Notes on the Index: Seventies Art in America. Part 2 Author(s): Rosalind Krauss Reviewed work(s): Source: October, Vol.

4 (Autumn, 1977), pp. 58-67 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/778480 . Accessed: 16/12/2012 15:34
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Notes on the Index: SeventiesArtin America Part 2

ROSALIND

KRAUSS

and abstract apart than photography painting, Nothing could seem further the the one wholly dependentupon theworld forthesourceof its imagery, other shunning thatworld and the images it mightprovide. Yet now, in the '70s, over large stretchesof the abstract art that is being produced, the conditions of photographyhave an implacable hold. If we could say of severalgenerationsof paintersin the late 19thand early20thcenturiesthattheconscious aspirationfor theirwork was thatit attain to theconditionof music,we have now to deal with claim. As paradoxical as it might seem, photographyhas an utterlydifferent become the operativemodel forabstraction. increasingly I am not so much concernedhere with the genesis of thisconditionwithin as the arts, its historical process, as I am with its internal structure one now confrontsit in a varietyof work. That photographyshould be the model for abstractioninvolves an extraordinary mutation, the logic of which is, I think, to grasp. important In trying demonstrate how thisis at workI wish to begin withan example to drawn not from painting or sculpture, but ratherfromdance. The instance thatDeborah.Hay gave last fallin which she explained to concernsa performance her audience that instead of dancing, she wished to talk. For well over an hour the Hay directeda quiet but insistent monologue at her spectators, substanceof which was that she was there,presentingherselfto them,but not throughthe routinesof movement, because thesewereroutinesforwhich she could no longer The aspirationfordance to which she had come, findany particularjustification. she said, was to be in touch with themovement every in herbody;that,and cell of the one her audience was witnessing:as a dancer,to have recourseto speech. The event I am describing divides into three components.The first a is refusalto dance,or what mightbe characterized moregenerally a flight as from the of terms aestheticconvention.The second is a fantasy total self-presence: be of to in touch with the movementof everycell in one's body. The thirdis a verbal discoursethroughwhich the subject repeatsthe simple factthat she is presentthereby duplicating throughspeech the contentof the second component.If it is or of it interesting importantto list the features the Hay performance, is because

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59

that logic there seems to be a logical relationshipbetween them,and further, seems to be operativein a greatdeal of the art thatis being producedat present. This logic involves the reductionof the conventionalsign to a trace,which then produces the need fora supplementaldiscourse. Withintheconventionof dance, signs are producedbymovement. Through the space of the dance thesesigns are able to be coded both with relationto one another, and in correlation to a tradition of other possible signs. But once is the movement understoodas something bodydoes not produceand is, instead, a on thatis registered it (or, invisibly, withinit), thereis a fundamencircumstance ceases to function tal alterationin thenatureof the sign. Movement symbolically, of and takeson the character an index. By index I mean thattypeof sign which of arisesas thephysicalmanifestation a cause, of which traces, and clues imprints, The movement which Hay turns-a kind of Brownianmotionof to are examples. the self-has about it this quality of trace.It speaks of a literalmanifestation of of presencein a way thatis like a weathervane's registration thewind. But unlike the weather vane, which acts culturally to code a natural phenomenon, this cellular motion of which Hay speaks is specifically uncoded. It is out of reachof the dance conventionthat might provide a code. And thus, although thereis a from thistraceof thebody'slife-a message messagewhich can be read or inferred "I that translatesinto the statement am here"-this message is disengaged from the codes of dance. In the contextof Hay's performance is, then,a message it without a code. And because it is uncoded-or ratheruncodable-it must be supplementedby a spoken text,one thatrepeatsthe message of pure presencein an articulatedlanguage. If I am using the term"message withouta code" to describethe natureof I Hay's physical performance, do so in orderto make a connectionbetweenthe features that event and the inherentfeatures the photograph. The phrase of of an "messagesans code" is drawnfrom essayin which Roland Barthespoints to the uncoded nature of the photographicimage. "What this [photofundamentally he that the relationof signified graphic] message specifies," writes,"is, in effect, is and signifier quasi-tautological. Undoubtedlythephotographimplies a certain but displacementof thescene (cropping,reduction, flattening), thispassage is not a transformation an encoding must be). Here thereis a loss of equivalency (as and the impositionof a quasi-identity. Put another (proper to truesign systems) an it way,thesign of thismessageis no longerdrawnfrom institutional reserve; is not coded. And one is dealing here with the paradox of a message without a code." 1 It is the orderof the natural world thatimprints itself thephotographic on emulsion and subsequently thephotographicprint.This quality of transfer on or tracegives to thephotographits documentary But status,its undeniable veracity. at the same time this veracityis beyond the reach of those possible internal
1. Roland Barthes,"Rhetoriquede l'image," [mytranslation], no. Communications, 4 (1964), 42.

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of property language. The connectivetissue adjustmentswhich are the necessary theobjectscontainedby thephotographis thatof theworld itself, rather binding than thatof a cultural system. In the photograph'sdistancefromwhat could be called syntaxone finds the mute presenceof an uncoded event.And it is this kind of presencethatabstract artistsnow seek to employ.2 Several examples are in order.I take themall froman exhibitionlast yearat P. S. 1,1an exhibition that had the effect surveying of much of the work thatis being produced by the currentgenerationof artists.Each of the cases I have in mind belongs to the genre of installationpiece and each exploited the derelict conditionof the building itself:its rotting its floors, peeling paint, its crumbling plaster. The work by Gordon Matta-Clarkwas produced by cuttingaway the and ceiling fromaround the joists of threesuccessivestoriesof the floorboards building, therebythreadingan open, vertical shaft through the fabric of the In revealed structure. East/West Wall MemoryRelocated, Michelle Stuart took of sectionsofopposing sidesofa corridor, on rubbings imprinting floor-to-ceiling sheetsof paper the tracesof wainscotting, crackedplaster,and blackboardframes, and theninstallingeach sheeton thewall facingitsactual origin.Or, in thework by Lucio Pozzi, a seriesof two-color, painted panels were dispersedthroughout thebuilding,occuringwhere,forinstitutional reasons,thewalls of theschool had been designatedas separateareas by an abrupt change in the color of the paint. The small panels that Pozzi affixed thesewalls aligned themselves to with this across theline of change,and at thesame timereplicating phenomenon,bridging it. The color of each half of a given panel matchedthe color of the underlying the of wall; theline of change betweencolors reiterated discontinuity theoriginal field. In thissetofworksbyPozzi one experiences thatquasi-tautologicalrelationand signified with which Barthescharacterizes photothe ship betweensignifier graph. The painting's colors, the internal division between those colors, are occasioned by a situationin theworld which theymerely The passage of register. thefeatures the school wall onto theplane of thepanel is analogous to thoseof of the photographic process: cropping, reduction,and self-evident The flattening. of effect the work is that its relation to its subject is that of the index, the
2. The pressureto use indexical signs as a means of establishingpresencebegins in Abstractand traces.During the 1960s,thisconcern Expressionismwithdepositsof paint expressedas imprints was continuedalthough changed in its importin, forexample, theworkof JasperJohnsand Robert This Rymrnan. developmentformsa historicalbackground for the phenomenon I am describingas belonging to 1970sart. However,it must be understoodthatthereis a decisivebreak betweenearlier attitudestowardsthe index and those at present,a break that has to do with the role played by the photographic,ratherthan the pictorial,as a model. 3. P.S.1 is a public school building in Long Island Citywhich has been leased to the Institute for Artand Urban Resourcesforuse as artists'studiosand exhibitionspaces. The exhibitionin question was called "Rooms." Mounted in late May, 1976, it was the inaugural show of the building. A catalogue documentingtheentireexhibitionwas issued in Summer 1977,and is available throughthe Institute.

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Gordon Matta-Clark.Doors, Floors, Doors. 1976. Removal offloor through1st,2nd and 3rdfloors. p. 62: Lucio Pozzi. P.S.1 Paint. 1976.Acrylicon wood panel.

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impression,the trace.The painting is thusa sign connectedto a referent along a purelyphysical axis. And this indexical quality is preciselytheone of photograabout thedifferences icon, and among thesign-types-symbol, phy. In theorizing index-C. S. Peirce distinguishesphotographs from icons even though icons of (signs which establishmeaning throughtheeffect resemblance)forma class to which we would suppose thephotographto belong. "Photographs," Peirce says, are because we know that instructive, "especiallyinstantaneousphotographs, very they are in certain respects exactly like the objects they represent.But this is resemblance due to thephotographshaving been producedunder such circumstancesthattheywerephysicallyforcedto correspond point bypoint to nature.In that aspect, then, they belong to the second class of signs [indices], those by physical connection."4 I am claiming, then,thatPozzi is reducingtheabstract pictorialobject to the statusof a mould or impressionor trace.And it seemsrather clear thatthenature of this reduction is formallydistinct from other typesof reduction that have of art. operatedwithinthehistory recentabstract We could, forexample,compare this work by Pozzi with a two-colorpainting by EllsworthKellywhere,as in the case of the Pozzi panels, two planes of highly saturatedcolor abut one another, without any internalinflection the color within those planes, and where this of unmodulated color simplyruns to the edges of the work's physical support.Yet whatever similarities format mostobvious difference the in the betweenthetwois thatKelly's work is detachedfromits surroundings. Both visuallyand conceptually it is freefrom any specificlocale. Thereforewhateveroccurs within the of to perimeters Kelly's painting must be accountedforwith reference some kind of internallogic of thework.This is unlike the Pozzi, wherecolor and theline of accountable to the wall withinwhich they separation betweencolors are strictly are visually embeddedand whose features theyreplicate. In thekind of Kelly I have in mind,thedemandsof an internallogic are met marksan by theuse of joined panels, so thatthe seam betweenthetwocolor fields actual physical rift within the fabricof the work as a whole. The fieldbecomesa conjunction of discreteparts, and any drawing (lines of division) that occurs within that fieldis coextensivewith the real boundaries of each part. Forcing "drawn" edge to coincide with the real edge of an object (a given panel), Kelly accounts for the occurance of drawing by literalizingit. If the painting has two visual parts, that is because it has two real parts. The message impartedby the one a drawingis therefore of discontinuity, messagethatis repeatedon twolevels of the work: the imagistic(the split betweencolor fields) and theactual (the split betweenpanels). Yet whatwe mustrealizeis thatthismessage-"discontinuity"is suspended within a particular field: that of painting, painting understood conventionallyas a continuous, bounded, detachable,flatsurface.So that if we wish to interpret messageof thework("discontinuity")we do so byreadingit the
4. C.S. Peirce, "Logic as Semiotic: The Theory of Signs," Philosophic Writings Peirce, New of York, Dover Publications, 1955,p. 106.

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established and tested; as the source of conventional coherence) and is used instead as the repository of evidence. (Since this is no longer a matter of convention but

against the groundwithinwhich it occurs.Painting in thissenseis like a noun for which discontinuous is understoodas a modifier, and the coherenceof Kelly's workdepends on one's seeingthelogic of thatconnection.What thislogic setsout is thatunlike the continuumof the real world,painting is a fieldof articulations or divisions. It is only by disruptingits physicalsurfaceand creatingdiscontinuous units thatit can produce a system signs,and throughthosesigns,meaning. of An analogy we could make here is to the color spectrumwhich language divides up into a set of discontinuous terms-the names of hues. In arbitrarily orderfora language to exist,the naturalordermustbe segmented into mutually exclusive units. And Kelly's work is about defining pictorial conventionas a the processof arbitrary ruptureof the field(a canvas surface)into the discontinuous units thatare the necessary of constituents signs. One could say,then,thatthereductionthatoccursin Kelly'spaintingresults in a certain schematizationof the pictorial codes. It is a demonstration the of internalnecessity segmentation orderfora natural continuumto be divided of in into themost elementary units of meaning. However we mayfeelabout thevisual resultsof thatschematic-that it yieldssensuousbeautycoupled withthepleasure of intellectualeconomy,or that it is boringlyminimal-it is one thattakes the processof pictorial meaning as its subject. is Now, in the '70s, there ofcoursea tremendous disaffection withthekindof analytic produced by the art of the 1960s,of which Kelly's work is one of many is to set possible instances.In place of thatanalyticthere recourse thealternative of of operationsexemplified the work of Pozzi. If the surface one of his panels is by divided, that partitioncan only be understoodas a transfer impressionof the or of features a natural continuumonto the surface thepainting.The paintingas of a whole functionsto point to the natural continuum, the way the word this accompanied by a pointinggestureisolates a piece of thereal worldand fillsitself with a meaning by becoming,forthatmoment,the transitory label of a natural event.Painting is not takento be a signified which individual paintingsmight to refer-as in the case of Kelly. Paintingsare understood, meaningfully instead,as shifters, emptysigns (like the word this) thatare filledwith meaningonly when or physicallyjuxtapposed with an externalreferent, object. The operations one findsin Pozzi's work are the operations of the index, which seem to act systematically transmute to each of the terms the pictorial of convention. Internal division (drawing) is convertedfromits formal status of to it. encodingreality one of imprinting The edge of theworkis redirected from its condition as closure (the establishmentof a limit in response to the internal meaning of the work) and given the role of selection (gathering a visually intelligiblesample of the underlyingcontinuum). The flatness the supportis of of deprived itsvariousformalfunctions theconstraint (as againstwhich illusion is

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merely of convenience, the support for the index could obviously take any two-or three-dimensional.) Each of thesetransformations configuration, operates in thedirectionofphotography a functional as model. The photograph'sstatusas a traceor index, its dependenceon selectionfromthe natural arrayby means of to a cropping, its indifference the termsof its support (holographyconstituting three-dimensionalization that support),are all to be foundin Pozzi's efforts of at P.S. 1. And of course,not in his alone. The workby Michelle Stuart-a rubbingis even more nakedly involved in the proceduresof the trace,while the MattaClark cut through the building's interiorbecomes an instance of cropping, in orderthat the void createdby the cut be literallyfilledby a natural ground. In each of theseworksit is the building itselfthatis taken to be a message which can be presented not coded. The ambitionof theworksis to capturethe but to of presenceof thebuilding, to findstrategies forceit to surfaceinto thefield the work. Yet even as that presencesurfaces, fillsthe work with an extraordinary it sense of time-past. Though theyare produced by a physical cause, the trace,the the of no impression, clue, are vestiges thatcause which is itself longerpresentin thegivensign. Like traces, worksI have been describing the the represent building through the paradox of being physicallypresentbut temporallyremote.This sense is made explicit in the titleof the Stuartwork where the artistspeaks of relocation as a formof memory.In the piece by Matta-Clarkthe cut is able to the a signify building-to point to it-only through processof removalor cutting in away. The procedureof excavation succeeds therefore bringing the building into the consciousnessof the viewerin the formof a ghost. For Pozzi, the act of The painted wall is taking an impression submits to the logic of effacement. signified the work as somethingwhich was therebut has now been covered by over. Like the other featuresof these works, this one of temporaldistance is a strikingaspect of the photographic message. Pointing to this paradox of a presenceseen as past, Barthessays of the photograph: The typeof perceptionit implies is truly withoutprecedent. Photograset up, in effect, a perceptionof the being-there an object not of phy (which all copies are able to provoke,but a perceptionof its havingbeen-there. is a question therefore a new category space-time: It of of and temporalanteriority. spatial immediacy Photography producesan of the hereand theformerly. is thusat thelevel It illogical conjunction of thedenotatedmessageor messagewithoutcode thatone can plainly understand real unreality thephotograph.Its unreality thatof the of is the here,since thephotographis neverexperiencedas an illusion; it is nothingbut a presence(one mustcontinuallykeep in mind themagical characterof the photographic image). Its realityis that of a havingbecause in all photographsthereis theconstantly been-there, amazing evidence: this took place in this way. We possess, then,as a kind of

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precious miracle,a realityfromwhich we are ourselvessheltered.5 This conditionof the having-been-there satisfies at questions of verifiability as of thelevel of thedocument.Truth is understood a matter evidence,rather than of a function logic. In the 1960s,abstract particularly art, painting,had aspiredto a kind of logical investigation, attemptingto tie the eventof the work to what could be trulystatedabout the internalrelationsposited by thepictorialcode. In so doing, this art tied itselfto the conventionof painting (or sculpture)as that continuous presentwhich both sustainedthe work conceptuallyand was understood as its content. In the work at P. S. 1, we are obviously dealing with a jettisonningof or convention, morepreciselytheconversionof thepictorialand sculpturalcodes into that of the photographicmessage without a code. In order to do this, the artistadapts his workto theformalcharacter theindexical sign.These of abstract with two of thecomponentsof theHay performance described comply procedures at the beginning of this discussion. The thirdfeatureof thatperformance-the addition of an articulateddiscourse,or text,to theotherwise mute index-was, I outcome of thefirst two. This need to link textand image has claimed,a necessary been remarkedupon in the literature semiologywheneverthe photograph is of mentioned. Thus Barthes, in speaking of those images which resist internal are divisibility, says,"this is probably the reason forwhich thesesystems almost always duplicated by articulatedspeech (such as the caption of a photograph) which endows themwith thediscontinuous aspect which theydo not have." 6 Indeed, an overt use of captioning is nearly always to be found in that art portionof contemporary which employsphotography directly. Storyart,body mount photographsas a art,some of conceptual art,certaintypesof earthworks, textor caption.7But in the typeof evidenceand join to this assemblya written workI have been discussing-the abstract of thisartof theindex-we do not wing finda written textappended to theobject-trace. There are,however, otherkindsof textsforphotographsbesides written as WalterBenjamin points out when ones, he speaks of the history the relationof caption to photographicimage. "The of directivewhich the captions give to those looking at pictures in illustrated in magazines," he writes,"soon become even more explicit and more imperative the filmwhere the meaning of each single pictureappears to be prescribed the by sequence of all preceding ones."'8 In filmeach image appears from within a succession thatoperatesto internalizethe caption, as narrative. At P. S. 1 the works I have been describingall utilize succession. Pozzi's and stairwells thebuilding. of panels occur at various points along the corridors
5. Barthes,"Rhetorique de l'image," p. 47. 6. Roland Barthes, Elements of Semiology, trans. AnnetteLavers and Colin Smith, Boston, Beacon Press, 1967,p. 64. See Part I of this essay,October,3 (Spring 1977), 82. 7. 8. WalterBenjamin, "The Work of Artin the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,"Illuminations, trans.HarryZohn, New York, Schocken Books, 1969,p. 226.

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Stuart'srubbingsare relocatedacross the facingplanes of a hallway. The MattaThe "text"thataccompanies Clark cut involvestheviewerin a sequence offloors. theworkis, then,theunfoldingof thebuilding's space which thesuccessive parts and that of the works in question articulateinto a kind of cinematicnarrative; in narrative turnbecomes an explanatorysupplementto theworks. In the first part of this essay I suggestedthat the index must be seen as thatshapes the sensibility a large numberof contemporary of artists; something thatwhethertheyare conscious of it or not, manyof themassimilatetheirwork (in part ifnot wholly) to thelogic of theindex. So, forexample,at P. S. 1 Marcia Hafif used one of the formerclassrooms as an arena in which to juxtapose executed paintingand writing.On thewalls above theoriginal blackboardsHafif abstractpaintings of repetitivecolored strokeswhile on the writingsurfaces account of sexual intercourse. themselvesshe chalked a detailed, first-person did Insofaras thenarrative not standin relationto theimages as an explanation, effect thatof was was not a truecaption. But itsvisual and formal thistextby Hafif captioning: of bowing to the implied necessityto add a surfeitof written to information the depletedpower of the painted sign.

?,qiii?-.n

....... ----

IM4

Marcia Hafif.Untitled.1976.Paint and chalk on walls and blackboards.

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