Tag: Michael Fried

CS & Bow: Research notes, Daniel Rubinstein, Failure to Engage 2017

~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ Leave a comment

www.danielrubinstein.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Failure-to-Engage.pdf

This article by Daniel Rubinstein confirms my recognition of Freid’s conservativism and does a super job of helping me to more fully comprehend some of the ideas in Barad’s essay. Beneath the argument about theatricality and anti-theatricality, it explores the changing nature of being and knowledge – or ontology and epistemology, as expressed via quantum sciences and philosophies, namely Barad (2003), Lupton (2019), Rovelli (2017), Capra (2014) – leading to what Barad terms “Onto-epistem-ology”[which is] —the study of practices of knowing in being—is probably a better way to think about the kind of understandings that are needed to come to terms with how specific intra-actions matter.” (2003: 829) (See Rovelli and Kant in the previous blog.)

However, Barad argues against what she calls representationalism, which is; “the belief in the ontological distinction between representations and that which they purport to represent; in particular, that which is represented is held to be independent of all practices of representing. That is, there are assumed to be two distinct and independent kinds of entities—representations and entities to be represented” (804) If you can overcome this and see “representationalism as a Cartesian by-product—a particularly inconspicuous consequence of the Cartesian division between “internal” and “external” that breaks along the line of the knowing subject.” (Rouse, 1996: 209, Barad, 2003:805) then the arguments made be Fried begin to disintegrate. As – “it is possible to develop coherent philosophical positions that deny that there are representations on the one hand and ontologically separate entities awaiting representation on the other” (807) relying instead on emergence. And ff you see theatre as a laboratory (not just Growtowski’s but the entire history of it) then perhaps Fried’s entire argument collapses – although I am not sure Rubinstein gets there with this.

Some quotes below and perhaps an occasional note:

  • by way of identifying the dualist oppositions and the ideological investments that establish the ontological significance of this text. (44)
  • Fried is not criticising the work of certain artists, but devising a universal method for distinguishing true art from ‘objecthood’, based on the assumption that (Fried’s) consciousness can distinguish physical reality from art (44) (religiosity)
  • this rejection leads him to adopt a conception of art that is hierarchical, analytical and traditionalist (45)
  • contemporary philosophical thought that studies theatricality as part of the logocentric apparatus inherited from the Renaissance (45)
  • The conception of ‘objecthood’ in contemporary art can be traced to Duchamp’s readymades which he created by selecting, modifying and rectifying mass-produced objects (46)
  • this opposition between the image and the real has its roots in Platonism, where the sensible world is produced as a copy of the world of ideas, and it is the task of reason to overcome the errors of the copy in order to arrive at the truth (46) Far more simply explained here than in Barad’s essay
  • The touchstone for this distinction is whether the image declares itself to be an image (the fable of the cave is told as a fable) or whether the image pretends not to be one, disguising itself as an object (47)
  • Plato’s demand for ‘primary distinction’ between images and models is motivated by the moral need to protect the idea of truth from the dangerous world of simulacra. (47) In CS A2, I argue the shadows on the wall of the attic are the actual real  – what looks like the simulacra is just as real as the flesh and blood version watching the slides – although more likely they exist together, both real, both valuable (see Jung – dream world equal to waking world) 
  • The artworks that Fried designates as ‘theatrical’ seem to have a common denominator: they strive to take over the real, to immerse and to overwhelm us by replacing the real with a readymade and truth with simulacrum until we are no longer able to distinguish the artwork from the real, the referent from the sign, and the subject from the object. (48)
  • Critical opposition to theatricality will not get one very far, as opposition itself is a theatrical requisite (49)
  • Quote Fried, “The Platonic division of the cave, which is effectively the theatrical division between a real outside and an inside simulating this outside … The thing stands for something else, and it is less than what it represents. In order that it be what it is, there has been a lack of being. What is given to us, insofar as it is not similitude itself, is deficient in force. The theatricality of representation implies this deficiency, this depression. (pp. 68, 71, emphases in original)” (49) See Barad and her refusal of representation being something that acts as a sign for something previous and original. (50)
  • Here the antinomy to the ‘theatrical cube’ is being revealed not as anti- theatricality, but as an infinite movement of surfaces that continuously self- replicate and morph into each other (50)
  • If the origin of theatre is in negation, and if its operation is representational, then the deeper reason Fried can speak of a ‘war’ between theatricality and real art becomes clear. (51)
  • Anti-theatricality, in other words, implies that in order to be meaningful, accessible and ‘true’, the artwork has to inhabit some form of transcendental negation, or excluded middle or some other form of metaphysical ground (51)
  • by arguing against the dualism of theatricality and for the monism of ‘real’ art, he is unable to move beyond the very dualism he is trying to unsettle as his thought is chained to the common-sense notion that representation is a natural, ordinary, everyday occurrence (52)
  • The deeper structure of Fried’s argument is that true knowledge can transcend mere appearances and grasp their underlying presence. As Luce Irigaray (1985[1974]) has shown, this framework is based on the notion of a stable subject that comprehends – like Rodin’s Thinker – a world that is also stable and unchanging. (53)
  • Freid’s description of Caro’s sculptures are ‘performative’ therefore theatrical (53) They are also elitist and come about due to a his privileged and educated position. 
  • according to Fried, the greatest danger: under the auspice of theatre, art loses its spiritual, sensual and theological dimension. When art is stripped of its mystical, spiritual powers, of its direct link with experience through the unmediated connection with life, all that remains is the theatre: a pale re-enactment of the mysteries of the sacrificial ritual. (53) This is a bizarre argument given theatre’s roots are deeply embedded in the spiritual and mystical, and was born out of attempts to commune with the gods (the universe).
  • Putting the object first will not work because the opposition between art and non-art is itself the product of an ideology that asserts that there is a real world that can be taken up and represented as an image (53) which Barad argues against using quantum knowledge. 

Edited 01/09/2009 to correct the spelling of Rubinstein’s name

Barad, K. (2003) ‘Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter                    Comes to Matter’ In: Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 28 (3) pp.801–831. At: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/345321 (Accessed 30/10/2019).
Capra, F. and Luisi, P. L. (2014) The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision. (1 edition) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rovelli, C. (2017) Reality is not what it seems: the journey to quantum gravity. London: Penguin
Rubinstein, D. (2017) ‘Failure to Engage: Art Criticism in the Age of Simulacrum’ In: Journal of Visual Culture 16 (1) pp.43–55. At: https://doi.org/10.1177/1470412917690970 (Accessed 30/10/2019).

CS: Assignment 2 – Literature review

~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ 2 Comments

Write a 2,000-word literature review that identifies, summarises and critically discusses the most relevant texts that currently explore the subject area of your practice (i.e. the subject area you are exploring in Body of Work). Try to contrast differing points of view and indicate how you will expand your research into your extended written project.

Your essay should include a bibliography, be fully illustrated and reference citations appropriately throughout. See the extended written project submission requirements at the end of Part Three for more information about how to format your literature review.

 

I have sent the following draft to my new tutor Matt White. This PDF does not include (c) images. The offline version does. Web CS Assignment 2 Can you be dead and alive at the same time_ Draft 4

He sent the following link a couple of weeks ago which I found useful.

The structure of a literature review

Here is my reflection:

Demonstration of subject-based knowledge and understanding:

I didn’t set out to write about Brecht but once I realised that Fried had relied on his theory to prop up his own writing I was able to draw on previous knowledge. As an A level student in 1989 or so I was barely literate but I managed to get top marks for my Brecht essay. I just loved learning about his plays and methods. I am also interested in reality so pulling these strands together was enjoyable although I feel I have only scratched the surface. I will need to read Fried more carefully as I’m pretty sure I’ve made some mistakes based on assumptions.

Demonstration of research skills:

As I say above I need to dig deeper and make sure I’m not assuming things. Having written this, I feel I can now go on to do the real research. I have just about finished the Lupton book and once that’s done I can get to grips with Fried and Object Ontology.

Demonstration of critical and evaluation skills:

I have shown that I am able to question established views and even if others don’t agree with me, I hope I have given reasons which go some way towards supporting my arguments.

Communication:

It’s always tricky getting the balance tight – overly academic writing isn’t fun to write or read. Before she left, Ruth suggested experimenting with the form and I would enjoy that – not sure the OCA assessors would agree though. I love Chris Kraus’s ability to intertwine critical theory and autobiography and novel into one.

Writing a literature review was new to me – should we include our thoughts? Some fo the advice I got from fellow students was contradictory and confusing to say the least!

Please note: I will need to go through it with a very fine-tooth comb before printing for assessment, and there will be typos and repetitiveness, however, I am likely to revisit it and hone it in the run-up to sending it in.

CS: Notes on Objecthood

~ Sarah-Jane Field ~ 3 Comments

One of the people who was recommended to counter James Elkin’s final sentences in What Photography Is that photography might actually be ‘boring’, was Michael Fried. I’d not read his work at length before, although had read the passage about him in Fifty Key Photography writers, and so have spent some time trying to introduce myself to a few of his key ideas. (Of no genuine importance unless you’re an avid Freudian, he has the same family name as my dad before he changed it when he was a young man.)

Objecthood – I suspect this is probably a subject quite close to my heart, but reading further will help talk about it using language that people writing about art tend to use. And certainly, there is a lot more to it that my constant referrals to Rovelli’s statement about relationship rather than objects. “[Quantum mechanics] does not describe things as they are: it describes how things occur and how they interact with each other… [] Reality is reduced to a relation.” (2014)

From a handy summary by the ever-reliable Chicago School of Art. “Maurice Merleau-Ponty breaks down Descartes system of binaries and conceptualizes the self and bodies as thoroughly intermeshed and indistinguishable, especially with respect to the body. With no clear distinction between subject and object, objects can be part of the subject’s being.” (See Klein’s object-relations).

This ties in with the quote I’d identified in Hayle’s work and which is discussed at length in various essays about cyborgs and the way we other-ise cyborgs/AI in fiction. “Only if one thinks of the subject as an autonomous self independent of the environment is one likely to experience the panic performed by Norbert Wiener’s Cybernetics and Bernard Wolf’s Limbo. This view of the self authorizes the fear that if the boundaries are breached at all, there will be nothing to stop the self’s complete dissolution. By contrast, when the human is seen as part of a distributed system, the full expression of human capability can be seen precisely to dependent on the splice rather than being imperilled by it.” (1999)

  1. Maurice Merleau-Ponty seems to go onto say that paintings are above and beyond that – they have a special place in the world. “The special category of objects, paintings, especially eludes this process, and returns the spectator for a moment to a time when the dichotomy, between subject and object, was not yet formed. The view of a painting does not move to perceive and define the object before them.” This seems rather like Benjamin’s aura. As if some objects carry something of ‘god’ or the ‘spirit’ in them.
  2. According to Fried, “During the experience of art subject and object, space and time become collapsed, negating the possibility of objects [see time, space].” [See Hoffman’s dissolution of space-time and therefore of objects within space-time. Also Rovelli, System’s theory and a number of other books I’ve read recently]
  3. Apparently, “Descartes relegates color to a secondary property of reality. This allows him to construct a unitary and undifferentiated model of objects, by making shape, a spatial property, the defining characteristic” which seems a bit nuts nowadays.
  4. “The essential norms or conventions of painting are at the same time the limiting conditions with which a picture must comply in order to be experienced as a picture. Modernism has found that these limits can be pushed back infinitely before a picture stops being a picture and turns into an arbitrary object. [11]” Modernism in these terms is the start of expressions which refute the existence of God, even though they still continue to refer to a kind of divine experience.
  5. “By virtue of its opposition to the banality, worldliness, and gracelessness of objecthood, art takes on transcendental significance.”
  6. Ah – here is what is at the core of my own thinking – Other writers do not distinguish art from objects by way of arguments about perception or phenomenology, but examine the way art objects behave socially to gain their status. Walter Benjamin’s concept of the “aura” depends on art as an object residing in specific spaces. The fact that forms of art such as painting and sculpture must exist in one spatial location corresponds to their social and class function. But Benjamin is still thinking in Cartesian terms because this aura relating to social class and function is tied to religion too as these institutions cannot really exist as they do without each other.
  7. “This art, unlike art with an aura, has no specific spatial location, and is unable to be located as an object. It would be difficult to term the art of film as an object in the sense that has been discussed above.” Well, I am not so sure about this. A film can be seen as an object if we think about the screen on which it is shown and we begin to imagine that we might function in a similar way which is what theory likes to point to nowadays – we have a desktop (reality) and we draw on information to construct objects [icons] in our world (Hoffman, 2019) This assertion that non-aura art has no spacial location remind me of the mentality that just because something is digital its not material. If I am looking at the letter on my screen (underlined in red due to all the typos – I know exactly where it is. It is here, in my construction of space and time which my many ancestors evolved to ‘exist’ within in order to recognise what will help my system continue for long enough to procreate and take care of the little systems that emerged from me. (ibid)
  8. “Rather it is a set of social practices that define and declare the object art.” Re Raymond Williams. This makes the most sense to me – art seems to be mostly about money and status and daft games. I say mostly because I am sure there is valuable work being made which has nothing to do with all of that. What is probably quite a good question is what if all of that nonsense is eschewed and just a few people see the work, perhaps in someone’s back garden in Croydon (honestly hypothetically as I know no-one there), is it art? Does something only become art when a middle-class art-history graduate deems it so? If it’s not got any fiscal value because no-one wants to buy it, is it art? Is Art just about something being a commodity? If yes, then art is a load of tosh that deserves the reputation it has amongst some people. I don’t think it is just that – but wading through it can be challenging.

https://csmt.uchicago.edu/glossary2004/objecthood.htm