art and allusion

Art as Conceptual: notes from 7 Ways of Thinking About Art, Tate Modern

Seven Ways of Thinking About Art
Monday evenings Tate Modern, admission by ticket only

Notes from Previous Sessions
Week One: Art as Thought-Provoking
Week Two: Art as Intentional
Week Three: Art as Self-Presentation

Notes from Session 4.

Art as Conceptual

What is conceptual art? There are at least two answers:

1) A post-Duchamp art movement that reached its zenith in the 1960s and 70s. (see Paul Wood Conceptual Art, Tate Publications or Wikipedia article on Conceptual Art with numerous links to conceptual artists' work)

2) Any art that is predominantly idea-based rather than created mainly for aesthetic appreciation. This is the more colloquial sense of the term ‘conceptual art’.
The main focus of this week’s session was on the second of these senses of ‘conceptual art’. In a broader sense, perhaps almost all art has some conceptual element (think of religious art, impressionism, cubism); but only where this dominates do we usually speak of a work as conceptual.

Marcel Duchamp’s Readymades are usually taken to be paradigms of conceptual art (in both senses above). With works such as Mark Wallinger’s A Real Work of Art (a real racehorse that he bought and put into races, but which he declared a work of art by choice of its name which was not meant to be metaphorical), there may be an aesthetic element: but what you see isn’t what you get.

The best explanation of what is going on with conceptual art is given by Arthur Danto (e.g. in his book The Transfiguration of the Commonplace) who wrote about the non-identity of indiscernibles. Just because you can’t tell two objects apart simply by looking at them it doesn’t follow that they express the same emotions, have the same content or meaning. The context and etiology of an object influence its meaing. A urinal on a production line has different proerperties from the urinal that Duchamp dubbed ‘Fountain’, signed R. Mutt and entered for exhibition in 1917.

But how can conceptual art be art? George Dickie’s first version of his Institutional Theory of Art gives one explanation. For him a work of art is an artifact some aspect of which has had the status of ‘candidate for appreciation’ conferred upon it by a member or members of the artworld (by artworld he meant anyone who believed themselves to be part of the artworld, not the social elite of curators, critics, gallery owners, collectorsand well-known artists). These provide necessary and sufficient conditions (pre-requisites and guarantees) that anything is a work of art. But this is a neutral sense of ‘art’: to say that something is a work of art implies nothing about its value. On this theory (which has been much criticised for being over-inclusive) it is very easy to see that, for example the minimal intervention of selecting and signing a urinal transforms it into an artifact, and entering it for an exhibition is an act of conferral of status of ‘candidate for appreciation’ (further reading, including criticism of this approach, Nigel Warburton The Art Question, chapter 4).

Two Thoughts

1) What about the status of the Idea in Conceptual Art? A challenge: if the ideas expressed in conceptual art are trite or unoriginal (which they often are) does that make the artwork trite? One possible answer is that the idea is an element of the work of art, not its sole purpose: the ingenuity of the way of communicating the idea is part of the work. This might be supported by the notion that if you want to communicate a complex idea writing a philosophy book or paper is usually better than making a work of conceptual art that is likely to be ignored or misunderstood by gallery goers…

2) Should we approach conceptual art with cynicism or charity? Cynicism involves a starting position that most conceptual art deals in alluding to not very profound thoughts that would be better expressed in straightforward ways, and has limited aesthetic appeal by way of consolation. Charity involves approaching these works in a more open way, starting with the working assumption that there is something worth engaging with there to be discovered. Both approaches have their dangers…

In the Gallery
We examined three works by Dan Flavin (1933-96), constructed from domestic flourescent lights. His genius was to take such a simple readily available raw material and turn it into a medium for self-expression, creation of beautiful objects that also have a conceptual element. We examined the works first from a purely conceptual point of view, drawing attention to features such as the links with Duchamp’s readymades, with minimalism (though Flavin himself declared that he wasn’t a minimalist but a maximalist!), the idea that a work could lilterally colour the gallery and spectators, and re-create spatial relations by enclosing or framing parts…and in the specific cases links with Tatlin’s tower or the exploration of ideas about the frame. Underlying the simplest work, a single fluorescent light at an angle, there was the implicit questioning of the limits of what can be art. Then we examined the same works from an aesthetic point of view, drawing attention to the formal elements, the striking use of colour (delivered with an intensity that can leave afterimages), and the pleasures of looking at these works. I took the consensus of our discussion to be that both conceptual and aesthetic elements contributed to the power of these works.

In contrast, Piero Manzoni’s ‘Artist’s Shit’ which is a small numbered can allegedly containing Manzoni’s excrement was a witty primarily conceptual work. The look of the object wasn’t as important as the witty gesture of mocking obsessions with the artist’s Midas Touch, and even the act of making a numbered edition of 90 of these tins is a comment on the artworld’s convention of limited editions (which essentially focus on the rarity value of works). In contrast with Flavin’s works, this work did not invite aesthetic contemplation – the idea or knowledge that the artist had performed this act of selling his own excrement to the artworld, was far more important than the look of the tin.

Notes from Previous Sessions
Week One: Art as Thought-Provoking
Week Two: Art as Intentional
Week Three: Art as Self-Presentation

Is this the End of Street Photography in Britain?

Tony Blair and co are allegedly poised to bring in legislation that will force photographers to register for ID cards if they want to take photographs in public places...so are we about to wave goodbye to British street photography? UPDATE HERE, 29.3.07.

There is an official petition against this which already has over 27,000 signatories, deadline for signing is 14th August 2007. More on this from the person who started the petition. This may be a false alarm: Sophie Howarth explains why here (and gives some useful links too).

Interview with curator Susan Bright on Face of Fashion

Susan Bright, freelance curator of photography exhibitions and author of the highly successful book Art Photography Now discusses her new exhibition Face of  Fashion (15th Feb. - 28th May 2007) below...[update: Read Susan's interview about 'How We Are Photographing Britain', Tate Britain]

Links to information about the five photographers included.
Read the Press Release.
Hear Susan talking about the exhibition on 3rd March at the NPG, booking information here
Susan will also be discussing fashion photography with some of the key players on Friday 13th April in a Tate Modern study day 'When Fashion and Art Collide'.

Audio tour: download mp3s about the exhibition.
Screensaver: download Face of Fashion screensaver.
Information about the Exhibition Catalogue here or click on icon below.

Nigel: Face of Fashion at the National Portrait Gallery has more publicity before it has opened than some major exhibitions get altogether. Why do you think there is such fervid press interest here?

Susan: I think there are many reasons for it. There are five photographers, so there are five potential stories and takes on the subject; the photographers have good links with the magazines so  in turn publications are more likely to feature them;  the exhibition features celebrities which of course sell column inches and finally the NPG has an excellent press department with very good relations with the media. You are also probably noticing it more too as you know me. Hogarth has had a lot too!

Nigel: What is the main theme of the show?

Susan: There is no over-arching theme. Its not a survey but a glimpse at the work of 5 photographers, highlighting their  virtuosity as portraitists and the diversity of the genre within a commercial setting. I like what Philippe Garner wrote about it in PLUK.. “…Face of Fashion does not claim to be encyclopedic or even comprehensive. It feels, rather, like and intuitive and sensitive probing of the field and presents work of just a few photographers…but each in sufficient depth to underscore their individuality. The list is international; it is diverse, and it succeeds in demonstrating the very considerable shifts that have marked the world of fashion imagery since the early 1990s. Without the straightjacket of a self-conscious curatorial structure, the work is encouraged to speak for itself, and it successfully  puts forward some challenging ideas.”

Nigel: What is fashion portraiture?

Susan:  Portraiture that is done by photographers that work mainly in fashion and portraits that appear within fashion and lifestyle magazines. This can be advertising or editorial.

Nigel: Is it different from other kinds of celebrity portraiture?

Susan: Yes. There are many types of celebrity portraiture – publicity shots and grabbed paparazzi shots for the ‘red tops’ example. Here we are looking at the very best editorial and advertising shots of the famous.

Nigel: I do think there is something different about fashion portraiture, but am not quite sure what it is. Perhaps because many of the subjects are particulary good-looking there is less focus on character (if the subjects are famous they are famous for the way they look, so everything is on the surface). It might have something to do with portraiture created for the more ephemeral medium of the fashion magazine spread too...Do you have any thoughts about this?

Susan: I think a lot of portraiture in ‘art photography’ is about the photographic act. Subjects tend to be awkward and over self-conscious about the camera. This is what makes so much of it strong. I am most obviously thinking of Rineke Djkstra here…In fashion portraiture they have been commissioned. The models or actors are very used to being photographed and are acting. It's their job to be photographed so the photographic act is totally taken for granted on some levels. They know what to do.

Models are like silent movie stars. Tilda Swinton wrote very eloquently in the handlist about being photographed by Paolo and how to move so not to appear frozen. She totally gets how to move, how to react. Production values are much higher too in commercial portraiture and don’t forget sitters will have been styled and made up. Also post production is much more rigorous and we only see the ones that make it to the final edit.

Nigel: In your book Art Photography Now (p.13) , writing about photographic portraiture, you asked, rhetorically, 'Is it all about  surface appearance or can it communicate something more?' Are you prepared to answer this question in relation to Face of Fashion?

Susan: I think its all about the surface. Portraiture is about role playing, performance, posing. Corinne’s work comes closest to showing more about the presence of her models but they are still aware of the camera.

Nigel: How did you select the five photographers?

Susan:  I was limited by space. The NPG is a modest museum. I wanted 5 different sets of work so that I could show a good amount of photographs rather than just three or four by more photographers. I wanted to show how each photographer approach portraiture in very different ways. However, it was important  in the selection to illustrate that what links them together is that they all form very close collaborations with the sitter. All the photographers deal with intimacy on some level although they do this in very different ways. Their relationship with their sitters comes from empathy and respect. There is not any cruelty in their work. I am not condemning cruelty in portraiture (some of the very best photographers use this to wonderful effect – Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon and Irving Penn to name a few) it's just not what these photographers are about or what the show wanted to say about portraiture. This doesn’t mean to say that the photographers in the show are just interested in flattering their sitters, far from it, it's more that they are prepared to work very closely with their subjects to produce results that push both themselves and the sitter due to high levels of trust created whilst shooting.

Nigel: Are we in a golden age of fashion photography?

Susan: Sadly no. Very conservative times indeed. The control of the advertisers cannot be underestimated. This doesn’t mean good work isn’t being produced though – but a Golden Age it certainly isn’t. The work in the show starts at the early 1990s which can be understood as a very significant time in the history and runs to the modern day.

Nigel: What are the highlights of the exhibition for you?

Susan: Working with Mario Sorrenti and Paolo Roversi. The integrity of both photographers was overwhelming.

Nigel: As a curator, are you able to influence the manner in which the photographs are displayed?

Susan: Yes, and no……with some photographers I worked very collaboratively. With others it was much more of them saying how their work was to be presented. We of course discussed everything through before display but each relationship was different.

Nigel: Many of the sitters for these portraits are startlingly beautiful, yet remarkably thin. Are you worried about supporting the size zero approach to beauty here and influencing vulnerable teenagers?

Susan:  I am interested that you think some of the sitters are remarkably thin. Don’t forget that models have always been thin (in fashion) think of the body shapes of famous models of the 1960s and 1970s such Gerry Hall, Marie Helvin, Twiggy…. Are the body shapes we have in the exhibition any different? Not really. I think they look strong and independent.  They certainly are not anywhere size zero. All the models in the show are from reputable (top) model agencies and most of the commissions are from magazines such as W, POP, Vogue which never show size zero models and have a working rule of only using models over 16. The whole ‘skinny’ model thing is fascinating and comes, I think, much more from Hollywood rather than fashion magazines. The red tops' obsession with weight is much more ‘to blame’ if we are going to band blame around.

Nigel: Kate Moss emerges as the star of this show. Somehow she manages to upstage the photographers even.  What is it about her that makes her such a mesmerising subject?

Susan: Her ordinariness on one level and her total understanding of the photographic act on the other. I know that sounds like a weird thing to say, but an anecdote might better illustrate this. A friend of mine was a fashion photographer in the early 1990s. Kate was often sent to him as a ‘go see’. He never bothered to take her picture and couldn’t understand why she kept being sent. He just didn’t get it. They became friends. He was at the time seeing an American model and remembers walking down Kings Road with her and noted that all the men were eying her up and then looking and him and wondering how he managed to go out with somebody so beautiful. A week later after one of the shows he was walking down the same road with Kate and noted that none of the men looked at her. Not one. Get her in front of the camera and she transforms. You can’t take your eyes off her. I noticed this at the opening - when she was in front of the cameras she transformed, totally lit up. It was incredible. So we can relate to her as ‘one of us’ but also as somebody so glamorous and unattainable.  This is a perfect combination for obsession and fascination – for both men and women.

Nigel: What are your plans for future projects?

Susan: Coming up in May 2007 I am co-curating How We Are: Photographing Britain with Val Williams for Tate Britain. This is to take place in the Linbury Galleries and is to be Tate’s first ever large scale exhibition of British photography. In May I also start a book on photographic self portraiture which I am currently researching. In October I am curating an exhibition at Fotogalleriet in Oslo. I am also thinking about getting a full time job rather than working freelance.

Nigel: Thank you very much.

Steve Pyke's Photographs of Philosophers

It's always interesting to get a sense of what philosophers look like. Steve Pyke's photographic portraits of philosophers appeared in book form as Philosophers in 1993 (I reviewed it for a magazine called Cogito). Since then his photographs have been the staple of philosophy book covers and publisher's catalogues, almost to the point of cliché. The distortions produced by placing his lens close to his sitter's face are now in some cases more familiar than the philosophers' less stylised images. If you haven't yet seen them, Philosophers 1 (which selects 36 images) is the place to start, though some of these border on mild caricature... The short quotations from each philosopher - included on his website - are interesting too. A more recent gentler series, Philosophers 11 (another 25 images) also exists. There is still at least one obvious omission though...

Interview with Steve Pyke from The Philosophers' Magazine.

7 Ways of Thinking About Art

Seven Ways of Thinking About Art
Monday evenings, Tate Modern, admission by ticket only.

Led by Nigel Warburton

Notes from Session 3, Art as Self-Presentation

For this session we focussed on some of the ways in which artists present themselves through their work, both in terms of their actual and implied selves.

The philosopher Jenefer Robinson in an interesting paper called ‘Style and Personality in the Literary Work’ [Philosophical Review, vol. 94, p (1985) reprinted in Neill and Ridley (eds) The Philosophy of Art: Readings Ancient and Modern and in Lamarque and Olsen (eds) Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art ] suggested that individual style in art is a consistent way of performing artistic acts and that this expresses an implied personality. Implied, because, as she recognises, the actual artist’s personality may differ from that pointed to by the work. Interpreting works of art involves an examination of that implied personality.

Individual style on this view  is the style of a particular implied persona (sometimes as, in the Chapman brothers, or Gilbert and George, two or more people may combine to make a ‘team’ persona, though this is not something Robinson discusses). It is contrasted with general style, such as Cubism or Vorticism. Individual style is also different from mere signature  (in the metaphorical sense suggested by Nelson Goodman). Signature is simply that by which we recognise a work as by a particular artist: it needn’t directly relate to the implied personality, but is rather more like the identifying trademark. One question that it can be interesting to ask of any element of a work of art is the extent to which it is an aspect of an artist’s style or merely a signature device. This is clearly an evaluative issue.

Gilbert and George by declaring themselves works of art break down the distinction between art and artist. Their images appear in almost all their work. But perhaps all art, whether or not it includes self-portraiture or representation at all, is an expression of an implied personality. Interpretation of art may involve examining and exploring that personality as it develops (or sometimes disintegrates) through an artist’s oeuvre.

The social psychologist Erving Goffman analysed and described the act of presenting one’s self in a social context in his brilliant book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959).  He gave what he called a dramaturgical analysis of human interaction, by which he meant to take seriously the idea that ‘All the world’s a stage’. We play social roles enacting parts in particular spaces that we to some degree control, motivated by presenting in most cases an idealised role to the audience we think we are before. In this context non-verbal cues are controlled and manipulated, often in a pre-conscious way. For such communications to work we need to believe in the sincerity of the participants. The self is for Goffman a social construct: there is no single ‘true’ self, just a succession of overlapping roles that we play.

Applying some of these ideas to Gilbert and George’s work, particularly that in Room 10 of the current Tate Modern exhibition, we discussed what the implied personality of the artists was. Suggestions included provocative, abusive, celebratory, quasi-religious (in their apparently devout worship of what others might take as profane and profane attitudes to what others may see as sacred), homosexual and to some degree kitsch. The high production values and neat clean-lined prints behind glass contrasted with the recurrent imagery of bodily emissions: urine, faeces, sperm  (Manzoni canned his own excrement; Gilbert and George present a stylised abstract image of theirs). Writing this now it occurs to me that Milan Kundera’s discussion of kitsch in The Incredible Lightness of Being as 'the absolute denial of shit'  is pertinent here…Gilbert and George to some extent prettify or stylise it rather than deny it.

In the large work Life Without End (1982) Gilbert and George embody the attitude of devotion in the far left of the image, kneeling like the donors in a medieval altar piece, yet they are kneeling before young men who are presumably the object of their (sexual) devotion; at the right of the picture one of the pair makes a two-fingered gesture (to religion?). If we believe the stated intentions of the artists this is view of their heaven:

We wanted to dream a kind of paradise…[with] those brightly lit human beings that we compare to flowers. [G & G quoted in the exhibition leaflet]

Their unorthodox imagery is part of a general policy to ‘deshock’ the viewer. Like the Elizabethan poet John Donne (who used to be Dean of St Pauls - just across the river), they deliberately transpose religious and sexual imagery albeit for different ends. The implied personae from the evidence of Room 10 have a profound reverence for the profane and a desire to shock the viewer into different ways of seeing the world.

Many reviewers of this exhibition have been intrigued by the relationship between the implied personae and the real Gilbert and George (and this is perhaps analogous to the ideas of Jorge Luis Borges in his ‘Borges and I’). They want to know the degree to which the couple are simply performing a role, that may be at odds with their ‘true’ selves.  Opinions of the group members differed as to whether it matters whether the real Gilbert and George endorse the values implied by their work; whether, in the most extreme view they are simply taking the artworld for an expensive ride. One view is that the implied joint persona presents a challenging subversion of many received opinions and when considering their work as art this is all that matters; the rest is gossip. From another perspective, if these artists are insincere, then their whole artistic enterprise is a fraud and of little artistic value.

Notes From Previous Weeks
Week One: Art as Thought-Provoking
Week Two: Art as Intentional

Exploring Surrealism: Chance-Dream-Desire-Taboo

Early warning about a course I will be leading later this year at the Victoria and Albert Museum to coincide with the 'Surreal Things' exhibition:

EXPLORING SURREALISM: CHANCE-DREAM-DESIRE-TABOO

4 consecutive Friday evenings 1st June – 22nd June at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Exhibition Road, London.

Led by Nigel Warburton
Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at The Open University

Course Aims

• To introduce and explore some key themes from Surrealism
• To discuss these themes in relation to philosophy
• To examine these themes in relation to particular works in the Surrealism show

This course does not pre-suppose any prior knowledge of philosophy or Surrealism. There will be suggestions for further reading, but no obligatory reading associated with the course.

Method
This course will be taught through a variety of interactive sessions. Students will be encouraged to discuss and explore the various themes through structured small group activities supplemented by short lectures and plenary discussions. Teaching will take place both in a classroom and within the exhibition itself. Students will be encouraged to engage both with philosophical ideas and with the objects on display.

The Themes (a provisional list)
The themes below may need to be adapted in the light of the content of the exhibition.

1. CHANCE: The methods of surrealism include free association and other forms of automatism. In this session we will explore philosophical ideas about artistic intention and chance, fatalism, and interpreting the accidental.

2. DREAM: Dreams and dream-like imagery inspire many surrealist works. The second session of the course is devoted to an exploration of the relation between dreams and reality.

3. DESIRE: Sexual desire, its complications, sublimations and manifestations fuels surrealism. In this third session we will explore some of philosophical explanations of the nature of desire relating these ideas to works in the exhibition.

4. TABOO: Like many artists, the surrealists challenged the status quo, They did this most dramatically by confronting taboos. In this session we will explore the meaning of taboo, and philosophical questions about offence, and the limits of artistic freedom.

Booking will be possible online at www.vam.ac.uk/tickets

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