innovations, traditionally the purview of the “solitary genius,” could be forced, like exotic blooms in a hothouse, using interdisciplinary think-tanks composed of very intelligent people. Intellectual Ventures was the result. The company holds about twenty-five invention sessions a year, netting five hundred patents annually, with three thousand more ideas, all potential patents, in a holding pattern. Its core business, however, is not creating but finding, buying, and stockpiling inventions which are then offered as assets in which companies may invest. Intellectual property is

151

The title is from Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho (1983). Epigraph from Daniel H. Pink, A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age (New York: Penguin, 2005), 14. 1. Malcolm Gladwell, “In the Air,” New Yorker (May 12, 2008), 50–60.

2. Michael Orey, with Moira Herbst, “Inside Nathan Myhrvold’s Mysterious New Idea Machine,” Business Week (July 3, 2006); http://www.businessweek.com/ magazine/content/06_27/ b3991401.htm[0]. 3. Lee Fleming, “Perfecting Cross Pollination,” Harvard Business Review (September 2004), 1–2.

presented as an investment opportunity, no different from stocks or old master paintings. Investors include Microsoft, Intel, Apple Computer, Sony, and Nokia. Even though they have their own acquisition unit, Intellectual Ventures relies on invention brokers to find patents, and they have acquired more than fifty patents from universities (an obvious source). Intellectual Ventures neither markets nor manufactures products but licenses their patents to companies who would commercialize them. Its estimated value is one billion dollars. Myhrvold, who describes himself as one of the first invention capitalists, says: “We think that if we specialize in invention, we can do it better than people who do it as a sideline.”2 When he says, “do it as a sideline,” Myhrvold means the vast majority of companies that must constantly weigh risking innovation against a stable bottom line. Myhrvold believes that Intellectual Ventures’ capacity for creating breakthrough ideas is the direct result of interdisciplinary brainstorming in the invention sessions. Awestruck wonder describes the current obsession with interdisciplinary innovation; for companies and research universities with a higher-than-usual tolerance for risk, the first move toward such innovation methodologies is away from the conventional R&D approach, where expertise is siloed. Research by Harvard Business School’s Lee Fleming buoys the confidence to take such a risk. “My research on more than 17,000 patents,” Fleming writes, “suggests that the financial value of the innovations resulting from such cross-pollination is lower, on average, than the value of those that come out of more conventional siloed approaches. . . . But my research also suggests that breakthroughs that do arise from such multidisciplinary work, though extremely rare, are frequently of unusually high value— superior to the best innovations achieved by conventional approaches.”3 Whether you view Fleming’s research as a cautionary tale or as offering daring opportunity accords with how you interpret this truism: with cross-disciplinary practices, the most common outcome is failure. The first invention session was held in August 2007, and while Myhrvold expected that many ideas would dead-end, he was banking on the “multiplier effect” of having eight inventors brainstorming across disciplines. In the end, he was surprised by the number of high-value inventions actually produced in the first session, although he won’t say how many there might have been. The multiplier effect occurs when a pioneer idea is accepted as the leading idea by the community where it is introduced. The difference at Intellectual Ventures is that the “community” is always interdisciplinary. The chief advantage of integrating the multiplier effect within an interdisciplinary setting is “ganging” diverse intellects; an idea, well known within the quarters of one discipline, is enhanced as other disciplines see it anew, multiplying its original monodisciplinary value in ways otherwise unavailable. It’s a version of what Ronald Burt, a sociologist from the University of Chi-

Ronald Jones  152  

cago, calls the economy of borrowed ideas. “The usual image of creativity is that it’s some sort of genetic gift, some heroic act,” Burt said. “But creativity is an importexport game. It’s not a creation game.” Burt continued: “Tracing the origin of an idea is an interesting academic exercise, but it’s largely irrelevant. The trick is, can you get an idea which is mundane and well known in one place to another place where people would get value out of it.” At Raytheon, the military contractor, Burt asked managers to offer up their best ideas about improving business operations, and the ones with the most value consistently came from managers who were already working operationally across disciplines. They were aware of new information and methods for problem solving that existed beyond their sphere of influence, and then adapted them to their own working group. “People who live in the intersection of social worlds,” Burt wrote in the American Journal of Sociology, “are at higher risk of having good ideas.”4 Myhrvold’s invention sessions thrive on Burt’s economy of borrowed ideas. By adapting the multiplier effect to an interdisciplinary community, participants discover and push out the kinds of inventions history tells us to expect from the infrequent solitary genius. A gang of intellects does the work of one mastermind, engineering ideas fantastic in breadth and deep with relevance. Nuclear energy, HIV, jet engines, cancer, microchips, and stopping hurricanes are a few of the research ­areas where Intellectual Ventures has produced new knowledge. When a patent is licensed, inventors share in the profits, but according to Dennis J. Rivet, a neurosurgeon who participates in invention sessions, that’s not the attraction; rather, it’s engaging interdisciplinarity as the agent of imagination. “The appeal is twofold,” he says, “the opportunity to interact with a diverse group of thinkers purely for the sake of invention, and the efficiency with which IV [Intellectual Ventures] translates imagination into intellectual capital.”5 The New Yorker recently published “In the Air,” an article by Malcolm Gladwell about Intellectual Ventures with the subtitle “Who says big ideas are rare?” Glad­ well convincingly demonstrates the idea of “multiples,” where several inventors happen to have the same idea at about the same time. He points out that Elisha Gray filed a patent for the telephone on February 14, 1876, the same day Alexander Graham Bell did, creating a rash of accusations about who was there first. He brings us loads of other examples; the steamboat is described as the exclusive discovery of no less than five independent inventors, and in 1611 four astronomers, including Galileo, discovered sunspots. One of Gladwell’s points is that in all of these cases the discoveries and inventions were made in “a common intellectual milieu,” which in part explains the simultaneity.6 Multiples are the foil to the ­notion that breakthrough inventions are proprietary to the singular genius, and against this Gladwell sets the success of invention sessions where interdisciplinarity has

153 Fail Again. Fail Better.  

4. Ronald Burt, “Structural Holes and Good Ideas,” American Journal of Sociology 110 (September 2004), 349–99. 5. Orey with Herbst, “Nathan Myhrvold,” 58. 6. Gladwell, “In the Air,” 56.

7. Ibid., 59–60. 8. Ibid. 9. Guerrilla Girls, The Advantages of Being a Woman Artist (1988 poster), http://www.guerrillagirls. com/posters/advantages.shtml.

the advantage. When surgeons and physicists collaborated across disciplines on advanced designs for X-rays, he writes: “Surgeons had all kinds of problems that they didn’t realize had solutions, and physicists had all kinds of solutions to things that they didn’t realize were problems.”7 Gladwell leans upon the work of the sociologist Robert K. Merton, who undercut our traditional impression of the genius. Merton’s research tells us that independent discoveries attributed to an inventorgenius have been, time and again, duplicated in a common intellectual milieu by gangs of other inventors. Gladwell’s article is a vote of confidence in an interdisciplinary approach to discovery. Toward the end of his article Gladwell writes, “Merton’s observation about scientific geniuses is clearly not true of artistic geniuses, however. You can’t pool the talents of a dozen Salieris and get Mozart’s Requiem. You can’t put together a committee of really talented art students and get Matisse’s ‘La Danse.’ A work of artistic genius is singular, and all the arguments over calculus, the accusations back and forth between the Bell and the Gray camps, and our persistent inability to come to terms with the existence of multiples are the result of our misplaced desire to impose the paradigm of artistic invention on a world where it doesn’t belong.”8 But why? If it is wrong-headed to apply the romance of the isolated-monastic-genius to discoveries in the sciences, how would it stand to reason that artistic genius is always the work of a solitary artist? According to the Guerrilla Girls, one of the thirteen “advantages of being a woman artist” is “not having to undergo the embarrassment of being called a genius.”9 Never mind that Gladwell’s notion of the “artistic genius” is freighted with a mindset as pale as it is male and stale, but wouldn’t artist teams and collectives from Fluxus to Gilbert and George to the Guerrilla Girls be mystified to hear that you can’t pool talent in the arts with effect, as in the sciences? Even in the case of abstract expressionism’s lone wolves, wasn’t the Cedar Tavern a collaborative incubator of sorts? Asking whether a dozen Salieris would produce Mozart’s Requiem is disingenuous; the idea of interdisciplinarity was not a part of the common intellectual milieu in 1791, but were we to ask instead what was at hand in the Cabaret Voltaire on July 26, 1916, when Hugo Ball read the dada manifesto, or in 1984 when the curtain opened on Einstein on the Beach at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, we would begin moving toward a serviceable answer to the question of whether “artistic genius” is always singular. Works of art created by a single artist are hardly diminishing in number, but it was a common intellectual milieu that drew together Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, Merce Cunningham and Robert Rauschenberg, Samuel Beckett and Jasper Johns, and choreographer Karole Armitage and physicist Brian

Ronald Jones  154  

Greene.10 Working collaboratively across disciplines—with results fairly described as breakthrough innovations, or if you want to go whole-hog, works of genius—is so familiar to artists, composers, designers, or choreographers, it must be regarded as routine. Even if “interdisciplinarity” had not yet entered the vocabulary of Guillaume Apollinaire, Hugo Ball, or Jean Arp, collaboration between poet, author, and artist was already beginning to dismantle the figure of the lone artistic genius Gladwell still takes for granted. As a methodology, interdisciplinarity in the arts may be less evolved and surely less organized on the whole than what goes on at Intellectual Ventures. A direct comparison is largely unhelpful, even if Myhrvold’s methodology for generating innovation is the very kind of idea Burt mentions as worth the effort to lift from one practice to another, from corporate research to artistic research. Carrying Myhrvold’s method for interdisciplinary research and development over to the cultural side of things begs the question of what interdisciplinarity is, and here the confusion begins. General agreement on what constitutes interdisciplinarity and how it functions at an advanced level is yet to arrive in cultural quarters. For example, interdisciplinarity is consistently confused with multidisciplinarity. Even Fleming uses “multidisciplinary work” to describe what is manifestly interdisciplinary. Is there a useful common language at hand? To begin at the beginning, monodisciplinarity provides the opportunity for Gladwell’s notion of the singular artistic genius. Monodisciplinarity is the application of one creative discipline: easel painting, the epic poem, and so on and so forth. Where two or more disciplines are involved in a single creative enterprise the door to multidisciplinarity opens. “Multi,” from the Latin multus meaning “many,” is the application of two or more disciplines to one theme or subject, but without the expectation that the disciplines will encroach on one other. Where multi­ disciplinarity is concerned, the adoption or integration of concepts, methods, or theories across disciplines is not in the cards. Ask a game theorist and a city planProf. S. J. Gates, Jr. & DFGHILM Collaboration, Unity of Hidden Adinkra, from a series of Mathematical Adinkra Diagrams, 2008

10. Inspired by Greene’s The Ele­ gant Universe (New York: Random House/Vintage, 1999), Armitage created a ballet of the same name in collaboration with composer Lukas Ligeti and theoretical physicist James Gates.

ner to design the traffic flow for a dense urban environment as a multidisciplinary exercise and the results will be two distinct plans, one based on game theory and a second on city planning. Multidisciplinarity is designed to functionally compare and contrast results, and is capable of generating great insight, innovation, and early conclusions about anticipating or solving difficult problems. But all too often multidisciplinarity methods are employed with the expectation of interdisciplinary outcomes. Such incongruity is irresolvable and usually results in frustrating dis­ appointment and even more confusion. Recently, Burt consulted with the head of a university chemistry department who confessed that sitting chemists next to physicists in the lab to work independently on a common research project typically “passes for interdisciplinarity” but, of course, the results never approach the interdisciplinary threshold for success. If lab results happened to come about by what Burt describes as import-export, they were generally achieved by accident. What was missing, he reasoned, was a common understanding of what interdisciplinary methodologies and goals could be. Operationally, interdisciplinarity is exceedingly difficult to achieve, as Fleming’s research tells us. Why? People and their institutions are reluctant to stray from their field, and if they do, they often relax back into their fundamental expertise at

Laurie Haycock Makela, Multidisciplinarity Diagram, 2008

the first chance and then fall short once their multidisciplinarity results are measured by the metrics of interdisciplinary success. Interdisciplinarity is collaboration between two or more disciplines where actors from each discipline begin by adopting and integrating each other’s concepts, methods, theories, and even epistemologies in the creation of a reciprocal hybrid practice. This depends on something along the lines of Burt’s import-export methodology, which acts like a fuel cell sustaining a reciprocal hybrid practice. This notion of the hybrid is what R. Buckminster Fuller once described as “synthesis” writing: “A designer is an emerging synthesis of artist, inventor, mechanic, objective economist, and evolutionary strategist.”11 This does not mean that disciplines eclipse one another, but rather merge along their outer precincts; each discipline remains as distinct as the hybrid is explicit. If “multi” implies many, “inter” meaningfully denotes between, in the midst, reciprocal, derived from two or more, between the limits of, and carried on or ex­ isting between. In interdisciplinary practices disciplines interpenetrate, intervene, and become intercommunal at their outer edges, producing crossbred methods and practices and, when everything goes right, results not otherwise within reach of a single discipline. Interdisciplinary team members need not be experts across every collaborating discipline. They must rather be capable of acting reciprocally to be effective at “adopting and integrating” concepts, methods, and theories from collaborating disciplines. They must “know enough to judge” where their expertise will be relevant in exploiting and multiplying the existing value of an idea outside their own discipline; it may be highly speculative work, but it’s not guesswork. In practical terms interdisciplinarity is typically marked by what Fleming describes as high alignment between disciplines: artists and designers, particle physicists and astrophysicists. Finding artists to work with particle physicists, where each knows enough about the other’s discipline to undertake an interdisciplinary project is exceedingly rare. Why? In Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, R. Buckminster Fuller rationalizes it as a result of higher education’s counterintuitive devotion to specialism: “All universities have been progressively organized for ever finer specialization . . . if the total scheme of nature required man to be a specialist she would have made him so by having him born with one eye and a microscope attached to it . . . what nature needed was man to be adaptive in many if not any direction.”12 The organization and ethos of universities, like most research institutions, tend to keep expertise siloed. Buckminster Fuller’s reasoning and Fleming’s research give us this paradox to solve: while an interdisciplinary team’s risk for failure increases the lower the alignment between their disciplines, a greater distance between disciplines accelerates chances for breakthrough innovation. If the chance for breakthrough innovations, however rare, escalates as the alignment between disciplines diminishes, then, in a manner of speaking, the first question is how to inspire artists to work with particle physicists, integrating their research while suc-

157 Fail Again. Fail Better.  

11. R. Buckminster Fuller, Ideas and Integrities: A Spontaneous Auto­ biographical Disclosure (New York: Collier Books, 1969), 176. 12. R. Buckminster Fuller, Operat­ ing Manual for Spaceship Earth (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969), 14.

cessfully managing the high risk of failure. Nathan Myhrvold’s answer comes in the form of his “invention sessions,” where experts, as diverse as reasonably possible, are asked to think about problems and ideas that would ordinarily never pass their sphere of influence. The sessions are followed up by a close evaluation of the ideas that result, and then, in consultation with specialists from the collaborating disciplines, the Intellectual Venture’s team parses ideas with a “high risk” of succeeding. It is itself a meta-hybrid methodology leveraging fresh perspectives ignited by interdisciplinary brainstorming against deep expertise. In Myhrvold’s experience most ideas come to nothing, many are multiples, and more than he had anticipated are original. In order to take full advantage of interdisciplinary research in the creative disciplines, an open hand must be taken to the existence of multiples: what appears as an original creation can exist simultaneously in different studios at the same time. There may well be fewer multiples in the arts than the sciences, but then it’s difficult to gauge because in the arts an innate, historical resistance to the idea of simultaneous discovery lingers, while a general acceptance that, as Gladwell writes, “a work of artistic genius is singular” persists. But multiples commonly occur in the history of art. In 1911 Braque stenciled the letters bal across a painting titled The Portuguese, signaling his shift from analytical toward synthetic cubism. If analytical cubism was about making the reality of the three-dimensional world conform to the reality of the two-­ dimensional picture plane (rather than the other way around), then synthetic cubism would employ subjects that already existed within the two-dimensional reality of painting (i.e., the alphabet). In the same year Picasso painted Still Life with ­P iano stenciling the letters cort in the upper left corner of the picture. The Por­ tuguese and Still Life with Piano, two paintings from two artists produced in a common intellectual milieu, testify to the existence of artistic multiples; the discovery of synthetic cubism was simultaneous. Yes, Braque and Picasso had a close relationship, perhaps an early precursor to multidisciplinarity, but as much as for Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell, it remained important to them and to art history to establish who could make claim to being the first synthetic cubist. Clement Greenberg, in the September 1958 issue of Art News, published an essay titled “Collage (The Pasted Paper Revolution),” in which he unwittingly acknowledged the notion of multiples, writing, “Collage was a major turning point in the evolution of Cubism, and therefore a major turning point in the whole evolution of modernist art in this century. Who invented collage—Braque or Picasso—is still

Laurie Haycock Makela, Interdisciplinarity Diagram, 2008

not settled. Both artists left most of the work they did between 1907 and 1914 undated as well as unsigned; and each claims, or implies the claim, that his was the first collage of all.”13 Of course, the matter of who got there first is likely never to be settled, as Greenberg would have wished, and is left hanging for art historians to bicker over, but to what end? By the time Cindy Sherman, Richard Prince, and Sherrie Levine had efficiently problematized the ontology of originality, tracking down the singular artistic genius responsible for the first example of the appropriation style had become a fool’s errand. By now, Gladwell’s refusal of artistic multiples may be fairly described as fundamentalist, and his and other’s rejoinders upholding private artistic genius have taken the form of small-bore comebacks. Fundamentalists just say it louder, perhaps because they know that the problems with their position will not be fixed. Rarer even than flourishing interdisciplinary practices is the creation of a transdisciplinary practice. Transdisciplinarity occurs when an interdisciplinarity hybrid is no longer served by being reciprocal but transcends the limits of the original collaborating disciplines to create a third unforeseen, and therefore entirely new, practice. If an alloy is an appropriate analogy to interdisciplinarity it is because interdisciplinarity is a homogeneous mixture of two or more disciplines, which in turn makes transdisciplinarity a compound: recognized as having different assets—­ properties and language—from the constituent disciplines from which it transcended. An example of a transdiscipline would be psychological economics, for which Daniel Kahneman was awarded the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. The citation for Kahneman’s prize credits him for having “integrated insights from psychology into economics, thereby laying the foundation for a new field of research.”14 Kahneman succeeded in so deeply fusing two disciplines with low ­alignment—economics, a hard science, with psychology, a soft science—that a third, unconditionally original innovation resulted. Psychological economics represents one of the breakthroughs that Fleming’s research observes. Arising from interdisciplinarity, it is an extremely rare occurrence, and one of unusually high value. Have similar transdisciplines sprung from the creative disciplines? Transdisciplines in the arts are relatively difficult to detect and agree upon without some preexisting consent to the characteristics of multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity. Hans Haacke’s 1971 exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum was cancelled because he addressed specific social situations in works like Shalopsky et al. Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, A Real Time Social System, As of May 1, 1971, which in turn were cast as existing beyond the latitudes of serious art. Adhering to a position reminiscent of Walter Benjamin’s—creating works of art with an established position inside politics, rather than reflecting an attitude toward politics—did Haacke fuse economics, politics, sociology, and art to create a new transdiscipline? And if he

159 Fail Again. Fail Better.  

13. Clement Greenberg, “Collage (The Pasted Paper Revolution),” Art News 57 (September 1958), 46–49. 14. “Psychological and Experimental Economics,” press release from the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2002, October 9, 2002; http://nobelprize.org/nobel_ prizes/economics/laureates/2002/ press.html.

15. Jack Burnham, Great Western Salt Works: Essays on the Meaning of Post-Formalist Art (New York: George Braziller, 1974), 25. 16. Henry Petroski, Success through Failure: The Paradox of Design (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 62–63.

did, was Haacke’s transdiscipline what the art theorist Jack Burnham once called a “real time system”?15 How much catching up might need to be done? While the methodologies of interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity are distinct, they share two characteristics that create significant differences between themselves and monodisciplinarity or multidisciplinarity. First, actors work across disciplines, often farthest from their own, but with the knowledge and insight allowing them to create a relevant integration between concepts, methods, or theories, either as a reciprocal hybrid practice or to transcend interdisciplinarity, creating an entirely new field. Second, research tells us that interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary practices are subject to failure rates higher than the conventional monodisciplinary or multidisciplinary practices. With these distinctions in hand, it is possible to make this prediction: we presently lack the imagination to conceive of another methodology—other than interdisciplinarity—capable of producing such a high level of creativity. This being the case, our lack of imagination means that in the future, the most valuable innovations, however infrequent, will be driven by interdisciplinarity. Whether you accept this prediction or not is a question of your risk tolerance for failure. If our lack of imagination makes failure inevitable, could it also be an advantage? I think so. Failure is essential to creativity and learning. Whether government, business, or art and design school, institutions are naturally risk-averse to failure—a significant reason breakthrough innovations are so extraordinarily hard to create. Institutions tend to be “performance cultures,” prizing optimal performance and predictable outcomes. “Learning cultures,” on the other hand—nurtured in efficient organizations that have been built to constantly reinterpret the world and their relationship to it—see failure as an advantage, promising the capacity for change. Learning cultures are first and foremost dedicated to a strategy of continuous learning from both contiguous and far-flung disciplines and fields. They encourage what might feel counterintuitive: to take risks, search, discover, test, prototype, screw up occasionally, and then do it all again. In this culture, failure becomes “productive” and “creative.” Henry Petroski writes in Success through Failure: The Paradox of Design that the common characteristic of creative people is how they conceive of failure. “They recognize that a failure not only provides them the opportunity to carry out the process of design and development anew but also enables them to conceive of something new and improved to obviate the triggering failure.”16

Laurie Haycock Makela, Transdisciplinarity Diagram, 2008

The core values of the design firm IDEO include interdisciplinarity and immersion in the paradox whereby failure produces innovative outcomes that could not have been anticipated in advance. I call it the “Titanic Effect.” Dennis Boyle at IDEO says that if a “project is not generating masses of prototypes, including many that clearly won’t fly, something is seriously wrong.”17 Understanding failure as an efficient agent of change can begin to close the gap between performance cultures and learning cultures, and provide the first step in the creation of an organization that can successfully initiate and sustain interdisciplinarity while managing attendant risks. At IDEO Boyle says the creative creed is “Fail early, fail often.”18 Beneficiaries of an operational learning culture that leverages the value of failure against interdisciplinarity are often nascent disciplines like experience design. Experience design has a brief history comprising kaleidoscopic influences and approaches, from entertainment design, to Adrian Henri’s notion of “Total Art,” to end-user design, to B. Joseph Pine II and James Gilmore’s description of an experience economy, to organizations like the Advance for Design Forum, to Nathan Shedroff ’s early attempts to define the practice, just to name a few. It is a history that might best be thought of as a string of entangled but uncoordinated disruptive in­ novations, which Harvard Business School professor Clayton M. Christensen describes as innovations that use disruptive rather than revolutionary strategies to overturn the status quo. In spite of, or perhaps because of, these disruptive innovations, experience design has remained estranged from common agreement about what it is or, put conversely, what it isn’t. Experience design begins with certain assumptions; chief among them is that art, design, craft, and media have real and measurable consequences on how society behaves with regard to basic human problems. Practitioners work across disciplines and, ever increasingly, in advanced hybrid research practices. Experience designers employ interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary methodologies to conduct practice-led research across disciplines from art to economics, from history to science, from philosophy to technology. In this sense, experience design’s true origins may lie within the Bauhaus curriculum, where artists, designers, and artisans grappled with the relationship of art, craft, and design to modernism. Like the Bauhaus, the work of experience designers, while often speculative, remains practically engaged socially, culturally, and ethically. But experience design shouldn’t be considered as merely derivative. It combines too many disparate strands of art, design, and craft with other relevant disciplines and has the potential to be a virtuoso, if sometimes unpredictable, synthesizer that simultaneously enhances, repurposes, and double-crosses the most conventional beliefs with the most advanced attitudes. Taking this perspective, it seems reasonable to say that in some fundamental respects experience design was spawned from a basic research question reflecting a fundamental shift in Western culture: How

161 Fail Again. Fail Better.  

17. Dennis Boyle, quoted in Bart Eisenberg, “Thinking in Prototypes,” Product Research and Devel­ opment (January 2004), 28. 18. Ibid.

19. Jack Burnham, “Systems Esthetics,” Artforum 7 (September 1968): 30–35; http://www.arts.ucsb .edu/faculty/jevbratt/readings/ burnham_se.html. 20. Lucy Lippard, Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972 (New York:

will creative cultures, crossing disciplines, locate relevance as we shift from an objectbased culture to an experience-based culture? In 1968 Jack Burnham made this claim: “In the automated state, power resides less in the control of the traditional symbols of wealth than in information.”19 Burnham predicted that standing armies, blocks of gold, and old master paintings would likely dim as projections of power, degraded by confidence in the information network to distribute knowledge, experience, and influence on a global scale.

Praeger, 1973).

Indicators of the movement from an object-based culture toward an experiencebased culture include the marketing sector’s deepening appreciation of consumer preference for experience over more traditional commodities and, at the other extreme, what Lucy Lippard described as the “dematerialization of the art object”: one of a series of historical episodes in which high culture prioritized experience over object making.20 Taken together as two significant indicators of an accumulating trend, entrepreneurial marketing strategies aimed at the value of experience and advanced visual culture’s emphasis on experience are reason enough to ask questions about the continuing relevance of art, craft, and design. Perhaps the more important question is: What new relevance might experience-based culture bring to these disciplines? One early outcome seems to be the “convergence experience,” where multiple disciplines merge into hybrid experiences encountered over time. Traditional timebased arts such as music, architecture, dance, and film have a well-established history and literature. But rather than, say, aspiring to the condition of music, experience design problematizes conventional time-based culture in seeking to locate a new relevance for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary studio practices. While conventional forms of art and design, such as painting and industrial design, use two and three dimensions, experience designers synthesize two- and three-dimensional media in their work. What they ultimately design is time; time becomes their medium. To design time as immersive experience is to persuade, stimulate, inform, envision, entertain, and forecast events, influencing meaning and modifying human behavior. Are we educating artists, designers, and artisans agile enough to perceive relevance often farthest from their disciplines and convert it into new, hybrid knowledge, while managing the high risk of failure that comes with interdisciplinary inno­ vation? Promising schools and institutes exist, among them MIT’s Media Lab, ­Stanford’s d.school, Illinois Institute of Technology’s Institute of Design, and the Stockholm School of Entrepreneurship. But in spite of these programs, and despite the combined rhetoric of seventeen million hits when you Google “interdisciplinary,” the art and design world still appears ill-prepared to create the deep-seated

Ronald Jones  162  

integration that would, for instance, produce innovations that could sit comfortably alongside Daniel Kahneman’s pioneering work in psychological economics. So it seems worth asking: What are the advantages in failing to be innovative? Universities and institutions that lag behind the frontiers of cultural transformation enjoy the advantage of being able to imitate success elsewhere without assuming the risk of innovation. So could it be true that significant precincts in the art and design world—unable to negotiate all that it would take to contribute to the emerging creative economy—have been left on the other side of the widening gap between developed and developing disciplines?

163 Fail Again. Fail Better.  

alice waters in conversation with walter hood

Alice Waters started her “delicious revolution” in 1971 when she ­introduced local, organic fare at her Berkeley, California, restaurant Chez Panisse. Waters has championed sustainable farms and ranches for more than three decades and brought her vision to public schools through the Chez Panisse Foundation. The foundation operates the Edible Schoolyard at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in Berkeley, where students plant, harvest, and prepare fresh food as part of the academic curriculum. Waters is the founder of the Yale Sustainable Food Project and vice president of Slow Food International. She is the author of eight cookbooks, including The Art of ­Simple Food (Clarkson Potter, 2007). Walter Hood creates “public landscapes” informed by place, time, and social uses, searching out stories and ways of living that reflect the cultural, environmental, and physical complexities of a given place. He designed the landscape and sculpture gardens for the de Young Museum, designed by Herzog & de Meuron, in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, and for Macon Yards, Georgia, as well as a garden in Charleston, South Carolina, and the Lifeways Plan for the nearby Phillips Community, with Ernesto Pujol and Kendra Hamilton. He received MA degrees in landscape architecture and architecture from the University of California, Berkeley, where he is a professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture, College of Environmental Design. He is also the principal of Hood Design, Oakland.

Coming Back to Our Senses

I have had exactly two professions in my life. I spent four years teaching school, in my early twenties, and I’ve spent all of the intervening thirty-seven years running the one restaurant I own, in Berkeley, California. I got into teaching after college, when I moved to England and trained in Montessori education. I was a fervent student, and I loved Montessori’s ideas about nourishing the whole child, and encouraging children to learn by doing things with their own bodies and hands, by touching and tasting and smelling in an ongoing education of the senses. Then I found a job at the Berkeley Montessori School, a quiet little place at the corner of Shattuck Avenue and Francisco Street. Berkeley was in a period of enormous social upheaval, so it was an exciting time; every parent and teacher seemed to feel that we could bring about a more just society by working together. And yet no sooner had I settled into the job than I took a trip to Paris and felt a very different thunderbolt striking my life. French food, and the way it anchored French family life to an agricultural community and even to the seasons, was a revelation to me. Cooking dinner back in Berkeley, I began teaching myself the basics of French cuisine and dreaming of a restaurant where all my friends could come for tasty food and talk about politics—like the right way to bring up our children and how to share this small planet. So I left teaching; I wasn’t patient enough anyway. Then, with the exuberant naiveté of youth, I opened a restaurant in an old house, a few blocks from the school. We called it Chez Panisse in honor of a beloved character from an old French movie, and we began sniffing around the back roads in search of delicious ingredients like the ones I’d tasted in France. It wasn’t easy, but we soon found ourselves on the doorsteps of organic farmers and ranchers and dairymen. Over the years, we built up a network of these suppliers, and that network came to define our food and our philosophy. The Edible Schoolyard has been evolving for twelve long years now, and it has become the most important thing in my life. It has also served as the incubator for the universal idea that I call Edible Education—a hopeful and delicious way of revitalizing public education.1

165

1. This personal statement is from the preface to Alice Waters and Daniel Duane, Edible Schoolyard: A Universal Idea (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2009). It serves to introduce and contextualize the conversation between Walter Hood and Waters, which took place over lunch at Chez Panisse, Waters’s Berkeley restaurant, on December 19, 2007.

Walter Hood: During the 2007 Dwell on Design Conference in San Francisco, we both spoke about building community, and I posited the idea of opening up community institutions. The example I gave was of a neighborhood high school that had a fenced-in boundary. We were working with the local community to plant trees, to tear down the fences, to integrate the off-site public spaces. Looking at your work after the conference, I thought about some of the things that you were doing with schools in Berkeley that are very similar. Do you see any similarities between the two approaches? Alice Waters: Absolutely. These schools have been abandoned and disconnected not only from their neighborhoods, but from the bigger community. This is partly because people are so busy in their lives that they have decided that the school should take care of the children. Be-

cause of that disconnect, the schools have become abandoned, in a way. They don’t have the life force of the community within them. You can see this at PTA meetings. They were really important back in the fifties, when I was growing up. At least a lot of parents went! WH: At least your parents went. AW: Take, for example, Martin Luther King School [a middle school in Berkeley]. There are a thousand kids, and maybe fifteen or twenty parents who go to PTA meetings. The idea of the Edible Schoolyard that we’re doing there is meant to reconnect and revitalize that school. We knew that if we built a garden that has a residential perimeter, it would be important to bring those parents and their neighbors into the garden and introduce them to this idea. WH: So it’s similar to my idea of tearing down the boundary and putting this agrarian space in between. AW: Exactly. You talked at the conference about the idea of connecting schools with garden spaces by making the path a space between the school and the garden. WH: Right, to make it something that people from the “outside” could come in through. AW: Yes, and then go either to the school or the garden. I love that idea of defining paths, whether with trees or with a street that becomes a walkway instead of a place for cars. That’s exactly the kind of reconnection that kids need to have and other people need it, too. We don’t even know what’s available to us and what might become beautiful and natural places in our cities. We just have no idea. We don’t know where

Alice Waters, The Edible Schoolyard, Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School, Berkeley, 1995

they are. There are so many barriers; there are so many streets that cut people apart and so many ­buildings that separate us, that here in Berkeley we can hardly find the park at the top of the hill. [Tilden Park—part of a chain of parks and public lands running north-south along the Berkeley and Oakland hills.] WH: People don’t know how to get to it; don’t even know it’s there. AW: And certainly nobody knows where the farms are that provide us with food. When you’re feeding kids at school with food from the farms, you begin to make that connection again. One of the first projects we did at this school was to sign up all the sixth-grade classes for the CSA, the Community-Supported Agriculture program. We pay in advance to get the vegetables from the farm, and then every week a box comes. And you don’t know what’s going to be in the box! The farmers started writing letters to the kids that they’d put in the box. We wrote back, and then we took a field trip out to the farms, so they could see where their food was coming from. WH: When I first arrived in the Bay Area I lived with Ken Simmons, one of the few African American professors in the architecture department at the University of California, Berkeley. He lived in Trestle Glen, down near Lake Merritt [in Oakland]. Coming from the East Coast, right out of Philadelphia, one night I was walking down the street and noticed this transient guy. He was definitely not from the community. But he was walking down the street picking lemons off people’s trees. And I thought, “California! This, this is amazing, right? This is the richness of California!” Twenty or thirty years ago, a guy by the name of Oscar Newman posited this idea of defensible

167 Coming Back to Our Senses  

space for our cities. Because poor areas were scary, neglected, and overly dense, people started leaving those communities and going into others. With this new development came the term “defensible space”—a way of defending ourselves from the outside world. You mentioned that getting to the parks in Berkeley is hard because the streets have these barriers and they are closed to through traffic. It creates a defensible perimeter and this begins to suggest that we’re afraid of the outside, even when we’re inside. This condition, this idea of borders: how do we escape this conundrum and become free from our fear of what’s “outside”? This affects our schools as well as our communities. AW: I really believe that it begins when kids are little and in school. We have to teach them a different set of values; we have to teach that food is our common language. We all eat. We all eat every day. And if we’re eating with intention, and we’re eating real food, and we’re connecting with where that food comes from, and we’re involved in the process of making it and offering it to our classmates, cooking for our classmates, and gathering around the table, then these ideas of community just emerge very naturally. WH: It’s a giving-and-receiving kind of thing. AW: It’s a giving and receiving: “I’m dependent on you for my nourishment.” That’s a deep message. And it’s about generosity. You’re able to teach diversity through the way you cook, and you bring people’s cooking backgrounds and personalities into that, to the table and into the garden. You learn diversity through the plants that you choose to put in the garden—the fifty different kinds of tomatoes. You’re not into mono­ ­culture. We have to build trust up again. Everybody is afraid of that world out there, and they’re

afraid of nature. Some of these kids at school didn’t want to get their shoes dirty; they didn’t want to get their hands dirty. It’s been thought of as something that is . . . WH: Dangerous, germs. AW: Germs and unclean. It’s a hygienic kind of thing. “You don’t want to touch that.” So we had to get boots for the kids, and we had to do it very gently. We had to get past that. But, of course, secretly, we all need Mother Nature. We are from that; we are connected to that. Our compost goes back into that garden. It’s all about metabolism. When you’re pulled away from that beauty and meaning, the rhythm of life—the life and death of a garden—you’re really deprived of the most important thing in life, which is that ability to feel connected to the bigger world outside yourself. You’re not just your own little person who has to figure out how to live on the planet. You have nature. WH: Also, the cyclical aspect of nature, the cycle of birth and death. It is inherent in that exper­ ience of the garden. It also suggests a return to this idea of a common—not “be common,” but of “a common”—a space that’s shared and owned by everyone. And maybe food production, just the basic sustenance for daily life, takes place there—whether it’s composting or the kids playing; whether it’s going out to get my tomatoes or getting my basil for dinner tonight. It’s a kind of space where people feel like they all share responsibility. Currently, there is no space that exists within the bureaucracy that would allow for such a thing. So how can we get something like that? AW: You have to build it, slowly. You can’t just ask people to be nice to one another. You have

to make it in their best interest to be nice to one another. You need something really meaningful, like the everyday exchange of food, to build that sense of interdependence and responsibility. When I was buying my food for Chez Panisse back in the early days, I was just looking for taste. So I was looking for the farmer who could grow things that tasted good. I never thought for one moment about sustainable farming or building community or having these friends or anything like that. But when I reflected back after twenty-five years at the restaurant’s birthday celebration, and everyone was asking me these questions, I thought, “My goodness! That’s what happened.” I found those farmers, and they were the ones who cared about flavor and about my nourishment. They were the ones. Now they are totally dependent on me and I’m totally dependent on them. I couldn’t run this restaurant without them. So we have a bond. I’m willing to do just about anything for them, and vice versa. If they didn’t have a crop, I would give them the money anyway. It’s just that way, and it happened because of an interaction—an everyday interaction that had an exchange of something really valuable at its base, as the bedrock of it. And that’s how we build it. This is not a new idea. This idea has been there since the beginning of time, we’ve just been disconnected from it. In all countries people have grown food, brought it to the local market, sold it, and shared it with family and friends. They’ve been dependent in that way on each other and responsible to each other. WH: What you’re suggesting is the notion of creating meaning out of quality. We’ve always had food, and a lot of it, in this country, whether it was good or not, we had a lot of it. When I was

Alice Waters and Walter Hood  168  

growing up, when the seventies hit, quality at a certain point became quantity: you got a deep freezer and put it in there, and made sure you had a lot of it. But what you’re suggesting is that meaning comes through quality, and that people will recognize that it’s good, and that it’s different from the frozen stuff in the bag. It’s an innate thing that people are going to recognize. Like with the gardens I’ve designed in the spaces under the freeways. If I make a garden using stone, people recognize that stone is better than concrete, and when they go to that space, they say, “There’s something different here.” AW: They just feel it. They don’t know what it is. When they come into the Edible Schoolyard, the kitchen classroom, they come into that kind of space. We’ve prepared it so that it looks beautiful and inviting; everything has been thought out. But they couldn’t point to any one thing that was necessarily beautiful. It’s just the feeling of care. And that is something. It’s about the work that’s gone into it. It’s revealed in ways that you can’t quantify. You can’t put your finger on it. You just sense it. WH: You experience it. AW: You just experience it and that’s what needs to happen. But you also have to open people up enough so that they can experience it. You have to make them aware. That’s about coming back to our senses. You have to open up those pathways so that we can touch and taste and see again. These children have been closed out of it—out of everything. With any luck, they’re seeing in yellow, red, and blue. The whole spectrum of beauty, and a sensual life and the richness of it, and the satisfaction that you get from it, has been cut off from most children’s lives.

169 Coming Back to Our Senses  

That’s what food can do—it can begin to reeducate your senses. It can open you up, because it’s about seeing and smelling and tasting a full spectrum. It’s an easy way, a natural way to open kids up. And it’s not just about food. It’s about everything in the world. WH: What you have done with the Edible Schoolyard, for me, is that you’ve created a hybrid landscape. To the notion that a school has just a playground and a playing field, you’ve said: “No! It’s going to have a garden; it’s going to have a yard.” And all of a sudden, you can’t put your finger on it; you can’t say it’s this or it’s that. It’s all these varied experiences. Do you think that idea could work within the larger community, blurring those boundaries so that a street could be a garden? AW: Absolutely. Why couldn’t a street be a garden? But you have to understand the values that you’re trying to communicate to society as important to that society, reaffirming what those values are. Once you’re there, you can open up all kinds of interpretations. If you say that the value is building community, then that could happen in an endless number of artistic and beautiful ways. If you decide that beauty is really important, or that inclusiveness is important, it’s the same. Whatever those criteria are, they are the same criteria that I have for what food needs to be for our public school system. WH: I was quoted once as saying that I like messy landscapes. “How do you get past this?” is the immediate response to messiness. It’s like your story about the kids wanting everything to be sanitized. Nature is messy. It goes through this process, and we’re a part of it. How do we get people past that idea that we have to be tidy with our environments?

AW: Again, you have to begin when children are really small. It’s very hard once they grow up. You have to understand the ecology of the wild space. What is it doing, not only for the horticulture of the place, but also for the animals? What is it doing to the rebuilding of the soil, of streams? How is it affecting the deep ecology of that place? We don’t know any of that. We’re not thinking holistically; everybody’s in a little department. It’s so clear, when you go to universities; you must feel it, here at Berkeley. When I went to Yale, people who were working on essentially the same thing had never talked to one another. They didn’t even know each other. As somebody from the outside who was looking for these same things, I found these people and brought them together at a table. WH: Were you creating a program, or was it a specific project? AW: We ended up with a program, but it didn’t start out that way. I just told them, “My kid came here, and went into the cafeteria, and said, ‘I can’t eat here!’ ” And I told her, “No, you can’t, and I’m going to go talk to the president.” So I did, and we created the Yale Sustainable Food Project. It’s amazing how it’s grown. You have to go see it. They have a garden that is amazing: three hundred varieties of fruits and vegetables. At that time it was run by a guy named Josh Vier­tel, and he integrated it into the curriculum of many departments, not only forestry, but also the history and nutrition departments. The kids all volunteer. They have a wood oven, and they eat there; they cook their food from the garden, and sit at the table and eat. It’s amazing. WH: The Yale Project makes me think of what might happen in Berkeley. I’m working on a

project now—Center Street in downtown Berkeley. I was hired by a nonprofit organization, Ecocity Berkeley. Its director, Richard Register, wants to bring healthy biodiversity to the heart of cities, and agriculture to gardens and streets. So a private citizen is paying for my consulting services, and I am not beholden to any bureaucracy or to any institution. We’re trying to come up with a vision for what I would call the precinct between the university and the city. Strawberry Creek is a block away, with its beautiful redwood trees. Maybe it will be an edible garden or a landscape where people can grow food. What better way to come into the university than to see all of these things manifested in one physical space—getting rid of the formal aspect and actually making it a living landscape? My proposal is: “How do we make this new street, this hybrid street, something that will express things that are under the ground?” As you mentioned, no one knows what goes on under the ground. It’s a city, but maybe it’s also a wilderness. And the new Berkeley Art Museum is ­going there, right on the corner of Oxford and Center Streets. This will be a completely new pres­ence in downtown Berkeley, with a café. AW: And the idea of the café is that it could be a teaching space, a place that is not just a beautiful space to eat in or an artful space to eat in, but something that really triggers all of the senses and the mind, that just makes you think about what it is that you’re eating. But I have to always say, when it comes down to it, nobody wants to curate the food. The food needs to be curated in this museum. WH: “Curating the Food”—that’s going to be the new slogan, and it brings us to my last question. I’m really interested in the idea of enmeshing space, where we no longer think about our

Alice Waters and Walter Hood  170  

world as a two-dimensional flat thing that we’d see from a helicopter, but we actually experience it more multidimensionally. So how I plant a tree is not based on some Cartesian coordinate system, and how I might layout a path is not based on some rational system, but they deal with experience. What you’re suggesting is that community is not only the physical world, but also includes temporal experience—and we’re constantly experiencing it, like when we are sitting here eating food. This is a spatial experience that we’re having right now. The food is contributing to my experience and my understanding. So the next time that I think about a meal, this will be part of my consciousness—this beautiful chicken that I’ve eaten, these fries—and that’s part of my larger experience of community as well. So if I’m walking down Center Street, past the museum café, and I see trees with fruit, and water perking up out of the ground, this gives me a different way of thinking about my community. It’s not just, “I’m going to BART,” but beautiful food is part of my walk down the street. This notion of enmeshing suggests that we can go beyond a single dimension and begin to weave everything into our communal experience. All of these things that we do as artists together can create this open-ended environmental system. What’s going on in Berkeley begins to suggest that we have all the pieces to do that. It’s a matter of getting people to align their values, and getting the right pieces together.

fines of the restaurant. The idea that I might collaborate with other people who have these incredible talents, that somehow we can put them all together and create something that’s greater than the sum of the parts—it’s so exhilarating.

AW: Just this idea of collaboration is so fantastic. It’s what I’m most passionate about at this moment, because I’ve been working in my own world for a very long period of time, and I can accomplish only so much by myself within the con-

WH: Well, you’ve renewed my interest in—I don’t know what to call it, they’re not “community gardens,” because I built the Berkeley Youth Alternative and I’ve worked on a lot of com­ munity gardens and at the end of the day, they

Alice Waters, The Edible Schoolyard, National Mall, 2005

become these little vestiges run by individuals— but what we’re discussing today is a way to lib­ erate the institution. I think community gardens have become more like institutions. Let’s liberate them and make them part of the everyday. I actually see amazing possibilities for collaboration, just having this discussion with you—about how you can get people to come see! And once they see it, they’ll want it. At one point in time, you couldn’t find salad—the kind of salad that we had today—you couldn’t find it. But now, if you don’t have it, people will say, “I want this.” I

think that has shown me that it’s not going to happen overnight, but if you start thinking about this idea of quality over quantity, no matter where, people will see it. AW: But again, I always go back to education. We need to rebuild our public education system from the bottom up, from kindergarten through college. California used to be number one in the country. The people who are going to be running this state in another ten or fifteen years: we need to educate them about these values.

Walter Hood (landscape architect), George and Judy Marcus Garden of Enchantment, de Young Museum, 2008

We have an amazing opportunity because of health issues. People have been thinking the way they are about the world because they’re eating fast food; they’re being fed the values of fast, cheap, and easy. It’s not just about food and wanting a restaurant to be open twenty-four hours a day, or eating in the car, it’s about music, architecture—disposable everything! If people don’t get it in a minute, they’re not interested. It’s about clothes. I go to the King School playground every morning, and there are clothes all over the place. When I was a kid, I had to come back and pick up my jacket! Even in the dark, I had to walk back, and get my jacket. Now nobody cares about the jacket! Who cares? We’ll get another one. And 95 percent of the population is eating fast food. We’re in a very rarefied place, here. But the

173 Coming Back to Our Senses  

great news is that, because food is a necessity, bringing children into a relationship with the food, one that’s about care, and authenticity and tastiness, and things that are good, kids are immediately connected. I mean, it’s not that hard. And once they get connected like that, with those values, with slow food instead of fast, they prefer to sit in the afternoon in the Edible Schoolyard classroom with the teachers doing their homework, rather than going down and buying candy with their friends at the corner store. It’s because there they have the real experience, not the virtual. We could go on for days. You have good ideas. WH: Searching is good. AW: Searching is good.

jacob bedford brenson mitchell baas schötker tatari eidelman bernstein

documenta 12, Kassel, 2007

On Experiencing Art

mary jane jacob

Mary Jane Jacob is professor and executive director of exhibitions and exhibition studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. As chief curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago and Los Angeles, she staged the first U.S. retrospectives of European ­artists Magdalena Abakanowicz, Rebecca Horn, Jannis Kounellis, and Christian Boltanski, as well as the first retrospective of Gordon Matta-Clark and early projects of Ann Hamilton. Shifting her workplace from the museum to the street, she critically engaged the discourse around public space, with site-specific and community-based programs including “Places with a Past” (1991) and “Evoking History” (2001–8) in Charleston for the Spoleto Festival USA, “Culture in Action” (1993) in Chicago, and “Conversations at The Castle” (1996) in Atlanta. She co-edited Buddha Mind in Contemporary Art with Jacquelynn Baas (University of California Press, 2004).

Being with Cloud Gate

When I go to my office at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, I walk by, ride past, or go under and into Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate. This work is an everyday experience for thousands—a part of life—and for many others a destination or discovery. It is what we thought public art was supposed to be: a large-scale sculptural object on a plaza. But it is also more than we imagined: an engaging, relational experience that transcends its objectness. It is a reminder that even though today we have an abundance of works and projects of wide-ranging and diverse genres that we call public art, few works actually open themselves up to anyone, anytime. Cloud Gate is validation that this can happen. It is more than the urban park site that makes this work public; it is truly so because it engages us in an intimate and giving way, offering not one but multiple ways of experiencing it. To know this work, to experience it, you have to be there, in the midst of its continually changing presence, as it enfolds you into a dynamic play.

1. Going through the sculpture’s

This gate offers passage between realms rather than spaces. In the conventional ambulatory sense, it leads nowhere.1 Yet like monumental gates, it is celebratory and creates a ceremonial place (weddings frequently use it as a photo site). A gate frames a view, but this one draws us into itself. It captures and holds, enabling us to focus and to experience. For Anish Kapoor, who has spoken of “gateways to the mystery of life,”2 this is a gateway to something other than a place. This gate is a way to the interior, to a deeper self, to a different point of view or a greater consciousness, a point of access to an immaterial level of reality—some would say the ultimate reality. It becomes eminently clear why Kapoor seeks to leave behind the personal mark of the artist’s hand: this is no stylistic trope, but a necessary method of working with material to achieve a state of “an-art.”3 Aiming to move beyond ordinary things, the work achieves a transubstantiation of material so that we might reflect on meanings beyond the thing itself.

2. This and other otherwise unat-

177

opening only takes you from one side of the open plaza area to the other. The work centers on a rectangular paved area accessed from the east as part of the park landscape; from the west you must climb staircases to the north and south to reach this section of park. This is due to the fabricated nature of Millennium Park; it is land built atop railroad tracks and a parking garage in what was previously an open area of lower elevation. So these steps connect the park/plaza level to street level along Michigan Avenue.

tributed quotes are from the author’s unpublished interview with the artist for the Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, 1997. 3. In her essay in the present volume, “Unframing Experience,” Jacquelynn Baas discusses the Sanskrit prefix an as fundamental to both the Buddha’s revolutionary concept of anatman (not-self) and Duchamp’s revolutionary concept of the anartist (not to be confused with anti-artist).

This way of achieving occurred to the artist during a revelatory, oft-cited trip back to India in 1979, which touched off a new level of understanding—one that could not be learned but was known through intuition, a deeper inherent way of knowing that had to be recalled and brought to consciousness by experience. There heaps of pigments, like spices in markets, seemed to him “an astonishing kind of revitalization, an affirmation that all the things I thought to be true, were true.” Impermanent, requiring a ritual-like remaking each time, like a sand mandala, the pigments projected an internal energy all their own. Inspired by this way of working, he returned and began the series 1000 Names (1979–82), which mined pigment’s “remarkable materiality all its own.” This allowed Kapoor to remove “traces of the hand,” so that these works have their own integrity. As the artist said, they “are not made; they are just there: self-made objects, autogenerated, revealed objects.” They were what he has elsewhere called “non-form.” We see this again, more than twenty-five years later, in Cloud Gate, where an intensive off-site fabrication process and on-site polishing were required to erase all seams of construction. In the city we became aware of its massive materiality and the human effort of its making when even the roads required reinforcement to Millennium Park, Chicago, 2008, with Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate at far left

bear the transportation of its 110-ton weight. Like other great monumental wonders, it is beyond its material making, not just because it is a sustained and wellexecuted technical tour de force, but because it leads us to wonder: “How could this mass have been made, come here, be?” It seems to have just landed here. Not just because it is becoming (as public art can, over time) an icon, but because it has a rightness, a rootedness. Like the Bamiyan Buddhas, which stood for a millennium and a half: they were not just made at or located in Afghanistan but were there. This sense of being is integral to the work and to our experience of it.

4. Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics (1975; Berkeley: Shambhala, 2000), 25. 5. This is one of the bases for John Dewey’s aesthetic theories. “Works of art are means by which we enter, through imagination and the emotions they evoke, into forms of relationship and participation other than our own” (John Dewey, Art as Experience [1934; New York: Pen-

So Cloud Gate emerges from material whose aspects can be quantified and detailed, to become immaterial and of another order. These coexistent, contradictory states of being are not just a complex method of making but also the message. This is suggested, in part, by its title, which tells us that it is a gate for clouds. Clouds are constantly moving; they have a life of their own. This work, while tangible and physical, is a living thing with its own vitality: it appears to be constantly changing. Dynamism is the continuous state of Cloud Gate, belying its materiality. This fluid state conveys, or rather embodies, its nature. Its non-form and “an-artness” are intensified by its reflectivity, so that it simultaneously is in this place and dissolves away from it.

guin, 2005], 247). “We understand [the work of art] in the degree in which we make it a part of our own attitudes, not just by collective in­ formation concerning the condition under which it is produced. . . . To some degree, we become artists ourselves as we undertake this integration, and, by bringing it to pass, our own experience is re-oriented. . . . This insensible melting is far more efficacious than the change effected by rea­ soning, because it enters directly

Kapoor has said his works “are manifestations, signs of a state of being, metaphors for a state of becoming or a transitional space, an in-between space, a space of becoming. Not a fixed or positive identity, but an illusionary space.” This conception of reality is at the core of the eastern worldview shared by Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoism. Fritjof Capra in The Tao of Physics found accord between these traditions and twentieth-century physics. As the properties and interactions of subatomic particles are of an intrinsically dynamic nature, and all matter is made of them, the universe is thought to be constantly in flux, moving, alive, and dynamic. We “see the world as a system of inseparable, interacting, ever-moving components with man being an integral part of the system.”4 Moreover, with Einstein’s developments in relativity theory, space is no longer conceived of as three-dimensional, and at times not even as a separate entity. Clouds are not only a manifestation of this, as any matter could be, but a ready and salient example; they offer us a way of visualizing flux in daily life and become a koan for understanding greater implications. When we approach Cloud Gate and see clouds moving, we see ourselves in dynamic flux, too. Yet this is no funhouse mirror trick. The power of phenomenological experience over the intellect, in light of the extraordinary potential for this that art possesses,5 is one of Kapoor’s major contributions to contemporary artistic vocabulary. Thus, the viewer comes into a magnetic rapport with such related mirrored works as Untitled (1997), Iris (1998), and S-Curve (2006). They speak to us in the immediate sense and of something larger, as the titles sometimes tell us: Turning the World Inside Out (1995), Turning the World Upside Down III (1996). In Cloud 179 Being with Cloud Gate  

into attitude” (ibid., 348).

6. The Korean-born artist Kimsooja, in speaking of her work A Laundry Woman—Yamuna River, India (2000), mentioned such an

Gate we glean at once our materiality and immateriality, the impermanence of our own being, and are offered a glimpse into our very nature as a constantly changing state of becoming.6

experience: “There’s a lot of detail on the surface of the river. . . . It’s all reflection: there is no sky, but it looks like sky; there are no real birds passing, only reflections of birds from above. So, in a way, the river functions as a mirror of reality. . . . In the middle of standing there, I was completely confused: Is it the river that is moving, or myself ? My sense of time and space were turned completely upside down. . . . I finally realized that it is the river that is changing all the time in front of this still body, but it is my body that will be changed and vanish very soon, while the river will remain there, moving slowly, as it is now. In other words, the changing of our body into a state of death is like floating on the big stream of the river of the universe. Doing this performance gave me an important awakeness.” (In-

For Kapoor, non-form “relates to the theme of Origin and to the idea that the work has its own reality independent of me. . . . I’ve always been interested in the idea that the artist can somehow look again at that very first moment of creativity, when everything is possible and nothing has actually happened. It’s a space of becoming.” Where does this birth of self in body and spirit, and also of the universe, occur? In a biological sense it springs from a center, a core, a place within. Interiority: that which is hidden away, that which we seek to know or have access to, the mysterious about which we can never fully know. The source of all life escapes the eye but is known, a thing we believe in, a force of energy felt. Hidden from view, things develop when made fertile and given time. The seed prepares to sprout; the womb protects the first stages of life; ideas push their way through cloudy moments to clarity and an idea is born. Entry to the creative place of the body remains masked, inaccessible; yet we are offered a way to sense it in works like Kapoor’s wall installation When I Am Pregnant (1992). His Marsupial (2006) gives a concave profile, a different model of fertility, yet a deep and wondrous, secure and sustaining place. There is a swelling in these works as in nature—a bursting pod, a belly, a head about to explode—as each strains to contain energy, then transforms, and with release the offspring becomes itself another source of energy in an unending, limitless process of generation.

terview with Kimsooja by Mary Jane Jacob, in Buddha Mind in Contemporary Art, ed. Jacquelynn Baas and Mary Jane Jacob [Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004], 217.)

At the same time, we are conditioned to perceive the unknown, void, or emptiness as an abyss, as threatening darkness. This seemingly contradictory view of creation occurs on an everyday level: in creativity we experience the difficulty of enduring the pressure and uncertainty of not knowing, waiting, maybe preferring to evade the pain of pushing it forward to take shape, because it is confusing, unsettling, even though the elation of the creative act can follow. Creative chaos: a dynamic struggle to find a way, grappling with moments of clarity, elusiveness of thoughts and means to find a way, a form, a solution that might also mean the destruction of what existed in order to move forward. We sense two states pulling at us. But rather than oppositional, both are needed to bring forth something new. Myths tangle with these human states and everyday truisms. Kapoor’s work often recalls the Hindu creation goddess Kali. This powerful figure is a mother-source of all Being and great protector as well as the annihilator, dark and violent. Her complexity demonstrates the way in which divergent states coexist to make up a whole. Rather than being dualistic, they are contained within Kali and can be found in other aspects of Hindu and Buddhist culture. “Complementary cosmic forces creating and sustaining the universe through their essential and intimate interaction,”

Mary Jane Jacob  180  

in Kapoor’s words. Fundamental polarities of Hindu metaphysics are part of the culture and are tensions in balance or multiple aspects to draw upon in achieving the whole: “The One Center divides into two modes of expression that together initiate a process of change through history. The experience of opposites allows for the expression of wholeness.” In Indian culture, among the primal dualities that are one are the lingam and yoni. Male and female in one entity, two faces or dispositions of the same, Cloud Gate is at once vagina and testicles—both containers of creative forces. Neither one nor the other but both. Like much of Kapoor’s work, it constitutes a third space: in between, not inside or outside but both, and without boundaries. At the point of origin and seat of creativity lies infinite potentiality. Non-form allows multiple and infinite views; not fixing us in a point of perception we have had before means great possibility, the chance to see anew as if for the first time, the way to see beyond and deeper as if we had wisdom of the ages. Indeed we do, within intuition. Buddhism calls this “empty space.” Kapoor says, “The more I empty out, the more there is. Emptying out is filling up.” So while we see ourselves in Cloud Gate as in a mirror, as we can perceive the fleetingness of time and ourselves within this enfolding, the march to death is exchanged for the potential of eternity. At the point of origin, in the center of the work, in the great opening or womb we see ourselves and others go on forever, unending, endur­ ing into infinity. “You cannot enter the void, but viewing gives prospect to the wholeness it contains.”

Anish Kapoor, Cloud Gate (details), 2004

7. “The metaphor of Indra’s net was developed by the Mahayana Buddhist school in the third-century scriptures of the Avatamsaka Sutra, and later by the Chinese Huayan school between the sixth and eighth centuries. Buddhist concepts of interpenetration hold that all phenomena are intimately connected” (http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Indra’s_net). 8. Dewey, Art as Experience, 2.

Thus Cloud Gate enables a dual state of reflection, offering a way for levels of ex­ perience. This first occurs by showing us our outward appearance and that of ­others—a superficial or transitory state captured for a moment in its mirrored surface. No wonder people are initially compelled, drawn, to capture themselves and their friends and loved ones, to halt time, however briefly, to be eternal. Then there is the longer or second look. Upon reflection, using this work as a vehicle or devotional object of practice, deeper thought can be cultivated. It becomes “a gateway to eternity.” Cloud Gate is about self and beyond self. “I think about the kind of space that there might be in an image of a meditating Buddha, where all attention is ­focused inward,” Kapoor has said. In this infinite space and time, we can also see reflected a complex unity. Indra’s net is a Buddhist model for concepts of the infinite interconnectedness of the universe as one of emptiness or potentiality and codependence. “Indra’s net symbolizes a universe where infinitely repeated mutual relations exist between all members of the universe.”7 Also called the jewel net of Indra, it is visualized as a web of connections between uniquely multifaceted jewels positioned at each vertex. In each jewel the whole is reflected; as one part moves, all are affected and respond. Cloud Gate’s jewellike surface has many jewels reflected in it, many beings in relation to each other. Does the public have this experience? Yes, on multiple levels and over time. John Dewey wrote: “In order to understand the meaning of artistic products, we have to forget them for a time, to turn aside from them and have recourse to the ordinary forces and conditions of experience that we do not usually regard as esthetic.”8 Dewey was speaking of art in general. The reflection on art experience that he evokes, triggered by life’s occurrences, can link back to works we have seen anywhere and anytime—in cities or in nature, in the space of a gallery or open space. Yet how we come to know a work of art, how it seeps into our consciousness, what references it accrues, and which moments in our lives it figures into, vary greatly. For those who do not have occasion to walk into, say, the adjacent Art Institute of Chicago or do not imagine themselves frequenting a museum, for those who go to the museum’s galleries on occasion but are on the city streets every day, Kapoor’s work affords many more opportunities for exchange and encounter. In just the short time it has existed here, it has come to occupy multiple memories of many of us already. It is a collective experience, too. Thus, it is all the more important that Cloud Gate is a public work: a work that we can easily revisit over time and that revisits us as we go about life. It is a new center of the city and a center from which we gain energy. This mirror that Kapoor has given us is not so much a mirror of the self or of the city as a mirror into the self and in which we can see ourselves in union with

Mary Jane Jacob  182  

others. As individuals and together, we are a constantly changing landscape. Hence the very notion of a reflection of our image or of the city’s skyline, capturing a moment or enduring image, is outside the realm of the real. Cloud Gate provides proof of this through the palpable experience of energy-in-flux it affords, giving us a way to see the transience and fleetingness of our life and that of others. In doing so, what it does reflect is beyond self and place and is located in an understanding—whether on a level of conscious cognition or intuitive knowledge—gleaned through its presence in everyday circumstances. So while the material in its making and this place in the work’s siting have been transformed, it is our own experience that undergoes the greatest transformation. And such an “act of transformation,” according to Kapoor, “is the same as an act of prayer, consecrating a particular time which is separated from one’s ordinary life.”

Anish Kapoor, Cloud Gate (detail), 2004

christopher bedford

Formerly an assistant curator in the Department of Contemporary Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Christopher Bedford is curator of exhibitions at the Wexner Center for the Arts, The Ohio State University. His curatorial projects include a Chris Burden retrospective, a mid-career survey of LA-based artist Mark Bradford’s work, Mixed Signals: Artists Consider Masculinity in Sports (a touring exhibition organized for Independent Curators International), and Silvia Kolbowski: an inadequate history. Along with co-curators Jennifer Wulffson and Kristina Newhouse, Bedford was the recipient of the 2009 Fellows of Contemporary Art Curators’ Award for the exhibition Superficiality and Superexcrescence: Surface and Identity in Recent California Art. He holds a BA in art history from Oberlin College and is a PhD candidate in art history at the Courtauld Institute of Art, where he is writing his dissertation on Chris Burden’s early performance work under the supervision of Mignon Nixon. Bedford has published in the Burlington Magazine, Artforum, Art in America, Tema Celeste, Sculpture Journal, Frieze, The Art Book, Afterall, October, and caa.reviews, and is currently working on edited volumes for Duke Uni­versity Press and the Sculpture Journal. He is on the editorial board of the LA-based journal X-TRA.

This Is Nowhere Precognito

“Everything I know grew out of the art. I am not a very literate person—I read almost not at all . . . I pick up almost no information in that manner. Everything I know I learned from being in the studio, standing in front of what is considered to be an art act.”1 Similar statements by Robert Irwin have been summarily dismissed as contrived “macho ignorance” by critics and art historians suspicious of the artist’s consistent claim that the logic of his practice departs fundamentally and absolutely from any other related fields of inquiry, including aesthetics and philosophy.2 And Irwin’s position is to some degree disingenuous since, as his few but dense published writings and innumerable public lectures attest, he is not only unusually well read, but an extremely learned and capable synthetic thinker with a ready command of Husserl, Wittgenstein, Sartre, Hegel, Merleau-Ponty, and, crucially, Alfred Schütz. In what follows, however, I want to measure and evaluate the merits of the trenchant ontological distinction Irwin maintains between visual experience and intellection. Drawing on the artist’s own published writings, on art criticism, and on select works by phenomenologists and aestheticians he identifies as important, I will trace an arc from the late 1960s to the present that illuminates the relationship of theory to intellection in Irwin’s work, with particular attention to the way this relation inflects the experience of seeing, writing about, and evaluating his achievements.

1. Robert Irwin, in a transcribed, undated public interview, curatorial files, Department of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, p. 14. 2. Anonymous source, in Lawrence Weschler, Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 176. 3. For a detailed analysis of the dot paintings, see Christopher Bedford, “Abstraction as Investigation: Robert Irwin’s ‘Dot Paintings,” Burling­ ton Magazine 149 (September 2007), 621–28. A good barometer of these debates is Artforum’s 1967 summer special issue, American Sculpture, which featured “Art and Objecthood,” by Michael Fried; “Notes on Sculpture, Part 3,” by Robert Morris; “Towards the Development of an Air Terminal Site,” by

Perception Alone

Robert Smithson; and “Paragraphs

When Irwin explicitly began to probe questions of perception with his early line paintings of mid-1961, he had not yet developed the theoretical armature necessary to justify his inquiry. This was a distinct disadvantage in the latter half of the 1960s, a contentious, polemical period marked by Michael Fried’s seminal disavowal of minimalism in 1967, as well as equivalently vitriolic defenses of avant-garde sculptural practices by the likes of Sol LeWitt, Donald Judd, and Robert Morris, artists who doubled as their own best critics.3 By 1968 Irwin was working on his disc paintings,

on Conceptual Art,” by Sol LeWitt.

185

4. Irwin, in Weschler, Seeing Is Forgetting, 99. 5. Ibid. 6. Donald Judd, “Specific Objects,” 1964, Arts Yearbook 8 (1965), 94. 7. Rosalind Krauss, review of exhibition at Pace Gallery, New York, Artforum 8, no. 4 (December 1969), 70. 8. Jane Livingston, letter to the editors, Artforum 7, no. 1 (Septem-

and it was this series that would throw the incompatibility of his work and contemporaneous criticism into high relief. Irwin’s discs are wall-mounted, ambient installations that built upon his desire to move beyond conventional definitions of painting to foster a purely perceptual, immaterial encounter. According to Irwin, “The question for the discs was very simple. How do I paint a painting that does not begin and end at the edge but rather starts to take in and become involved with the space or environment around it?”4 Accordingly, the discs are mounted 20 inches from the wall and cross-lit from all four corners by lights of equal intensity. As a result, the wall-mounted disc, the pools of light, and the interlocking shadows form one integrated image without edges to create, as Irwin notes, “an evenness of presence.”5

ber 1968), 6.

Owing in part, perhaps, to the lack of a codified critical manifesto like Judd’s “Specific Objects” (1964),6 or a vocal advocate to delineate his core conceptual concerns and carve out his niche in New York, the discs came under fire from powerful critics like Rosalind Krauss, who in a 1969 review accuses Irwin of continuing to “take the picture’s relationship to the wall as one which automatically guarantees illusion.” “Therefore,” she continues, “although his work is no longer physically framed or portable in the old sense, it settles itself comfortably within the traditional notion of the easel painting. Nowhere in the experience of the ephemera of color and shadow in Irwin’s work is one confronted with the slightest hint that the artist has anything like critical distance from the illusionistic effect he has staged.” Krauss concludes with the acerbic charge that the discs are both “thoughtless and effete,” noting also that her “distaste is not softened by the awareness of the elaborate machinery needed to stage Irwin’s work.”7 Some of Irwin’s defenders, like the prolific critic Jane Livingston, understood early on that his work was impoverished considerably during the 1960s by the lack of a sustained critical discourse to bolster it. “What is not grasped,” Livingston claims in a systematic repudiation of a review of Irwin’s discs written by Emily Wasserman for Artforum, “is that Irwin’s disc paintings operate in such an unconventional set of terms that the viewer has precious little to prepare him for the experience. As with all radical art, its true meaning temporarily withholds itself.”8 In retrospect, it is apparent that Irwin’s series of dot and disc paintings represent a systematic dismantling of doctrinaire Greenbergian modernism. The dots in particular unravel the logic of Greenberg’s lore of flatness and Fried’s prohibition against theatricality, staging, and testing the dialectic of flatness and illusion according to the rules of modernism, only to find those rules too constraining. In the absence of a properly circulated theory, however, the experience of these works lacked form and so was, and often still is, written out of the canonical debates that define this passage in American art history.

Robert Irwin, Untitled, 1969

187 This Is Nowhere  

9. Weschler, Seeing Is Forgetting,

Cognito

178.

During the 1970s Irwin began to address the theoretical silence surrounding his work. According to his biographer Lawrence Weschler, “For months on end [Irwin] would abandon his art-world interactions altogether. You could find him, almost every day, either by the falafel stand in the village or in a shady grove on the UCLA campus, a pile of well-thumbed volumes arrayed by his side. He read with heartrendering [sic] deliberation. Five, six, eight hours a day: two, three pages. He stubbornly puzzled over each turn of phrase, never giving an inch, evaluating every move.”9

10. Robert Irwin, “The Process of Compounded Abstraction—Notes toward a Model,” 1977, reprinted in Robert Irwin: Primaries and Secondaries (San Diego: Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, 2008), 149–62. 11. Ibid., 153.

The bohemian romanticism of Weschler’s account notwithstanding, this period of textual study gave rise to Irwin’s first fully reasoned theoretical tract, published in the catalogue of his retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1977.10 Subtitled “Notes toward a Model,” it is in this text that Irwin first articulates a claim that has provided the infra-logic for his practice since and is, by no coincidence, the central organizing principle for the present essay, namely, that perception precedes conception. Irwin claims that the moment of precognitive perception shapes our experience of the world, not the learned structures and careful conceptualizations of the conscious mind. Perception, for Irwin, is the “originary faculty of the unique individual, our direct interface with the phenomenally given, that seemingly infinitely textured field of our presence in the world. Our tactile senses continuously present us with an extremely complex tactile synesthesia of data. . . . Perception, ideally, offers a pure re-presentation of the essential natures of that field.” Conception, on the other hand, is a subset of perception, and can be defined as “the almost simultaneous faculty of the unique individual to appropriate and mold reality as presented in perception into a systematic experience of cognizance; we are speaking of a process of selection, enhancement, and re-presentation from the tactile form of perception to the forms of mental imagery (words, pictures, symbols, perspectival frameworks, etc.), those representation events which code input to the brain, plus those processing events which again comprise the character of the intrinsic organization itself.”11 It goes without saying that with his obdurately abstract, environmentally scaled installations, Irwin eschewed conception in favor of a return to the “originary faculty” of pure perception.

Robert Irwin, Untitled, 1969–70

Though his essay is dense, tightly argued, and persuasive, Irwin’s medium is visual, not textual. As Weschler has noted in reference to the artist’s writing, “Ironically, his passionate defense of the experiential becomes mired in his intellectualizing style—something that seldom happens in his speech.” And never, it must be added, does such miring occur in his site-conditioned, site-specific, and site-­responsive works, which offer experiences mercilessly purged of intellectual and cognitive demands; these are seamlessly haptic and optic, not pre-, post-, or anti-intellectual, but simply and completely experiential. Though Irwin denies that his work as an artist entails a conventional studio practice, it seems quite evident that his ­occasional forays into theory represent a mode of working very close to studio practice, similar in application, perhaps, to another artist’s preparatory sketches, albeit sketches intended for display. Irwin’s labored textual “sketches” absorb and contain all the weight that his weightlessly elegant site installations lack. They are theoretical propositions purged of theory.12

12. Irwin notes convincingly that his decision to theorize his own practice was in large part a concession to an art critical climate in which textual justifications—often authored by artists—were understood increasingly as intrinsic to art production. “At the time,” he says, “no one was so inclined so I took on the task” (Irwin, in conversation with the author, May 7, 2008). 13. Alfred Schütz, The Phenomenol­ ogy of the Social World, trans. George Walsh and Frederick Lehnert (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1967). 14. Ibid., 249.

The hard-won positions offered in “Notes toward a Model” owe a great debt to the German phenomenologist Alfred Schütz, a thinker Irwin singles out as particularly formative and influential for him. Unlike Maurice Merleau-Ponty, whose name is synonymous with phenomenology within art history, Schütz lies outside familiar discursive bounds. This is somewhat ironic, since of all the phenomenologists, Merleau-Ponty included, it was Schütz who articulated most clearly and with the most verve a brand of phenomenology that attempted to reconcile the ideas of his teacher, Edmund Husserl, with the social world. His only book, The Phenomenology of the Social World, published in English in 1967, contains three chapters of philosophical discussion bracketed by an introduction and conclusion that relate his analyses to society. While is it not my objective here to relate his arguments point by point to Irwin’s practice, I do want to demonstrate very briefly how and why Schütz’s book proved to be such a fertile site for reflection and negotiation as Irwin began to give form and language to his investment in perception.13 Schütz examined how the human being or “sociological person”14 analyzes and typifies streams of amorphous sensory experience into stocks of knowledge shared by us all. Taken as a whole, these stocks of knowledge constitute the “life world,” our experience and knowledge of which are one in the same thing.15 Our primary understanding of lived experiences is, for Schütz, pre-phenomenological; that is, meaning resides in an experience that precedes language and the cognitive processes of perception. This is the crucial point for Irwin, since Schütz’s claim opens up the possibility of a purely intuitive response to visual stimuli. As should be clear from this very brief account, Schütz’s core ideas align closely with Irwin’s own understanding of our perceptual and cognitive processes. For example,

189 This Is Nowhere  

15. This account is derived in part from Schütz’s Phenomenology of the Social World, and in part from the account of Schütz offered in The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, ed. Ted Honderich (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 848–49.

16. Robert Irwin, in conversation with the author, April 4, 2008. 17. Rosalind Krauss, “Overcoming the Limits of Matter: On Revising Minimalism,” in Studies in Modern Art: American Art of the 1960s, ed. John Elderfield (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1991), 123–41. 18. Ibid., 131. 19. Ibid. 20. Irwin, in conversation with the

like Schütz, Irwin claims that it is the human capacity for intuitive, prelingual, precognitive understanding that unifies the cognitive self and the sentient self, allowing us to feel and experience time and space.16 It is Irwin’s consistent desire to parlay this theoretical construct into a real perceptual situation that provides the basis and motivation for the ineffable, abstract, environmental installations that have become synonymous with his work since he abandoned conventional studio practice around 1970. Ephemeral site projects like Scrim Hall (1988) are not mere illustrations of a theory, but moments that embody the radically reduced essence of an expansive proposition, and in this sense, the rigid ontological line Irwin draws between ideation and its manifestation may in fact be quite accurate.

author, April 4, 2008. 21. Irwin, in Weschler, Seeing Is Forgetting, 203.

“Notes toward a Model” was published in 1977, and by 1991 at least one notable critic, Rosalind Krauss, had revised her previously stated opinion in an essay published by the Museum of Modern Art entitled “Overcoming the Limits of Matter: On Revising Minimalism.”17 Here Krauss, without referencing her negative review of 1969, lauds Irwin’s achievement with the disc paintings, declaiming their investigation of the perceptual process and trumpeting the way they “seem to hover above a clover-leafed bed of shadow,” dissolving the “concreteness of the picture plane, to diffuse the edges of the pictorial object, to create the sense that an almost invisible veil was floating.”18 Glossing East and West Coast concerns, she concludes that the minimalists were “making objects,” while out West Irwin was “finding phenomena,” a sweeping historical assertion that radicalizes and champions the efforts of a formerly marginalized figure.19 Even Krauss, a critic renowned for maintaining a cold, unflappable distance from her object of study, here, consciously or not, falls into line with Irwin’s account of his own work, a tendency that, as we shall see, becomes increasingly commonplace. To riff on the Cartesian construction, if “Notes toward a Model” was Irwin’s first expression of public cognito, by 1991 his convictions were gaining considerable recognition. Precognito

By Irwin’s own admission, he is no longer the voracious reader he was during the 1970s, no longer scouring and interrogating the work of phenomenologists and aestheticists, painstakingly measuring their conclusions against his own, sentence by sentence.20 Having constructed and enumerated the theoretical framework for his art, he now works steadily from project to project, responding to specific environmental conditions with appropriate aesthetic solutions, still mining the possibility of a precognitive moment of contact with a given visual stimulus wherein the viewer might see and feel differently, if only for an instant. Thus, after a career of restless and relentless self-reflection, Irwin’s central concern remains con­stant: “All I try to do for people is to reinvoke the sheer wonder that they perceive anything at all.”21

Christopher Bedford  190  

A signal example of this very ambition is his installation Who’s Afraid of Red, Yel­ low & Blue 3 (2007, pp. 14–15) at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, a project that in many respects aptly sums up Irwin’s preoccupations and achievements to this point in his career. This work does not strive for stylistic originality or material innovation, but instead draws forthrightly on the rhetoric of a recognized icon—Barnett Newman’s work of the same name, painted in 1966—to establish an entirely new proposition. The six lustrous, high-key panels that make up the work—​t hree laid on the floor and three suspended from the gallery ceiling— seem, despite their considerable size and heft, to evaporate into the cavernous gallery, reflecting and enlivening that environment, while assimilating unexpected

Robert Irwin, Square the Room, 2007

22. Leah Ollman, “The Geometry of Sight,” Art in America 96, no. 4 (April 2008), 120. 23. Irwin, in Weschler, Seeing Is Forgetting, 106. 24. Carol Diehl, “Robert Irwin at PaceWildenstein,” Art in America 95, no. 8 (September 2007), 158–59.

imagistic content from the architectural details: hulking materiality rendered purely immaterial. Absorbing and absorbent, the installation narrows and focuses one’s perception, while welcoming in the surrounding world. Early in his career, Irwin had focused his efforts on a narrow set of analytical problems in order to free his practice from the restrictions of received ideas. Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow & Blue 3 is the hard-won inheritance of those investigations, loudly signaling the expanded field of possibilities opened up by a career of committed perceptual research and experimentation. So often misaligned with the progress of Irwin’s career, the ever-fickle arc of criticism has recently intersected favorably with his work. Much less partisan and dogmatic in character than in previous decades—the 1960s in particular—the cause of criticism today seems better adapted to Irwin’s line of questioning than ever before. It is striking, for example, to hear echoes of Irwin’s own ideas in current writing on his work. In an extended review of Irwin’s large survey exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, for example, Art in America critic Leah Ollman begins her review: “Robert Irwin’s articulation of the critic’s task bears a serious resemblance to the role he has adopted for himself as an artist. He has shed old pictorial habits—the frame, the mark, the imposition of meaning—and created an art of pure experience. . . . For 40 years, he has cultivated an advance in our percep­ tual responsiveness.”22 Irwin once confessed to his biographer Lawrence ­Weschler, “I know the world isn’t breathlessly following my every move, saying after each new step, ‘Ah ha, now he’s made that move, it must mean this . . . ’”23 While it may be true that there is no contemporaneous critical record that maps point by point the slow unfolding of his visual experiments—from the stripe paintings to the dots to the discs and then away from painting altogether—the strikingly methodical teleology of Irwin’s work has become apparent retrospectively and has now emerged as the primary current that guides writing on his work. In a recent review of ­Irwin’s Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow & Blue 3 , for instance, Carol Diehl notes: “In exploring the relationship between physicality and the illusion of physicality, Irwin, for most of his long artistic life (he is now in his late 70s) has striven to avoid creating things for the viewer to focus on, de-emphasizing the object in order to highlight pure experience. Now he’s made what can only be seen as objects—­gigantic paintings, really, and in intense color—yet in a strange way they remain as neutral as a scrim. While the panels are supremely beautiful in themselves, they are still only catalysts for what is at the heart of the work—the experience of that which hangs in the air between them.”24 Finally, Ollman’s account of the exhibition Primaries and Secondaries ends with an implicit deferral to the conceptual logic Irwin has enumerated throughout his career: “At 79, Irwin continues to refine his sensibility, staging opportunities for us to expand our capacities to see and experience what is before us. ‘Seeing,’ he has

Christopher Bedford  192  

written, ‘is the initial act of valuing, and the nature and infinite potential of human beings to see and to aesthetically order the world is the one pure subject of art.’ What is at stake in his art is also what is at stake in the wider world—our ability to perceive and feel.”25

25. Ollman, “Geometry of Sight,”

In his essay, “Some Notes on the Nature of Abstraction,” Irwin says that “the critic’s only valid function is to clear away the extraneous considerations and return us, naked, to the experience before us.”26 The almost forty-year critical arc I have sketched here maps select moments of consonance and dissonance between Irwin’s practice and its critical reception. From the 1960s, when Irwin’s work outpaced the discourse of modernist criticism—and, indeed, the artist’s own capacity to properly articulate his concerns—to the present moment, when the reason of his work is more accessible and intelligible to critics than ever before, it is evident that the experience of art is mediated and conditioned by the conventions of looking and the priorities of critical analysis that hold sway at given moments in history.

27. Krauss, “Overcoming the

“History,” as Rosalind Krauss rightly suggests, “is a matter of who gets to write it.”27 In claiming that critics today are finally able to “see” Irwin’s work, I am not suggesting that we find ourselves in a posttheoretical or postcritical moment wherein the art writer simply surrenders all agency and criticality to the moment and succumbs to the considerable temptations of flowery ekphrasis. Nor am I insinuating that Irwin’s is a post- or extra-theoretical art. Quite to the contrary. I want to suggest that Irwin’s ongoing enterprise represents the distillation of theory into a purely visual experience, theorized as visual practice, then rationalized as theory— one that demands a consonant critical language subtended by historical consciousness and theoretical sophistication, but alive to the rhetoric of an art that provides experience beyond the limits of conventional language. Unencumbered by theoretical orthodoxies, art criticism on Irwin’s current work reflects the inheritance of numerous theoretical positions—phenomenology, structuralism, and semiotics, for example—but, like Irwin’s work, the writing is not inscribed with or delimited by those concerns. In other words, the discursive boundaries of looking have broadened sufficiently so that a new and, dare I say, truer understanding of Irwin’s work has become available, and this is due in no small measure to ­Irwin’s own efforts. This is not to suggest by any means that this symmetry of concerns will persist, nor should it. Doubtless we are on the precipice of another sea change whereby Irwin’s work will fall out of focus—and perhaps favor—for critics with a different agenda. Irwin has noted that “less is more when less is the sum total of more.”28 It appears, for now, that Irwin and his critics have reached consensus on this point, and we are able to see and write about Irwin’s work for what it is: a theoretically invested practice, but not a theory-dependent experience.

193 This Is Nowhere  

177. 26. “Some Notes on the Nature of Abstraction,” in Robert Irwin: Pri­ maries and Secondaries, 168.

­L imits of Matter,” 138. 28. Irwin, in Robert Irwin: Primaries and Secondaries.

michael brenson

Michael Brenson is an art critic and art historian who has written and lectured extensively on arts policy, arts institutions, art criticism, and modern and contemporary art. He was an art critic at the New York Times from 1982 to 1991. He is the author of Visionaries and Outcasts: The NEA, Congress, and the Place of the Visual Artist in America (New Press, 2001) and Acts of Engagement: Writings on Art, Criticism, and Institutions, 1993–2002 (Rowman and Littlefield, 2004), and is working on a biography of David Smith. Brenson has curated several exhibitions, including Magdalena Abakanowicz: “War Games” at PS 1 ­Museum in Long Island City, Queens. He teaches in the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College and taught at Bard’s Center for Curatorial Studies. Brenson received a PhD in art history from the Johns Hopkins University.

The Look of the Artist

“What are you looking at?” These five words have continued to announce themselves to me since 1996, when I heard the sculptor Juan Muñoz declare them his first artistic question. For him, the question was definitively formulated in the legendary 1656 painting Las Meninas, in which Velázquez stands, brush ready, palette in hand, in front of his easel, confronting a presence outside the painting that is at once his model and everyone else who would ever look at the painting and at its image of him. Muñoz was raised in Madrid under the despotic paranoia of Franco. Building this question into his art was a way of ensuring its connection to his harrowing histories while at the same time anchoring his art within the most generative and unprovincial artistic tradition of Spain. He knew as well that this was also one of the defining questions of modernity. Through picturesque sculptural tableaux whose farcical and often ominous occurrences all but compel spectators to ask this question, he believed he could maintain exchanges with other twentieth-century artists and writers for whom the question was equally inescapable, including Alberto Giacometti, Robert Smithson, Jeff Wall, Luigi Pirandello, Samuel Beckett, and Michel Foucault, whose meditation on Las Meninas at the beginning of Les Mots et les choses (The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences), became an instant landmark for many people, including me, who read the book soon after its publication in 1966.1 Muñoz spoke with precision and zest. His ideas were sharply focused, sculptural in their clarity of edge and shape, but as often as not they emerged in an almost oracular flow, sometimes seeming to burst or even bolt from him, communicating with infectious relish both the constraint he had known and the freedom he had earned. His ferocious and at times demonic independence was unmistakable, but so, too, was his memory of limits. When I remember him speaking the words “What are you looking at?” I hear the pressure of his consciousness and concentration and his compulsion to inquire. At the same time, I hear his heightened awareness of betrayal

195

1. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Hu­ man Sciences (1966; New York: Pantheon Books, 1970), 3–16.

and threat. While his figurative and architectural sculptures are so visually arresting that they invite investigative inspection, they seem to be watching anyone examining them. They also communicate a vaster and more portentous looking, a 24/7 machinery of surveillance that animates the floors and walls of his work. Who are you? his question seems to ask. But also—who the hell are you? And what are you doing here? What right do you have to look? What are your plans for what you are looking at? Are you fool enough to believe that you or anyone else can look with impunity at art or at anything else? ­Muñoz’s question identi­fies looking with astonishment and accusation. Someone who lives with the authority of this question knows what it means to be treated as an outsider, an interloper, a trespasser, an other in a world in which power is elsewhere and hostile, the relationship— and threshold—between inside and outside, subject and object, is a fraught yet ­i ndispensable negotiation, and the right place can become the wrong place at any time. I know this question. Growing up in the 1950s in Manhattan, I periodically heard “What are you looking at?” directed at me in a subway or park or on the street. The question was always aggressive and often menacing. Whenever it was directed at me, I had reason to fear. Everyone raised in a big city develops a muscularity and acuity of looking. Every city dweller knows that codes of looking change from one neighborhood to the next, one race and class to the next, one subway car to the next, and that looks can kill, or lead to being killed. They know that looking can communicate disapproval and transgression, as well as beseeching, compassion, desire, seductiveness, and love. They know that even the most habitual acts of looking are saturated with psychology and history. When Muñoz declared as the first artistic question “What are you looking at?” I’m quite sure the “you” did not refer only to another person looking at his or another artist’s work, or at him. I think the “you” was also inside him. I think “What are you looking at?” was also a question he regularly asked himself, in any number of situations. After that 1996 conversation with him, I found myself increasingly asking myself: “Michael, what are you looking at?” For me, this question is attached to another one, easier and less confrontational, one I am more likely to ask myself in the presence of art by artists who are students and/or friends: “What am I looking at?” For many writers, curators, and artists, this may be their first question when they enter a studio or exhibition. The question opens into others, some of which could not be more concrete. Why is this a painting, photograph, or video? Why is it this size, in these materials, in these colors? Why this image? Sooner or later in this process of engagement, the questions become dramatic. What is it in

Michael Brenson  196  

this work that is trying to speak, trying to exist? Where is this something that is trying to speak coming from? Where and what is the work? Such questions reinforce the difference, as well as the potential for connection, between me and it. What kind of discussion is the art hoping to initiate, in what and whose language? Does it want me to be part of this discussion? What is the art asking of me? What do I want from it?

Juan Muñoz, Conversation Piece (Dublin) (detail), 1994

One reason I feel closer to sculpture than to any other artistic discipline is that since Constantin Brancusi, sculpture has continued to radiate a constellation of basic questions: What am I? the sculpture asks. Who are you? Do you want to be here with me? Or I with you? Why are we here together? My hunch is that most writers, curators, and critics who regularly ask themselves, “What am I looking at?” don’t hear the more reflexive and dissonant question. They don’t hear the “I” as also a “you”—or the “you” in the “I.” I can’t detach “What am I looking at?” from “What are you looking at?” The latter establishes within me an awareness that even in the moments of intense concentration I’m a stranger to myself, or rather, that there’s a stranger in myself, or rather, that there’s a crowd in me, each member of which has had and still seems to want some voice in my perceiving and thinking. “What am I looking at?” gives me the feeling of being welcome to exchange territories in an encounter whose potential cost to me is moderated by a process of reciprocity and transition. “What are you looking at?” asserts the shock and risk, the challenge to process, of another experience of looking, one in which I do not know who is holding the cards and whether there is even the possibility of a conversation. The question establishes the existence in me of a vast psychological, sociological, political, and linguistic network. I can find in this network my family history and my relationships with my parents; their status in an America that rescued and betrayed them; a host of other personal relationships; my place in or displacement from what has been determined by others to be my generation; all that I know and the industries of art and thought I cannot possibly keep up with that inscribe and defuse whatever I write and think; my travels to places far from the United States, where people looked at me uncomfortably and I had to constantly adjust to perspectives alien to my own. “What are you looking at?” reveals the stakes in looking. It lets me know that as I am looking, I am being looked at. That the realities and needs of the art and artists whose company I am in are distinct from mine and have as much agency as I have. And that even the most solitary looking is an exchange of unfathomable complexity in which it is impossible to discover everyone present. Maybe this helps to explain why after sustained concentration in art spaces people may suddenly become acutely aware of everyone else around them, who, even as strangers, seem somehow with them, and why the encounters with art that seem the most internally intense also therefore seem to have the most social potential. Why the most irreplaceable private experiences with art become at some point insufficient and the most intimate journeys are likely to generate a hunger for collective communication. Why each artist who matters brings into being a potential community.

Michael Brenson  198  

Where is the art experience? Is it in exhibitions, fields, galleries, homes, magazines, museums, streets, studios, classrooms, the Internet, the intellect, the imagination? Is it in us, the art, the artist, everyone else encountering the art with us? In all of these sites together? Do we want to be looked at through our looking, and, if so, what in ourselves, and how much of ourselves, do we want to be seen? The ways in which we relate to these questions reflect the profoundly idiosyncratic ways in which we orient ourselves toward memory. In galleries and museums, in classrooms and studios, perhaps everywhere and with everyone, our responses are informed by what and how much we remember, by the speed or slowness of remembering, and by the rigidity or suppleness of the languages in or through which memories are suppressed or revealed. Many artists learn early on that access to memory and history cannot be separated from creativity or intelligence and make a conscious effort to clear passages into their personal histories. They interpret emotional and intellectual quickness as proof that these passages into their creative sources are unimpeded. At the end of the foreword to his 1964 book, The Anxious Object, the art critic H ­ arold Rosenberg wrote: It matters not in what mode an artist begins, whether with colored squares, a streak of black, the letter “D” or the drawing of a nude. All beginnings are clichés and the formal repertory of modern art was fairly complete by 1912. It is finding the obstacle to going ahead that counts—that is the discovery and the starting point of metamorphosis. Uniqueness is an effect of duration in action, of prolonged hacking and gnawing. In the course of engagement a mind is created.2 What roles do obstacles play in the making and reception of art? What is the importance of the obstacles confronted by an artist to the experience of his or her work? Does this experience depend on an engagement with our own obstacles, which test our limits and are capable of provoking tantrums of frustration and despair? What is the relation between obstacle and access, obstacle and desire, obstacle and insight, obstacle and affection, obstacle and language? Although I’ve been writing about art for thirty years and looking at it since I was a child, my first response when I enter an art gallery, museum, or studio is now more likely to begin with a moment, or many moments, of disorientation. Often I feel a screen or film between the art and me. In a museum, I walk through a show quickly before returning to the beginning, where I may then stand and not move, waiting for acclimatization. It’s not just with mega exhibitions or with art I don’t know that I may feel awkward and uncertain. Just because I have been thinking about an artist’s work for five years or thirty is no guarantee I have a sense of secure

199 The Look of the Artist  

2. Harold Rosenberg, The Anxious Object: Art Today and Its Audi­ ence (New York: Horizon Press, 1964), 20.

3. Juan Muñoz, conversation with James Lingwood, May 2001, in Juan Muñoz: Double Bind at Tate Modern (London: Tate Publishing, 2001), 74–75.

knowledge when I see it again. The issue is more than the challenges of the art, more than the velocity of change and the bombardment of information, which revive and smother memory and make each passing moment a new filter and screen. It’s also site. In most galleries and even in familiar museums, no matter how many times I’ve been there, at first I don’t understand where I am or what I and the work are doing there. But all this only partly explains why Muñoz’s question “What are you looking at?” still seems prophetic to me. Why I can’t stop hearing him say it. And why if anyone else had spoken it to me, it probably would have had no impact. In an interview with James Lingwood about Double Bind, his 2001 installation within and beneath the vast (almost 500 feet long, 80 feet wide, and 100 feet high) Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern in London, Muñoz said: Most of the time if you walk through the big museums you can see that people don’t look. Or maybe they look in a different way. They walk through museums as if they were walking in a modern street, like Walter Benjamin’s idea of the arcade, strolling past elegant objects that they probably could not afford to buy. They are just surrounded by these images and these moments of luxury. . . . And you are the maker of an object and you wonder what is your role in relation to all this.3 Muñoz refused to allow viewers to assume a connection between looking and knowing. “Between the seer and the subject of the gaze there is a gap,” he wrote in the acknowledgments for the catalogue of Double Bind. In one of his early sculptures, there is a switchblade stuck to the back of a banister; you have to look to see it, but looking won’t undo the shock from the sadistic prankishness of its placement. Muñoz’s Conversation Pieces, from the late 1980s and early 1990s, consist of slightly smaller than life-size bronze figures with odd limbs and heads, and spheres for legs and feet, who seem like cruel twists of fate, no more able than their spectators to decipher what they are and the subterfuges of their behavior. In Double Bind Muñoz raised the stakes. What spectators were confronted with was still enigmatic and hypnotic, still a crime scene, but it was not mischievous. The heart of it was, in Muñoz’s words, “an extreme image.” Its main tableau included a vast grayish floor with more than twenty trompe-l’oeil holes painted across it. Toward the back of the Turbine Hall were two shafts in the floor. Rising and falling within them were elevators, each one open, without a front door, so everyone could see into them. The higher the elevators climbed the more unprotected the spaces inside them seemed, and the more it seemed as if people had been thrown out of them and lost. When the elevators disappeared under ground, the disappearance suggested silencing and entombment. Then the elevators again popped up and revealed their emptied chambers.

Michael Brenson  200  

Juan Muñoz, Double Bind (detail), 2001

Visitors first encountered the installation on the ground floor as they emerged from the stairs. Obliged to stand behind a wooden barrier, like people viewing a parade, they could not get close to the elevators, which they had to watch from a distance of some three hundred feet. Several floors up, from behind the window of a roughly twenty-foot-long viewing area, a smaller number of people watched the installation as well. Looking up some five stories at these spectators was something like looking up at figures in a baroque ceiling but not at angels. From below, those human beings—looking at this scene of disaster from a place of refuge, like a luxury box, within a museum—seemed more than complicit. More than any other looking at this work, theirs seemed violent. Their protected looking brought into Muñoz’s spectacle a sense of the unspeakable. In August 2001 Muñoz himself disappeared, dead with shocking suddenness of an esophageal aneurism at the age of forty-eight. Two weeks after his death, after months, if not years, of planning, of studying—looking at—America and its people, terrorists in two pirated planes hit the World Trade Center, nearly three thousand people fell and vanished, and Americans, like millions of people in other countries, were faced with a new order of spectacle. Hardly anyone could absorb what he or she was looking at. When the first plane hit the World Trade Center, I was walking west in Midtown. Later, after the Archives of American Art (part of the Smithsonian Institution, a government agency) closed around noon, I walked the mile home through ­agitated crowds and fretfully animated cross-class, cross-gender, and cross-generational conversations. As the day unfolded on television, I felt—at the time —that I was watching more than a historical event. I was watching its ownership claimed by interests that were violently disconnected from my past and present, including my childhood in Manhattan. More than three decades before the World Trade Center erected an imperial image of New York City as the world’s economic capital, my parents had arrived in the United States through the port of Manhattan. Even during my nearly two decades away from New York, I had always taken for granted that this was my town as much as it was anybody else’s. But watching the events of that day on television, I saw my Manhattan replaced by another one, in which politicians, the media, many other Americans, and “the American nation” were vigorously invested. This New York was consolidating itself in a Lower Manhattan that was not the Lower East Side, or Ellis Island, or immigrant America, but the symbol of American economic might. It was this America that Al Qaeda had attacked. It was this America that, as a result of the attacks, would become identified with the “American way of life.” For everyone in the city that day, the destruction and death were awful. It was horrible to see thousands of people terrified and crushed and to feel my hometown horribly wounded. It was alarming to breathe

Michael Brenson  202  

that toxic yellow air, even as all of us, including the volunteers and firefighters who risked and in many instances lost their lives, were assured by political leaders that the air was not dangerous. In the production of the narratives that with breathtaking speed began vying for ownership of that day, including those that the Bush administration would use to justify its “state of exception,” “extreme rendition,” and global “war on terror,” my family’s New York—my New York—was buried. On that day, I saw the ruthless logic of economic and political power without being able to have any effect on it, and I understood, once and for all, the noxious efficacy of the official. When Muñoz and I spent the day together in Spain in 1996, we spoke for a long time about Giacometti (1901–1966), who has been part of my life since 1967, when I presented a paper on him in a graduate seminar on modern sculpture. Describing an experience in 1945 in a newsreel theater called “Actualités Montparnasse,” just after World War II, Giacometti, who used words like “screen” and “curtain” to describe his lifelong struggle, intensely solitary and intensely social, to understand looking, said: The true revelation, the real impetus that made me want to try to represent what I see came to me in a movie theater. I was watching a newsreel. Suddenly I no longer knew just what it was that I saw on the screen. Instead of figures moving in three-dimensional space I saw only black and white specks shifting on a flat surface. They had lost all meaning. I looked at the people beside me, and all at once by contrast I saw a spectacle completely unknown. It was fantastic. The un­ known was the reality all around me, and I no longer knew what was happening on the screen! When I came out onto the Boulevard Montparnasse, it was as if I’d never seen it before, a complete transformation of reality, marvelous, totally strange, and the boulevard had the beauty of The Arabian Nights. Everything was different, space and objects and colors and the silence, because the sense of space generates silence, bathes objects in silence.4 Now the miracle is the technology. The spread of unprecedented connectivity goes hand-in-hand with unprecedented disconnection, a conflict exemplified for me by the new emblematic image of the big city dweller, absorbed in one cell phone conversation after another while blind to everyone and everything else sharing his or her space in a restaurant or on the bus or street. When I look at images on digital cameras and cell phones, I don’t know what I’m looking at. They don’t cohere. When I see myself in digital images, I feel entombed. Who is the person in these images? What is the relation of these machines to me? When I am obliged to have digital photographs taken of me, my hope is not to look good or even presentable. My hope is to survive.

203 The Look of the Artist  

4. Quoted in James Lord, Giacom­ etti: A Biography (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1983), 257–58.

5. Marina Abramovig, interview with Mary Jane Jacob, in Buddha Mind in Contemporary Art, ed. Jacquelynn Baas and Mary Jane Jacob (Berkeley: University of ­California Press, 2004), 191. 6. Ibid., 190.

In her interview with Mary Jane Jacob for the 2004 book Buddha Mind in Contem­ porary Art, Marina Abramovig said she “dedicated The House with the Ocean View to New York.”5 The performance unfolded over twelve days at Manhattan’s Sean Kelly Gallery. Speaking about the performance, Kelly mentioned Joseph Beuys’s 1974 action piece at the René Block Gallery, Coyote, I Like America and America Likes Me, and said that after 9/11 he hoped Abramovig’s performance could have a similar impact on New York City. In The House with the Ocean View Abramovig, who was born in Belgrade in the immediate aftermath of World War II, engendered an experience of looking that was not informed by shock, distrust, and incomprehension. It did not ask, “What are you looking at?” A telescope was placed in the audience’s space and focused on her. People could watch her expressions and the rest of her body in intimate detail. Her acceptance of their looking was unconditional. For the performance, the gallery built three raised, white, sparsely furnished compartments along the wall farthest from the street entrance. One was for sleeping, another for sitting; the third functioned as a bathroom. Between the compartments, instead of doors, were open portals through which Abramovig could move. Because the compartments did not have ceilings or walls closing them off from the rest of the gallery, Abramovig, whether naked or robed, could not hide. Each raised platform was connected to the floor by a ladder with six rungs composed of stainless-steel butcher knives. Taped to the floor, just in front of and parallel to the compartments, between the ladders and the rest of the gallery, was a white line. For twelve days Abramovig fasted and lived in this “house.” Everything she did while the gallery was open, was visible. “I had such a short time to create The House with the Ocean View,” Abramovig told Jacob, “You can’t imagine the stress. I had a deadline; I had to come up with ideas. It was like this complete high adrenaline. But then, I came to the point of total silence, nothing was moving. I mean absolutely nothing was moving, except the normal activity of peeing, taking a shower, drinking water, sitting and standing for twelve days . . . and the gaze to the audience.”6 Periodically and sometimes for many minutes, her eyes met those of people sitting or standing in the darkened—but not entirely dark—room. Sometimes after catching someone’s eye, Abramovig sat on the edge of the platform and remained focused, unblinkingly, looking into the eyes of someone looking at her. “You know how people go through galleries . . . three minutes here, two minutes there, just go in and out,” she told Jacob. “I had people staying. I had the people who would come every single day, some for hours, five hours sit there. I had people going to work

Michael Brenson  204  

with their briefcases who would wait in the front of the gallery for it to open, just to be there, like addicts, just to have that gaze, and then go out into the world, because out of that they can get something.”7 I visited three times, each time remaining longer. Partly because of her fasting, her eyes communicated trance, a state Giacometti periodically fell into while working, as had perhaps all the great modernist sculptors, beginning with Brancusi. Her eyes seemed both entirely present and to be drawing energy from somewhere else, something in her and behind or beyond her, and channeling it into the present. Her exchange of gazes with visitors did more than hold the attention of the people she looked at. It neutralized the cold eye of the telescope. It activated the space and made everyone in that almost cavelike interior seem, individually and collectively, a living sculpture, part of a very old and yet very vital practice, and ritual. I think Abramovig is right when she said that the performance created a “space without time”—as opposed to time without space, an affliction with which a great many people are trying to cope. There is no end of need for artists who remember history, and understand the consequences of overlooking, and the deepening crisis of looking, and who are willing to take the risks of looking back.

205 The Look of the Artist  

7. Ibid.

w. j. t. mitchell

W. J. T. Mitchell is the University of Chicago’s Gaylord Donnelley ­Distinguished Service Professor of English and Art History and editor of the interdisciplinary journal Critical Inquiry. A scholar and theorist of media, visual art, and literature, he is associated with visual culture and iconology (the study of images in the media), and known for work on the relation of visual and verbal representations in the social and political contexts. He is the recipient of the Lowell Prize in literary criticism from the Modern Language Association and the Morey Prize in art history from the College Art Association. His pub­ lications include What Do Pictures Want? Essays on the Lives and Loves of Images (University of Chicago Press, 2005); The Last Dinosaur Book: The Life and Times of a Cultural Icon (University of Chicago Press, 1998); Picture Theory (University of Chicago Press, 1994); Landscape and Power (University of Chicago Press, 1994), and Art and the Public Sphere (University of Chicago Press, 1993).

Headless/Heedless Experiencing Agora

Agora, a grouping of more than one hundred headless statues by Magdalena Abakanowicz gathered at the south end of Grant Park in Chicago, produces an uncanny experience of simultaneous archaism and contemporaneity. Certainly the statues look “old-fashioned” in the straightforward sense of being monumental, erect human figures, masculine in shape, made of very traditional materials. But their archaism seems deeper than their resemblance to traditional figurative sculpture. The massive cast-iron body casts look like petrified or fossilized relics, as if they had been excavated from an archaeological dig, their rusty bodies oxidizing at their contact with the air and the weather after millennia underground. Like the famous terra-cotta army excavated from the tomb of the first Chinese emperor, near Xi’an, they seem to come from another time and place, weirdly displaced into a modern urban park where they are flanked on the south and west by high-rise apartment buildings, on the east and north by the green spaces of the park and the expanse of Lake Michigan. At the same time, they seem to capture some essential feeling about this specific historical moment. Abakanowicz has been exploring the theme of the headless figure for a number of years, of course. But why do her images now strike me as an apparition of the historical present, as if her figures had somehow congealed in their molten forms some essential intuition into the dominant ideologies and images of our time? Perhaps it is because there is something omnipresent and overdetermined about the image of headlessness today. We live in an age of beheading, both of human beings and of statues, and spectacular decapitations of both circulate in film and on television. The faceless, hooded torture victim has become a ubiquitous icon of the so-called “war on terror,” and videos of decapitation circulated on the Internet

207

Magdalena Abakanowicz, Agora, 2006

have become the central icon of the terrorist response. Decapitation is what is done to idols, whether as an iconoclastic spectacle of the destruction of religious icons (as in the Taliban’s destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan) or in the symbolic deposing of “heads of state” (as in the hooding of Saddam Hussein’s statue with the American flag before it was toppled during the U.S. entry into Baghdad). In its most radical contemporary form, the headless or faceless figure evokes what Jean Baudrillard has called the “acephalic clone,” the organ donor cloned to provide spare parts for its parent organism. And on every side we find figurative forms of headlessness: headless or­ga­n izations, corporate bodies whose heads are missing when responsibility is called for, empty-headed heads of state, bodies without hearts, souls, guts. T. S. Eliot would have recognized them as reincarnations of his “hollow men,” newly born in our century. Sociologist David Riesman would have seen them as postmodern literalizations of his “Lonely Crowd.” Headlessness in sculpture is usually a mark of iconoclasm and vandalism, the ruination of a human image by attacking the head, decapitating it, smashing its nose (and, usually, castrating it with a parallel blow), or shrouding it in a hood, rendering it blind and helpless, an object of pity and scorn. Abakanowicz, however, has defeated iconoclasm. She gives us her statues predecapitated, pre-castrated, even pre-eviscerated. Does this not, in a sense, make them immune to iconoclasm, like those roman-

209 Headless/Heedless  

tic fragments of antique statues and artificial gothic ruins that adorn English landscape gardens? The only damage that could be done to them would be to place heads on them, especially lifelike, flesh-colored, animated human heads, moving their eyes and mouths, speaking and looking about. This would be the most grotesque parody imaginable, an act not of murder, destruction, or disgracing of the bodies, but of repairing them, bringing them back to life and wholeness. What does it mean that this idea seems obscene? Why would “recapitation” be just as horrible as “decapitation”? Why is the Venus de Milo more beautiful without her arms than she would be with prosthetic limbs attached? Abakanowicz has said that faces and hands are the parts of the body that lie, but the body cannot lie. What is the truth of these bodies? As I walk amid the gathered statues of Agora, the most obsessive point of my attention is what is not there, what they are missing: they are headless and gutless. Their bodies are hollow, as if eviscerated, leaving only a scooped-out interior and a frontal surface swathed in what look like winding sheets, fabrics that seem to have merged with the skin in a kind of wrinkled, seamless integument, as if to remove the garments of these figures would be take the skin along as well. From behind, the hollow casings of their bodies invite the beholder to reach into them, to place one’s own living body inside the cast-iron shells and breathe life and warm flesh and blood into the cold metal casings. But it is a warm, sunny day in September, and I find a curious warmth as I lean into the backs of the rough metal interiors. Then there is the peculiar arrangement of the figures. In contrast to the Chinese emperor’s terra-cotta army, they are without discipline, disorganized. They do not stand in ranks or rows, but seem to be striding along independent paths, a characteristic that further enhances their uncanny character. If they were static, standing still, their headlessness would be normalized, but their dynamic positions, one foot in front of the other, turns them into figures of “living death,” moving corpses, cast-iron zombies. And it seems crucial that their implied motions are uncoordinated, as if they were milling about, each going off in its own direction, indifferent to one another and oblivious to any organizing principle. This makes them headless in a collective sense as well, for in contrast to the usual image of the crowd or mob, they are leaderless, lacking in a central focus or objective. Placed on an urban common, they have nothing in common, at the same time they seem almost (but not quite) identical—all the same height and proportions, differentiated only by the intricate folds and wrinkles of their surfaces. From a distance, they are all alike; up close, they are all different, but only superficially different. Their common hollowness and headlessness reunites them in similitude.

W. J. T. Mitchell  210  

So far, however, this is merely to describe them as objects, as material bodies with specific visual, tactile, and formal characteristics. To this we must add an account of something that is perhaps experientially prior to any physical encounter—the sense of them as human presences, images of beings like ourselves, members, however strange, of our species. And the only word that I can find to capture this quality is the notion of heedlessness, suggested partly by the pun that connects their aura of human presence to their inhuman and impossible physicality as headless figures. The Oxford English Dictionary says the Anglo-Saxon verb “heed” means “to pay attention, take notice,” “to observe, see, behold, take note of.” When the verb is nominalized, it becomes an object of specifically human relations, perhaps even economic relations of exchange and reciprocity: one “gives” or “takes” or “pays” heed, not just to something, but to someone: “My sone, gyve hede to my words”; “Democritus . . . paid no heed to their advice.” “Heed,” in other words, is more than paying attention, whether listening or watching. It is more than what one might call “animal cunning” and caution, an alertness, for instance, to the presence of danger. It is something more like intersubjective acknowledgment, the entry into an ethical relationship with another being, a moment of recognition that may be extended beyond species commonality to animals and perhaps even to certain kinds of objects. Erwin Panofsky famously compared the encounter with a work of art to greeting a stranger in the street by tipping the hat, a gesture that grows out of the medieval custom of raising the visor on a knight’s helmet to indicate peaceful intentions.1 “Heed,” then, is both given and taken, lent and paid back, and it means entering into a relationship of trust with another being, putting oneself in their care if only for a moment, as if their capacity for heeding were one’s own protection. Shakespeare captures this archaic sense of the word in Love’s Labour’s Lost when the witty Berowne disparages academic learning in favor of the pedagogy of love: Light seeking light doth light of light beguile; So, ere you find where light in darkness lies, Your light grows dark by losing of your eyes. Study me how to please the eye indeed By fixing it upon a fairer eye, Who dazzling so, that eye shall be his heed And give him light it was blinded by. (I.i. 77–83) Love is blind, of course, and heedless lovers notoriously “lose their heads”—or their maidenheads—in Shakespeare’s plays. But heedfulness is the study of this giveand-take, a discipline for transforming the blinding light of the other’s eye into the “heed” or protector of one’s own vision, and turning blindness into illumination. It

211 Headless/Heedless  

1. Erwin Panofsky, “Iconography and Iconology,” in Meaning in the Visual Arts (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1955), 26. See also author’s essay “Iconology and Ideology: Panofsky, Althusser, and the Scene of Recognition,” in Reframing the Renaissance, ed. Claire Farago (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), 292–300.

is, we might say, the bright, pacific side of the famous predatory and paranoid dialectic of “the Eye and the Gaze” described by Jean-Paul Sartre and Jacques ­Lacan, the moment of disarming the eye and “laying down the gaze.” Headlessness, then, is the radical physical expression of heedlessness, of the inability or refusal to pay attention, to give or take heed of anyone else. And that is the structural, or de-structural, principle at work in the arrangement of Abakanowicz’s figures, who obviously cannot pay heed to one another because they have been deprived of four out of the five senses. They are represented, most fundamentally, as unable to see or hear, and thus can only be aware of each other through the sense of touch, the most fundamental, primitive aspect of the sensorium. And, of course, none of them touches any of the others—though some of them might be thought of as “on a collision course.” They are a heedless, headless collective, apparently indifferent to each other and (of course) to the living, seeing, and hearing beholders who walk among them. One feels this as a slightly menacing quality of their monumental proportions: if they were to come alive and start moving, they would quickly trample any flesh-and-blood bodies in their midst with a blind, deaf indifference. If this is an “agora,” then, in the classical sense—a place of assembly for commercial and political activity—it is also a place to experience agoraphobia, which is not just the fear of heights, but of exposure to the multitude, immersion in a crowd in which one finds or loses one’s identity. In Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Man of the Crowd,” a spectral individual wanders the streets of the city following the crowds who are the condition of his own existence. If he finds himself alone, he falls into panic at the certainty that his very being will disappear. This tale suggests that there is a counterpart to the familiar fear of crowds, a kind of agoraphilia that draws us together like bees to a hive, huddling and herding ourselves together despite the uncoordinated heedlessness of each individual to any other. “There is safety in numbers,” as the saying goes, but also danger. In the midst of Abakanowicz’s Agora I cannot decide if I feel safe or endangered, protected or menaced, by the massive figures around me. Either way, I am drawn in by a kind of invisible gravitational pull to the most congested center of the crowd, where the body cases allow me to play hide-andseek with the geometric faces of the apartment buildings looking down on me to the south and west, and with the open spaces to the north and east. It occurs to me at this point that the gathering of statues is also an expression of this invisible, inaudible force that has drawn the figures together, sensing the presence of the others in a lateral gravitational field that draws bodies together before they actually touch one another. Perhaps Abakanowicz’s emphasis on the hollow, headless bodily surface and the garments that, as Marshall McLuhan would have

W. J. T. Mitchell  212  

said, are its primary extensions, compels us to notice this invisible tactile field. Could we call this a form of the “sixth sense,” which makes our hair stand on end when we sense, without hearing or seeing anyone, that someone is close by? Is this not another reason why touch is generally associated with the sensus communis, the master-sense that underlies and coordinates all the other senses, and the one that establishes, prior to seeing and hearing, our fundamental connection to other members of our species? And then I notice something that didn’t strike me before. There are two congested areas, two assemblies or crowdings in Agora, one to the north and one to the south, and they are loosely linked by a few outlying figures who seem to be striding ­between them or heading off to unknown destinations. What can this mean? Is

Magdalena Abakanowicz, Agora, 2006

it not a question of what Ludwig Wittgenstein called “seeing as”? If Agora is seen (as the Greeks thought of it) as a commercial gathering place, then perhaps the suggestion is one of commerce between two gatherings, two markets, with “go-betweens” circulating between them. If an agora is regarded as a political gathering, then perhaps this is the moment of mitosis that is fundamental to political formations: the division into rival gangs, collectives, societies, teams— the division into “us” and “them,” friend and enemy, which (according to some theorists) is the basic formative principle of the political. Abakanowicz’s Agora, then, is a kind of meta-agora, a double gathering, a gathering of gatherings. Her agoras are, however, not at war but at peace with one another, milling about internally and then emitting emissaries who pass between the gatherings. They could be two families meeting to negotiate a marriage contract, two tribes gathered to discuss a treaty, two collective bodies in the process of forming or dissolving. And at this point I realize that my first impressions, or rather the pre-formed templates that I brought to this experience, have begun to reverse themselves. Instead of seeing a lonely, alienated crowd of hollow men from the outside, I have begun to feel the invisible gravitational pull of the crowd from within. I want to be in it, and I have this strange feeling that, despite its headless, headlong heedlessness, it wants me to mingle with it as well. And then it hits me that Agora is a kind of petrified or fossilized snapshot of the formative moment of human sociability as such. It is the moment just prior to heedfulness and mutual acknowledgment that brings human beings together, or perhaps just after it, when the heeding is of something larger than another individual, the collective body that is about to coalesce—or not—in this public space. Abakanowicz has captured a moment very much like that in Robert Frank’s photograph of pedestrians passing one another heedlessly on a crowded street in New Orleans and yet not colliding. It is that delicate, almost imperceptible moment of transition, the pre- and post-social gathering in which organisms, all the way from the social insects to the primates, come together in an intricate, randomized dance, a kind of Brownian movement that is usually replaced immediately by a “coming to order” or a dispersal. Agora occupies the fragile, transitory state of undecidability between these two possibilities. The meeting could be just beginning or ending. And we will never quite know which one it is, because its fleeting temporality is incarnated in massive iron figures anchored in concrete that will stand in these positions long after we pass from the scene. The Greeks had a practice of assembling a “forest of statues,” usually choroi, with one foot in front of the other, to represent the gathering over time of an imagined

W. J. T. Mitchell  214  

community of aristocrats that transcended city-state and tribal identities.2 The forest of statues was generally taken as symbolic of a cosmopolitan, Panhellenic community. Today, perhaps, in Abakanowicz’s updating of this ancient sculptural practice, the agora represents a common humanity that knows no borders, presents no stereotyped or lying faces, and is thus heedless of the racial, sexual, and religious divisions that plague our species, their hollow, headless forms invisibly coordinated by the horizontal gravity of the sensus communis.

215 Headless/Heedless  

2. I owe this factoid to Richard Neer, professor of art history at the University of Chicago.

jacquelynn baas

Jacquelynn Baas is director emeritus of the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and an independent scholar. She previously served as chief curator and then director of the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College. She has organized some thirty exhibitions and is currently developing a traveling exhibition entitled Fluxus and the Essential Questions of Life. Her recent publications include Buddha Mind in Contemporary Art, co-edited with Mary Jane Jacob (University of California Press, 2004), and Smile of the Buddha: Eastern Philosophy and Western Art from Monet to ­Today (University of California Press, 2005). Baas received her PhD in the history of art from the University of Michigan.

Unframing Experience

There is no art per se, only mutual transformations of works of art and observers. a l e x a nder d orner, 194 7

Manifesting Emptiness, an exhibition curated by Milena Hoegsberg at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, examined formal and philosophical approaches to empty space by artists ranging from Marcel Duchamp, Yves Klein, John Cage, Yoko Ono, and Nam June Paik to Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Kimsooja, and Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle. On view from August 24 through September 29, 2007, it was part of “fluXspace,” a series of projects, programs, and physical changes to the Betty Rymer Gallery intended to engage the questions: What is a gallery? Why do we make exhibitions? What do exhibitions have to do with the teaching and making of art? The works of art included or evoked were all in one way or another inquiries into the nature of nothing—territory that led me to explore a different question: How can art like this, art about “nothing,” effect change in the world? The fundamental way art acts in the world, as I am hardly the first to observe, is by changing consciousness.1 Changing how people “see” is one of the things modernism has been about. According to the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, consciousness is “the unified mental pattern that brings together the object and the self.”2 Pattern and analogy are key to how we think, which is why art is such a powerful consciousness-shaping force. Art reminds us of something, something about ourselves. Yet at the same time, art affects consciousness by pulling us out of ourselves. One reason art is an effective tool for changing consciousness is that the eye is like the mind—both function by shifting focus. This quality links the two so closely that “seeing” is a metaphor for “understanding.”

217

Epigraph from Alexander Dorner, The Way beyond ‘Art’: The Work of Herbert Bayer (New York: Wittenborn, Shultz, 1947), 226. 1. See, for example, Lawrence Rinder, ed., Searchlight: Conscious­ ness at the Millennium (London: Thames and Hudson, 1999), and Arthur Danto’s essay “The Gap between Art and Life,” this volume. 2. Antonio R. Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999), 11.

3. Nicholas Humphrey, Seeing Red: A Study in Consciousness (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006). 4. Nicholas Wolterstorff, Thomas Reid and the Story of Epistemology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 101. 5. Humphrey, Seeing Red, 70. 6. Ibid., 131. 7. John Dewey, Art as Experience

The psychologist and philosopher Nicholas Humphrey theorizes that sensation (the ongoing, moment-to-moment physical feeling of being alive) and perception (our mental apprehension, thought processes, and knowledge that generate recognition) are two quite separate activities that developed at different evolutionary stages.3 Because sensation and perception occur simultaneously, it is hard for us to separate them. The Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid defined perception as “the formation of immediate belief.”4 Perception is the framing and analysis of objects and events by the conditioned mind based on experience. We perceive a chair, for example, because we have previous experience with objects in the category “chair.”

(New York: Minton, Balch, 1934), 4–5. Along these same lines, in the last paragraph of the book Dewey states: “The union that is presented in perception persists in the remaking of impulsion and thought” (349).

Experience, however, is not perception; it is sensation—the immediate, emotional, active response to stimuli from sense organs and the brain. Sensation is feeling. What sensation does, according to Humphrey, “is to track [our] personal interaction with the external world—creating the sense each person has of being present and engaged, lending a hereness, a nowness, a me-ness to the experience of the present moment.”5 Sensation generates consciousness. What is the purpose of consciousness; why does it matter? Humphrey speculates that, from an evolutionary perspective, consciousness matters because it is its function to matter.6 At some point in the evolution of sentient beings, consciousness appeared with, as perhaps its most useful feature, the sense of a self whose life is worth pursuing. This obviously would have given our ancestors a competitive edge in terms of their own survival and the survival of their offspring. Consciousness has everything to do with our sense of ourselves as “beings.” This sense of a special self, Humphrey argues, is the source of our intuition that there is something about us that goes beyond the physical, that some people believe survives the death of the body. The mental pattern that creates consciousness is something we develop, and that we go on developing throughout our lives. Every experience modifies this pattern by creating physical changes in the brain, mutations of the mind—experience strengthens some synaptic connections while weakening others. In this realm, art, as the pragmatist philosopher John Dewey argued, is nothing special.7 Except for one thing: art is something humans “do,” on purpose, in order to generate mind-altering experience in themselves and others. The sense of being present and engaged that art practice generates in both artist and viewer is what makes art so satisfying. Art elicits our experiential engagement, which, like a sugar-coated pill, carries its own satisfactions, no matter how strong or bitter the content.

Jacquelynn Baas  218  

I want to suggest that there is an inverse relationship between the degree of framing or categorization with which perception “makes sense of” sensation and the effectiveness of art experience. The less “framed” the sensation, the more open the situation; the more unfamiliar the pattern of sense stimuli, the greater will be the impact on consciousness. Buddhists call this mental state “beginner’s mind” or “mind of don’t know.”8 It is an open, alert, nonjudgmental attitude toward experience that is cultivated in both meditation practice and art practice. This open, creative state of mind comes naturally to artists, which is why so many artists have been attracted to the teachings of the Buddha—they already “know” what he was talking about.9 Central to my thinking in what follows is the underrated relationship between the Taoist/Buddhist concept of emptiness and the preeminent cultural issue of the modern era—removing the barrier between art and life.

8. See, for example, Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind (New York: Weatherhill, 1970). 9. Buddhists texts became available to the educated public in Europe and America beginning in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. But it was not until the last quarter that various translations of Buddhist texts began to yield anything like a coherent understanding of Buddhist theories of mind. See Jacquelynn Baas, Smile of the Buddha: Eastern Philosophy and Western Art from Monet to Today (Berkeley: University of California

Many philosophies and religions emphasize wisdom and compassion. The teaching unique to Taoism and Buddhism is the teaching on emptiness: all things are “empty” of inherent self-existence. In Buddhist Tibet, wisdom is the female attribute; compassion, male. The visualized union of their manifestations generates, in the mind of the practitioner, a blissful experience of the so-called “empty” nature of reality. Taoist/Buddhist emptiness is the opposite of “empty” in the usual sense of this English word. It is full of a fundamental sense of connection and potential: there is nothing, including ourselves, that exists either separately or permanently. Everything is connected and in process. To perceive this counterintuitive reality is to experience emptiness.

Press, 2005). 10. Robert Lebel first published his story in André Breton’s journal Le Surréalisme, même in 1957. He republished it along with the novel in 1964, in La Double vue suivi de L’Inventeur du temps gratuit (Paris: Soleil Noir). “L’Inventeur du temps gratuit” has been translated into English by Sarah Skinner Kilborne with Julia Koteliansky and published as “The Inventor of Gratuitous Time by Robert Lebel” in

Now let me return to the question: How can art that encourages seeing “nothing” effect positive change in the world? One answer can been found in the work of two artists born more than fifty years apart: Marcel Duchamp and his godson Gordon Matta-Clark. For Duchamp, unlike Matta-Clark, there is no documentary evidence that he was influenced by Taoist/Buddhist perspectives on reality. There is, though, plenty of indirect evidence. I want to begin by expanding upon the concept of art as medicine—that “sugar-coated pill” I mentioned earlier. In “The Inventor of Free Time”—a story by Duchamp’s friend Robert Lebel published together with the novel Double View in 196410 —a character based on Duchamp says, “Everything announces a passage to go through, a rupture to realize. Between this world and the other, there’s no legendary transition, no discursive commu­ nication. No one offers us the key to some different nirvana because it seems as if, where we’re going, ecstasy has no reason to exist. . . . No ceremonial, no in­ cantations, no rites, but reaching the point of lucidity where the notion of time becomes a fruit one can peel,” and with his fingers he made these little, nimble movements.

219 Unframing Experience  

Toutfait, the online Duchamp journal (issue 2, 2000); http://www .toutfait.com/issues/issue_2/ Art_&_Literature/lebel.html. I have modified their translation somewhat.

11. Arturo Schwarz, The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp (1969, 1970; rev. ed. New York: Delano Greenidge, 2000), 597. 12. Michel Sanouillet, with Elmer Peterson, Duchamp du signe: Écrits, rev. ed. (Paris: Flammarion, 1975), 261–62. 13. This point was first made by Tosi Lee in “Watering, That’s My Life: The Symbolism and SelfImaging of Marcel Duchamp,” Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1993, 218.

A fruit presumably peeled in a spiral, like the corkscrew shadow in Duchamp’s socalled “last” painting, Tu m’, or the spirals of his “Precision Optics.” “I’m one of the rare ones to explicitly define [free time],” Lebel’s Duchamp character brags, “to the point where I can, without too much posturing, presume to be its inventor. . . . My ambition is to turn it into a real commodity, a simple object to buy and sell, just like those pharmaceuticals whose properties are known only to chemists, but which are nevertheless sold at every counter.” The statement is reminiscent of the two little “lights,” one red, the other yellow, that Duchamp said he dabbed onto an art-store print, which he then inscribed “Pharmacie.” “I saw that landscape in the dark from the train,” Duchamp later recalled, “and in the dark, at the horizon, there were some lights, because the houses were lit, and that gave me the idea of making those two lights of different colors . . . to become a pharmacy; or at least they gave me the idea of a pharmacy, there on the train.”11 Pharmacy wasn’t the only time Duchamp conceived of art as a cure. My own idea of art as a sugar-coated pill came from a letter he wrote to Tristan Tzara in 1922 proposing they produce a multiple consisting of four cast letters “D, A, D, A,” strung together on a chain together with what Duchamp described as A fairly short prospectus . . . [where] we would enumerate the virtues of Dada. So that ordinary people from every land will buy it, we’d price it at a dollar, or the equivalent in other currencies. The act of buying this insignia will consecrate the buyer as Dada. . . . [It] would protect against certain maladies, against life’s multiple anxieties, some­ thing like those Little Pink Pills for everything. . . . You get my idea: nothing “artistic” literary about it; just straight medicine, universal panacea, fetish—in the sense that if you have a toothache you can go to your dentist and ask him if he is Dada.12 From his dentist example, Duchamp’s “Dada” would seem to be someone who can give you relief. The Sanskrit word dadati means “giver,” and one of the Sanskrit names for Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, is Abhayam-dada. ­Dada—“giver”—is appended to abhayam, which means “fearless.”13 So the bodhisattva of

Marcel Duchamp, L.H.O.O.Q. (1919) from Boîte—Series F, 1966

compassion is “the giver of fearlessness,” a trait that would be very helpful in a dentist as well as an artist. Another thing about Avalokiteshvara is his ability to manifest as either male or female, depending on the requirements of the situation. The gender of the bodhisattva of compassion is thus open to artistic interpretation. Duchamp gave Leonardo’s Mona Lisa a mustache and goatee, bestowing on her a male alter ego that paralleled his own female alter ego, Rrose Sélavy. His caption, L.H.O.O.Q., read as a single English word, instructs us to “LOOK”! 14 On the other hand, said individually as French letters, their sounds make a sentence that translates as something like “she has a hot bottom.” Both meanings are conflated in Du­champ’s last major work, a startling diorama visible only to those willing to cross a small, dark room at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and “look” through two holes in an old wooden door. The two holes make binocular vision possible: Duchamp wanted his viewers, one at a time, to fully experience his three-dimensional diorama of a naked female within a mountainous landscape in a dancelike pose that reveals her “bottom.” Duchamp entitled the work Étant donnés, or Given. (There’s that Sanskrit da again—da, “give,” is the root of the French word donner.15 ) Where might the concept for this amazing scene have come from?

14. This reading of the title was, I believe, first pointed out by Theodore Reff in 1977 (“Duchamp & Leonardo: L.H.O.O.Q.-Alikes.” Art in America 65 [January–February 1977], 90). Its significance was

Its background resembles that of the Mona Lisa. But the strange pose is typical of Tibetan images of yoginis and dakinis: naked female figures who represent the transformative power of consciousness (p. 222). As a meditative object, the task of such an image is to help the practitioner integrate energies liberated in the process of visualization, or inner “looking.” Dakini is a Sanskrit word; in Tibetan, her name is khadroma. Kha means “celestial space,” or emptiness; dro means “moving”; ma signals her feminine gender. Thus, khadroma is a female moving, or dancing, within emptiness. Her nakedness symbolizes the nature of reality unveiled.

elaborated by Tosi Lee in his dissertation, “Watering, That’s My Life,” and his essay “Fire Down Below and Watering, That’s Life: A Buddhist Reader’s Response to Marcel Du­ champ,” in Buddha Mind in Contem­ porary Art,. ed. Jacquelynn Baas and Mary Jane Jacob (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 135. 15. Duchamp famously loved words—​ their derivations and multiple mean-

Like Duchamp’s figure in Étant donnés, khadroma’s arm is raised and her leg bent, although her genitals are not as open as those of Duchamp’s figure. From this point of view, the image who offers herself to us in Philadelphia would seem to be a West-

Marcel Duchamp, Étant donnés: 1° La chute d’eau, 2° Le gaz d’éclairage (Given: 1st The Waterfall, 2nd The Illuminating Gas), 1946–66

ings. In 1967 he disingenuously told Pierre Cabanne: “The word ‘art’ interests me very much. If it comes from Sanskrit, as I’ve heard, it sig­-

nifies ‘making’ ” (Pierre Cabanne, Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp, trans. Rod Padgett [1971; New York: Da Capo Press, 1987], 16). 16. From a 1953 interview with Dorothy Norman published in Art

ern version of the female Buddha, Vajrayogini, in her manifestation of emptiness. Both works quite remarkably conflate the bliss of seeing things as they really are— namely, empty of inherent self-existence—with the bliss experienced within the “emptiness” of the female vagina. And both are intended as objects of meditation: they are artistic tools for the transformation of consciousness.

in America 57 (July–August 1969), 38. I have reversed the two phrases for readability. 17. From a January 19, 1959, interview broadcast November 13, 1959, by the BBC as part of the series Art, Anti-Art; excerpts available at http://www.ubu.com/sound/ duchamp.html.

Marcel Duchamp worked to liberate art from the realm of what he called the “retinal” in order to make it more effective medicine for liberating the mind. “Whereas the modern approach to art is based on competition, on making art exoteric,” Marcel Duchamp told Dorothy Norman in 1953, “The true artist, true art, is always esoteric.”16 His work, like the work of the dada and neo-dada artists who followed him down this path, got dubbed “anti-art” by mainstream critics. In a 1959 interview with Richard Hamilton, Duchamp expressed his opinion of this term: I’m against the word “anti,” because [anti-artist] is very like “atheist” as compared to “believer.” An atheist is just as . . . religious . . . as the believer is, and an “antiartist” is just as much of an artist as the other artist. “Anartist” would be much bet­ ter . . . “an”-artist, meaning, “no artist at all.” That would be my conception.17 Hamilton restated Duchamp’s word as “a-artist,” which would seem to mean the same thing, and be more linguistically correct. But “a-artist” is not what Duchamp

Sarvabuddhadakini (khadroma), Tibet, 1800s, and Vajrayogini in Her Manifestation of Emptiness, Tibet, Shangpa Kagyu lineage

said, and Duchamp was nothing if not verbally precise. Duchamp’s “an” is a Sanskrit prefix. His choice suggests that what lay behind “anartist” was the fundamental Buddhist concept of anatman, or “no-self”—in contrast with Brahmanism’s at­ man or eternal soul. At the same time, anatman countered the opposite belief—in the annihilation of the self, which, the Buddha pointed out, presupposes the existence of a separate self to be annihilated. Anatman is no self at all, just as “anartist” is “no artist at all.”18

18. The Sanskrit prefix “an” becomes “un” in English, meaning “not” or “non-.” Another way to say the same thing would be “unartist”—a term Allan Kaprow, the originator of happenings, would adopt in the early 1960s for his own practice. See Jeff Kelley, Childs­ play: The Art of Allan Kaprow (Berkeley: University of California

This was Duchamp’s conception of the role of the artist—at least his own role as an “anartist,” whose most important work was “breathing.”19 This is why his work is impossible to “understand”: there’s nothing to understand. You are the one who makes sense of it, depending on who you are and how aware you are of the workings of the mind. Marcel Duchamp unframed the art experience, dubbing this process “extra-sensory esthetics.”20 The “empty” creative consciousness Du­ champ distilled in his work offers liberation from habits of perception— of space and time, of ourselves and others. His goal was freedom, for himself and for each of us to realize that we are artists of our own lives, to become “anartists.” Of course, his influence was huge. You could say that Marcel Duchamp is still changing consciousness by how he changed art making. Duchamp’s godson, Gordon Matta-Clark, was very much his own artist, with his own issues and concerns. But he spent a good deal of time with Duchamp in his youth, and traces of the older artist’s influence are woven throughout his work. The parallels are many: their numerous notes to themselves; their shared love of word-play; their mutual interest in “passages”—as in Duchamp’s Étant donnés, which first went on public view in 1969, one year after his death, and Matta-Clark’s Conical Intersect of 1975, which he also called Étant d’art pour locataire—roughly, “being about art for occupants.”

Press, 2004), 157ff. 19. At the end of his life, Duchamp told Pierre Cabanne: “If you wish, my art would be that of living: each second, each breath is a work which is inscribed nowhere, which is neither visual nor cerebral. It’s a sort of constant euphoria” (Cabanne, Dialogues, 72). Duchamp’s stepson Paul Matisse wrote of him: “When asked, he used to say that he did nothing, that he was just a breather . . . and it was the truth, despite the fact that many of us thought that he was joking. . . . And what did he know? He knew nothing, as he was perfectly content to tell us” (Paul Matisse, “Some More Nonsense about Duchamp,” Art in America 68, no. 4 [April 1980], 82). 20. Paul Matisse, Marcel Duchamp: Notes (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1983), n. 220. Somewhat unusually, this note is in English. 21. Henri-Pierre Roché, “Souvenirs

Then there is Matta-Clark’s term for his artistic practice. Trained as an architect, he called the free-form art he and his friends engaged in “anarchitecture,” by which he seems to have meant a subversive process of creating spaces of mental freedom. Just as Duchamp’s “anartist” was “no artist at all,” so Matta-Clark’s “anarchitecture” was no architecture at all. It was “art for occupants”—people, the public, the society of his time—that responded to the human need to breathe, to be free of the confining walls of social stricture. Perhaps the most striking parallel is an undated manuscript text in which MattaClark played with Duchamp’s motto, “There is no solution because there is no problem,”21 in terms that suggest the four fundamental truths of the Buddha:

223 Unframing Experience  

sur Marcel Duchamp,” La Nouvelle N.R.F., 1, no. 6 (June 1953), 1136.

Gordon Matta-Clark, Conical Intersect (also called by the artist Étant d’art pour locataire and Quel Con), Paris, 1975

(1) We experience life as unsatisfactory (2) because we resist change. (3) It is possible to dismantle our resistance to change (4) by cultivating attitudes and behaviors consistent with the perception of the interrelatedness of all things—the socalled “middle way.” To see everything as interrelated is to remove the framing devices that limit our perception. “There are no solutions because there are no— problems,” Matta-Clark reminds himself in his note. “There are no solutions because there is nothing but change. There are only problems because of human resistance. Passing through resistance—surprise—is passing through and seeing what you have always expected. . . . Surprise is a state of consciousness.”22

22. Gloria Moure, Gordon MattaClark: Works and Collected Writings (Barcelona: Poligrafa, 2006), 122. 23. Ibid. 24. From an interview with Judith Russi Kirshner in Gordon MattaClark (Valencia: IVAM Centro Julio Gonzalez, 1992), 391. 25. See Thomas Crow’s essay “Gordon Matta-Clark” in Gordon MattaClark, ed. Corinne Diserens (Lon-

He relates these observations to his work in another note: “Cutting through for surprise, the building is given complex spaces and parts punctuating the relations between views and the unvisible.”23 Matta-Clark seems to be observing that surprise can be an engineered state of mind, a mind-of-don’t-know that dismantles the conditioned framing devices, both social and psychological, that dictate how we “see” by extracting the visible from the “unvisible” reality beyond our habitual perceptual frames.

don: Phaidon, 2003), 27–31. 26. Corinne Diserens, “Gordon Matta-Clark: The Reel World,” in Gordon Matta-Clark, ed. Diserens, 213, n. 7. Michel Waldberg, author of a 1973 book on Gurdjieff (Paris: Editions Seghers), is the son of Patrick and Isabelle Waldberg— mistress of Robert Lebel and an intimate friend of Marcel Duchamp

Like Duchamp, Matta-Clark sought mental “perspective” via unexpected penetrations of ordinary surface existence that open to higher dimensions of consciousness. “What we understand as building or see as the urban landscape,” Matta-Clark said, “is just this sort of middle zone . . . that given ingredient which is . . . really just the beginning of speculations about what could be beyond it, and what number of directions there could be.”24

who lived in Duchamp’s Paris studio apartment after Duchamp relocated to New York in 1947. 27. Verbal communication from Jane Crawford to Mary Jane Jacob, 2007. Gerry Hovagimyan related to Joan Simon how “in 1976 . . . Les Levine took him to Rimpoche

There are, of course, other influences to consider—too many to discuss at length here. Most frequently noted is alchemy, the art of change and transformation. 25 We also know from Matta-Clark’s first partner, the dancer Carol Goodden, that MattaClark was “enamored” with the teachings of the Buddhist- and Sufi-influenced Russian G. I. Gurdjieff (1866–1949), who developed the concept of “The Work,” connoting work on oneself, and emphasized the spiritual benefits of energetic movement and dance.26 And, after the suicide of his twin brother in 1976, MattaClark became a student of Tibetan Buddhism.27 Two years later he too was dead, from cancer, at the age of thirty-five. Gordon Matta-Clark’s overarching project was archaeology of the self. He said of his building cuts: “Aspects of stratification probably interest me more than the unexpected views . . . generated by the removals—not the surface, but the thin edge, the severed surface that reveals the autobiographical process of its making.”28 For Matta-Clark, architectural space was a middle zone waiting for an anarchitect to come along and open it up, revealing its “empty” qualities of passage to unframed

225 Unframing Experience  

­[ probably Dujom Rimpoche] and the meeting between Gordon and the guru, and his subsequent involvement with Buddhism calmed him down; he was able to function again” (Mary Jane Jacob and Gordon Matta-Clark, Gordon Matta-Clark: A Retrospective [Chicago: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1985], 89). 28. From an interview by Donald Wall, “Gordon Matta-Clark’s Building Dissections,” Arts Magazine 50, no. 9 (May 1976), 79.

29. Levine in Jacob and MattaClark, Gordon Matta-Clark, 95. 30. From a conversation with Fulvia Carnevale and John Kelsey, Artforum 45 (March 2007), 259, 261, 264. 31. See “Appendix I: Glossary of

dimensions of vision, awareness, and response. His friend and fellow artist Les Levine asserted: What’s left of [Gordon’s] abandoned buildings, now torn down, is the same as what’s left of any action taken to make the world better. The world is better. The world knows and feels more. Their individual actions may not be remembered, but their actions did change things, and the world is better for it.29

Technical Terms” in Jacques Rancière, The Politics of Aesthetics, trans. Gabriel Rockhill (London: Continuum, 2004), 85. 32. Dorner, The Way beyond ‘Art,’ 112–13. 33. Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics, trans. Simon Pleasance and Fronza Woods with Mathieu Copeland (1998; Dijon: Presses du réel, 2002), 13. Artists associated with Fluxus, such as Ben Vautier, Daniel Spoerri, and George Brecht,

So here is yet another way of answering my question: How does art like this, art about removal, art about “nothing,” bring about change in the world? The contemporary French philosopher Jacques Rancière could have had Gordon Matta-Clark’s “anarchitecture” in mind when he described his concept of “dissensus.” “Dissensus is a modification of the coordinates of the sensible . . . ,” Rancière says. “The problem, first of all, is to create some breathing room, to loosen the bonds that enclose spectacles within a form of visibility, bodies within an estimation of their capacity, and possibility within the machine that makes the ‘state of things’ seem evident, unquestionable. . . . And the practice of dissensus is always a practice that both crosses the boundaries and stops traffic.”30

were engaged in this type of activity as early as the 1950s. Although Bourriaud seems unfamiliar with the nature and extent of their activ­ ities, he does portray relational aesthetics as part of a cultural continuum, giving plenty of credit to Duchamp. 34. Cf. Duchamp’s Clock in Profile, a “pliage,” or folding artwork, created in 1964 for the special edition of Lebel’s book, La Double vue suivi de L’Inventeur du temps gratuit. While flat, this piece is in the shape of a pair of glasses. When folded into three dimensions, it forms a clock with holes where numbers normally would be.

“A modification of the coordinates of the sensible” strikes me as a pretty good description of what Matta-Clark and Duchamp, too, were trying to achieve. Their extrasensory aesthetics were calibrated to modify the coordinates of the sensible and shift viewers’ consciousness into higher gear and wider dimensions of reality. They were key instigators of what Rancière describes as a loosening of the bonds that include and exclude what we see “within a form of visibility”; a dismantling of the restricting walls, both social and aesthetic, that shape “the partition of the sensible.”31 I call this process “unframing experience.” It is a process that liberates perception, making it possible to see objects and events as entities, while simultaneously experiencing them together with ourselves as both unbounded and interrelated. The revolutionary German museum director Alexander Dorner described an early stage of this process in his 1947 book, The Way beyond ‘Art.’ “The old three-dimensional reality has become obsolete . . . ,” Dorner wrote. “Abstract art has opened the gate to a new reality beyond all form. . . . It leaves behind, literally, the rigid confinement of the frame.”32 Unframing experience might be characterized as a heightened version of the socalled “relational aesthetics” of the 1990s, proposed by the French curator Nicolas Bourriaud as a shift in which “the role of artworks [became] no longer to form imaginary and utopian realities, but to actually be ways of living and models of action within the existing real.”33 From artworks as “social interstices” (to use a Bourriaud term) to artworks as “spectacles” (from the Latin specere: “to look”) 34 is not a

Jacquelynn Baas  226  

small leap, but it is a necessary one: you can’t live or act within what you can’t see. Seeing clearly is what Duchamp and Matta-Clark helped us to do. Art that generates this expanded field of perception links maker, viewer, and environment within a continuous, multidimensional reality: infra-relational aesthetics. Evidence of the expanding realm of aesthetic experience is readily apparent in recent exhibitions, such as Olafur Eliasson’s weather project (2003, p. 228) at the Tate Modern in London, where a semicircular form lit by hundreds of mono-frequency lamps was completed in the mirrored ceiling of the Turbine Hall to create the illusion of a dazzling sunlike sphere. A fine mist drifted through the gigantic space, which the yellow color of the lamps transformed into a vast duotone landscape. It was the first exhibition I’d seen that made people react physically in a particular way—flinging their bodies onto the concrete floor to experience the sight of themselves in the mirror overhead along with everybody else within Eliasson’s otherworldly environment. The Chinese artist Ai Weiwei’s Fairytale (p. 251) at documenta 12 in the summer of 2007 incorporated 1,001 Qing dynasty chairs and 1,001 Chinese citizens scattered throughout the exhibition venue, which was itself scattered throughout the city of Kassel. The “content” of Fairytale became the actions and interactions of Ai’s “guests” within the context of this huge, sprawling show—guests that (the Chinese chairs made clear) included us Westerners. Ai’s unbounded installation somehow erased the boundaries of space while foregrounding, in a low-key but omnipresent way, the relationships and interrelationships of ourselves and others within it. Finally, as one of many other examples, I want to mention Ann Hamilton’s 2007 performance tower at the Oliver Ranch near Geyserville, California (pp. 69–73). Forbidding on the outside, magically multidimensional on the inside, the structure, which was three years in the making, is neither art nor architecture. Inspired by a sixteenth-century Italian well that let farm animals down to water via one staircase and—because there wasn’t room for them to turn around—back to the top via another, the tower functions as a threshold to higher dimensions of reality. At the bottom, a reflecting pool serves as the start-point for two spiral staircases. Shaped like a double helix, the winding stairs never connect or cross each other on their way up to a circular viewing platform at the very top. The 128 steps in each of the staircases get progressively narrower as they ascend. The climb is punctuated by openings that allow for unexpected glimpses of sun-drenched landscape, and also allow sound to escape the reverberating space. “A vocal chord for the Alexander Valley” is how Hamilton describes her tower. “What interested me about the form of the double helix in this situation,” she says,

227 Unframing Experience  

“is that it means that one stairway can be a moving performance, and one can be a static or moving audience. But you’re wound within each other, in the same space.”35 The result is unframed experience—an expanded field encompassing sight and sound, movement and stillness, oneself and others as unbounded, interrelated entities. All of this brings me back to the exhibition Manifesting Emptiness and its encompassing project, “fluXspace,” which included, among other things, a student-­ curated series of relational works, presentations, and temporary installations both inside and outside the gallery. Students had the opportunity to choose, as did ­Matta-Clark and the artists represented in Manifesting Emptiness, to dismantle frames of perception and see beyond what they thought they knew to what they didn’t know they knew. As it happened, outside and inside were unexpectedly brought together by one of the works in Manifesting Emptiness—Yoko Ono’s Painting to See the Skies (1961/2007). One day, the gallery’s director, Trevor Martin, noticed that when the lights were turned off, this canvas with two holes placed in front of a window transformed the gallery space into a camera obscura, as an otherwise unvisible moving streetscape appeared in full color, upside down, on the opposite wall. Surprise is a state of consciousness, as Matta-Clark observed. But there are different kinds of surprise: there is the sudden surprise of the unexpected, and then there is the satisfying, slow surprise of experiencing what we see “out there” as no more real than our perception of it, perception that can be transformed by something as simple as turning off the lights.

Olafur Eliasson, The weather project, 2003

35. From the KQED arts and culture program Spark, broadcast July 2007; http://www.kqed.org/arts/ people/spark/profile.jsp?id = 18240.

ulrich schötker

Ulrich Schötker is an art educator and art mediator who headed the Mediation Department for documenta 12 and served in this department for documenta 10 and 11. He was also an assistant at the Institute of Educational Science (Ästhetische Bildung), University of ­Hamburg. He curated Walden #3, or The Child as Medium for the Kunst­haus Dresden 2006, with Christiane Mennicke. He is also cofounder of Liquidación Total, Public Gallery for Contemporary Art in Madrid. Schötker studied German literature, art education, and fine arts at the Universität Gesamthochschule Kassel, and media science and media education at the Institute of Education, University of London.

The Unknown Child Art Mediation/Mediation Art

The unknown child in the image (p. 232) appears distorted. The child is faceless. He/she has pulled a stocking over his/her face. Were it not for the fact that the stocking is pulled downward and tucked inside the pants, it would seem as though the child were about to rob a bank. Those bulging lumps make the child look bizarre. His/her pants are full, and he/she has breasts. The unknown child appears sexually charged. We cannot leave out the possibility of sexual abuse. The child has a name. That name cannot be disclosed. It is a secret. The child is a total mystery. He/she refuses the outside gaze. The child is withdrawn. He/she eludes our control and stays by him/herself. We do not learn much about the child, and who knows whether what we might learn would touch upon the child’s actual experience. Nonetheless, here is an account of what happened to this child. In the summer of 2007, when I was director of the art mediation team for documenta 12, the local press called our office to inform us that concerned parents had complained about sexually explicit artworks. Those works, by Juan Davila, Jo Spence, Tseng Yu Ching, and Lee Lozano, were exhibited throughout the documenta venues. Parents could not foresee where in the exhibition they might be caught off-guard by these artworks, turning a documenta visit with their children into an unpredictable parcours. These parents demanded a hotline be installed to voice their concerns. Our concerns, however, could not be settled with a hotline. We were concerned both with the children and the art. We wanted both to surprise us. Art can be a public, societal medium, but it must find an appropriate space where the unpredictable, the unknown, and the unfamiliar can unfold, where the functional mecha-

231

nisms of society can relax their control. The exhibition addressed a wide audience. Of course we considered children to be part of that audience, and we could not expect either the adult public or the children to function according to a given set of rules. This is why the art mediation team of documenta 12 discarded the notion of merely providing a service. Our way of seeing art did not differ from our perception of the public—as unpredictable and ready to surprise us in the process of mediation. The image of the child was an outcome of the program “dirty & stinky,” which was designed for children between twelve and sixteen years of age. We found this program to be a fitting educational way to address the question of how and why children react when exposed to sexuality in artworks. Our answer involved our own “un-knowledge.” Not being able to tell which kinds of experiences the children would bring with them to the program, we decided to invite and address them as experts. We denied the notion that art mediation is centered on conveying facts about artworks, deeming it more pro­ductive to learn from the aesthetic expertise of the children. After informing the parents about the program’s methods and seeing them off, we discussed our set of problems with the children, telling them that the censoring of sexually explicit artworks was nothing new, and that there are many examples of such exclusions throughout history. Kevin, a German teenager living in the United States, talked about freedom of speech, while other boys and girls also thought it essential for artists to have freedom of expression. We were surprised by the knowledge and demands of these children! We then showed them the painting The Origin of the World by Gustave Courbet, but without naming the title of the work. One of the kids expressed the opinion that the work went too far. A discussion ensued on the limits of representability and tolerance. Then we disclosed the title and the tide turned, as the children expressed understanding for why Courbet had chosen this form. Next, it would be Robert Mapplethorpe’s turn to surprise the kids with his photographs of a limp tulip and a black man in a suit from whose fly dangled something akin to a tulip.

Ulrich Schötker, The Unknown Child, from “dirty & stinky,” 2007

But before we showed them these two artworks, we explained that we envisaged two ways of engaging with the program: through either shock or embarrassment. We explained that both possibilities were necessary in order to formulate a life of one’s own, in order to formulate oneself. Sometimes it might be necessary to provoke, sometimes to retreat. So we created masks that we and the children could use when there were things, actions, or people we might not want to look at. And before going into the exhibition, we suggested that the kids dress as experts, so that other docu­ menta visitors would be able to tell them apart from the regular public. We gave the kids rice, nylon stockings, wool yarn, and free rein. An image shows one of the boys in disguise. This is how an expert might look.

1. See Jochen Kade, “Vermittelbar/ nicht-vermittelbar: Vermitteln: Aneignen, Im Prozeß der Systembildung des Pädagogischen” (Transmittable/Untransmittable: Transmission: Acquisition in the Process of Pedagogical System Formation), in Bildung und Weiter­ bildung im Erziehungssystem: Leben­ slauf und Humanontogenese als Medium und Form (Learning and Continuing Education within the Educational System: Curriculum Vitae and Ontogeny as Medium

Re-reading Georges Bataille

and Form), ed. Dieter Lenzen and

For the past fifteen years, the notion of art mediation (Kunstvermittlung) has referred to a field of artistic agency in German-speaking countries. It did not initially surface as a theoretical derivation, but as a concept for practices that deny any clear-cut ascription to either art or educational systems. The advantage of the mediation concept lies in its rejection of a school-oriented implementation, as well as any didactic framing, such as (school) readiness or canonical values. In addition, it leaves open whether what is mediated will be appropriated.1 It acts in coherence with the ineffability and incommensurability of aesthetic experience, thus dispelling any possibility of heteronomy. Art mediation transgresses the limits of the social systems of art and education as a functional differentiation, both questioning and reformulating the tacit relationship between art and Bildung. 2

Niklas Luhmann (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1997), 30–70. 2. In the German context, there is a subtle difference between the rather commonplace notion of Bildung and the term “education.” Modern education works at the paradox between restriction and freedom, but the notion of Bildung circumvents this dichotomy since it is concerned with the self. Thus in German, Bildung implies SelbstBildung, and it is understood both as a condition and objective of education. A functionalist reading does not apply to Bildung, but rather to

There are two sides to transgressing limits. Any prohibition and every taboo compels us either to acknowledge it, due to impending sanctions, or to transgress it because of those sanctions. The French writer Georges Bataille (1897– 1962) identified a social function in the transgression of limits, one beyond any moral grounds. To Bataille, the act of transgressing limits can enable the subject to experience his or her own sovereignty. Prohibitions protect a homogeneous society from external and internal dangers. The moment a subject transgresses limits, he or she undergoes an inner experience of “unproductive expenditure,” a wasting of energy devoid of specific purpose that generates a feeling of continuity and unity.

Ausbildung (instruction/education). The philosophy of Bildung was first shaped by German idealism (Kant, Schiller, Humboldt, Schelling, Her­ bart) and, from its inception, was closely tied to art (see Schiller’s “On the Aesthetic Education of Man”). In German, the term Bildung maintains its philosophical roots in idealism with its focus on Allge­ meinbildung (general education), leading to a concept of objectivation of knowledge, to dogma and canon. Here, while trying to carry on that

There is thus a fascination with the transgression of limits in modern society, as subjects find themselves isolated in a world of differences. “It is a question of arriv­ ing at the moment when consciousness will seek to be a consciousness of something; in other words, of becoming conscious of the decisive meaning of an

233 The Unknown Child  

line, I ascribe to Bildung the experiential moment as discussed in the theory of aesthetic experience and negativity. I therefore differentiate between Bildung and education.

3. Georges Bataille, The Accursed Share: An Essay on General Econ­ omy, Vol. I: Consumption, trans. Robert Hurley (Brooklyn, NY: Zone Books, 1988), 190, 197n. 21. 4. Rita Bischof, “Über den Ge­sichts­ punkt, von dem aus gedacht wird” (Concerning the Point of View on Which Our Thinking Is Based), in Georges Bataille, Die psychologische Struktur des Faschismus: Die Sou­ veränität (The Psychological Struc-

i­ nstant in which increase (the acquisition of something) will resolve into expenditure; and this will be precisely self-consciousness, that is, a consciousness that henceforth has nothing as its object,” Bataille writes. “Nothing but pure interiority, which is not a thing.”3 Particularly in sexuality, Bataille discovers moments that can generate this conscious/unconscious union and continuity the subject longs for, in spite of separation and complete isolation from the world. Rita Bischof describes this borderless state of the subject as its “boiling point,”4 the apex of the subject who risks it all, exhausting and wasting him or herself.

ture of Fascism: Sovereignty) (Munich: Matthes and Seitz, 1978), 90. 5. Georges Bataille, The Inner Expe­ rience, trans. Leslie A. Boldt (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988), 3. 6. Bataille, Die psychologische Struk­ tur des Faschismus, 54. 7. Bataille, The Inner Experience, 9. 8. Bischof, “Über den Gesichts­ punkt,” 104.

It may be useful in this context to ascertain a theory of Bildung in which “increase (the acquisition of something) will resolve into expenditure.” This theory of Bil­ dung negates prevailing discourses of education geared toward utility and accumulation of information that are implemented in the state-sanctioned public school system. Given that with unproductive expenditure one goes beyond a known horizon, one must separate from knowledge: “He who already knows cannot go beyond a known horizon.”5 Therefore, Bildung cannot be grasped as a form of passing on knowledge, but as a state of inner experience, an actual transgression of limits, a conscious negation of the given order (of the efficacious world) grounded in nonknowledge.6 In such transgression, both subject and society find a sense of life. The social component that lies between knowledge and non-knowledge is greatly relevant to the realm of Bildung, but has been heretofore neglected in the educational context. According to Bataille, “inner experience” is always generated by an act of violence, destruction, or death in which self-sacrifice and self-expenditure take place. This experience, in turn, produces an emotive form of communication that could be cultivated toward the formation of a society based on difference. The medium of emotive communication, that of poetic words, gestures, and things, does not just convey something, but the self. According to Bataille, oneself  “is not the subject isolating itself from the world, but a place of communication, of fusion, of the subject and the object.”7 Unproductive expenditures allow us to partake in a collective subjectivity. This emotive communication is both a condition and a result of collective life, the secret center of society or the “central core.”8 It is difficult to grasp this space of inner experience using scientific modes of description, as the space of inner experience is withdrawn from rationality and language, both being part of the world of differences, discontinuities, and productive expenditures. The space of inner experience lies beyond language and rationality; it reveals the limits of philosophy, for philosophy’s positive stance on knowledge

Ulrich Schötker  234  

and the ability to know can neither grasp the scope nor represent the moment of inner experience. Bataille delves into a subjectivity that is not philosophical consciousness. Rather, it is on the condition that this consciousness be dissolved that Bataille’s sovereign subjectivity becomes possible. Such subjectivity lies beyond philosophical consciousness, yet simultaneously denotes its borders. Bataille’s theory of sovereignty, grounded in cultural history, is inextricably tied to a theory of art. He points out a potential in art that science and philosophy cannot match. Nevertheless, his position on the function of art in modern society remains ambivalent. Bataille associates art with the world of production, referring to a time when artists sustained a servile relationship to rulers, when they were bound to a sovereign subjectivity. But it “was never a question of man’s fundamental subjectivity which, differing only in a random way from that of other men, instead of being radically separate like that of God or the king, belonged to the artist to the degree that he was able to communicate it.”9 The artist’s unique role in modern society manifests itself at the intersection between a power-exerting subjective sovereignty and a sovereign subjectivity that enables power of expression. In a bourgeois societal order, in which, according to Bataille, sovereignty is repressed and replaced by the objectivity of power, the subjective sovereignty of the artist always appears subversive; the artist is a subversive agent. Any connection between artistic endeavor and political objective power would degrade art. Bataille affirms that “sovereign art is such only in the renunciation, indeed in the repudiation of the functions and the power assumed by real sovereignty.”10 This is not the place to elucidate the full scope of Bataille’s theoretical models. Nevertheless, I hope it is evident that Bataille’s models of thought on sovereignty, art, and economy assault prevailing notions, theories, and legitimizations of art mediation, understood in its traditional way as service, knowledge transmission, or schooling the masses. With Bataille’s transgression of the limits in mind, it might be reasonable to ask for examples of artworks that transgress art’s own limits. Thomas Hirschhorn’s Bataille Monument (2002) for documenta 11 mirrors this from within the art system. By choosing the heterogeneous field of a public housing project as the location for his “monument,” Hirschhorn invalidated the boundary between social experience and artwork. Working with the Turkish residents of the Friedrich-Wöhler housing estate, he turned the understanding of a monument inside out. Located far from the official venues in a low-income district, Hirschhorn’s piece was metaphorically a walk on the edge between art

235 The Unknown Child  

9. Georges Bataille, The Accursed Share, Vols. II–III: The History of Eroticism and Sovereignty, trans. Robert Hurley (Cambridge: MIT Press/Zone Books, 1993), 417. 10. Ibid., 421.

and non-art and social inclusion and exclusion. It was not difficult to detect “unproductive expenditure” in the work’s three shanties: a TV studio that members of a local boxing club for underprivileged teenagers helped build; a library with books by Bataille together with publications about sex, sports, word, image, and art; and an exhibition containing a flood of texts and images of Bataille’s life and work, surrounding a huge model of an ocean made out of plastic wrap and foil. The used materials conveyed a sense of the improvised, the imperfect, and heteronomy. But they also directed perception to an unconventional use of material, its total availability and, at the same time, invisibility. The dwellers had to be seen as the material of the artwork, too. Hirschhorn functionalized the neighborhood, but he did it with aesthetic intent. Somehow he managed to transform what might be understood as art mediation into mediation art.

Thomas Hirschhorn, The Bataille Monument, 2002

A Critique of Art Education

11. See Wolfgang Kemp, in Zeichen

The history of art education in Germany reads like a story with two plots. In one storyline, we find its theoretical derivation from German idealism aimed at the social and educative function of art. In the other, we recognize the theorization of applied art practice and the integration of visual media into the course canon at the onset of the modern school system. Any understanding of the development of art education must therefore include the learning of drawing as a technical skill. Around the beginning of the nineteenth century, drawing was introduced into the incipient modern school system not because of merely aesthetic considerations, but as a support for math classes (specifically, geometry) and as a tool to introduce students to writing skills.11 During the second half of the century, the evolution of drawing courses was subject to the demands of trade associations. The desire to improve instruction of the prospective work force for the developing Gewerbeindus­ trie (design industry) resulted in pedagogically questionable, albeit at the time highly regarded, teaching methods for drawing such as that of Adolf Stuhlmann— similar to the Bell-Lancaster method, named after the British educators Dr. Andrew Bell and Joseph Lancaster.12

und Zeichen­unterricht der Laien 1500–1870 (Drawing and Drawing Instruction for Laymen, 1500–1870) (Frankfurt; Syndikat, 1979), 188ff.; also chap. 10, p. 2. 12. Adolf Stuhlmann, cited in Kind und Kunst: Zur Geschichte des Zeichen- und Kunstunterrichts (Child and Art: On the History of Drawing and Art Instruc­t ion) (Berlin: Bund Deutscher Kunsterzieher, 1977), 46. See also Joseph Lancaster, Improvements of Education, As It Respects the Industrious Classes of the Community . . . , 3rd ed. (London: Darton and Harvey, 1805). 13. The concept is experiencing a revival in blended and e-learning (the computer was considered the primary medium from the start). Programmed instruction was ex-

Thus, what we now call art education originated in forms of efficacious productivity, not in concepts of art free from purpose. Even in the 1950s, at the inception of modern German art education, when drawing courses were renamed “art courses” and the Zweckfreiheit (freedom from purpose) of art was accepted, aesthetic experience was still a long way from being perceived as limit-transgressing. The major didactic concepts of art education emerged in the course of a wide-ranging the­ orization of teaching techniques after the notion of “programmed instruction,” originating in the behaviorism of B. F. Skinner and John B. Watson, as well as the information-processing communication theories of cybernetics.13 This systematization of art mediation required that art be converted into subject matter, with standards and scientific methods. But such objectification and “technologization” again stifled the possibility of subjective forms of expression. This kind of teaching is still prevalent and is even widely considered to be a logical offshoot of liberal democracy: the concept that all should partake of the same knowledge can be understood as a form of egalitarianism.

pected to work as a teacher surrogate, and control was wrongly understood as self-control. Although the hypothesis is now dated, programmed instruction has influenced teaching in schools worldwide. Today, the material is broken down into smaller steps, purporting to structure information hierarchically. Programmed instruction has cultivated notions of functional education technologies that both teachers and pupils administrate at the cost of an experiential dimension. Still encouraged is the belief that the objectivation of learning tools and participants massively increases efficiency and control of the Bildung system. See Wey Han Tan, “e-learning als utopische

Negation

The modern reflection on aesthetic experience was, in fact, part of art education, but mirrored only one side of an ongoing, philosophically ambivalent discussion. Art education theory integrated the notion of aesthetic experience alongside different modes of experience and other discourses about rationality (a rationality that was further differentiated in modern social systems).14 Most illustrative of this approach were John Dewey’s theories, widely accepted in art education discourse and influential for the

237 The Unknown Child  

Praxis?” (e-learning as Utopian Practice?), in Walden #3 oder Das Kind als Medium (Walden #3, or Child as Medium), exh. cat. (Dresden: Kunsthaus Dresden, 2009). 14. See Christoph Menke and Neil Solomon, The Sovereignty of Art: Aesthetic Negativity in Adorno and

Derrida (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999). 15. Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), esp. chapters “Situation” and “Toward a Theory of the Artwork.” 16. John Dewey, Logic: A Theory of

debate on aesthetic experience. What was suppressed was the attitude of the surrealists in general, Antonin Artaud and Bataille in particular—an attitude that, since Theodor Adorno, has been discussed as the concept of “negativity.”15 Here, aesthetic experience has the potential to transcend reason. It runs counter to the traditional discussion about aesthetic rationality, and this underlines its difference with Dewey’s views on affirmation and negation based on cognition and a rational approach.16 So it should not be surprising that neither educational technology nor the legitimating education sciences would give surrealist negativity any quarter.

Inquiry (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1938), 186. For contemporary recovery and re-reading, see: Tom Burke, Dewey’s New Logic: A Reply to Russell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); R. W. Sleeper, The Necessity of Pragma­ tism: John Dewey’s Conception of Philosophy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988); Ray McDermott, “In Praise of Negation,” in Zeitschrift für Pädagogik, Erzie­ hung—Bildung—Negativität, Analy­ sen zum Verhältnis von Macht und Negativität (Journal of Education: Upbringing—Development— Negativity: Analyses of the Relationship of Power and Negativity), ed. Dietrich Benner (Weinheim: Beltz, 2005), 150–70.

But it is not as if there were no room for it. According to Bataille, the history of civilization is characterized by continuous transgression of limits. The search of subjects for their rightful sovereignty is the result of an overarching repression of subjectivity. In the educational context, this “accursed share” surfaces as catastrophes to which the educational establishment has responded with enforcement, not only in the form of violence, strict discipline, and punishment, but also evaluation, ­selection, and degradation. Subversive moments of unproductive expenditure—­ moments in which freedom is experienced—have been banned as disruptions from the educational thought system. Most educational theories integrate a latent moral understanding, so all negativity is either sorted out or has to lead to a positive value. But Bataille’s negation negates both the positive and the negative. It is easy to see how the negation of all given values might work against a system. But I am interested in this third space, this sort of “Bildung.” Instead of following a logic, it is more a patho-logic. It is not about curing; it asks more what we can do to provoke negation. It is a lesson in suffering.

17. Bataille, The Accursed Share, Vols. II–III: Eroticism and Sover­ eignty, 421. 18. Ibid., 420.

In order to consider education in a broader sense, we must open it up to forms of boundary transgression, negation, and subversion. In his parody of affirmation, “I am nothing,” “a buffoon,” Bataille identifies the distress of the artist. But his stance has potential to provide the framework for a sovereign life of the subject/ citizen, as well as for educational contexts of agency. “I am nothing,” “a buffoon,” are the last words of sovereign subjectivity, “freed from the dominion it wanted—or had—to give itself over things.”17 After the last word comes self-dissolution. Unity and continuity take place here, in the world of destitution. And this destitution must not be equaled with a world of horror. There is also room for experience within ridicule. Thus, sovereignty arises through the abdication of values and hierarchies, by counterposing a total negation, a dislocation that the subject experiences as a revelation in impotence.18 While the educational context is full of stories of exclusion, control of heterogeneity, a culture of mockery in schools, and worse, art education has shown some openness toward situations of discontinuity by occasionally identifying, in the un-

Ulrich Schötker  238  

ruly actions of pupils, sovereign moments rather than an absence of readiness to be educated. The history of art education is also permeated by moments of opposition within its theoretical discussions. Still, art education has yet to develop an awareness of how to integrate the notion of negativity, even to contemplate it as a starting point. But this does seem to be changing. Art Mediation/Mediation Art—the Function of Distinction

Bildung has been understood as a social component of art since the eighteenth century, but the strong interconnection, idealizing the identification of beauty, art, genius, the original, and timelessness, has persistently insulated art from social implications and education from sovereign aesthetic experiences. After more than a century of modern society, the art system and the educational system have to revise their coupling, not only through identification, affirmation, and objectivation, but also through difference, heterogeneity, and transgression of limits. Educational processes must cross the border and experience art and the aesthetic, thus allowing for the experience of oneself through exposing, acting, and expressing difference. Aesthetic and artistic processes can then become emphatic citizenship. Friedrich Schiller’s utopia of the aesthetic regime, which led to his model of aesthetic education, will be replaced by the observation of art through its educational implications and education through its aesthetic ones. This implies, for instance, an understanding of educational institutions as cultural living spaces and art institutions as educational. Hirschhorn pointed out that he did not see himself as a social worker or as an entertainer for a social district. I want to follow him in rejecting any understanding of mediation art as a new genre of the art system or art mediation as a new method of teaching. This essay seeks to emphasize that critical observation of the paradoxical relationship of art and education can enable their social functions. It connects to traditional art-system differences since the Renaissance, such as beautiful/ugly (or attention/non-attention in the educational system), or in the modern version: old/new (redundancy/selection in educational matters). This distinction between art mediation and mediation art is intended not to substitute for former distinctions, but to suggest a contemporary answer to issues of our developing modern society, which lacks any self-evident relationship between art and Bildung. And we can expect a critical impulse from the “accursed share” for the linkage and development of the art and Bildung systems. At documenta 12, for example, Bildung was a central concern. Here the role of art mediation became crucial, in contrast to many museums, where, as a rule, it is considered to be an appendage. documenta 12 showed that artistic/aesthetic methods, especially those involving ways of addressing the public, can be developed. As I mentioned earlier, we addressed each member of the public as potentially an expert. The boy Kevin was

239 The Unknown Child  

just one of many people who got involved in new forms of approaching an exhibition. At the same time, structural components were installed, such as the docu­ menta 12 advisory board, which integrated citizen volunteers into the exhibition process, helping artists to get in contact with the city and the city to get in contact with the exhibition. Several artists relied on these participants to complete their work, artists like Martha Rosler, Alan Sekula, Lin Yilin, and Ricardo Basbaum, to name a few. These artists celebrated the fact that not only is art a medium of society, but society is also a medium of art.

Thomas Hirschhorn, The Bataille Monument, 2002

A cultivation of the distinction between art mediation/mediation art will not be possible without a subversive deftness; this is one of the things Bataille’s theories surely has to offer. Without gray areas, complicities, and parasitic agency—all those metaphors that the heterogeneous, contagious field brings in—it is not possible to transgress limits. This involves engaging with difficulties, disregarding expectations related to displaying art, providing access to information, and dismantling barriers. But we can certainly build on the experiences generated by those who have transgressed them.

241 The Unknown Child  

ronen eidelman, ˘ uz tatari, and og carolyn bernstein

Ronen Eidelman, an Israeli artist, writer, activist, and cultural producer, is engaged with linking art, culture, and grassroots politics. He works extensively in public space. Based in Tel Aviv, he is the founder and co-editor of Maarav, a leading online art and culture magazine from Israel, and for more than ten years he has been active in anti-occupation and anti-capitalist direct-action groups. Og˘uz Tatari, born in Istanbul in 1978, currently lives and works here, there, and elsewhere. He abandoned his enrollment in kindergarten because he hated being obligated to sleep during the best time of the day. Tatari works as a conceptual and creative activist-artist in/about/ within public space. He is a humanist, a skeptic, and believes in one non-nation state. He is going to make himself a nice dinner, open some red wine, and then save the earth. Carolyn Bernstein is an artist whose work points to what can be seen and understood behind, beside, through, or in addition to that which is intended to hold our attention or frame our point of view. She reveals her subjects in a range of genres, including installation, sculpture, and photography. In 2009 her large-scale installation Yew Tree Project (2006–8), which integrated science and metaphor, was featured both in exhibitions (including Confrontation/Contemplation at Aurora University) and in publications, with a series of related drawings in Whitewalls: A Journal of Language and Art. Bernstein is the recipient of a Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation Creative Fellowship Award and has exhibited in Chicago, where she now lives, and elsewhere in the United States. She earned an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2008.

Looking at an Exhibition Ronen Eidelman: Public Response to Works of Art

Found Art

They stand around with maps in their hands; some are wearing earphones, while others also hold a small booklet. They look confused; their heads are moving from side to side, scanning their surroundings. A few younger people arrive on bicycles; they are holding the same map. “Excuse me, do you know where number 29 is?” the gray-haired woman wearing the earphones asks the group on the bicycles. Number 29 is a work of art, probably a sculpture, and this group of people, lost in a foreign city in the middle of the day, is searching for art. Like treasure hunters, they scan the city of Münster with their maps, looking for the numbered circles that represent art projects on the map. The white circles represent new works—the most preferred art. The green circles represent old sculptures that have survived from previous Münster projects. These works are a bit less interesting for most of the hunters, since old art is not as exciting, except for some famous artists whose names still draw a lot of interest. During their quest/search, they may see other interesting objects or situations, perhaps even artworks, that are not marked on the map. But they will not spend time on this; it’s not part of the project, it’s not on the map. Unless . . . Let’s go back to our group. They are standing around looking for number 29. The gray-haired woman with the earphones already heard the explanation on the project audio guide, but has not yet found the art piece. She is getting frustrated. “What’s that over there?” says the young woman on the bicycle, pointing with the edge of her map toward an unidentified object a few hundred yards down the road. “I think that it could be number 29.” The group advances toward the object; the bicycle riders arrive first. They circle the object but don’t get off their bikes until the rest of the group

Ronen Eidelman, summer 2007, Germany

has arrived. It’s an interesting-looking object, with lots of power, and it invokes strong emotions; some in the group are smiling; the balding man in the black shirt is even caressing it. But they are all confused; there is no plaque and no guard with a white shirt and a black Skulptur Projekte bag. “The audio guide described this completely differently,” said the gray-haired woman with earphones in bewilderment. A knowledgeable-looking couple, pushing a really cool baby carriage, approaches. “Do you know if this is number 29?” the group asks together. “It’s around the corner just past the bridge,” they answer with a smile. In Münster you need a map to get around. The exhibition curators even suggest using the map in the preface of the short guide in order to “create your own tour to visit . . .” This, of course, helps finding the works in the exhibition, but it offers a restricted way of experiencing the city and could block one from getting in touch with other interesting encounters that might happen. It’s not unusual to see people walking with their heads buried in the map, only to look up at an “official” sculpture, take a few pictures, and then run on to the next number on the map. I was shocked when I talked to some people and they said that they had not seen the bunnies. There where hundreds of bunnies running all around in the parks in Münster. Working for Art—Making an Effort

The artworks are spread around the city and are far apart from each other. We approach the art after we have made an effort walking and riding and searching for it. This effort builds a certain ­expectation; one wants to feel rewarded for one’s efforts. We may even feel cheated if we feel that the artist did not make a big effort as well. But then, we don’t want the art to

Ronen Eidelman, summer 2007, Germany

demand more effort from us. We might be moving around under the hot sun, or it could be cold and raining; we could be hungry and thirsty, so the art should not be too demanding, but obviously as rewarding as possible. Documenta 12 is a completely different story, but it also demands a lot of effort and work. Although there is not much searching and most of the art is exhibited in the main halls, the exhibition still has more than five hundred works. But that is not where the main effort is needed. Documenta demands the viewer make an effort to understand the show. Organizers Roger M. Buergel and Ruth Noack write in the exhibition catalogue: “To do documenta, an exhibition with no form, means entering a field of highly contradictory forces.” So, in order “to do documenta” you have to get lost. If you try to follow any “map” you will probably end up walking into walls or just give up and go drink a coffee. Watching the visitors at documenta you notice many confused faces; people are puzzled, scratching their heads trying to figure out what’s going on. But you can also see angry people, upset people, people who do not accept this idea of no form, of contradictions. You will also notice many who are running around, glancing at one artwork and quickly running to the next, because they want to see everything. (I joined one woman for this journey and we managed to “see” all the works in the four main exhibition ­spaces—Museum Fridericianum, Aue-Pavillon, documenta Halle, and Neue Galerie—in three hours.) Some rush through the exhibition because of lack of time; they have only a few hours to spend in Kassel. Others run through it out of frustration, not managing to comprehend what they are seeing. For example, take the photo series and documentation of political and social dramas from conflict areas around the world: they were exhibited with almost no information, were not very interesting or good photos, and had only one layer of meaning. So a possible response to these images is to feel pity or anger or just give a quick glance and move on. I feel there is another reason why people rush through the exhibition: they want to try and grasp the whole exhibition

245 Looking at an Exhibition  

at once. Since a lot of the artworks do not stand by themselves and it’s not clear why they are in the exhibition, some hope that something will be revealed to them by seeing the whole thing in one go. It’s a curator’s exhibition, and the larger context of the art needs to be understood. Therefore, you feel you must see the whole exhibition at once, even if this is impossible. You have to work on this exhibition for it to work for you. Many works can be discovered only if you educate yourself about them. There is minimal information (name of the artist, title of the piece and year), never the artist’s place of birth, place of working, gender, or other background information. So you see many visitors skimming back and forth through the pages of the catalogue in order to inform themselves about the art they are looking at. Others walk around with the audio guide, while some even see the exhibition with a real guide. But all these methods give you only some of the information you are seeking. For example, the guides ask the group what they would like to see, and then it’s only possible to discuss with them a small number of the works. So you have to work even harder if you want more information, do some serious research, go to the archives, search the Web, or even track down the artist and attack him or her with questions. Unless . . . you just make it up yourself, look at the art closely and slowly, and make up your own narrative, create your own

Ronen Eidelman, summer 2007, Germany

threads, put the puzzle together, in order to create not a sensible picture but something chaotically beautiful. It is clear that the curators do not feel it is important for the audience to see, connect, and understand everything in the exhibition. There are so many threads to follow, so many mixed thoughts, questions left unanswered. There is no map with circles that we should check. To experience documenta is to accept the curators’ notion of a formless exhibition, to concentrate on the art and the ­relationships between the works and the audience. This is not something that I would think makes docu­ menta an especially good exhibition, and only a few works really inspired and excited me. The exhibition did not become, for me, a medium of its own, as the curators wished— but it has definitely made documenta a mindprovoking experience.

247 Looking at an Exhibition  

Looking at an Exhibition

˘ uz Tatari: In Quest of Experience Og

That which doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger. Fr iedr ic h Nie t z s c he, Twilight of the Idols

The epigraph is from Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, trans. Thomas Common (New York: Dover, 2004), 3.

Learning is a process, a process of acquiring observations, practices, memories, and knowledge. It is the main goal of education. The product, the achievement, of learning is understanding, but learning is also the product of experience. Experience is what we remember, perceive, and understand after our practice. It doesn’t exist in our minds independent of practice and customary performance. It is ­empirical—dependent on sensory observations and repeated actions. It can never be a priori, therefore it is a posteriori. It teaches us the value of being mistaken yet correct, rational yet absurd, effective yet useless. Categorization is an implication regarding the recognition, difference, and understanding of various subjects; thus, a category illustrates a certain type of relationship between the subject and the objects it contains. To categorize types of audience according to how people behave while viewing art (not just one artwork, but an entire show) seems to be an effective way of reflecting on the nature of the audience and its response to works of art. But today there are no clear-cut lines between categories, so the classical idea of categorizing, sharply defining the differences between substances, is no longer valid. Experience can be gained in a different way, through “floating” behaviors. By adopting a certain method, one can generate a personal mode of obtaining experience. From this perspective, experience is more valid when it is independent of one particular action, when it is not located in a specific definition, when it has no concrete borders. I call this “amebic behavior.” It is an approach to viewing art that retains the intention and strength of the act of being a spectator. Today—as the public realm is transforming into a representative model of private companies, as art practice is crushed under the oppression of economic and political

  248  

considerations, and as we are overcome by the symbol- and idol-making ideas of the financial market—audiences have to develop different approaches to art viewing. Some conscious viewers are more critical of institutional and artistic aspects than ever before, but the consciousness of the majority is obscured and they are not aware that they have lost any freedom in viewing art. To illustrate, imagine yourself as a puppet whose strings are in the hands of documenta 12 curator Roger M. Buergel. Reading viewers’ behavior requires a multilingual filter. Each human being has a personal sense of movement related to his or her ideas under unspecified, spontaneous circumstances. The following classifications do not encompass all art viewers; rather, they offer my personal perception of people’s responses. Considering only viewers who already show amebic behavior and can change from one state to another in order to generate a more cohesive way of seeing things, I have divided them into four types of audience: disguised, vigilant, liberal, and rapid. The Disguised Audience

One day Nasreddin Hodja climbed up a tree. As he sat down on a branch, it suddenly broke and he fell from the tree. Hence, he broke his arm. People gathered around him.

Halil Altindere, Dengbejs, 2007

Someone said, “Hodja! Let’s call a doctor for you!” Hodja answered him straightaway: “Do not call a doctor for me! Call someone who has fallen from a tree.” Nasreddin Hodja, who lived in the thirteenth century in Aksehir (in the center of present-day Turkey), is Turkey’s best-known philosopher/trickster, famous for his humorous, unconventional, and profound anecdotes. One way of learning is through other people’s experiences, what we call “secondhand experience.” Sometimes this can be more valuable than “firsthand experience,” as it is not only tested and proven beforehand, but also summarizes effective solutions to get right to the point. This is why Hodja refuses to go to a doctor and calls for someone who has had the same experience and passed through that stage, someone who can offer expertise. He wants to walk in someone else’s shoes. Hodja’s choice can be applied to T’s situation. This Greek architect from Weimar had a limited time, only half a day, to visit documenta 12. Consequently, she decided to use a pre-selection, someone else’s suggestions on “good” pieces to see. While aware of the subjectivity, she considered this person’s advice so valuable that she decided not to follow her group on a time-saving guided tour of the show, but instead took the route proposed by the person whose taste in art she respected. T is a good example of the disguised audience. This type of audience generally tries to find different ways to see art, accepting suggestions from others. They care about others’ appreciations, valuations, and critiques, yet at the very end they make up their own minds about the works they see. This exchange of personal and subjective views engenders an interactive process, a new and unusual dialogue. As T put it: “I felt weird because I didn’t follow my usual way of seeing things; I wasn’t in control of choosing the way through the exhibition. I would normally loaf around and wait for something to catch my eye and my mind. I felt that I was bound to my ‘suggestion-map,’ and I would not risk wasting my precious time on uninteresting works. So what I did, limiting the x-factor to a minimum, was to turn this rushed experience into a good one, if not the best possible.” Although she chose to have a filtered experience of the exhibition, she did not believe that this inhibited or influenced her own way of experiencing the particular works suggested. “The chosen person functioned like a curator for me,” she explained. This behavior opened a new way of seeing art and seeing another person’s perceptions. The Vigilant Audience

Halil Altindere has a video work in documenta 12 about a Kurdish tradition, Dengbej (Kurdish minstrels). Representing an Anatolian tradition of the Mesopotamian region, ˘ uz Tatari  250   Og

these minstrels wander from town to town as nomads, singing their experiences. They live on through their songs. Most of them do not use any kind of instrument; their voices are their instruments. They are experts in experience collecting. Walking through the corridors of the Aue-Pavillon, seeing more than ninety works before reaching the end, visitors often become tired. Curators may have considered the quantity of the pieces, for they decided to install a chill-out bar in the venue, between the works of art. There, visitors can rest a bit, some more than a while, and gain energy to finish seeing the works; for a few, the bar is the end of the show. Another chance for resting, despite their lack of comfort, comes with the wooden chairs brought from China by Ai Weiwei. Yet some visitors want to keep the ball rolling; they are the vigilant audience. They carefully watch every sequence of any video work, look at every square inch of a photograph or painting, and they always see the whole show, without missing even one work of art. They walk with their maps open, holding onto a pen or a pencil in case they need to jot something down, and keeping their cameras ready in the other hand. They do not wait to be “caught” by a piece; they go from one work of art to another. When they feel they are losing steam, they sit somewhere, open their water bottles, and take a sip. Then they take out their pens or pencils to make some ad-

Ai Weiwei, Fairytale (detail), 2007

ditional notes. They generally do this after seeing a work of art, writing directly on the map, next to the name of the artist. These are notes to remember later, small notes, just words, not sentences. If they see something important to them, they use their cameras for a later, more detailed viewing. If they feel bored, distracted, or disturbed, they may pass some of the works and start from another point. Or they may begin at the end, going backward to create their own route, indifferent to that of the curators. They are open-minded, but they mostly believe in their own critique. This kind of audience is the modern European imitation of Dengbejs, with their emphatic and variable rhythms. Members of the vigilant audience try to experience the show at their best. They never give up; on the contrary, they find new and unpracticed ways to finish the show. As with the authenticity of the voices of Dengbejs, they use their documentation later for didactic or personal purposes. The Liberal Audience and the Rapid Audience

Using the map you can create your own tour to visit both the new works and the sculptures installed permanently from previous exhibitions Guide f or Sk ul p t ur Pr ojek t e Müns t er 0 7

Metaphorically speaking, each of us has different maps—maps of our own, in our minds, in front of our inner eyes—and different ways of reading them. This was the reality at Skulptur Projekte Münster 07, not a metaphor. Some viewers sat and checked off works on the map; some walked and used the map as a tool to find their path to the artworks; some did not even open it when walking. But rabbits do not use maps; they make their own. Münster and Kassel have more rabbits than I have ever seen in my whole life. They are everywhere, on every green area, in every district, every park. To try to catch them with your bare hands is a dream, such a useless effort. I have seen people stepping back from seeing art and instead watching the behaviors of the rabbits in a city environment. These viewers show their emotions without hesitation; they do not hide their feelings or thoughts. I call them the liberal audience. They do not judge things according to whether it’s art or not; rather, they are willing to transgress the boundaries between art and life, to liberate accustomed definitions. If you talk to these people, they do not mumble, but respond in a straightforward way. The liberal audience does not rush. After encountering an artwork, they may decide to linger to get deeper into the work, or they may stay because of good weather or a nice view. They do not mind spending time on something other than viewing the art, because they do not perceive this as time lost. Anything they do is valuable

˘ uz Tatari  252   Og

for them. They do not care whether they finish the exhibition. Their goal is to enjoy their time. They do not like to be curated; they create their own environments. One can identify them by how they use their maps: not only as notepaper or a drawing sheet, but also, more radically, as fans, tablecloths, or even bottle openers. Yet rabbits do not walk; they run—and some viewers imitate them. They are the ones who do not have much time, and therefore they follow a predetermined route of works to see. I call these people the rapid audience. They don’t spend time on a particular work. They do not dwell, but rather they try to be surprised and go with a first impression. They search for a work, find it, and stand still—but only for a minute, not even a second more than that. They may take a photo, but they do not necessarily need to have visual documentation because they think that documentation is for others; their documentation is only for their own benefit, not because they are selfish, but because they do not think that it will do any good for anyone else. Then they open their maps, take some notes, and search for the next artwork destination, normally the closest one, and zoom off to it. They generally use bicycles to conserve their energy and use time more efficiently. They usually are in the company of others so that they are able to discuss one work on the way to the next. Conclusion

Thanks to the speed of today’s media and World Wide Web, we are living in a time of immense knowledge, but a given, controlled, and changed knowledge—­incarnated mostly by governments, private companies, and other models of political power. Knowledge of things that would never come together can and does come together, as if a butterfly were swimming in a spoonful of water. Similar melting pots of knowledge can be found at such popular art events as biennials, documenta, and Skulptur Projekte, which have financial, social, as well as ­political power. Although curatorial decisions are made to create a dynamic atmosphere and to engage the public, these exhibitions end up wearying the audience because of their gargantuan scale, requiring lots of time to take in the sheer quantity of works of art, not to mention the various side events. Nevertheless, by creating one’s own way of observing, by developing strategies, through amebic behaviors—shifting from one perspective to another, discovering how to contemplate, to educate oneself about and gain pleasure from an event—we learn not to be afraid of the not-getting-to. We learn to experience the space. We learn to be independent: independent of institutional and corporate structures. And we learn something more humane—the congruity of the strength of absurdity and the act of reality. Maybe, then, we can speak of an effective way of experiencing.

253 Looking at an Exhibition  

Looking at an Exhibition Carolyn Bernstein: Reframing Experience

This suite of photographs by Carolyn Bernstein was executed in response to docu­ menta 12. In these works she focuses on the curators’ use of window coverings, paradoxically, to screen the view and bring the outside in. Elements such as windows and the experience of the space and the artworks it contains were part of the way this and any exhibition can be perceived. Through these photographs Bernstein shares her discovery of what she calls “slow seeing”—an unexpected dialogue between what was presented for viewers to see at documenta 12 and the totality of what was available for seeing and experiencing. The images begin here and continue in the discussion, “The Empty Conversation,” that follows.

254

Carolyn Bernstein, Reframing Experience (at documenta 12), 2007

Carolyn Bernstein, Reframing Experience (at documenta 12), 2007

257 Looking at an Exhibition  

jacquelynn baas, mary jane jacob, and ulrich schötker

“The Empty Conversation” is an edited version of a lunch lecture ­organized and moderated by Ulrich Schötker for documenta 12. It took place at documenta Halle, Kassel, on June 25, 2007.

The Empty Conversation

Ulrich Schötker: We will be discussing different practical experiences and theoretical ideas at work behind the term “emptiness.” It might be a paradox to talk about emptiness in the context of documenta 12—a show filled with hundreds of art pieces. But if we have an understanding of a full exhibition, we might also have an understanding of an empty one. Our question is: What does emptiness have to do with documenta 12? What does it have to do with respect to the function of its mediation? And, in general, what does it have to do with exhibiting today? When Mary Jane Jacob and I first talked about the realization of art mediation and art education for documenta 12, we found out that we had arrived—from different points of view—at the same ideas about the relationship of art, exhibition, and audience. I was talking about the understanding of art as a negative space with regard to Theodor Adorno, Niklas Luhmann, and George Spencer Brown. Mary Jane suggested a Buddhist philosophy, with its conception of the dissolution of self and emptiness as an important motive of Buddhist beliefs. We came up with the idea of exchanging ideas in public together with Jacquelynn Baas.

259

Jacquelynn Ba as: After stepping away from directing museums in 1999, I co-founded with Mary Jane a consortium of artists, curators, and other arts professionals called “Awake: Art, Buddhism, and the Dimensions of Consciousness.” Our goal was to focus on the impact of Buddhism on contemporary art. This was a multiyear project, with eight seminars over two years. And as a result there were two books—Buddha Mind in Contemporary Art, which Mary Jane and I coedited, and my Smile of the Buddha: Eastern Phi­ losophy and Western Art from Monet to Today (both published by University of California Press, in 2004 and 2005, respectively)—as well as some artist residencies, and quite a number of public projects. So that’s the direction I come from. Mary Jane Jacob: After about fifteen years of working in museums, I decided to shift how I was working, not just for vocational purposes, but also out of great disappointment with how I felt the art experience was being evaporated by the way museums were functioning. There were my experiences around the economics and purchasing of art, the promotion of art and of institutions, which seemed to detract from what artists were doing and what the artwork might do, and what the artwork might possess.

For more than a decade afterward I worked with artists, creating art within public spaces. These works were temporary; they did not exist before or after the exhibition. This is one way of touching upon this question of emptiness—something that changes, something that is not permanent. It’s transient. You have to be present in the moment of looking at the work. I also had the experience of how viewers took in this work. It was something remembered. Later people would recount their experiences to me; this rarely, if ever, happened in my museum experience, even though the works are there permanently. Perhaps being temporary with the experience nonrepeatable made it more important. This is how I came to engage the subject of ­Buddhism and the idea of a thought “arising and passing away.” Our consortium was designed to analyze the experience of art and what exhibitions can do to cultivate that experience. So documenta is an exciting occasion for us as a platform we can all share. Here are threads of connection between works within one building and across venues that trace narratives and make associations.

ies might give us this feeling. Anonymous and without deeper social relationships, we are passing each other by and using communication in a very functional and impersonal way. That might be a perception of emptiness leading us to the question of how and whether we can understand documenta as a social event. There would also be another understanding of emptiness in my opinion. Here in documenta 12 there are lots of people standing in front of art pieces with a blank look in their eyes, with their mouths a bit open. Is that a moment of emptiness in the heads of spectators? We are used to calling it a moment of contemplation. You might assume that they are having an aesthetic experience. But the interesting fact is that we don’t know if they are, because we can’t look into their brains. So in which way does this emptiness have anything to do with aesthetic experience? Apart from the outward appearance of visitors, is aesthetic experience a specific state of mind? I think that both moments have a lot in common. They are two sides of a same problem of how communication in modern society is structured, and this seems somehow a clue to the necessary function of art today.

US: When we started to figure out what this emptiness could mean in a big show like docu­ menta 12, I think we somehow got near to that idea: that to understand the exhibition as a medium is to understand that it’s not a closed form, it’s not finished; that you can only understand this exhibition as a medium if there is an audience that participates.

JB: I would like to respond to something that you said about this exhibition being empty. It’s empty in the sense of its potential; it’s pure potential. It doesn’t become an exhibition until the audience interacts with it. I think that’s the sense in which we are speaking of emptiness here: emptiness as the fullness of interrelatedness.

Then my question was: Can you understand this emptiness in regard to that audience? What would that mean? Could we focus on emptiness and on empty conversation as a typical experience between citizens in modern societies? Our everyday life in harshly structured urban societ-

In documenta 12 there is the use of the word “autonomy” and the phrase “autonomous art.” As an English speaker, I understand that to mean the work of art as separate and self-contained. Yet my experience with art is related to how one sees the world from a Buddhist perspective,

Baas, Jacob, and Schötker  260  

where everything is interrelated; nothing exists separately in and of itself. I am dependent upon everything else in the world. I would echo Marcel Duchamp in hesitating even to call myself a “being.” Art is the same: art relies on the spectator, as well as the artist and an environment, to be realized. MJJ: I think it also has something to do with the freedom the documenta curators took to present noncontemporary work, which contradicts the stereotype the art world holds on what docu­ menta is supposed to be. This time I can look at a wedding textile from Mali and, taking it for a cultural object from a remote time, be surprised when I read the label and find it’s actually from the twentieth century. Then I find myself connecting the linear patterns of this textile to the linearity in the work of artists in the adjoining galleries. I also find a deep cultural connection to the description of the origin of a textile design to commemorate the death of a fourteen-year-old girl, raped, in Amar Kanwar’s work. Both have to do with female culture, so when I see the video I think back to the marriage cloth. These are things that were not in the mind of the makers and certainly not of their culture, but which emerge in the looking. In English, “art’s autonomy” doesn’t work for me either. On its own, I take that phrase to be about meaning independent of context and closed to other readings, which might require a much tighter and specific understanding of what that cloth from Mali was intended to be and how it was used; it might only carry with it its original intent. But if I think about how the curators situated this object within this exhibition, art’s autonomy takes on quite an opposite definition— being independent of its original cultural meaning—and this object in and of itself has a

261 The Empty Conversation  

way of living beyond a single place and a time. It is not impervious, independent of new relationships, but subject to them, finds new relationships that allow me to project these other meanings and associations onto it. It becomes a locus for other readings. In this sense, the object is empty because it allows itself to receive other things. It’s wide enough, big enough, to allow other experiences to enter and elaborate its meaning. US: There might be at least two different interpretations of the term “autonomy of art.” One is of the nineteenth century, this art for art’s sake topic. It was at that time a very radical point of view, to consider art as autonomous. It put forward the belief that art is not utilitarian, that it exists only to generate sensual gratification. But this was very much criticized by political understandings of art in modern societies. The critique had very much to do with the question of what kind of understanding we have of the term “medium” in our society. The understanding of language as a medium was at that time bound to an idea of origin, mostly to that of nation. Also, medium was understood in religious and later mass-media terms. Art in this sense took on political connotations that brought it near to the concept of mission and propaganda, a functional view of art within a direct political, discursive structure. But this is not the specific, only, or even main function of art in modern society and in contemporary times. What we see today, with the help of more recent theories, is that the two different perceptions of art—art for art’s sake and political art—go together, in a paradoxical way. So I would like to make a connection with that idea of autonomy of the late nineteenth century, while questioning what social and political impact art can have. In my opinion it has to do

with the difference between appropriation and alienation. As the German sociologist Arnold Gehlen said, there is no freedom without alienation. This is completely contradictory to previous beliefs that we need to avoid alienation in order to liberate the citizenry in modern society. I share Gehlen’s opinion and believe it is very much supported by the necessities of our global modern society. There is no appropriation without alienation; there is no identity without difference. Everyone who begins to identify self does so for his or her own purpose and in distinction to other possible identities. It is not the business of art to say what a specific person should think about the work. A spectator may think that he or she appropriates an art piece, but an art piece is never appropriated by just one person. In the way it is used it provokes alienation in us. So art objects that are materialized through aesthetic processes by artists become alienated by the fact that they go public. The work is then not owned by an artist anymore. It belongs to another space. We have to understand this as a negative form of our world. So for me, this autonomy of art—or, I would love to say, this negative space—is important to us because we can reflect ourselves in it with all the different perceptions we are trained to work with or otherwise possess. JB: You spoke about viewers having this kind of mindless expression on their faces. The other thing art does is take you out of yourself. And what that expression is about, for however briefly or however long, is that you’ve forgotten yourself as this entity in the world that has to make sure you have enough water with you, or knows where the nearest toilets are, or this or that. All of a sudden you are interspersed within the world via

this vehicle, which is the work of art. So it’s an experience happening in the mind of the viewer, but at the same time it’s the viewer outside of him- or herself. And that’s the sense in which, I think, you can’t pin down where the artwork actually is, or where it’s actually doing its work, if I may put it that way. MJJ: Related to that is a territory of research we were exploring in “Awake” that deals with the relationship between the way one engages meditation in Buddhist practice, the way the artist is engaged in the creative practice, and the way in which we look at the works of art and are engaged in a re-creative process, that is, our own creative process as viewers. So we arrive at something that sounds like a paradox between art’s autonomy, which connotes an inherent power of the art, and the power that everyone in this room possesses when they spend time walking through documenta. Going through the exhibition, we have been hearing what others are thinking, especially getting feedback from our professional colleagues. From my own anecdotal research in the last few days, I have observed that these people come with many expectations of what documenta is or should be, and then they encounter something different here. So rather than having an experience of something unexpected, they are constantly bumping up against their own expectations, and these inhibit them from having the chance to really settle into the work on view. I believe having a sense of openness when coming to such an exhibition is really important. It is the way we empty out expectations in order to give ourselves to the works of art and at the same time become the protagonists of that experience as we move through the show. That’s not so easy to do, because people feel they’re coming to an exhibition for an education, for

Baas, Jacob, and Schötker  262  

Carolyn Bernstein, Reframing Experience (at documenta 12), 2007

entertainment, or for a certain kind of experience that someone else has predetermined; it becomes a big game to figure out what others wanted us to experience rather than finding our own way. And it’s a challenge for those of us who work professionally in the genre of exhibitions to allow visitors to have their own experience. I wonder, Ulrich, if you might talk about how you’ve allowed visitors to sit and experience art in this show, perhaps with the positioning of chairs to look at art and also at other people, or to look at nothing—a kind of emptiness, or looking away from art—not necessarily to contemplate a painting, but to turn away from the exhibition and have another experience . . . or contemplate the experience we’ve just had. These occasions recur again and again as we move through the venues. JB: Going through the Neue Galerie, room after room, I got into judging—“Oh, I like this, I don’t like this; this is working, this isn’t working”— which isn’t the most satisfying way to look at art, but it is very easy to fall into this pattern, especially if you’re a critic or a historian. Then on the lower level of that building I came to a room with nothing in it; I wasn’t sure whether there was something that hadn’t shown up for the exhibition or whether it was intentional. The first time I was there, it really didn’t have anything in it. Now it has four chairs and a bench. But what this empty space made me do was to look at what was in the room, and I saw this really quite wonderful window grate up at the top of the wall, letting light in. And then I wondered, “Does every one of these rooms have a grate like this?” Suddenly I became very conscious of where I was, and it refocused me in an amazing way. I thought, “Oh, here I am, experiencing this place and these objects, and here’s a room with noth-

ing for me to look at specifically. But I don’t stop looking.” It was a very nice moment. US: When we started to think about art mediation at documenta 12, I brought up the question: What do we do when we start to talk with groups while going through the exhibition? Which side are we on? If we talk about art as a specific medium in our society, which brings in the fact of illusion and the metaphor of the mirror, and which claims to be another space (its negativeness), then my question is: Are we really fixed on only one side? By this I mean, on this practical side of doing a service for people by providing positivistic facts, or do we deal as well with aesthetic changes? Are we working with aesthetics in a poetic way? What do we do when we talk about art? Are we on the edge somehow, when we are talking about art? And is it still a service then, or what happens to people when they not only start to listen to us grasping some ideas about the art or giving more information about it, but also start to reflect about the art mediation they are in? Suddenly you have a kind of double-bounded situation, where you’re skipping between one side and the other, and you have to figure out which side you are on. You’re suddenly stepping into an empty space, and you’re not sure if it’s part of the show or not, if it’s an art piece or not. These are moments of differentiation or interdependence in which you’re not sure who actually decided. Is it already decided or not? What kind of position do I have? You can experience this often in documenta 12. For example, with the situation of the “palm groves” (Palmenhaine) in the Aue-Pavillon (in English, we call them “circles of enlightenment”): the groupings of antique Chinese chairs brought by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei. Suddenly

Baas, Jacob, and Schötker  264  

you discover that you’re not only observing art pieces, but also people in those palm groves. You observe the observer. Art mediation becomes self-reflexive; the show becomes a social event. So you notice that documenta is not only about the presentation of objects of art, it’s also about the conversation. It’s not only about this inner contemplation you do as an individual—this attitude from the nineteenth century—but also about conversation, a cultivated conversation about art that somehow guarantees that this medium—art—can work in our modern society. If it has no social connection, it will become useless somehow. And it’s interesting to see this in the Neue Galerie, because it’s a place where it’s nearly impossible for mediators to talk about the art. This space of the late nineteenth century, with its small rooms, was made for the bourgeois individual. Art at that time could not be seen as a social practice, nor was the exhibition understood as an art medium. JB: Going through the exhibition with students and mediators was very interesting, because I hadn’t gone to an exhibition with a guide for a very long time. I am usually my own guide. But I realized that I do like going through an exhibition with another person, no matter what level of information that person has about the art, because in the dialogue back and forth I understand more what I’m experiencing. I have to describe my experience for the other person and that brings me along; then they respond and see things I don’t see. Together we move forward. So the communal experience of art—which is, of course, very much a part of the performing arts but hasn’t been so much a part of the visual arts—is something that is encouraged or suggested here in a very focused way by the “circles of enlightenment” or “palm groves.”

265 The Empty Conversation  

MJJ: The communal notion reminds us that being in an exhibition can be a noisy experience, too. Many times when we go to museums, it’s like being in church: there’s this sanctity and you’re afraid to speak when other people aren’t talking. But this kind of interaction, in which experiencing art is a social relation and you have a conversation or inquiry together, expresses what’s in your mind but which you may not have been conscious of until you verbalized it. This is quite liberating as well as stimulating. There’s also something extraordinary about going through exhibitions when they work well. It can be very private and public at the same time as we move in and out of experience. This is one thing I enjoyed about the possibility you’ve crafted, Ulrich, through the manner of mediation at documenta and the potential for discussion with the guides. It isn’t a scripted monologue. It empowers visitors to take charge of their experience. In curating we can find ways to use the exhibition to provoke viewers to experience and, coming from an academic environment, art students to make art. Using a show and the works in it to explore in a host of questions gets back, in a way, to art’s autonomy: we can create an atmosphere through an exhibition that directs us to the works on view and also takes us somewhere else. This touches on what the design of an exhibition does, as well as the works of art on view. At docu­ menta we’re looking at a very pronounced exhibition design, which in many ways seems radical compared with the usual contemporary art shows; it is neither an artist’s installation nor the invisible hand of a curator—because we now take a white wall not to be a decision but a nondecision. Nobody says, “Why did you paint the wall white?” because they expect the wall to be white, but here people are saying, “Why did they

paint that wall green?” then, “Why are those rooms a deep salmon color?” and so forth. These are curatorial decisions that I imagine were meant to cultivate art experience, but they are certainly assertive and seem more aligned with the display of historical than contemporary art. I liked the installation at the Neue Galerie, because the dark colors of the wall had a calming effect, quieting, and enabling me to slow my pace and look. US: We have found ourselves experiencing people in the mediation groups freaking out, in a way. They do not get answers to the questions they ask; there is no final answer as to why this wall is red and that one green. We could ask the curator Roger Buergel, but this doesn’t bring us, really, any closer to an answer, because these questions fall back on the visitor: you have to figure it out on your own; what does it mean to you? There is another aspect to this lack of information in terms of wall texts and a strong discourse behind the show. Previously, at docu­ menta 11, a very strong postcolonial discourse carried the whole exhibition. Compared with that, this one has very few texts, gives very little information, and the information offered—for example, in the catalogue—is sometimes given in a poetic way. Then you have situations like that in the AuePavillon, which starts off quite orderly or giving orientation, inviting you to step in, but suddenly there is that moment with the work of Saâdane Afif, Black Chords Plays Lyrics, and then you encounter this huge green bubble by Gerwald Rockenschaub. After that, the whole exhibition seems to be falling apart. Our art mediators tell me that they all have the same experience: as soon as they step into that space, the whole group falls apart, because they lose

their orientation. You do not know where to walk. You do not know on which art piece to focus. It’s completely up to you to make that decision. It shows us how difficult it is in a free space to make a decision on what to do. Another problem is that people can’t find the exit. In my opinion, it’s not that difficult but because of the way the space is designed, there is no clear orientation. I think, with this, we again make a connection to this world of emptiness, because people realize that they are not themselves anymore. This self is a void, and in this void or emptiness, in Buddhist terms, you have left the idea of having a self. JB: It goes back to the idea of interdependence. Because I’m not an independent, self-existing entity—I am not my age or my height or my weight or any one thing, and what’s more, my very existence is dependent not only on my mother and my father, but also on the farmers who grow the grain, the bakers of the bread that I eat. My existence is dependent on all these things, and many more. Once I realize my interdependence, the whole world opens up for me and to me. The sense of my having to defend some entity I call myself within an aggressive environment disappears; it falls away because I experience everything as connected and interdependent. This is an experiential thing, which is also the way art works. To hear me describe this is not to experience it. For thousands of years, people who have focused on their breath, or on another physical sensation, have experienced this feeling of the separation between themselves and the world falling away. This connects in an interesting way with the twentieth-century trend of bringing art and life together, of erasing the boundary between art and life. There’s a direct parallel with that concept in art with how the

Baas, Jacob, and Schötker  266  

mind works. An example that Eleanor Rosch, a cognitive scientist who was part of our “Awake” consortium, used is this: as I’m speaking to you now, I’m not reading these words off a teleprompter; I am engaging in a creative act. So, at a very fundamental level, we’re all creative artists; we’re all creating new forms of art by inter-

acting with each other. What artists do is bring that to the point of making: they make something intended to offer an experience and generate a response. But it’s all part of a continuum. In that sense, this really is an empty conversation, which is being given form in the minds of the people listening to us.

Carolyn Bernstein, Reframing Experience (at documenta 12), 2007

US: I would like to mention that we are open for questions. Audience Member 1: I’m wondering about this issue of mindlessness that one sees in the viewer, that comes out of an openness or maybe even a closedness, or a partial openness; also about the term “void” or “emptiness.” Are we actually looking at a graduated scale? At one end, there’s absolute openness, which actually doesn’t invite the viewer because there’s nothing coming from the world to connect to, so some of the mindlessness might come out of the fact that there is no connection at one end. In the middle, there’s a kind of connective thread between the object or the person or the light or the color or whatever it might be. And at the other extreme, there’s a kind of closedness where the object is very autonomous and it doesn’t actually connect to the viewer in any way. Maybe we can adapt the glass half-empty or half-full analogy, so that at one end it’s completely empty and at the other end it’s completely full and perhaps too autonomous. All three of those positions connect to you, bring about a kind of mindlessness, but not an equivalent mindlessness—a mindlessness going from connection, to lack of connection, with a middle ground between, where both things are speaking to each other. JB: What that brings to my mind is the question of which works of art actually elicit your response. I like this range that you’re talking about, because in some cases I feel—and I can speak only for myself—a work of art is grabbing my attention and I’m trying to make sense of it. In other cases, I am actually out there seeking; I’m in a mind-state where I really want to encounter. And I don’t even necessarily need a work of art to have an aesthetic experience. I can walk out in the morning and have that same

kind of feeling of connection to the world. So in the interaction with art, some works of art are more communicative, at least for me, than others, but this can also depend on whether I might be in a better frame of mind to approach them. MJJ: I think these touch on very basic human principles, but somehow art history and aesthetics, institutions and the art world, obscure them—and at times distance the viewer from them and the experiences they can engender. So in this gradation that you’re talking about, the lack of response to a work may not be the failure of the work or my failure; it could be a failure of the situation in which it is presented. Also, sometimes a work touches you at a certain point in your life, whereas at another time it doesn’t at all; things that I might have passed by before might now appeal to me. Sometimes this is because of other works of art that I have seen in the interim or knowledge gained, but it can also be because of other experiences I’ve had. When you say, Jackie, that you can have an aesthetic experience without a work of art, we start to understand that art experience exists in a very multidimensional way through time and space. Audience Member 2: I have a question for Mary Jane Jacob. I really like how you reminded us that the white wall is also a decision. It’s a decision pretending not to be a decision—it’s a naturalized non-decision, if you like—and curators who have those walls painted aren’t asked why they made those choices. Yet as a spectator at this exhibition, within this tradition that we obviously have, I am asked to put myself into or to position myself toward the exhibition because of these non-decisions. I find this really interesting. I am not criticizing it—I’m actually enjoying it—but, still, you were talking about the

Baas, Jacob, and Schötker  268  

spectator or the visitor as a protagonist, and I’m very interested in that idea or notion. What possibilities do visitors have in this framework to become protagonists, and what do you actually mean by that? MJJ: On one level, it is physical. The mediators here, for instance, lay out the landscape or geography of the show for us, give us a sense of where this is all leading, and we want to know where the end of the road is before we start down it. As a protagonist, I can choose where I go and for how long or whether to go back to visit a building again. Once inside, we make decisions all the time as to which path to take. In my mind, I’m playing with the possibility of not seeing some things because I want to spend time with others or go back to look again at something I already saw. So in one way, being a protagonist is engaging in all the possibilities that we have, and in doing so, I become more conscious of my experience. In preparation for being here with students, we examined what causes and conditions cultivate the art experience for each of us, personally. One prerequisite we determined was time. Colleagues we met who were here for the opening, rushing to get on to the next major show in the so-called European “grand tour,” were shocked when we said: “We’re dealing with documenta as ‘slow art,’ like the popular term, ‘slow food.’ This is slow art, and you need time to take it in.” And it’s true. Still, we find our own relationship to individual works of art, and which ones we dwell on. So that’s another aspect of being the protagonist. People leave with very different documentas, and I think that’s a lesson for every exhibition. But again, like that white wall, we have an assump-

269 The Empty Conversation  

tion that we’re all seeing the same show and leaving with the same experience. I think that docu­ menta really demonstrates that we have to leave with different experiences, because we’re not taking the same path. So to me, it feels more overt in allowing us to be our own protagonists. US: I think, as well, that one important part of being a protagonist in this show is being part of the audience or being part of a society. We should ask ourselves, “What are we doing here?” Other people are working. The main question to ask is why people are here. Why do people look at art? We can’t really answer this question, but we have a connection to this question. This question focuses on the function of an exhibition as a social happening. JB: It does seem—and cognitive science is working on all of this—that experience, sensation, is pleasurable in itself. As living things in the world, we “know” we exist only because we experience. So there’s actually a satisfying quality in just being in the world. And when you’re around things like artworks that are intended to generate experience, aside from the intellectual component, it’s actually satisfying in a very tangible way. People look at art for the same reason they eat, basically: it feels satisfying. The fact is that art can also act on us and act on us over time, as Mary Jane indicated; that each time we come back to look at even the same work we’re a different person; and this work will change us again, will modify some of our brain cells—that’s part of being alive. I think we sense this, we know this. So this is what we’re doing here: we’re being alive. MJJ: I also think that having a second or later experience with a work of art can happen even without physically reencountering that work,

Carolyn Bernstein, Reframing Experience (at documenta 12), 2007

­ ecause it does live on in the mind. This is the b nature of experience. But I think, too, that when we have a deep experience with art, we can deal with some of the big questions, seemingly insurmountable questions that exist within our own lives or within the society. Art is another way of confronting them and grappling with understanding them, maybe not at the time you see the work, but perhaps over time. US: Well, I would say it’s more. Art for me is the only medium in our society that can show what is productive in a paradox. It is about difference between medium and form, and showing that we can get in communication with objects. Normally people would send you to the hospital if you started to talk with objects. But it’s funny

271 The Empty Conversation  

that we say, for example, an art piece calls our attention. Our language makes this kind of aesthetic perception possible: some artworks talk to me, others do not. And why is this a paradox? Because I can’t materialize experience, can’t really explain it, but it’s inside here; it’s materialized between me and the art piece. It’s a medium of society, but at the same time it’s mediating society. And at the same time, too, I have to consider myself as a medium of society that is mediating society. So there are lots of paradoxical situations in the communication mediated by art. In my opinion, it’s the only medium that really can show me how complex and, at the same time, how well structured modern society is.

Illustrations

Front matter

Saltz

Commencement, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 2008 Photo: Danny Hsu pp. iv–v

Bruce Nauman The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths (Window or Wall Sign), 1967 Neon tubing with clear glass tubing suspension frame, 59 x 55 x 2 in. Philadelphia Museum of Art, purchased with the Henry P. McIlhenny Fund, the bequest (by exchange) of Henrietta Meyers Miller, the gift (by exchange) of Philip L. Goodwin, and contributions from generous donors, 2007 Courtesy Sperone Westwater, New York © 2009 Bruce Nauman/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York p. 31

Commencement, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 2007 Photo: Danny Hsu p. vi artway of thinking (Stefania Mantovani and Federica Thiene), “Co/Operare” workshop School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 2008 Photo: John Sisson pp. viii–ix Introduction

Li Yang Washing the Heart, 2008 Digital photograph Photo: Courtesy of the artist p. x On the Being of Being an Artist

Robert Irwin Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow & Blue3 , 2006–7 Aircraft honeycomb aluminum, six panels, 241 1⁄2 x 265 1⁄2 x 1 5⁄8 in. each; overall dimensions variable Collection Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Museum Purchase, Contemporary Collectors Fund Art © 2009 Robert Irwin/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Photo: Philipp Scholz Rittermann pp. 14–15 Danto

Jörg Immendorff I Wanted to Become an Artist, 1972 Oil on canvas Courtesy Michael Werner Gallery, New York and Berlin p. 18

Johannes Vermeer View of Delft, 1660–61 Oil on canvas, 38 x 45 9⁄16 in. Royal Cabinet of Paintings Mauritshuis, The Hague p. 32 Tucker

Marcia Tucker as Miss Mannerist, 1999 Photo: Dean McNeil p. 39 Epstein

John Cage A Dip in the Lake: Ten Quicksteps, Sixty-two Waltzes, and Fifty-six Marches for Chicago and Vicinity, 1978 Felt-tip pen on map Collection Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago Restricted Gift of the MCA Collectors Group, Men’s Council, and Women’s Board; and National Endowment for the Arts Purchase Grant Copyright © 1978 by Henmar Press, Inc. Used by permission of C.F. Peters Corporation. All Rights Reserved. p. 47 Agnes Martin The Field (retitled by artist from The City), 1966 Ink and graphite on paper, 9 x 9 in. The Museum of Modern Art, New York; partial and promised gift of UBS © 2009 Agnes Martin/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York p. 51

  272  

Arlene Shechet Mind Field Series: Borobudur Awash (Borobudur & Kalachakra Mandala), 1997 Handmade abaca paper, 24 x 24 in. Collection of the Department of Prints and Paper at the New York Public Library Photo: Tom Warren p. 53 Pujol

Ernesto Pujol Memorial Gestures: Mourning and Yearning at the Rotunda, 2007 Performance at Chicago Cultural Center, Grand Army of the Republic Rotunda Courtesy of the artist Photos: Peter Coombs pp. 59, 61, 63, 64 Hamilton

Ann Hamilton and Meredith Monk Songs of Ascension, 2007 Performance at Ann Hamilton’s Tower, Oliver Ranch, Geyserville, California, 2007 Collection of Nancy and Steven Oliver Courtesy of the artists Photos: Lynne Hayes pp. 69, 70 Photo © 2008 Marion Gray pp. 72–73 Abakanowicz

Magdalena Abakanowicz Runa, from the series War Games, 1995 Wood, iron, burlap Courtesy of the artist Photo: Artur Starewicz p. 76 Jaar

Alfredo Jaar A Logo for America, 1987 Installation project, Times Square, New York Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Lelong, New York p. 84 Alfredo Jaar Muxima, 2005 Digital video Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Lelong, New York pp. 86–87

273  illustrations  

Alfredo Jaar Lament of the Images, 2002 Installation Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Lelong, New York p. 88 Marshall and Mau with Wainwright

Kerry James Marshall Many Mansions, 1994 Acrylic on paper mounted on canvas, 114 x 135 in. Max V. Kohnstamm Fund, 1995.147, The Art Institute of Chicago Photography © The Art Institute of Chicago p. 92 Bruce Mau Design, Inc. New Tokyo Life Style Think Zone, 2001–2 Photograph of installation for The Mori Building Company, Tokyo Courtesy Bruce Mau Design, Inc. p. 95 Kerry James Marshall Souvenir I, 1997 Acrylic and glitter on canvas banner, 108 x 156 in. Collection Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago Bernice and Kenneth Newberger Fund Photography © Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago p. 100 Bruce Mau Design, Inc. Panamarama, 2002 Photograph of model for exhibition space at Panama Museum of Biodiversity, opening 2010, Panama Canal Courtesy Bruce Mau Design, Inc. p. 102 On Making Art and Pedagogy

Alfredo Jaar The Skoghall Konsthall, 2000 Installation project, Skoghall, Sweden Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Lelong, New York pp. 104–5 Wainwright

Robert Rauschenberg Coexistence, 1961 Oil, fabric, metal, and wood on canvas, 66 3⁄4 x 497⁄8 x 14 1⁄4 in. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Gift of The Sydney and Frances Lewis Foundation

Art © Rauschenberg Estate/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY Photo: Katherine Wetzel, © Virginia Museum of Fine Arts p. 118

Suzan Frecon Composition with Red Earth and Red Earth, 2005 Oil on linen, 108 x 87 1⁄2 in. Courtesy of the artist p. 147

Robert Rauschenberg Retroactive I, 1963 Oil and silkscreen ink on canvas, 84 x 60 in. Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT; Gift of Susan Morse Hilles Art © Rauschenberg Estate/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY p. 121

Rosie Lee Tompkins Three Sixes, 1987 Polyester double-knit, wool jersey quilt (quilted by Willia Etta Graham and Johnnie Wade), overall (irregular) 89 5⁄8 x 71 in. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Purchase, with funds from the Contemporary Painting and Sculpture Committee 2003.70 p. 148

Robert Rauschenberg Tennis game in Open Score, 1966 Performance at 9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering, October 1966 Courtesy Experiments in Art and Technology Art © Rauschenberg Estate/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY Photo by Peter Moore © Estate of Peter Moore/ VAGA, New York, NY p. 122 Getsy

Robert Rauschenberg Erased de Kooning Drawing, 1953 Traces of ink and crayon on paper, with mat and label hand-lettered in ink, in gold-leafed frame 25 1⁄4 x 21 3⁄4 in. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; purchased through a gift of Phyllis Wattis Art © Rauschenberg Estate/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY Photo by Paul Hester, courtesy of PaceWildenstein, New York p. 133 Rinder

Luc Tuymans Superstition, 1994 Oil on canvas, 16 1⁄2 x 14 1⁄2 in. University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive Art © Luc Tuymans Courtesy David Zwirner, New York, and Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp Photographed for the UC Berkeley Art Museum by Benjamin Blackwell p. 144

Jones

Prof. S. J. Gates, Jr. & DFGHILM Collaboration Unity of Hidden Adinkra, from a series of Mathe­matical Adinkra Diagrams, 2008 p. 155 Laurie Haycock Makela Multidisciplinarity Diagram, 2008 Based on Lee Fleming, "Perfecting Cross-­ Pollination," Harvard Business Review 82, no. 9 (September 2004): 22 p. 156 Laurie Haycock Makela Interdisciplinarity Diagram, 2008 p. 158 Laurie Haycock Makela Transdisciplinarity Diagram, 2008 p. 160 Waters and Hood

Alice Waters The Edible Schoolyard, Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School, Berkeley, 1995 Photo: Doug Hamilton; courtesy of Alice Waters p. 166 Alice Waters The Edible Schoolyard on the National Mall, Smith­sonian Folklife Festival, 2005 Photo: Doug Hamilton; courtesy of Alice Waters p. 171 Walter Hood (landscape architect) George and Judy Marcus Garden of Enchantment, de Young Museum, San Francisco, 2008 Photo: Patti Lacson; courtesy of the artist p. 172

illustrations  274  

On Experiencing Art

documenta 12, Kassel, 2007 Aue-Pavillon with Ai Weiwei’s chairs, part of Fairytale Photo: Jacquelynn Baas pp. 174–75 Jacob

Millennium Park, Chicago, 2008, with Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate Photo: André S. van de Putte p. 178 Anish Kapoor Cloud Gate (details showing reflected images), 2004 Stainless steel Millennium Park, Chicago Courtesy the City of Chicago and Gladstone Gallery, New York Photos: Seth Hunter pp. 181, 182–83

Art © 2009 Robert Irwin/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Photo: Philipp Scholz Rittermann p. 191 Brenson

Juan Muñoz Conversation Piece (Dublin) (detail), 1994 Resin, sand, and cloth Installation at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA), Dublin Courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery, New York p. 197 Juan Muñoz Double Bind (detail), 2001 Figures, elevators shafts, patterned floor From the Unilever Series: Juan Muñoz Installation, Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, London Courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery, New York Photo: Marcus Leith p. 201

Bedford

Robert Irwin Untitled, 1969 Acrylic lacquer on formed acrylic plastic, 53 x 3 in. Collection Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Museum purchase Art © 2009 Robert Irwin/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Photo: Philipp Scholz Rittermann p. 187 Robert Irwin Untitled, 1969–70 Cast acrylic column, 144 x 8 1⁄2 x 3 1⁄2 in. Collection Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Museum purchase in honor of Jackie and Rea Axline Art © 2009 Robert Irwin/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Photo: Philipp Scholz Rittermann p. 188 Robert Irwin Square the Room, 2007 Tergal voile, light construction, and framing materials, 14 ft. x 46 ft. x 2 in. Collection Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Museum purchase with funds from the ­A nnenberg Foundation

275  illustrations  

Mitchell

Magdalena Abakanowicz Agora, 2006 Cast iron Chicago Park District Courtesy Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago Photos: Kenneth Tanaka pp. 208–9, 213 Baas

Marcel Duchamp L.H.O.O.Q. from Boîte—Series F, 1966 Replica of work originally made in 1919 Color reproduction, 7 3⁄4 x 4 7⁄8 in. University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Museum Purchase: Bequest of Thérèse Bonney, Class of 1916, by exchange Art © 2009 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris/Succession Marcel Duchamp Photographed for the UC Berkeley Art Museum by Benjamin Blackwell p. 220 Marcel Duchamp Étant donnés: 1° La chute d’eau, 2° Le gaz d’éclairage (Given: 1st The Waterfall, 2nd The Illuminating Gas), 1946–66

Mixed-media assemblage, about 95 1⁄2 x 70 x 49 in. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of the Cassandra Foundation, 1969 Art © 2009 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris/Succession Marcel Duchamp p. 221 Sarvabuddhadakini (khadroma) Tibet, 1800s Gilded bronze, 8 5⁄8 in. high University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; on extended loan from a private collection Photographed for the UC Berkeley Art Museum by Benjamin Blackwell p. 222 Vajrayogini in Her Manifestation of Emptiness Tibet, Shangpa Kagyu lineage Ground mineral pigment on cotton Private collection Photo: Arnold Lieberman p. 222 Gordon Matta-Clark Conical Intersect (also called by the artist Étant d’art pour locataire and Quel Con), Paris, 1975 Installation and film Courtesy the Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark and David Zwirner, New York © 2009 Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York p. 224 Olafur Eliasson The weather project, 2003 From the Unilever Series: Olafur Eliasson Installation, Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, London Courtesy of the artist; Tanya Bonakdar, New York; neugerriemschneider, Berlin Photo: Jens Ziehe p. 228

Schötker

Ulrich Schötker The Unknown Child, 2007 Photograph from “dirty & stinky,” art meditation project, documenta 12 Courtesy of the artist and documenta GmbH, Kassel p. 232 Thomas Hirschhorn The Bataille Monument, 2002 Installation project, documenta 11 Photos: Knut Fierke pp. 236, 240–41 Eidelman

Ronen Eidelman summer 2007, Germany Courtesy of the artist pp. 243–47 Tatari

Halil Altindere Dengbejs, 2007 Video still Collection Centre Pompidou, New Media Department Courtesy of the artist Photo: Courtesy of documenta GmbH, Kassel p. 249 Ai Weiwei Fairytale (detail), 2007 Antique Chinese chairs Installation at documenta 12 Courtesy of the artist Photo: Courtesy of documenta GmbH, Kassel p. 251 Bernstein

Carolyn Bernstein Reframing Experience (at documenta 12), 2007 Photographs Courtesy of the artist pp. 255–57, 263, 266–67, 270

illustrations  276  

Index

Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations. Abakanowicz, Magdalena, 1, 4, 5, 11, 74–81, 207, 209–10; Agora, 9–10, 207, 208–9, 209–15, 213; Crowds, Flocks, Hurma, 80; Ragazzi, Infantes, Puellae, Bambini, 81; Runa, 76 Abramovig, Marina, 204–5; The House with the Ocean View, 204 Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, 140 Achebe, Chinua, 83 Achmat, Zackie, 84–85 Actor’s Studio, 38 Adorno, Theodor, 11, 238, 259 Advance for Design Forum, 161 aesthetic(s): definition of, 2–3; Duchamp’s, 21, 22, 223, 226; and ethics, 88–89; infra-relational, 3, 226–27; Lorca’s duende and, 148–49; MattaClark’s, 226; study of, 146–49, 185; Zeami’s yugen and, 148–49. See also art experience Afif, Saâdane, Black Chords Plays Lyrics, 266 Agamemnon, 26 AIDS, 3, 29, 36, 85, 153 Allen, Terry, 39 Allende, Salvador, 5, 83 Alpers, Svetlana, 144 Al Qaeda, 202 Altindere, Halil, 250; Dengbejs, 249 American Journal of Sociology, 153 Apexart Gallery (New York), 27 Apollinaire, Guillaume, 155 Arabian Nights, The, 202 Archives of American Art, 202 Aristotle, 107, 109; Ethics, 107; “Good Practice,” 107 Armitage, Karole, 154, 155n10 Arp, Jean, 155 art: in ancient Greece, 26; autonomy of, 144, 260–62, 265; boundaries and, 3, 20–21, 23, 27, 97, 149; definitions of, 3, 4, 6, 20, 22–23, 29, 33, 70–72, 86, 108; as healing, 32; legibility of, 27, 125, 126, 139; as meditation, 43–55, 219, 222, 262; as mirror, 20, 26, 96, 182–83; as peace, 89; philosophy and, 22, 25–26; social change and, 3, 17–18, 27, 29, 36, 58, 69, 72–73, 83–89, 91–103, 119, 217, 219, 225; technology and, 64, 118–19, 203; as way of knowing/not knowing, 29, 32, 36, 62, 68–69, 96–97, 217. See also specific art movements

277 

Art Academy (Düsseldorf ), 17 Artaud, Antonin, 238 Art Center College of Design, 145 art critic. See critic art education/pedagogy, 4–8, 23, 60–65, 143, 237–39, 248; aesthetics in, 146, 149; Bildung and, 233, 234, 239–41; capitalism and, 64, 138, 145; cost of, 23; criticism and, 146–49; curators in, 137–41; curriculum of, 118, 119; discourse in, 107–15, 143; game studies and, 125–35; German, 233–34, 237; graduate level, 96; history in, 125, 132–35; interdisciplinarity and, 151–63; for nonartists, 97, 100; Rauschenberg’s lessons for, 117– 23, 132–34; theory in, 108–10, 115, 117, 135, 146; during war, 62. See also specific institutions art experience, 11, 36, 179, 199, 211, 219, 226–27, 233, 237–38, 265–66; Buddhism and, 1, 11, 179, 182, 260; designing of, 145, 161; Dewey on, 2, 6, 8–9, 11, 179n5, 182, 218, 237–39; effort in, 244–47; looking and, 195–205 (see also perception); negation and 237–39. See also viewer Artforum, 143, 186 art history, 30, 125, 130–35; construction of, 69, 131, 193, 196; contemporary art and, 146; cubism and, 158–69; frontier in, 19–20; modern art and, 128; multiples in, 158–59; museums and, 138, 268; novelty and, 19, 126; Rauschenberg and, 119; sexual difference in, 120; teaching of; 96–97, 109, 125, 117; versus visual and cultural studies, 143–44; Zen Buddhism and, 108 Art in America, 192 art-life gap, 17–18, 21, 22, 26–27, 123; overcoming of, 27, 219, 266. See also art, social change and art market, 7, 140 art mediation, 10, 11, 232–33, 235–37, 239, 241, 259, 264–65 Art Mob (vocal group), 39 art museums and institutions. See museums and art institutions Art News, 158 art practice: 6, 7, 114–15, 125, 128, 149; Buddhism and, 219; game studies and, 125–35. See also art making art world, 4, 7, 23, 29, 61, 65, 87–88, 92, 96, 138, 162, 268; as complex system, 137; conservativism

art world (continued) of, 98; rules of, 132; transformation of, 140, 226–27 Ashbery, John, 49, 50, 52, 54 Asher, Michael, 139 Astaire, Fred, 2 attention, 44, 49–50, 52, 53, 97, 211–12; of viewer, 99, 198, 267–68 audience. See viewer Avalokiteshvara, 220–21 awareness. See attention; consciousness Baas, Jacquelynn, 1–12, 177n3, 216–29, 258–71; “Awake: Art, Buddhism, and the Dimensions of Consciousness,” 259, 262, 267; Buddha Mind in Contemporary Art, 1, 11, 259; Smile of the Buddha, 259 Ball, Hugo, 155 Bamber, Linda V., 11 Bamiyan Buddhas, 179, 209 Barney, Matthew, 146 Basbaum, Ricardo, 240 Basualdo, Carlos, 140 Bataille, Georges, 10, 147, 233–36, 238, 241 Batchelor, Stephen, 48, 52 Baudrillard, Jean, 209 Bauer, Ute Meta, 7, 12, 136–41 Bauhaus, 161 BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation), 139 Becker, Carol, 11 Beckett, Samuel, 8, 30, 154, 195 Bedford, Christopher, 9, 184–93 Bell, Alexander Graham, 153, 154, 158 Bell, Andrew, 237 Bellow, Saul, 68 Benjamin, Walter, 159, 200 Berger, John, 85 Berkeley Art Museum, 170 Berkeley Youth Alternative, 171 Bernstein, Carolyn, 10–11, 12, 242, 254–57; Reframing Experience (at documenta 12), 254, 255–57, 263, 266–67, 270 Best of Death, The (musical), 38 Beuys, Joseph, Coyote, I Like America and America Likes Me, 204 Bildung, 233, 234, 239–41 Bion, W. R., Taming Wild Thoughts, 53 Bischof, Rita, 234 Black Mountain College, 118 Blake, William, 85 Blanchot, Maurice, 83 Blau, Herbert, 38

Bosnian War, 32 Bourdieu, Pierre, 7, 137 Bourriaud, Nicolas, 226; Relational Aesthetics, 226n33 Boyle, Dennis, 161 Brahmanism, 223 Brancusi, Constantin, 198, 205 Braque, Georges, 154, 158; The Portuguese, 158 Brecht, George, 222n33 Brenson, Michael, 9, 12, 194–205 Breton, André, 219n10 Brown, George Spencer, 11, 259 Brown, Robert, 214 Buchloh, Benjamin, 91, 144 Buddha, 1, 5, 182, 220; as performance artist, 1; teachings of, 3, 6, 45, 219. See also Vajrayogini Buddhism, 10, 43–44, 49, 181–82, 259–60; four truths of, 45, 223; interrelatedness and, 260–61; mind and, 11, 46, 53, 122, 219; self and, 44, 266; Tibetan, 225; in West, 45, 219n9. See also Zen Buddhism Buergel, Roger M., 245, 249, 266 Burnham, Jack, 160, 162 Burt, Ronald, 152–53, 156–57 Bush, George W., 203 Butler, Judith, 113 Cage, John, 4, 21, 44, 46, 53, 54, 55, 118, 134, 217; A Dip in the Lake: Ten Quicksteps, Sixty-two Waltzes, and Fifty-six Marches for Chicago and Vicinity, 47; “Music of Changes,” 49; and Zen Buddhism, 48–49, 50 Caillois, Roger, Man, Play, and Games, 126, 128 California College of the Arts, 7, 139, 145, 146 California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), 143 capitalism, 85, 144 Capra, Fritjof, The Tao of Physics, 179 Carroll, Lewis, Alice in Wonderland, 35 Center for Massive Change, 94, 101 chance operations, 48, 49 change, 35–41, 72, 91, 102; art history and, 143–44; in brain, 95, 218, 269; butterfly effect and, 71; of consciousness, 8, 27, 217–29; failure and, 8, 160–61; meditation and, 45; resistance to, 225. See also art, social change and Charcot, Jean-Martin, 53 Chez Panisse (restaurant, Berkeley), 165, 168 Chicago: Grant Park, 207; Millennium Park, 9, 177n1, 178; South Side, 93 children: art and, 93–96, 231–33; gardens and, 165–70 Chilean revolution (1973), 5, 83

index  278  

Ching, Tseng Yu, 231 Christ, 8, 80 Christensen, Clayton M., 161 Christianity, 58, 80; Eucharist, 8; Gospel of Thomas, 20; iconography of, 120, 122 Christo and Jeanne-Claude, The Gates, 23 CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), 83 Cioran, Emile, 86 Civil Rights Movement, 58; “Freedom Summer,” 21 Civil War, U.S., 60 class and class consciousness, 18, 91, 92, 138 collaboration, 134, 151, 154, 157–63, 171; Mau on, 93, 96, 99, 103; Rauschenberg and, 118, 119, 123. See also Intellectual Ventures; interdisciplinarity Collège de France, 46 color-field painting, 51 Columbia University, 18–19, 21, 23, 45, 50 Comic Strip (comedy club, New York), 40 communism, 78. See also Marxism community, 2, 8, 166–71; agora and, 212–15; art and, 58, 198, 265; gardens in, 166–73; innovation in, 152; mourning in, 60 Community-Supported Agriculture, 167 compassion, 219; bodhisattva of, 220–21 conceptual art, 18, 60, 99 consciousness, 3, 5, 10, 17, 43–44, 49, 52–54, 57, 97, 115, 178, 182, 198, 218; Bataille on, 233–34; changing of, 8, 27, 217–29; group, 57, 119; religion and, 97; of viewer, 226, 249 Cooper Union, 139 Courbet, Gustave, The Origin of the World, 232 craft/craftperson, 22 25, 117, 118 creativity, 41, 153, 160, 180, 181; change and, 35–41; failure and, 30, 41, 55, 61, 152, 160–61; frontier and, 18, 19; interdisciplinarity and, 151–63; multiples in, 153, 154, 158–59; non-intention and, 43–55 “Creativity and New Frontiers” (performance, Columbia University), 18, 21 critic, 9, 27, 126, 143, 192–93, 264; aesthetics and, 146–49; artist as own, 30–31; in art market, 140; commercial sector and, 137; of music, 21; neoformalist, 144–45; practices of, 18, 79 crowds, 79–81, 212–15 cubism, 19, 158 Cunningham, Merce, 154 curator, 7, 265; in art education, 137–41; in art market, 140 Currin, John, 149 dadaism, 19, 20, 133, 220, 222 dakini, 221

279  index  

Dalai Lama, 62 Dalí, Salvador, 19 Damasio, Antonio, 217 Danto, Arthur C., 3, 12, 16–27, 45, 48 Davila, Juan, 231 de Kooning, Willem, 132–33 Deleuze, Gilles, 115 Democritus, 211 Derrida, Jacques, 115 Descartes, René, 29 design, 97, 119–20; versus art, 5, 96, 98; education, 94, 97–98, 119, 120; experience, 161–62; social change and, 91, 101; sustainable, 91; Dewey, John, 1–2, 6, 8–9, 11, 179n5, 182, 218, 237– 38; Art as Experience, 1–2, 218n7; Experience and Education, 6n14 DFGHILM, Unity of Hidden Adinkra, 155 Diehl, Carol, 192 disciplinarity, 7, 8; inter-, 151–63, 158; multi-, 155–57, 156, 159, 160; trans-, 159–60, 160 documenta, 10, 138, 253; documenta 11, 139, 140–41, 235, 266; documenta 12, 10, 11, 174–75, 227, 231, 232, 239, 240, 245–46, 249–52, 259, 260–66, 269 Documents group, 128 Dorner, Alexander, The Way beyond ‘Art’: The Work of Herbert Bayer, 217, 226 Duchamp, Marcel, 3, 3n11, 8, 10, 20, 22, 118, 128, 217, 219–23, 221n15, 223n19, 225, 225n26, 226, 226n33, 227, 261; on “anartist,” 222–23; Clock in Profile, 226n34; “The Creative Act,” 8n17; “Dada,” 220; Étant donnés (Given), 221, 221–23; L.H.O.O.Q., 220, 221; “Precision Optics,” 220; Tu m’, 220 Dwell on Design Conference, 166 egoism, 17, 62–63 Eidelman, Ronen, 10, 12, 242–47; summer 2007, Germany, 243–47 Einstein, Albert, 179 Eliasson, Olafur, 10; The weather project, 227, 228 Eliot, George, 41 Eliot, T. S., 209 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 73 emptiness, 10, 11, 48, 54, 57, 86, 180, 181, 182, 219, 221, 222, 259–62, 264, 266–67 enlightenment, 43, 57, 61 Enwezor, Okwui, 91, 140 Epeius, 25 Epstein, Mark, 3, 4, 12, 42–55 Er, 24, 25 Erickson, Thomas Hylland, 85

Ernst, Max, 19 Erste internationale Dada-Messe (exhibition, Berlin), 141 Euripides, 27 experience, 30, 179, 248, 269; of community, 8, 171; convergence, 162; as cultural base, 162; per­ception and, 188-90, 218; performance art as, 62; unframing of, 226–27. See also art experience experience design, 161–62 failure, 30, 41, 55, 61, 152, 160–61 Farquharson, Alex, 137 fauvism, 19 fear, 40–41, 61, 68; agoraphobia, 212 Fleming, Lee, 152, 155–57, 159 Flower Ladies (Charleston, SC, civil rights group), 58 “fluXspace” (Betty Rymer Gallery, Chicago), 217, 229 Fluxus, 18, 20, 21, 128, 154, 226n33 food, 8, 165–71 Foster, Hal, 144 Fotouhi, Shahab, A Few Centimeters above Sea Level, 27 Foucault, Michel, 113, 139, 195; Les Mots et les choses (The Order of Things), 195 Franco, Francisco, 195 Frank, Robert, 214 Frecon, Suzan, 149: Composition with Red Earth and Red Earth, 147 freedom, 4, 18, 85, 238; of speech, 232 “Freedom Summer,” 21 Freire, Paolo, 6 French Revolution, 18, 30 Freud, Sigmund, 3, 44, 53, 54, 55 Frick Collection (New York), 37 Fried, Michael, 185, 186 Fuller, Buckminster, 101, 157; Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, 157 futurism, 19 Galilei, Galileo, 153 games: as cultural texts, 126; psychology of, 128, 129n6; rule-breaking in, 131; rules of, 130–32; taxonomy of, 126–28, 127n4; “temporary worlds” in, 128, 129n8 game studies, 125, 127n3; applied to art practice, 125–35; versus game theory, 127n2 Game Studies (journal), 127n3 Gandhi, Mahatma, 89 Gates, James, 155n10 Gates, S. J., Unity of Hidden Adinkra, 155

Gauguin, Paul, 130 Gehlen, Arnold, 262 Gehry, Frank, 98 gender, 18, 138; performativity and, 113 General Dynamics, 101 genius, 151, 153, 154; artistic, 154–55, 158, 159; versus artistic multiples, 158–59 genocide, 5, 84 Getsy, David, 6, 124–35 Ghez, Susanne, 140 Giacometti, Alberto, 195, 202, 205 Gilbert and George, 154 Gilmore, James, 161; The Experience Economy, 145 Gladwell, Malcolm, “In the Air,” 153–55, 158–59 globalism, 62 global warming, 60 God, in art, 120 Godard, Jean-Luc, 88–89 Gombrich, Ernst, Art and Illusion, 19 Gonzalez-Torres, Felix, 217 Goodden, Carol, 225 Gooden, Mario, 58n4 Gordimer, Nadine, 72 Gore, Al, 104 Gramsci, Antonio, 87, 140 Grand Army of the Republic, 60n5 Gray, Elisha, 153, 154, 158 Greenberg, Clement, 25, 144, 145, 159, 186; “Avant-Garde and Kitsch,” 144; “Collage (The Pasted Paper Revolution),” 158; “Modernist Painting,” 19, 20, 21 Greene, Brian, 154–55; The Elegant Universe, 155n10 Grosz, George, 141n5 Grotowski, Jerzy, 78 Guerrilla Girls, 154 Guggenheim Museum, 159 Gurdjieff, G. I., 225 Guston, Philip, 46, 50, 52, 53, 54 Haacke, Hans, 139, 159–60; Shalopsky et al. Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, A Real Time Social System, As of May 1, 1971, 159 Hamilton, Ann, 4, 10, 12, 66–73; son Emmett, 70, 71, 72; Songs of Ascension, 69, 70, 72–73, 227, 229 Hamilton, Kendra, 58n4 Hamilton, Richard, 98, 222 Hamlet, 26, 27 Hannula, Mika, 6, 106–15 Hausmann, Raoul, 141n5 Hawking, Stephen, 81 Heartfield, John, 141n5

index  280  

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 18, 24, 25–26, 27, 46, 146, 185, “Absolute Spirit,” 27 Henri, Adrian, 161 Herodotus, 80 Hinduism, 179, 180–81 Hirschhorn, Thomas, 239; The Bataille Monument, 235–36, 236, 240–41 Hirst, Damien, 91, 146 Hitler, Adolf, 75, 77n2, 81 Hodja, Nasreddin, 249–50 Hoegsberg, Milena, 217 Holocaust, 43 Homer, 26 Hood, Walter, 8, 58n4, 164–73; George and Judy Marcus Garden of Enchantment, 172 Hopps, Walter, 119 Huff, Ray, 58n4 Huizinga, Johan, Homo Ludens, 126, 128 Humphrey, Nicholas, 218 Husserl, Edmund, 185, 189 I Ching, 49 identity, 44, 52, 54, 117; as artistic practice, 63; loss of, 212; politics of, 108, 120 IDEO (design firm), 161 illusion and reality, 19, 20, 25–26, 69, 83, 179. See also art-life gap Immendorff, Jörg, 3, 17–18, 23, 27; I Wanted to Become an Artist, 17, 18 Indra’s net, 182 Information (exhibition), 91 “infra-mince” (Duchamp), 3n11 Institute of Fine Arts (New York), 37 intellectual capitalism, 152, 153 intellectual property, 151–52, 153 Intellectual Ventures, 151–53, 155, 157 interdisciplinarity, 151–63, 158; multidisciplinarity versus, 155–57; transdisciplinarity versus, 159–60 interiority, 64–65, 180, 234 intuition, 4, 178, 181; defined, 2 Iraq War, 91 Irwin, Robert, 9, 185–86, 188–93, 189n12; “Notes toward a Model,” 188, 189, 190; Scrim Hall, 190; “Some Notes on the Nature of Abstraction,” 193; Square the Room, 191; Untitled (1969), 187; Untitled (1969–70), 188; Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow & Blue 3, 14–15, 191–92 Izutsu, Toshiko and Toyo, 148 Jaar, Alfredo, 5, 12, 82–89; Lament of the Images, 88; A Logo for America, 84; Muxima, 87; The Skoghall Konsthall, 104–5

281  index  

Jacob, Mary Jane, 1–12, 176–83, 258–71; “Awake: Art, Buddhism, and the Dimensions of Consciousness,” 259, 262, 268; Buddha Mind in Contem­ porary Art, 1, 11, 204, 259 James, William, 1, 1n4 Johns, Jasper, 120, 134, 154 Jones, Ronald, 7–8, 145, 150–63 Joyce, James, 44 Judd, Donald, 185; “Specific Objects,” 186 Juul, Jasper, Half-Real, 127n4 Kaf ka, Franz, 5, 88–89 Kahneman, Daniel, 159, 163 Kali, 180 Kanwar, Amar, 261 Kapoor, Anish, 177–83; Cloud Gate, 9–10, 177–83, 177n1, 178, 181, 183; Iris, 179; Marsupial, 180; 1000 Names, 178; S-Curve, 179; Turning the World Inside Out, 179; Turning the World Upside Down III, 179; Untitled (1997), 179; When I Am Pregnant, 180 Kaprow, Allan, 223n18 Kennedy, Robert, 120 khadroma, 221–22, 222 Kieslowéki, Krzysztof, 78 Kimsooja, 217; A Laundry Woman—Yamuna River, India, 180n6 Kirby, Michael, “Manifesto of Structuralism,” 147 Klein, Melanie, 128, 129n6 Klein, Yves, 217 Kline, Franz, 50–51 Klüver, Billy, 119 Kojeve, Alexandre, 46 Koolhaas, Rem, 98 Koons, Jeff, 91 Kosuth, Joseph, 139 Krasner, Lee, 37 Krauss, Rosalind, 144, 186, 190, 193; “Overcoming the Limits of Matter,” 190 Ku Klux Klan, 120 Kurzweil, Ray, 102–3 Lacan, Jacques, “The Eye and the Gaze,” 212 Lancaster, Joseph, 237 Larson, Kay, 1 Lassaw, Ibram, 45 Leacock, Stephen, Gertude the Governess, 41 Lebel, Robert: Double View, 219, 226n34; “The Inventor of Free Time,” 219, 219n10, 220 Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa, 221 Lerner, Jaime, 96

Levine, Les, 226, 225n27 Levine, Sherrie, 159 LeWitt, Sol, 185 Lichtenstein, Roy, 17, 21, 26–27 Ligeti, Lukas, 155n10 Lippard, Lucy, 162 Lingner, Michael, 139 Lingwood, James, 200 listening, 41, 44, 53, 67, 71, 109, 211 Livingston, Jane, 186 Lorca, Federico Garcia, “Play and Theory of Duende,” 147, 148 Lowell, Robert, 89 Lozano, Lee, 231 Luhmann, Niklas, 7, 11, 137, 259 MacIntyre, Alasdair, 114 Maharaj, Sarat, 140 Makela, Laurie Haycock: Multidisciplinarity Diagram, 156; Interdisciplinarity Diagram, 158; Transdisciplinarity Diagram, 160 Mandela, Nelson, 85 Manet, Edouard, 130 Manglano-Ovalle, Iñigo, 217 Manibhadra, 43 Manifesting Emptiness (exhibition), 217, 229 Mapplethorpe, Robert, 232 Marshall, Kerry James, 5, 12, 89–103; education of, 94; Many Mansions, 92; Souvenir I, 100 Martin, Agnes, 50, 53, 54; The Field, 51 Martin, Trevor, 229 Marxism, 18, 144 MASS MoCA, 23 Matisse, Henri, La Danse, 154 Matisse, Paul, 223n19 Matta-Clark, Gordon, 10, 219, 223, 225–27, 225n27, 229; Conical Intersect, 223, 224 Mau, Bruce, 5, 12, 89–103; New Tokyo Life Style Think Zone, 95; Panamarama, 103 McLuhan, Marshall, 102, 119, 212 McShine, Kynaston, 91 Means, Charmaine, 70 meditation, 219, 222, 262; art as, 43–55; Buddhist, 44–45 memory, 49, 67, 81, 85, 182, 199, 200 Menand, Louis, 1 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 111, 185, 189 Merton, Robert K., 154 Merton, Thomas, 46 Mighty Oaks Theater Company, 38–39 Mills, C. Wright, The Sociological Imagination, 109 mind-body dualism, 29–30

mind/mindfulness, 2, 11, 46, 49, 61, 122, 188, 222–23 minimalism, 18, 20, 21, 185 Mitchell, W. J. T., 9–10, 206–15 modernism, 19, 20, 99, 117, 130, 149, 161, 185, 186, 195, 217; defined, 19 Monk, Meredith, Songs of Ascension, 69, 70, 72–73 Montessori, Maria, 165 Morris, Robert, 185 mourning, 52, 60 Mozart, Amadeus, 154 multidisciplinarity, 155–57, 156, 159, 160 Muñoz, Juan, 9, 195–97, 200, 202, 204; Conversa­ tion Piece, 197, 200; Double Bind, 200, 201, 202 Murakami, Takashi, 146 Museum of Modern Art, 91, 190 museums and art institutions, 23, 119, 161, 259, 265; and art market, 139, 140; and art mediation, 239; economics and politics of, 137, 141; exclusivity of, 138 music, 21, 44, 49. See also Cage, John Myhrvold, Nathan, 151–53, 155, 158, Nagarjuna, 52 Napoleon, 18 Naropa Institute, 43 Nash, Mark, 140 Nauman, Bruce, 30, 114; The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths (Window or Wall Sign), 31 negation/negativity, 11, 237–38, 239, 259 Negri, Toni, 140 neo-formalism, 144–45 Newman, Barnett, 191 Newman, Oscar, 167 New Museum, 35, 39–40 New Realists, The (exhibition), 22 New School for Social Research, 21 New Yorker, 153 New York School, 46, 118 Nietzsche, Friedrich, Twilight of the Idols, 248 9/11, 81, 202–3, 204 9 Evenings: Theater and Engineering (exhibition), 122 Noack, Ruth, 245 Norman, Dorothy, 222 nothingness, 48, 217. See also emptiness not knowing, 62, 68, 69, 180 October, 91 Odysseus, 24 Oedipus, 26 Oldenburg, Claes, 22, 26

index  282  

Ollman, Leah, 192–93 Ono, Yoko, 217; Painting to See the Skies, 229 Orestes, 26 Paik, Nam June, 217 Panofsky, Erwin, 211 Pardo, Jorge, 98 Peabody, Elizabeth Palmer, 1; The Dial, 1n4 pedagogy. See art education/pedagogy Peirce, Charles S., 1–2, 1n4, 6; The Century Diction­ ary, 2, 5; “The Fixation of Belief,” 8n18 perception, 22, 27, 139, 181, 185, 189, 192–93, 223–24, 226; of artist/viewer, 195–205; versus conception, 188; defined, 192–93, 218; Irwin and, 185–98; versus sensation, 218–19. See also phenomenology; viewer performance art, 60–61, 62, 72, 108, 117, 128. See also specific artists Performing Garage (theater company), 38 Peterson, Ara, 149 Petroski, Henry, Success through Failure, 160 Phelan, Peggy, 57 phenomenology, 179, 189, 192–93. See also MerleauPonty, Maurice; perception; Schütz, Alfred; viewer. Philadelphia Museum of Art, 221 Phillips, Adam, 54 philosophy, 185, 234; in ancient Greece, 26: of art, 22–23. See also specific philosophers Picasso, Pablo, 19, 154, 158; Still Life with Piano, 158 Pillar Point Refugee Center (Hong Kong), 84 Pine II, B. Joseph, 161; The Experience Economy, 145 Pink, Daniel H., 151 Pinochet, Augusto, 83 Piper, Adrian, 114 Pirandello, Luigi, 195 Plato, 71; The Republic, 20, 24–26; The Statesman, 26 play, art making as, 128. See also games pluralism, 20, 109 Poe, Edgar Allan, “The Man of the Crowd,” 212 poetry, 26, 50, 68 Polanski, Roman, 78 Pollock, Griselda, Avant-Garde Gambits, 128, 130 pop art, 17, 18, 20, 21, 26–27, 48 postmodernism, 20, 117, 123, 149, 209 pragmatism, 1–2, 107 Prince, Richard, 159 process, 3, 4, 41, 44, 60, 96, 110, 140; defined, 2; Buddhism and, 45, 49; Cage and, 44, 48–49; Dewey and, 2; Martin and, 53; in modernism, 117; Rauschenberg and, 118

283  index  

psychoanalysis, 44, 53, 54, 55 psychology, 49, 55, 128 public art, 58, 60, 64, 92, 177, 182, 231, 260. See also documenta; Kapoor, Anish Pujol, Ernesto, 4, 56–65; Baptizing the Garden, 58n4; Memminger Garden, 58; Memorial Gestures: Mourning and Yearning at the Rotunda, 59, 60, 61, 61, 63, 64; Phillips Community and, 58; “Places with a Future Collaborative,” 58n4; The Water Cycle, 60; Water Table, 58 race, 18, 91, 92; in art institutions, 93 Rancière, Jacques, 1, 6, 225–26 Rauschenberg, Robert, 6, 48, 117–23, 132–34, 154; Coexistence, 118; Erased de Kooning Drawing, 132–34, 133; Open Score, 122; Overseas Culture Interchange, 123; Retroactive I, 121 Razavipour, Neda, A Few Centimeters above Sea Level, 27 ready-made, 20, 22 Reid, Thomas, 218 Reisman, David, “Lonely Crowd,” 209 Relyea, Lane, 144–45 René Block Gallery (New York), 204 Rich, Adrienne, 85 Richter, Gerhard, 114 Rinder, Lawrence, 7, 12, 142–49, Rivet, Dennis J., 153 Rockenschaub, Gerwald, 266 Rorty, Richard, 7, 137 Rosch, Eleanor, 267 Rosenberg, Harold, The Anxious Object, 199 Roshi, Suzuki, 39 Rosler, Martha, 139, 240 Rothko, Mark, 50 Rushdie, Salman, 68, 70 Rwandan genocide, 5, 84 Saddam Hussein, 209 Sade, Marquis de, 29 Salen, Katie, 130–31 Salinger, J. D., 46 Saltz, Jerry, 3, 12, 28–33, 147 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 185, 212 Sarvabuddhadakini (khadroma), 222 satori, 52 Scarry, Elaine, 41 Schank, Roger, 24 Schechner, Richard, 38 Schell, Jonathan, The Unconquerable World, 72 Schiller, Friedrich, 239 Schjeldahl, Peter, 100

Schoenberg, Arnold, 49 School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 11, 38, 60, 93, 177, 182, 217 Schötker, Ulrich, 10, 11, 230–41, 258–71; The Unknown Child, 10, 231–32, 232 Schütz, Alfred, 185, 189, 190; The Phenomenology of the Social World, 189 Sean Kelly Gallery (New York), 204 Sekula, Alan, 240 Sellars, Peter, “The Culture of Democracy,” 71 sensation, versus perception, 218–19 Serra, Richard, 98, 99 sex/sexuality: abuse, 231; in art, 120, 230; Bataille on, 234 Shakespeare, William, Love’s Labour’s Lost, 211 Shechet, Arlene, Mind Field Series: Borobudur Awash (Borobudur Kalachakra Mandala), 53 Shedroff, Nathan, 161 Sherman, Cindy, 159 Sidney Janis Gallery (New York), 21 silence, 65, 203 Simmons, Ken, 167 skepticism, 22 Skinner, B.{ths}F., 237 Skulptur Projekte Münster 07 (exhibition), 10, 243–44, 252–53 Smithson, Robert, 195 social change. See art, social change and socialism, 78 Socrates, 1, 5, 20, 24–25, 26 Sontag, Susan, 85; “On Style,” 147 Sophocles, 27 sovereignty, theory of, 235 speaking, 4, 53, 67–68; in dialogue, 71; non-native languages, 67; in unison, 68 spectator. See viewer Spence, Jo, 231 Spoerri, Daniel, 226n33 Statue of Liberty, 120 Steefel, Lawrence, The Position of Duchamp’s Glass in the Development of His Art, 3n11 Stein, Gertrude, 69 Steinberg, Leo, 123 Stille Helden (Silent Heroes), 138, 139 Stuhlmann, Adolf, 237 surprise, 225, 229 surrealism, 19, 128 Suu Kyi, Aung San, 84 Suzuki, D. T., 4, 45–46, 48–50, 53, 54, 55 Taliban, 209 Tanguy, Yves, 19

Tatari, Otuz, 10, 12, 242, 248–53 Tate Modern, 200 technology and art, 64, 118–19, 203 theater, 38–40; ancient Greek, 26, 71; Japanese, 148 theory: applied to art, 29, 65, 235; versus practice, 6, 8, 114; teaching of, 108–11, 115, 117, 146 3rd berlin biennial for contemporary art, 139 Tibetan Buddhism, 225 Toeplitz, Krzystof Teodor, 78 Tompkins, Rosie Lee, 149; Three Sixes, 148 Too Much Pollution to Demonstrate: Soft Guerrillas in Tehran’s Contemporary Art Scene (exhibition), 27 transdisciplinarity, 159–60 Treatment Action Campaign (AIDS activist group), 85 Trojan War, 25 Tucker, Marcia, 3, 4, 12, 34–41, 39 Tuttle, Richard, 39 Tuymans, Luc, 146; Superstition, 144 Twombly, Cy, 134 Tzara, Tristan, 220 unconscious, 24, 48, 54–55 Vajrayognini, 222, 222 Valéry, Paul, 83 Vasari, Giorgio, 19 Vautier, Ben, 226n33 Velázquez, Diego, Las Meninas, 195 Venice biennials, 138 Venus de Milo, 210 Vermeer, Johannes, 33, View of Delft, 32 video art, 19, 113, 114 Vietnam War, 91 viewer: 9, 44, 96–97, 243–47; Abramovig and, 204–5; in ancient Greece, 26; attention of, 99, 198, 267–68; Irwin and; 185; Muñoz and, 195–96, 198–200, 202–3; as participant, 139; psychology of, 196; Rauschenberg and, 117; relationship with artist, 9–10, 38, 57, 139, 195, 200, 218, 227, 259, 261–62; types of, 248–53 Village Voice (newspaper), 38, 146, 147 Virilio, Paul, 147 WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution (exhibition), 141n6 Wainwright, Lisa, 5, 6, 12, 90–103, 116–23 waiting, 69–70 Wajda, Andrzej, 78 Waldhauer, Fred: Experiments in Art and Technology, 119

index  284  

Wall, Jeff, 195 war, 4, 5, 60, 75–78, 101; in art, 120; “on terror,” 207. See also specific wars Warburg, Aby, 144 Warhol, Andy, 3, 21, 22, 26, 27 Washington, George, 120 Wasserman, Emily, 186 Waters, Alice, 8–9, 164–73; Edible Schoolyard, 8, 165, 166, 166, 169, 171, 173; Yale Sustainable Food Project, 170 Watson, John B., 237 Wayne, John, 108 Weiwei, Ai, 10, 251, 264; Fairytale, 174–75, 227, 251, 264 Weschler, Lawrence, 32–33, 188, 189, 192 Wexner Center for the Arts, 102 Whitechapel Art Gallery (London), 81 Whitney Museum of American Art, 37, 38, 39, 188; biennials, 138, 147 Williams, William Carlos, 86

285  index  

Wiman, Christian, 85 Winnicott, D. W., 128, 129n6 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 22, 127n4, 185, 214 Wooster Group (theater troupe), 38 World Trade Center, 202 World War I, 20 World War II, 75–77, 134, 202, 204; German occupation of Poland, 75–77, 81; Home Army (Polish underground), 77n2; Soviet occupation of Poland, 78–79; Warsaw Uprising, 77 World Wide Web, 207, 253 Yang, Li, Washing the Heart, x Yilin, Lin, 240 Zaya, Octavio, 140 Zeami, “Nine Stages,” 147, 148–49 Zen Buddhism, 46, 48, 49, 52, 55, 65 Zimmerman, Eric, 130–31

This book is a project of the Department of Exhibitions, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago: Mary Jane Jacob, executive director; Trevor Martin, director; Todd Cashbaugh, associate director; and Kate Zeller, assistant curator and editorial assistant for this volume. University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the University of California Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England School of the Art Institute of Chicago Chicago, Illinois © 2009 School of the Art Institute of Chicago Individual authors retain copyright to their essays or interviews. Every effort has been made to identify and locate the rightful copyright holders of all material not specifically commissioned for use in this publication and to secure permission, where applicable, for reuse of all such material. Credit, if and as available, has been provided for all borrowed material either on-page, on the copyright page, or in an acknowledgment section of the book. Any error, omission, or failure to obtain authorization with respect to material copyrighted by other sources has been either unavoidable or unintentional. The editors and publishers welcome any information that would allow them to correct future reprints.

Text: 9.5/14 Scala Display: Sackers Gothic Medium and Light Sponsoring editor: Deborah Kirshman Assistant editor: Eric Schmidt Project editor: Sue Heinemann Editorial assistant: Erica Lee Copyeditor: Mary Yakush Design concept: Jessica Mott Wickstrom Production coordinator: Pam Augspurger Compositor: Integrated Composition Systems Printer and binder: KHL Printing Company Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Learning mind : experience into art / edited by Mary Jane Jacob and Jacquelynn Baas.    p. cm.   Includes bibliographical references and index.   ISBN 978-0-520-26076-4 (cloth : alk. paper)   1. Art, Modern—20th century—Psychological aspects. 2. Art, Modern—21st century—Psychological aspects. I. Jacob, Mary Jane. II. Baas, Jacquelynn.   N6490.L337 2009   701'.1—dc22 2009027921 Manufactured in Singapore 18  17  16  15  14  13  12  11  10  09 10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.481992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper).