Grant Kester - Artforum - Claire Bishop [The Continuing Saga]
Related LeisureArts posts:
The Social Turn - Claire Bishop - Response to LeisureArts
Claire Bishop - Aesthetic/Ethical - Critical Modalities
Maria Lind - Tactical/Agnostic - Ted Purves
ARTFORUM - New Art Practices - Cross Pollination
Oddly enough, Artforum has been making its way to us in subscription form without our instigation. An anonymous donor must have paid for the magazine to be delivered to us (We pay for our own subscription to Cabinet, but would gladly accept a subscription to US Weekly). We were never sure if this was an act of friendship or aggression, a gesture of good will or a taunt. However it was intended, it has provided material for many posts, particularly regarding Claire Bishop and the implications and fallout from her piece, "The Social Turn: Collaboration and Its Discontents."
The saga continues. In the May 2006 issue, Grant Kester writes a scathing letter in response to the aforementioned article. He rightly highlights Bishop's own complicity in reinforcing the division between ethical and aesthetic critical/artistic positions. Of course Kester, in his book Conversation Pieces: Community + Communication in Modern Art, has his own set of contradictions when he valorises didacticism (although he would reject that designation) over the "shocking" impulse of the avant garde. He takes issue with the critic who presumes to decode these "difficult" works for a bewildered public. Although his critique of the mythos of avant garde art is welcome, it is less than satisfying to offer the "informed" artist to replace the critic as he seems to do in discussing Adrian Piper (much more can be said here, but blog space requires we move on).
He continues to challenge the privileged perspective of the critic in the Artforum letter by somewhat unfairly offering that "What Bishop seeks is an art practice that will continually reaffirm and flatter her self-perception as an acute critic..." He moves on to discuss Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's "paranoid knowing,' condemning Bishop as an example of "...one who views any attempt to work productively within a given system as unforgivably naive and complicit..." This might be an accurate analysis of how Bishop positions the work of Oda Projesi, and especially Maria Lind's critical treatment of it, but identifying her with a "paranoid" sensibility however well articulated by Sedgwick, is rather hyperbolic.
Kester hits his high note when offering this of Bishop, "While otherwise quite keen to question the limits of discursive systems of meaning in her criticism, she exhibits an unseemly enthusiasm for policing the boundaries of legitimate art practice."
Claire Bishop begins her response to Kester's letter by offering this shocking dismissal, "...he finds in my essay what he wants to read, rather than what I actually say." Did a huge portion of the critical oeuvre of the late 20th century pass Bishop by (Iser, Barthes, Foucault, Fish, or see this post of ours that touches on authorial intention with regard to Duchamp)? She's far too intelligent and well read to have made such an astounding claim. It is no simple task to determine what she "actually" says, and choosing to offer herself as the final arbiter on the matter feeds into Kester's "self-perception as an acute critic" accusation.
As an answer to Kester's claim that she seems interested in policing boundary distinctions between aesthetic and activist work, Bishop offers that she cited Oda Projesi and Jeremy Deller and that they "...clearly occupy a blurred territory between these poles..." This is true, but she doesn't mention that she lauds Deller over Oda Projesi because his project leans toward the aesthetic end of that pole while Oda Projesi's leans toward the activist.
Bishop then moves to her unfair treatment of Kester by saying, "He considers thinking and writing in depth about art, and using theory to elaborate ideas, as a way to intimidate others and 'flatter' oneself as a critic." She cites Kester's "populist" approach as something that bolsters her "philosophical antihumanism." She seems to be saying that either Kester has not written in depth about art, or that he is hypocritically guilty of self-flattery. Neither seems true to us. We are quite sympathetic to Bishop's aim to move beyond liberal humanist criticism, but don't share that working towards populist critical positions is inherently oppositional toward that goal.
What is most striking to us, though, is something we originally raise here and here concerning something Kester doesn't quite have an answer for, and something Bishop unsatisfactorily addresses. In closing his book, Kester asks these questions (which are the "big" questions haunting all of this as we've written about and something Ted Purves gets at in his generous comments here):
"Why bother trying to explain this work to an art historical and critical establishment that has so often treated it with indifference, if not disdain?"
And:
"What is to be gained by defining this work as art?"
Kester offers only a passing answer to the first question in closing his book, noting a pragmatic reason for art critical/historical engagement with these projects - no one else writes about them. The second question remains largely unanswered, but Kester does seem to agree with Bishop that viewing these activities as art is important. He closes his letter to Artforum lamenting that "critics like Bishop" too readily challenge "the ontic status of this work as art qua art." The question remains, what do we gain by framing these activities in this manner? Bishop's only answer seems to be that we have more grist for the critical mill, more "artistic gestures" that we can determine to be either "good art," "bland art," or "pleasantly innocuous art." Offering those sorts of distinctions sounds an awful lot like an "enthusiasm for policing the boundaries of legitimate art practice." We wish something a little more interesting was at stake.
The Social Turn - Claire Bishop - Response to LeisureArts
Claire Bishop - Aesthetic/Ethical - Critical Modalities
Maria Lind - Tactical/Agnostic - Ted Purves
ARTFORUM - New Art Practices - Cross Pollination
Oddly enough, Artforum has been making its way to us in subscription form without our instigation. An anonymous donor must have paid for the magazine to be delivered to us (We pay for our own subscription to Cabinet, but would gladly accept a subscription to US Weekly). We were never sure if this was an act of friendship or aggression, a gesture of good will or a taunt. However it was intended, it has provided material for many posts, particularly regarding Claire Bishop and the implications and fallout from her piece, "The Social Turn: Collaboration and Its Discontents."
The saga continues. In the May 2006 issue, Grant Kester writes a scathing letter in response to the aforementioned article. He rightly highlights Bishop's own complicity in reinforcing the division between ethical and aesthetic critical/artistic positions. Of course Kester, in his book Conversation Pieces: Community + Communication in Modern Art, has his own set of contradictions when he valorises didacticism (although he would reject that designation) over the "shocking" impulse of the avant garde. He takes issue with the critic who presumes to decode these "difficult" works for a bewildered public. Although his critique of the mythos of avant garde art is welcome, it is less than satisfying to offer the "informed" artist to replace the critic as he seems to do in discussing Adrian Piper (much more can be said here, but blog space requires we move on).
He continues to challenge the privileged perspective of the critic in the Artforum letter by somewhat unfairly offering that "What Bishop seeks is an art practice that will continually reaffirm and flatter her self-perception as an acute critic..." He moves on to discuss Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's "paranoid knowing,' condemning Bishop as an example of "...one who views any attempt to work productively within a given system as unforgivably naive and complicit..." This might be an accurate analysis of how Bishop positions the work of Oda Projesi, and especially Maria Lind's critical treatment of it, but identifying her with a "paranoid" sensibility however well articulated by Sedgwick, is rather hyperbolic.
Kester hits his high note when offering this of Bishop, "While otherwise quite keen to question the limits of discursive systems of meaning in her criticism, she exhibits an unseemly enthusiasm for policing the boundaries of legitimate art practice."
Claire Bishop begins her response to Kester's letter by offering this shocking dismissal, "...he finds in my essay what he wants to read, rather than what I actually say." Did a huge portion of the critical oeuvre of the late 20th century pass Bishop by (Iser, Barthes, Foucault, Fish, or see this post of ours that touches on authorial intention with regard to Duchamp)? She's far too intelligent and well read to have made such an astounding claim. It is no simple task to determine what she "actually" says, and choosing to offer herself as the final arbiter on the matter feeds into Kester's "self-perception as an acute critic" accusation.
As an answer to Kester's claim that she seems interested in policing boundary distinctions between aesthetic and activist work, Bishop offers that she cited Oda Projesi and Jeremy Deller and that they "...clearly occupy a blurred territory between these poles..." This is true, but she doesn't mention that she lauds Deller over Oda Projesi because his project leans toward the aesthetic end of that pole while Oda Projesi's leans toward the activist.
Bishop then moves to her unfair treatment of Kester by saying, "He considers thinking and writing in depth about art, and using theory to elaborate ideas, as a way to intimidate others and 'flatter' oneself as a critic." She cites Kester's "populist" approach as something that bolsters her "philosophical antihumanism." She seems to be saying that either Kester has not written in depth about art, or that he is hypocritically guilty of self-flattery. Neither seems true to us. We are quite sympathetic to Bishop's aim to move beyond liberal humanist criticism, but don't share that working towards populist critical positions is inherently oppositional toward that goal.
What is most striking to us, though, is something we originally raise here and here concerning something Kester doesn't quite have an answer for, and something Bishop unsatisfactorily addresses. In closing his book, Kester asks these questions (which are the "big" questions haunting all of this as we've written about and something Ted Purves gets at in his generous comments here):
"Why bother trying to explain this work to an art historical and critical establishment that has so often treated it with indifference, if not disdain?"
And:
"What is to be gained by defining this work as art?"
Kester offers only a passing answer to the first question in closing his book, noting a pragmatic reason for art critical/historical engagement with these projects - no one else writes about them. The second question remains largely unanswered, but Kester does seem to agree with Bishop that viewing these activities as art is important. He closes his letter to Artforum lamenting that "critics like Bishop" too readily challenge "the ontic status of this work as art qua art." The question remains, what do we gain by framing these activities in this manner? Bishop's only answer seems to be that we have more grist for the critical mill, more "artistic gestures" that we can determine to be either "good art," "bland art," or "pleasantly innocuous art." Offering those sorts of distinctions sounds an awful lot like an "enthusiasm for policing the boundaries of legitimate art practice." We wish something a little more interesting was at stake.
Issued from Dilettante Ventures control room at 15:29
5 Comments:
First of all, did they date or something?
Second, I have been slogging slowly through the original Bishop article and want to reserve judgement until I have digested it.
But I couldn't resist knocking Kester's "she exhibits an unseemly enthusiasm for policing the boundaries of legitimate art practice" dig.
We will probably disagree, dilletanteventures, but I see value, even freedom, in boundaries like the one Kester refuses, and at this point in my reading I wish Bishop did more, not less, policing. Oda Projesi is doing social work/activism/applied sociology that works well in other contexts, like Cornell's David Driskell, or my sometimes employer The Brooklyn Center for the Urban Environment.
This work is important--why dilute its importance by calling it art? What's the impulse behind calling it art? Art's only power comes from its powerlessness, its uselessness. Art=jesterism. Putting real people and real activism into that equation leaves a bad taste in my mouth for two reasons:
Trying to fight the fact that art and reality are different things by throwing a bunch of reality into art makes art less powerful. When it's fake and you can do anything because it is fake, art has the power to take the human mind anywhere. When it's about reality and what can really be done, that's an unnecessary limit on human creativity.
Besides, the art context will minimize whatever you're doing anyway. Why put real people with real problems into this minimizing machine?
Working against categories can be interesting as long as there is a reasonable amount of rigidity to those categories. The problem is that the boundaries have collapsed and in less you're advocating a hardcore return to a Greenberg or Fried like puritanical aesthetic, it just doesn't make sense to operate in that way.
"This work is important--why dilute its importance by calling it art?"
Funny, Bishop seems to think that calling something art, or treating it critically as such increases its importance. In a certain way she's right. As Kester notes in his book, treating things as art heightens their visibility and thus might be useful for the activist projects you say are demeaned by the designation. Our concern has been with all of the tangential issues created by framing things as art - is the increased visibility/discussion worth all of the digressions and distractions? Ultimately, can't we create new conceptual/discursive networks and structures for supporting these activities?
I know that Bishop and Kester think that art is more important than life, but I think this is a problem of context. Contemporary visual art is not particularly relevant to ordinary folks (think Kimmelman's barnacle on the cruise ship of pop culture quip). Bishop and Kester should try teaching art in the public schools, or even teaching an art appreciation class to nonmajors at their respective universities (not lecturing, teaching a section).
I see how making something art increases its visibility, but how? To whom? As someone flailing around trying to market quasi-political art myself, I find myself looking to the regular-person media as a practical matter. The art market is so highly specialized and its concerns are so narrow that I have a hard time trusting its ability to get anything across.
These are gut reactions, they sit alongside my gut reaction that this total, irreversable collapse of boundaries is a last gasp of modernist reduction, that it's a red herring. I don't think a hardcore return to puritanical Greenberg/Friedism is necessary at all--it's not like you have to back up the truck for 20 miles if you figure out the road you're on is eventually going to dead end. There are turnouts all up and down the thing, leading to new places.
You write:
"Ultimately, can't we create new conceptual/discursive networks and structures for supporting these activities?"
Yes, definitely. The great thing about Oda Projesi, for example, is the way it injects creative thought and artistic models of thinking into non-art spheres. This is beautiful and right and good and should be the goal of art education everywhere. But this kind of practice is a hybrid--it's applied, first of all, and it's also fundamentally social and non-visual. It's using art strategies for non-art goals. It's hacking art, and in that way it should stand apart from art and create its own discourse that doesn't rely on the visual supremacy and not-for-use bent of visual art discourse. Why should Oda Projesi play this game? Their work is not visual, and so fails at the visual discourse, and it is too important and real to sit inside the rarified space of much art discourse.
These discourses needn't expand, they are useful for much art. Why not create new ones?
I don't have time to reread this because I am late for work. I hope I haven't said anything stupid, will come correct it later if I have.
"Bishop and Kester should try teaching art in the public schools, or even teaching an art appreciation class to nonmajors at their respective universities (not lecturing, teaching a section)."
I don't know if/how well you know them or their teaching practices/histories, but this seems unfair. I know you said you went to UCSD. Was Kester there when you attended? I've heard good things about his teaching, but even if I hadn't it wouldn't really be all that relevant to me in terms of his theoretical position.
"I see how making something art increases its visibility, but how? To whom?"
We think Kester might ask here: Who else will/does write about the work of Oda Projesi (to use Bishop's and your example since Kester doesn't write about them in the book) other than the art critical world? Who else will take them seriously? He writes about the importance of creating a "sustained historical record," but it's not always clear whether he means art historical or not.
Your remarks about visuality are confusing. The 60s and 70s happened right? "Visual" art is just a subdomain of the "expanded field" of art established in that time.
An aside: UCSD's program still calls itself the Visual Arts department which seems so dated to us. Why create that as an institutional frame? Why not studio art, or post-studio art department? Or to be the most generic, art department?
We're also curious why you think the
"irreversable collapse of boundaries" is a dead end and how you see this collapse as a "modernist" project. This all starts to get really tricky - whose/which definition of modernism are we going to use? We see interdisciplinarity as something that opens up possibilities and something that operates against modernist principles.
Thanks again for the engagement fisher.
Kester is a fantastic lecturer, but is not a particularly engaged discussion leader. I meant what I said about him--he is much more interested in delivering what he knows than learning from students in my experience. I don't know Bishop.
I should restate my point. It makes sense that Bishop and Kester think art is so important because they think that what they are doing is important (I think art is important in this way as well). But it is, honestly, laughable to think that this importance translates to the rest of the culture we live in. How valued is art education in the public schools? How much subsidizing of artists does the government do? How much does it cost to get into MOMA?
To ask who else will write about Oda Projesi gets exactly to my point. Why make "art" the miscellaneous drawer? That does seem like a dead end to me--the logical conclusion of a modernist experiment that works reductively, chipping away at the stone to get at that one essential truth hidden underneath it.
Again, dilletanteventures, you've got me beat when it comes to booklearnin'. But I don't see why a hardcore return to old thinking is the only way to create a structure for understanding what art is and what it does--why it's relevant to other people. I don't think that including everything that other folks won't take seriously accomplishes that goal, and this leaves potential viewers out in the cold, trying to like art but being unable to because it makes no freaking sense. Call me a populist---the thing I don't like about Kester's theoretical position is that it does not reach out past the ever-shrinking sphere of people who already care. Worse, it assumes that art has more power than it actually has. That seems small and ungenerous to me.
Shoot, I have a lot more to say and need to go to work. You are right to ask me which modernism and in general it's really hard to have this kind of discussion in 1/2 hour snippets. It's important to me, though, because I do a lot of work that is very Oda Projesi-like that has nothing to do with art (so I do actually think there are contexts that make perfect sense for their work).
And yes--I think UCSD is an interesting lab for all this kind of thought. I think that UCSD's program should be called visual art, and I can unpack that later.
As always, it's a pleasure doing business, dilletanteventures. This is an interesting discussion.
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