THE
PUBLIC
SCHOOL
NEW YORK

The class examines modern political history of visual display/exhibitions. The artistic avant-garde radically altered the way we look at visual display by eliminating the separation between image and audience. But didn't it create the spectacle, simply giving the audience an illusion of participation? We will look into the history of avant-garde (Russian and Western) and subsequent totalitarian art (Socialist Realism in Eastern Europe), in comparison to the concept of a museum of modern art emerged in the USA, in the midst of the Cold War, and see how the ideological function of a modern art museum was developed. How do museums and contemporary art institutions now use ideology, which as Guy Debord, theorist of the spectacle noted, conceals the truth of the society that produces it? Does the notion "public art" adequately express the avant-garde desire for the full integration of viewers in the process of exhibiting the artwork? Is there a space for resistance to the ideology of "spectacle," and corporate economy around art inside the modern museum? We will read critical texts on these issues and visit current exhibitions of modern and contemporary art in NYC museums to discuss these issues in situ.

Session 1. Ideology of the spectacle and contemporary art museums.

Reading:

Society of Spectacle. By Guy Debord. Chapter 2: “Commodity as Spectacle”. 1967. www.aaaarg.org

“The Situationists and the New Forms of Action in Art and Politics”. By Guy Debord. Essay, 1963. Translated by Ken Knabb.

http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/si/newforms.html

Jean Baudrillard, “Beaubourg-Effect: Implosion and Deterrence”

“Exhibition Rhetorics. Material speech and utter sense.” By Bruce W Ferguson. In: Thinking About Exhibition. Ed. by Reesa Greenberg, Bruce W Ferguson, Sandy Nairne. Routledge. 1996, 1999.

Homework:

Please see the current shows “Kandinsky” and “Paired: Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Roni Horn” at the Guggenheim Museum

http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/exhibitions/on-view-now/paired-gold

as well as Emory Douglas show (closes on Oct 18th) and Uri Fischer: Marguerite de Ponty (opens on Oct 21st) at New Museum.

Questions:

1. To which extent can we apply Debord’ and Baudrillard’ critique of capitalist spectacle to current museum shows in NYC?

2. What do we recognize as “Beaubourg-effect” in these shows?

Some points to focus on:

“This is the principle of commodity fetishism, the domination of society by “intangible as well as tangible things,” which reaches its absolute fulfillment in the spectacle, where the tangible world is replaced by a selection of images which exist above it, and which simultaneously impose themselves as the tangible par excellence” (Debord, Society of Spectacle).

“[Critical] art must not only be critical in its content, it must also be self-critical in its form. It is a communication which, recognizing the limitations of the specialized sphere of established communication, is now going to contain its own critique.” (Debord, “The Situationists and the New Forms of Action.”)

“Beaubourg is at the level of culture what the hypermarket is at the level of the commodity: the perfect circulatory operator, the demonstration of anything (commodity, culture, crowd, compressed air) through its own accelerated circulation.” (Baudrillard, “Beaubourg-Effect.”)

“Never, as it did here [in Beaubourg], has culture lost its memory in the service of stockpiling and functional redistribution.” (Baudrillard, “Beaubourg-Effect.”)

“… Art objects themselves are the continuing subject of rigorous re/decontextualization, and institutions of art, especially museums, have become de rigeur subjects of much interdisciplinary thought and writing. Both the art object and the museum in which it is found then are the special subjects of a new critical industry whose criticality often ignores the genres, systems, histories and architectonics of exhibitions and their reception.” (Ferguson, “Exhibition Rhetorics.” In: Thinking about Exhibition. P. 176)

Reading:

Theory:
Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle.
Jurgen Habermans: "The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia aticle. (1964)"
Brian O'Doherty, Inside the White Cube: The ideology of the Gallery Space.
Negt/Kluge, "The Public Sphere and Experience. Selections."
Jean Badrillard, "Beaubourg-Effect: Implosion and Deterrance" (essay)
Slavoj Zizek, "Cyberspace, Or, The Unbearable Closure of Being" (essay)

Alternative art scenes and exhibition practice:
Margarita Tupitsyn, El Lissitzky: Beyond the Abstract Cabinet.
Thinking of Exhibitions. Edited by Bruce Ferguson, Reesa Greenberg, Sandy Nairne
Museum as Arena. Artists on Institutional Critique. Kunsthaus Bregenz
Democracy. Group Material. 1988.
Martha Rosler, "If You Lived Here Still..." Current archival exhibition of Martha Rosler 1989 project at e-flux, catalogue.

from: olgakop