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Brian O'Doherty

the WhiteCube

TheIdeology of the GallerySpace

Introduction by Thomas McEvilley

TheLapisPress
SantaMonica San Francisco

Copyright @1 9 7 6 ,1 9 8 6b y B r i a n O ' D o h e r t y of America Printed in rhe United States All rights reserved in whole or in part, in any This book may not be reproduced, form (beyondthat copyingpermittedby Sections107and 108 CopyrightLaw and exceptby reviewers of the United States without written permissionfrom the for the public press), publishers. in Artforum in this book originally appeared The essays magazinein 1976in a somewhatdifferentform. F i r s tb o o k e d i t i o n 1 9 8 6 54J2r 9089888786 The LapisPress Suite466 l8 50 Union Street, CA 9412l San Francisco, 1 4 - 7c l o t h I S B N 0 - 93 2 4 9 9 paper I S B N0 - 9 3 2 4 9 9 - 0 5 - B s atalog C a r dN o . 8 5 - 0 8 1 0 9 0 L i b r a r yo f C o n g r e sC

Contents
Acknowledgements McEvilley Introduction by Thomas I. Notes on the GalierySpace
A F a b l eo f H o r i z o n t a l a n d V e r t i c a l . . . M o d e r n i s m . . . T h e P r o p e r t i e so f t h e l d e a l G a l l e r y . . . T h e S a l o n . . . T h e E a s e lP i c t u r e . . . T h e F r a m e a s hf t h e P i c t u r e E d i t o r . . . P h o t o g r a p h y . . . l m p r e s s i o n i s m . . . T h e M y to Plane . . . Matisse. . . Hanging . . .Th PicturePlane as Simile . . .The Wall as Battlegroundand'Art" . . .The Installation shot . . . .

II.The Eye and the Spectator

. . . P a i n t ,P i c t u r e P l a n e , Another Fable. . . Five Blank Canvasses O b j e c t s . .. C u b i s m a n d C o l l a g e... S p a c e . . . T h e S p e c t a l o r . . . T h e Eye . . . Schwitters's Merzbau . . . Schwitters's Performances . . . Happenings a n d E n v i r o n m e n t s . . . K i e n h o l z , S e g a l .K a p r o w . . . H a n s o n , d e A n d r e a . . . of Experience . . and Minimalism . . . Paradoxes Eye,Spectator, Conceptuaa l nd BodyAr[ . . . .

III. ContextasContent
T h e K n o c k a t t h e D o o r . . . D u c h a n ] p ' s K n o c k . C e i l i n g s . . 1 . 2 0 0B a g s0 f ...The Mileof Sting. ..Duchamp's Cral...GesturesandProjecrs "Body" . . . Hostility ro the Audience . . .The Arrist and the Audience . . T h e E x c l u s i v e S p a c e . . . T h e S e v e n t i e s. . . T h e W h i t e W a l l . . . T h e W h i t e C u b e . . . M o d e r n i s t M a n . . . T h e U t o p i a n A r t i s t . . . M o n d r i a n ' sR o o m . . M o n d r i a n ,D u c h a r n pL , i s s i t z k y .. . .

Afterword

For SidneyYates, whofghts for the artist

Acknowledgements
M y t h a n k s t o J o h n C o p l a n s .w h o p u b l i s h e d t h e o r i g i n a l e s s a y si n A r t f o r u m w h e n h e w a s e d i t o r , a n d t o C h a r l e sC o w l e s ,w h o w a s t h e n t h e p u b l i s h e r . l n g r i d S i s c h y ,t h e p r e s e n t editor, offered the writer every courtesy in collecting these essays for republication. J a n B u t t e r f i e l d o f T h e L a p i s P r e s sh a s b e e n a n i d e a l e d i t o r , a n d I a m g r a t e f u l t o h e r f o r h e r d e t e r m i n a t i o n t o p u t t h e s e a r t i c l e si n b o o k f o r m . B a r b a r a N o v a k r e a d t h e t e x t c l o s e l y , a s i s h e r w o n t . N a n c y F o o t e m o s t k i n d l y a s s e m b l e dt h e p h o t o g r a p h s . S u s a n L i v e l y t y p e d t h e t e x t w i t h p r e c i s i o na n d r r i o . I am indebted to Jack Stauffacher for his careful design of the book. I a m a l s o g r a t e f u l t o t h e m u s e u m s a n d g a l l e r i e sw h i c h p e r m i t t e d t h e p u b l i c a t i o n o f r h e p h o t o g r a p h s w h i c h i l l u s t r a t er h e t e x t . I w a n t s p e c i a l l yt o l h a n k T h o m a s M c E v i l l e y f o r s o c o g e n t l y s e r r i n g t h e c o n t e x t i n h i s i n r r o d u c t i o n a n d A n n M c C o y f o r s u g g e s r i n gr h i d e a o f t h e b o o k . I should also thank Maurice Tuchman for his invitation to lecture at the LosAngeles C o u n t y M u s e u m o f A r t i n J a n u a r y 1 9 7 5 ,w h e n t h e l e c l u r e " l n s i d e t h e W h i t e C u b e . 1855 - 1974' was first delivered.

Introduction

It has been the specialgenius of our cenrury to investigatethings in relation to their context,to come to seethe context as formative on the thing, and. finally, to seethe conrext as a thing itself.In this classicessay, first published as a seriesof three articlesin Artforum in1976, Brian O'Doherty discusses this turn toward context in twentieth century art. He investigates,perhaps for the first time, what the highly controlled context of the modernist gallery does to the art object,what it doesto the viewing subject,and, in a crucial moment for modernism,how the context devoursthe object, becoming it. In the flrst of the three sections, O'Doherty describes the modern galiery spaceas "constructedalong iaws as rigorous as those for building a medieval church." The basic principle behind these laws, he notes,is that "The outside world must not come in, so windows are usually sealedoff.Walls are painted white.The ceiling becomesthe sourceof light . . . . The art is free, as the saying used to go, 'to take on its own life.' " The purpose of such a setting is not unlike the purpose of religiousbuildings - the artworks, like religiousverities,are to appear "untouc[ed by time and its vicis" situdes. The condition of appearingout'of time, or beyond time, implies a claim that the work already belongs to posterity-that is, it is an assurance of good investment.But it does strangethings to the presentness of life, which, after all, unfolds itself in time.'Art existsin a kind of eternity of display.and though rhere is lots of 'period' (late modern) there is no time.This eternity givesrhe gallery a limbolike status;one has to have died already to be there."
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In searching for the significance of this mode of exhibition one must look to other classesof chambers that have been constructed on similar principles.The roots of this chamber of eternal display are to be found not in the history of art so much as the history of religion, where they are in fact even more ancient than the medieval church. Egyptian tomb chambers.for example, provide an astonishingtycloseparallel.Theytoo were designedto eliminate of the outside world.They too were chamberswhere an awareness presencewas to be protected from the flow of eternal of illusion time.They too held paintings and sculpturesthat were regardedas magically contiguous with eternity and thus able to provide access to it or contact with it. Beforethe Egyptian tomb, functionally were the Paleolithicpainted cavesof the Magcomparablespaces too, dalenian and Aurignacian agesin Franceand Spain.There, paintings and sculptures were found in a setting deliberately set - most of the off from the outside world and difficult of access and some galleries near the entrances, are nowhere famous cave of them require exactingclimbing and spelunking to get to them. of the ancient are symbolic reestablishments Such ritual spaces umbiiicus which, in myths worldwide, once connectedheaven and earth.The connection is renewed symboiically for the purposesof the tribe or, more speciflcally, of that casteor party in the Sincethis is a tribe whose specialinterestsare ritually represented. realms is made to seem metaphysical where access to l'righer space available,it must be shelteredfrom the appeaianceof changeand spaceis a kind of non-space,ultratime. This speciallysegregated space,or ideal spacewhere the surrounding matrix of space-time is symbolically annulled. ln Paieolithictimes the ultra-spacefilled with painting and sculptureseemsto have servedthe ends of magical restitution to the biomass; afterlife bpliefs and rituals may have been involved also.By Egyptian times thesepurposeshad coalescedaround the personofthe Pharaoh: assuranceofhis afterlife through eternity was assurance of the sustenanceof the statefor which he stood.Behind thesetwo purposesmay be glimpsedthe political interestsof a classor ruling group attempting to consolidate its grip on power by seeking ratification from eternity. At one
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level the process is a kind of sympatheticmagic, an artempr ro obtain somethingby rituarly presentingsomething ersethat is in some way like the thing that is desired.If something like what one wants is present, the underlying reasoning implies, then what one wants may not be far behind. The construction of a supposedly unchanging space.then, or a space where the effectsof charrg. u.. deliberatelydisguisedand hidden, is sympatheticmagic to pio- mote unchangingness in the real or non-ritual world; it is an attempt to castan appearance of eternality over the statusquo in terms of socialvaluesand also,in our modern instance,artistic va I ues. The eternity suggested in our exhibition spacesis ostensibly . that of artisticposterity,of undying beauty.of the masterpiece. But in fact it is a specificsensibility, with specificlimitations and conditionings, that is so glorified.By suggesting eternal ratiflcation ofa certain sensibility, the white cube suggests the erernal ratification of the claims of the casteor group sharing that sensibility. As a ritual place of meeting for members of that casteor group, it cen_ sors out the worid of socialvariation, promoting a senseof the sole reality'of its own point of view and, consequently,its endur_ ance or eternal rightness.Seenthus, the endurance of a certain power structureis the end for which the sympathetic magic of the white cube is devised. In the secondof the three sectionsof his essay. O,Dohertv deals with the assumptions a b o u t h u m a n s e l f h o o dt h " t u r . i n v o l v e di n the institutionaiization of the white cube.,,presence before a work of art," he writes. "means that we absentourselvesin favor of the Eye and the Spectaror." By rhe Eyehemeans the disembodied faculty that relatesexclusivelyto formal visual means.The Spec_ tator is the attenuatedand bleached-outlife of the self from which the Eye goesforth and which, in.the meantime, does nothing else. The Eye and the Spectatorare afl that is left of someone who has "died," as O'Doherty puts it, by entering into the white cube.In return for the glimpse of ersatz eternity that the white cube affords us-and as a token of our solidarity with the specialinterestsof a group-we give up our humanness and become the cardboard
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Spectator with the disembodied Eye. For the sake of the intensity of the separateand autonomous activity of the Eye we accept a reduced level of life and self. In classical modernist galleries,as in churches, one does not speak in a normal voice; one does not laugh, eat,drink, lie down, or sleep;one does not get ill, go mad, sing, dance, or make love. Indeed, since the white cube promotes the myth that we are there essentially as spiritual beings - the Eye is the Eye of the Soul-we are to be understood as tireless and above ofchance and change.Thisslender and reduced the vicissitudes form of life is the type of behavior traditionaliy required in religious sanctuaries, where what is important is the repressionof in favor of the interestsof the group.The essenindividual interests tially religiousnature of the white cube is most forcefully expressed by what it doesto the humanness of anyone who entersit and cooperateswith its premises.On the Athenian Acropolis in Plato'sday one did not eat,drink, speak,laugh, and so on. O'Doherty billiantly tracesthe development of the white cube .out of the tradition of Western easelpainting. He then redirects attention to the sane developmentsfrom another point of view, that of the anti-formalist tradition representedhere by Duchamp's installations1,200CoalBags\1938) and Mile of String (1942\, which steppedonce and for all outside the frame of the painting and made the gallery spaceitself the primary material to be altered by art. When O'Doherty recommendstheseworks by Duchamp to the attention of artists of the seventies he implies that not a great deai has been achievedin the last forty or fifty years in breaking down the barriersof disinterestor disdain that separatethe two traditions.Such lack of communication is impressive,sinceartists have attemptedto carry on this dialogue for a generathemselves tion.Yves I(lein, for example,exhibited an empty gallery called "The Void" (Le vide\ ( I958); shortly rhereafrerArman responded with an exhibition called "The Full" (te pleinl (1960) in which he dialecticizedKlein's positing of a transcendentalspacethat is in the world but not of it by filling the same gallery from floor to ceiling and wall to wall with garbage.Michael Asher, James Lee Byars, and others have used the empty exhibition space irself as their
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primary material in various works - not to mention the tradition known as Light and Space. O,Doherty discoveredthe way to ver_ balize these developments for the first time. His essayis an exam_ ple.of criticism attempting to digest and analyze theiecent past and the present-or shall I saythe recent p..ie.rt. He arguesthat the communal mind of our culture went ;hrough a sigriificant shift that expresseditserf in the prominence of the white cube as a central material and expressivemode for art, as well as a fashion_ able style of displayingit. He identifies rhe rransirion in question as modernism bringing "to an endpoint its relentlesshabit of selfdeflnition." The defining of self means the purposeful neglect of all that is other than serf.Ir is a process incriasingly reductive that finally leavesthe slatewiped clean. The white cube was a transitional device that attempted to bleach out the past arid at rhe same time control the future by appealingto supposedlytranscendentalmodes ofpresenceand power. But the problem with transcendentalprinciples is that by definition they speakof another world. .rot thir one. It is rhis other world, or access to it, that the whire cube represents.Itis like Plato'svision of a l"righer metaphysicalrealm where form, shiningly attenuatedand abstracr like mathematics,is utterly discon_ nected from the Iife of human experience here below. (pure form would exist,Plaro felt, even if this worrd did not. It is little recog) nized how much this aspectof pratonism has to do with moderriist ways of thinking, and especiallyas a hidden controlling structure behind modernist esthetics. Revivedin part as a compensarory reaction to the decline of religion, and promoted, however mistak_ enly, by our culture'sattention to the unchanging abstraction of mathematics,the idea of pure form domihat.d trr. esthetics(and ethics) from which the white cube emerged.Thepythagoreans of Plato s day,including plato himself. held that the beginning was a blank where there appearedinexplicably a spot which stretched into a line, which flowed into a plane, whictrfolded into a solid, which casta shadow,which is what we see. This set of elements_ point. line, surface, solid, simulacrum - conceived as conientless except in their own-nature, is the primary equiprnent of much
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the blank ultimate faceof modern art.The white cuberepresents unspeaktheseelements myth, light from which, in the Platonic geometand In suchtypesof thought, primary shapes abiy evolve. asalive in fact,as more intensely areregarded ric abstractions ulticontent.Thewhite cube's a specific alive than anythingwith disambition transcendental mate meaningis this life-erasing to specificsocialpurposes'O'Doherty's guisedand converted of the real life of the world against issaysin this book aredefenses of time of the iterilizedoperatingroom the white cube- defenses transcendence and the myth of the eternality and changeagainst as much asthey of pure form. In fact,they embodythis defense time, illustrating of reminder of spooky kind a ."p..tt it. Theyare the classical become today of how quickly tlle newestrealizations modernism' that Though it is common to say insightsof yesterday. is over'that rate of changeor development, with its exacerbated written Articles is increasing. but remains rate of changenot only will like these, or forgotten rOlo, eitherhavebeen todaywili, U1, classic. havebecome
Thomas McEvilleY New York City 1986

I. Notes on the GallerySpace

A recurrent scene in sci^fi moviesshowsthe earthwithdrawing from the spacecraft until it becomes a horizon,a beachball, a grapefruit, a golf ball,a star. With the changes in scale, responses slidefrom rheparticular to rhe generat. fni inaiviaualis replaced by the raceand we area pushover for the race_amortal biped, or a tangleofthem spread out below like a rug.From a certainheieht peoplearegenerally good. verticar distance encourages this ' generosity. Horizontality doesn't seemto havethe samemoral virtue.Faraway figuresmay be approachingand we anticipatethe insecurities of encounter. Life is horizontal, just one thinq after another,a conveyer belt shufflingus towardthe fro.iror.r."sui ;lr_ tory, the view from the departingspacecraft, is different. As the scale changes, layers of time aresuperimposed and throughthem we projectperspectives with which to recover and correcithepast. No wonderarr gers bollixedup in this process; its history, perceived throughtime,is confounded by the picturein fronr of your eyes, a witness readyto change testimony at the slightert p.r..p_ tual provocation. Historyand the eyehavea profoundwrangle'at the centerof this ',constant,, we call tradition. All of us arenow surethat the glut of history,rumor,and evi_ dencewe callthe modernist tradilionis beingcircumscribed by a horizon. Lookingdown,we seemoreclearlyits,,laws,, of progiess, its armature hammered out of idealist philosophy, its miliiarf metaphors of advance and conquest.What a sigfrt it is_or was! Deployed ideologies, trancendent rockets, romintic slumswhere degradation andidealism obsessively couple, all thosetroopsrun_
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reports ning backand forth in conventionalwars.Thecampaign betweenboardson coffeetablesgiveus little ii-t"i*a up pressed huddle achievements paradoxical heroics'Those ideaof the actual avant-garde the that will add a"*" rft.t., "waiting the revisions fear'end it' Indeed'tradition sometimes we erato tradition,or,as withdraws'looks like another pieceof brici*ff, "t the spacecraft table-no morethan a kineticassemblage ,-U.u. o" the coffee poweredby little mythic motors gf".a1"g.,ft.r with reproductions' And in its midst'onenotices of museums' tiny models lnd spoiting "cell" that appears crucialto making the thing ;; .;;;iy riintea sPace' the gallerY work: ' or by that space; ifr. irirr6ry of modernismis intimately framed in with changes rathe, the hiitory of modern art can be correlated a point now reached it ur rpu.. and in the way we seeit'we have ageis to the of (A clich6 first' *t .r. *. seenot the aribut ttrespace to comes image An a gallery') on entering overthe space elalulate picture' ihat' morethan any single .ni.taoi, white,ideaispace it clarifies art; century imageof tw-entieth archetypal ' ;;;;1h. attached usually inevitability f,istorical of process a itselfthrough to the art it contains. from the artwork ali cuesthat interihe ideal gallerysubtracts ferewiththefactthatitis"art'"Theworkisisolatedfromeverywould detractfrom its own evaluationof itself'This tl-tut it-rir-rg whereconby otherspaces possessed a presence gives the space of system throughthe repetitionof a closed arepreserved ventions v a l u e s . S o m e o f t h e s a n c t i t y o f t h e c h u r c h , t h e f o r mjoins alityo fthe with iaboratory the mystrlueoi the experimental courtroom, Sopowerful of esthetics' a unique chamber to prodr-,ce chicdesign that' once "t. ,f-t.p"....piuut fieldsof forcewithin this chamber things Conversely' status' into secular it, uri.u.t lapse outside wherepowerfulideasaboutart focuson art in a space become the mediumthrough becomes the objectfrequently them.lndeed, fo-rdiscussion-a proffered and which theseideasaremanifested aremoreinter("ideas academicism popularform of laternodernist becomes natureof the space .rting tf,unart") .The sacramental modernism: laws of projective and sodoesone of the great clear,
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As modernismgetsolder,context becomes content.In a peculiar reversal. rhe objectintroducedinro the gallery ,,frames,. ihe gallery and its laws. A galleryis constructed along rawsasrigorousasthosefor building a medievalchurch.The outsideworld must not comein, so windowsareusuallysealed off.Wallsarepaintedwhite.Theceiling becomes the source of light.The woodenfloor is polished so that you click along clinically,or carpetedso that you pad sound_ lessly, restingthe feetwhile the eyeshaveat the wall. The art is free,asthe saying usedto go,,,totakeon its own life.,, The discreet deskmaybe the only pieceof furniture.In this contexta standing ashtray becomes almosta sacred just asthe firehose object, in a modernmuseumlooksnot like a flrehose but an esthetic conun_ drum. Modernism's transposition of perceptionfrom life to formal valuesis complete. This,of course, is one of modernism,s fatal diseases. Unshadowed, white,clean, artificial-the space is devoted to the ' technology of esthetics. Worksof art aremounted,hung,scattered for study.Their ungrubbysurfaces areuntouchedby time and its vicissitudes. Arr exisrs in a kind of eternityof display, and though thereis lotsof "period" (latemodem), thereis no time.Thiseter_ nity givesthe gallerya limbolikestatus; one hasto havedied already to be there. Indeedthe presence ofthat odd pieceoff.rniture,your own body,seems superfluous, an intrusion. The space offers the thoughtthat wrrileeyesand nrindsarewelcome. irraceoccupying bodies,are not-or aretolerated only askinesthetic mannekins for furtherstudy. This Cartesian paradox is reinforced by oqe of the iconsof our visualculture:the installation shot,sarzs figures. Hereat lasttl.re you are spectator, oneself, is eliminated. therewithout beingthere-one of the major services provided for art by its old antagonist, photography.The installation shoris a metaphorfor the galleryspace. In it an idealis fulfllledasstrongly a si n a S a l o n painring of the l83ds. Indeed, the Salonitselfimplicitlydefines whar a galleryis,a definition appropriate for the esthetics of the period.A galleryis a placewith a wall,which is covered with a wall of pictures.The
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for an wall itselfhasno instrinsicesthetic;it is simply a necessity upright animal.SamuelF.B. Morse'sExhibition Galleryat the as ( lS33) is upsetting to the moderneye:masterpieces Louvre in space out and isolated eachone not yet separated wallpaper, of the (to us) horrid concatenation Disregarding like a throne. by the periodsand styles, the demandsmade on the spectator Are you to hire stiltsto riseto the our understanding. hangingpass ceiling or get on handsand kneesto sniff anything below the areas.You overhear dado?Both high and low areunderprivileged "skied" but nothing aboutbeing from artists a lot of complaints were at leastaccesaboutbeing"floored."Nearthe floor,pictures "near" Iookbefore ihe connoisseur's sibleand couldaccommodate One can seethe ninehe withdrewto a morejudiciousdistance. strolling,peeringup, stickingtheir faces feenth centuryaudience in picturesand falling into interrogativegroups'aproper distance away,pointing with a cane,perambulatingagain,clockingoff the exhibition pictureby picture.Largerpaintingsrise to the top tilted out from and aresometimes (easier to seefrom a distance) "best" pictures piane; stayin the viewer's the wall to maintain the perfect bottom.The drop to the the middlezone;smalipictures without a patchof mosaicof frames hangingjob is an ingenious wallshowing. wasted law couldjustify (to our eyes)sucha barbarWhat perceptuai one only: Eachpicturewas seenasa self-contained ity? One-and neighborby a heavy from its sium-close entity,totallyisoiated perspective within. Space system framearoundand a complete just in which the houses and categorizable. as was discontinuous thesepictureshqng had differentrooms for differentfunctions. and the nineteenth The nineteenth cenlurymind wastaxonomic, and the authorityof ofgenre hierarchies eyerecognized ,century the framd picturebecome sucha neatlywrappedparcel How did the easel with the riseof coincides Thediscovery of perspective of space? the prompicture, in turn, confirms the easelpicture,and the easel peculiar relationise of illusionisminherentin painting.Thereis a ship betweena mural - painted directly on the wall - and a picture
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Sam uel F B. Morse. Exhibition Gallert at the Louvre, l8j2 - )j, c o u r l e s y T e r r a M u s e u m o f A m e r i c a n A r t , E v a n s t o n ,I l l i n o i s

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that hangson a wall; a painted wall is replacedby a piece of portable wall. Limits are establishedand framed; miniaturization rather than contradicts becomes a powerful convention that assists even when illuto be shallow; in murals tends space illusion.The the wall is as part integrity of of the idea, the sion is an intrinsic oftel,reinforced, by struts of painted architecture, as denied.The wall itself is always recognized as limiting depth (you don't walk through it),just as corners and ceiling (often in a variety of inventive ways) limit size.Close up, murals tend to be frank about their means - iliusionism breaks down in a babble of method. You feel you are looking at the underpainting and often can't quite find your "place." Indeed,murals project ambiguous and wandering vectors with which the spectator attempts to align himself.The easelpicture on the wall quickly indicatesto him exactiy where he stands. For the easdlpicture is like a portable window that, once set on it with deep space.Thistheme is endlessly , the wall, penetrates repeated in northern art. where a window within the picture in turn frames not only a further distance but confirms the windowlike limits of the frame.Themagical,boxlike statusof some smaller they contain and easelpicturesis due to the immense distances the perfectdetailsthey sustainon cioseexamination.The frame of the easelpicture is as much a psychologicalcontainer for the a4ist as the room in which the viewer standsis for him or her.The perspectivepositionseverythingwithin the picture along a cone of space,againstwhich the frame acts like-a grid, echoing those cuts "steps" of foreground,middleground,and distancewithin. One depending on its firmly into such a picture or glides effortlessly, greater the invitathe greater tonality and color.The the illusion, lrom an hnchored eye; the eye is abstracted tion to the spectator's ' body and projectedas a miniature proxy into the picture to inhabit and test the articulationsof its space. as an For this process, the stability of the frame is as necessary oxygen tank is to a diver. Its limiting security completely defines the experience within.The border as absoluteiimit is confirmed in easelart up to the nineteenth century.Where it curtails or elides
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subjectmatter,it doesso in a way that strengthens the edge.The package classic of perspective enclosed by the Beaux-Arts frame makesit possible for picturesto hang like sardines. Thereis no . suggestion that the space within the picture is continuouswith the space on either sideof it. is made only sporadically , This suggestion through the eight_ . eenth and nineteenthcenturiesas atmosphere and color eataway at the perspective. Landscape is the progenitorof a translucent mist that puts perspective and tone/colorin opposition,because implicit in eachare oppositeinterpretationsof the wall they hang on_. Pictures beginto appearthat put pressure on the frame.The archetypal composifion hereis the edge-to-edge horizon,separat_ ing zonesof sky and sea, often underlined by beach, with maybe a figurefacing,as everyone does,the sea.Formal compositionis gone; the frameswithin the frame (coulisses, repoussoirs, the Braille of perspective depth) have slid away.Whatis left is an ambiguous surface partly framedfrom the insideby the horizon.Suchpictures (by Courbet,Caspar David Friedrich,Whistler, and hostsof little masters) poised are betweeninfinite depth and flatness and tend to read aspattern. The powerful convention of the horizon zips easilyenoughthrough the limits of the frame. Theseand certainpicturesfocusingon an indeterminatepatch of landscape that often looks like the ,,wrong,.subjectintroduce the ideaof noticing something, of an eyescanning.This temporal quickening makes the framean equivocal, and not ah absolute, zone.Onceyou know that a patchoflandscape represents a deci_ sion to excludeeverythingaround it, you are faintly awareof the space outside the picture.The framebecomes a parenthesis.The separation of paintings alonga wall, through a kind of magnetic repulsion,becomes inevitable. And it wes accentuated and Iargely - or art- devoted initiatedby the new science to the excision o1a subjectfrom its context:photography. In a photograph, the locationof the edgeis a primarydecision, - or decomposes - what it surrounds. sinceit composes Eventually framing,ediring,cropping- establishing limits - becomemajor actsof composition. But not so much in the beginning. Therewas
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the usual holdover of pictorial conventions to do some of the work of framing - internal buttressesmade up of convenient trees and knolls.The best early photographs reinterpret the edge without tension on tlle assistanceof pictorial conventions. They lower t}:'.e itself, rather to compose matter the subject the edge by allowing is typical Perhaps this than bonsciouslyaligning it with the edge. ofthe nineteenth century.The nineteenth century looked at a subfields were studied within their ject-not at its edges.Various not the fleld but its limits, and defining Studying declaredIimits. these limits for the purpose of extending them, is a twentieth century habit. We have the illusion that we add to a fleld by extending it laterally,not by going, as the nineteenth century might sayin proper perspective style,deeperinto it. Even scholarshipin both centurieshas a recognizablydifferent senseofedge and depth, of Iimits and definition. Photography quickly learned to move away from heavy framesand to mount a print on a sheet of board.A .frame was allowed to surround the board after a neutral interval. Early photography recognizedthe edge but removed its rhetoric, softenedits absolutism,and turne d it into a zone rather than the strut it later became.One way or another,the edge as a firm conventio.n locking in the subject had become fragile. Much of this applied to Impressionism,in which a major rheme was the edgeas umpire of what's in and what's out. But this was combined with a far more important force,the beginning of the decisivethrust that eventually altered the idea of the picture,the way it was hung, and ultimately the gallery space:the myth of which becamethe powerful logician in painting's arguflatness, ment for self-definition'The development of a shaflow literal space (containing invented forms, as distinct from the old illusory space on the edge'The containing "real" forms) put further pressures great inventor here is, of course,Monet. Indeed, the magnitude of the revolution he initiated is such that there is some doubt his achievementmatches iU for he is an artist of decidedlimitations (or one who decided on his limitations and stayed within them). Monet's landscapes often seem to have been noticed on his way to or from the real subject.There is an impres20

C l a u d e M o n e t , W a t e rL i l i e s , 1 9 2 0 ,r r i p r y c h : e a c h p a n e l 6 , 6 , ' x 1 4 ' , courtesy Museum of Modern Art, New york. Mrs. Simon Guggenheim Fund

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sion that he is settlingfor a provisionalsolution; the very featureinformal subject your eyeto look elsewhere.The relaxes lessness . matter of Impressionism is alwayspointed out, but not that the in subjectis seenthrough a casualglance,one not too interested "looking at" is in Monet what it's looking at.What is interesting forthis look - the integumentof light, the often preposterous through a punctatecodeof color and mularization of a perception edge touch which remains(until nearthe end) impersonal.The that decision a somewhathaphazard eclipsingthe subjectseems could just aswell havebeenmade a few feet left or right.A signais the way the casuallychosensubjectsofture of Impressionism structuralrole at a time when the edgeis under tens the edge's douof the space.This shallowness pressure from the increasing on the edgeis the preludeto bled and somewhatopposingstress object-a container painting a self-sufficient as of a the definition setsus primary fact itself-which of illusory fact now becomethe on the high road to somestirring estheticclimaxes. and objecthoodusually find their first officialtext in Flatness in 1890that beforea pictureis famousstatement Maurice Denis's with lines and colsubjectmatter,it is first of all a surfacecovered ors.Thisis one of thoseliteralismsthat soundsbrilliant or rather Right now, having seenthe enddumb, dependingonthe Zeitgeist. nonillusion and nonnonstructure, point to which nonmetaphor, makesit sounda little obtuse. contentcantakeyou,the Zeitgeist That pictureplane- the ever-thinningintegumentof modernist - sometimes readyfor WoodyAllen and hasindeed seems integrity that the and wits. But this ignores its shareof ironists attracted powerful myth of the picture plane receivedits impetusfrom the of illusion. systems in unalterable duringwhich it sealed centuries adjustan heroic was era in the modern Conceivingit differently was which viei'v, ment that signifieda totaily differentworid into the technologyof flatness. trivialized into esthetics, As the The literalization of the pictureplaneis a greatsubject. composition shallower, and becomes shallower vessel of content the edge all overflowacross and subjectmatter and metaphysics the emptyingout is SteinsaidaboutPicasso, until, as Gertrude
22

complete.But all the jettisoned apparatus-hierarchies of painting, illusion, locatablespace, mythologies beyond number-bounced back in disguiseand attachedthemselves,via new mythologies,to the literal surfdce,which had apparently left them no purchase. The transformation of literary myths into literal myths-objecthood, the integrity of the picture plane, the equalization of space. the self-sufflciency of the work, the purity of form-is unexplored territory.Without this change,art would have been obsolete. Indeed,its changesoften seem one step ahead of obsolescence, and to that degreeits progress mimics the laws of fashion. The cultivation of the picture plane resulted in an entity with length and breadth but no thickness,a membrane which, in a metaphor usually organic,could generateits own self-sufficient laws.The primary law, of course,was that this surface, pressed between huge historicalforces,couid not be violated.A narrow space forced to represent without representing, to symbolize without benefit ofreceived conventions,generateda plethora ofnew conventionswithout a consensus-color codes,signaturesof paint, private signs,intellectually formulated ideas of structure. Cubism'sconceptsof structureconservedthe easelpainting status quo; Cubistpaintings are centripetal,gathered toward the center, fading out toward the edge.(Is this why Cubist paintings rend to be small?) Seuratunderstoodmuch better how to define the limits of a classic formulation at a rime when edgeshad become equivocal.Frequently,painted borders made up of a glomeration ofcolored dots are deployedinward to separateout and describe the subject. The border absorbsthe slow movements of the structure within.To muffle the abruptnessof the edge,he sometimes pattered all over the frame so that the eye could move out of the picture-and back into it-witirout a bump. Matisseunderstoodthe dilemma of the picture plane and its tropism toward outward extension better than anyone.His pictures grew bigger as if, in a topological paradox, depth were being translatedinto a flat analog.On this, place was signifiedby up and down and left and right, by color, by drawing that rarely closed a contour without calling on the surface to contradict it, and by
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paint appliedwith a kind of cheerfulimpartiality to everypart of largepaintingswe are hardly everconthat surface.InMatisse's frame. He solved the problem of lateral extensionand of the scious perfect the centerat tact.He doesn'temphasize containmentwith of the edge, or vice versa.His picturesdon't make the expense of bare wall.They look good almost arrogantclaimsto stretches informal structureis combinedwith a tough, anywhere.Their prudencethat makesthem remarkablyself-sufficient. decorative Theyareeasyto hang. indeed. is what we needto know more about.From Hanging, history. ofhangingarean unrecovered Courbeton, conventions about what is The way picturesarehung makesassumptions on mattersof interpretationand Hangingeditorializes offered. Subinfluenced by tasteand fashion. value.and is unconsciously It be its deportment. should Iiminal cuesindicateto the audience possibleto correlate the internal history of paintingswith the externalhistory of how they were hung.We might begin our (iike communallysanctioned not with a modeof display search those private insight-with of but with the vagaries the Salon), eiecenturycollectors and eighteenth pictures of seventeenth gantly sprawiedin the midst of their inventory.The first modern in which a radicalartistsetup his own space I suppose, occasion, one-manSalondes in it wasCourbet's and hung his pictures of I855.How were the pictures the Exposition Refusds outside their relationtheir sequence, construe hung? How did Courbet did nothing he I suspect between? ship to eachother,the spaces (who happened yet it wasthe firsttime a modernartist startling; to be the flrst modern artist)had to constructthe context of his aboutits values. editorialize work and therefore their earlyframingand mayhavebeenradical, Thoughpictures of what a picture hangingusuallywasnot.Theinterpretation In delayed' we may assume, impliesaboutits contextis always, pictures their stuck the Impressionists their firstexhibitionin I874, cheekby jowl, just asthey would have hung in the Salon.Impresand their doubtsabout their flatness which assert sionistpictures, off in Beaux-Artsframesthat do the limiting edge,arestill sealed

little more than announce "Old Master,,-and monetary - status. When William C. Seitztook off the frames for his greatMonet show at the Museum of Modern Art in t960, the undressedcanvasses looked a bit like reproductions until you saw how they began to hold the wall.Though the hanging had its eccenrric moments, it read the pictures' relation to the wall correctlvand. in a rare act of curatorial daring, followed up the implicationi. Seitz also set some of the Monets flush with the wall. Continuous with the wall, the picturestook on some of the rigidity of tiny murals. The surfaces turned hard as the picture plane was ,,overliteralized."The differencebetween the easelpicture and the mural was clarified. The relation between the picture plane and the underlying wall is very pertinent to the estheticsof surface. The inch of the stretcher's width amounts to a formal abyss. The easelpainting is not transferable to the wall, and one wants to know why. What is lost in the transfer?Edges, surface,the grain and bite ofthe canvas, the separationfrom the wall. Nor can we forget that the whole thing is suspended or supported- transferable, mobile currency. After centuriesof illusionism. it seemsreasonableto suggest that theseparameters, no matter how flat the surface,are the loci of the last tracesof illusionism. Mainstream painting right up to Color Field is easelpainting, and its literalism is practicedagainst \ these desiderata of illusionism. Indeed, these tracesmake literalism interesting;they are the hidden component of the dialecticalengine that gave the late modernist easelpicture its energy.If you copied a late modernist easelpicture onto the wall and then hung the easelpicture besideit, you could estimatethe degreeof illusionism that turned up in the faultlessliteral pedigree of the easelpicture.At the same timel tl-re rigid mural would underline the importance of surfaceand edgesto the easelpicture, now beginning to hover closeto an objecthood defined by the ,,literal,, remnants of illusion-an unstable area. The attackson painting in the sixtiesfailed to specifythat it wasn't painting but the easelpicture that was in trouble. Color Field painting was thus conservativein an interestingway, but not
25

to those who recognized that the easel picture couldn't rid itself of illusion and who rejectedthe premise of something lying quietly on the wall and behaving itself. I've always been surprised that Color Field - or late modernist painting in general- didn't try to get onto the wall, didn't attempt a rapprochement between the mural and the easelpicture. But then Color Field painting conformed to the social context in a somewhat disturbing way. It remained Salon painting: it needed big walls and big collectors and couldn't avoid looking like the ultimate in capitalist art. Minimal art recognized the illusions inherent in the easel picture and didn't have any illusions about society.It didn't ally itself with wealth and power, and its abortive attempt to redefine the relation remains largely unexplored. of the artist to various establishments painting postulatedsome late modernist Field, Apart from Color ingenious hypotheseson how to squeezea little extra out ofthat . recalcitrant picture plane, now so dumbly literal it could drive you crazy.Thestrategyhere was simile (pretending),not metaphor "like a ." The (betieving): sayingthe picture plane is blank was filled in by flat things that lie obligingly on the literal surfaceand fuse with it, e.g.,Johns'sFlags,CyTwombly's "sheets" of lined blackboard paintings,Alex Hay'shuge painted "notebooks." Then there is the "like a window paper,Arakawa's "like a sky" area.There's a good comedy-ofshade," "like a wall," "like a -" solution about the be written to piece manners including related areas, plane.There are numerous to the picture schemaresoiutelyflattened into two dimensions the perspective ro quote the picture plane'sdilemma. And before leaving this area wit, one should note the solutions that cut of rather desperate through the picture plane (Lucio Fontana3 answer to the Gordian surface) until the picture is taken away and the wall's plaster attacked directlY' Also relatedis the solution that lifts surfaceand edgesoff that Procrustean stretcher and pins, sticks, or drapes paper, fiberglass, or cloth directly against the wall to literalize even further. Here a lot of Los Angelespainting falls neatly-for the first time!-into the historical mainstream; it's a little odd to seethis obsessionwith
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surface, disguised asit may be with vernacularmacho,dismissed asprovincialimpudence. All this desperate fussmakesyou realizeall over againwhat a conservative movementcubism was.It extendedthe viability of the easel pictureand postponed its breakdown.Cubismwasreducible to system, and systems, being easierto understandthan art. dominateacademic history.Systems are a kind of p.R. which, amongotherthings, pushthe ratherodiousideaof progress. prog_ resscan be definedaswhat happenswhen you eliminaie the opposition. However, the tough opposition voicein modernism is that of Matisse, andit speaks in its unemphatic, rationalway about color,which in the beginningscaredCubismgray.ClementGreen_ berg's Art and culturereportson how the New york artistssweatecrr out Cubism.while castingshrewdeyeson Matisseand Mir6. AbstractExpressionist paintingsfollowed the route of lateral expansion, droppedoff the frame,and graduallybeganto conceive eaqeasa strucrural unit through which the painting entered lfe into a dialoguewith the wall beyond ir. Ar rhis point the dealer and curatorenterfrom the wings.How they- in collaboration with the artist-presented these works,contributed, in the late foities and fifties,to the deflnition of rhe new painting. Throughthe flftiesand sixties, we notice the codifiiation of a new themeasit evolves into consciousness: How much space shoulda work of art have(asrhe thrase went) ro ,,breathe,,Z tf paintingsimplicitly declare their own terms of occupancy, the somewhat aggrieved mutteringbetweenthem becomes harderto ignore. What goes rogerher, what doesn,t? The esthetics of hanging evolves according to its own habits, which become conventions, which become laws. we enterthe era whereworks of art conceive the wall asa no-man's land on which to projecttheir concept of the territorial imperative. And we are not far from the kind of border warfarethat often Baikanizes museum group shows. Thereis a peculiaruneasiness in watchingartworksattempting to establish territorybut not placein the contextof the placeless modern gallery. All this trafficacross the wall made it a far-from-neutralzone.
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: r a n k S t e l l a i,n s t a l l a t i o n v i e w ,l 9 6 4 , o u r t e s yL e o C a s t e l lC i a l l e r yN , en York 28

Now a participantin, rather than a passive supportfor,the art, the wall became the locusof contendingideologies;and everynew development had to comeequippedwith an attitude toward it. (GeneDavis's exhibition of micro-picturessurroundedby oodles of space is a goodjoke aboutthis.) Oncethe wall became an esthetic force,it modifiedanything shown on it.The wall, the context of the art,had becomerich in a content it subtly donatedto the art. It is now impossible to paint up an exhibition without surveying the space like a healthinspector, taking into accountthe esthetics of the wall which will inevitably "aftify" the work in a way that frequentlydiffuses its intentions.Most of us now "read" the hanging aswe wouid chewgum-unconsciously and from habit.The potencyreceived wall's esthetic a final impetusfrom a realization that,in retrospect, hasall the authorityof historical inevitability: picturedidn't haveto be rectangular. The easel Stella's earlyshaped canvasses bent or cut the edgeaccording to the demands of the internal logic that generated (Here them. ld'ihael Fried's distinctionbetweeninductive and deductivestructrfie remainsone of the few practicalhand tools addedto the critid3 blackbag.) The resultpowerfully activatedthe wall; the eye frequently went searching tangentially for the wall'slimits.Stella's show ofstripedU-,T-,and L-shaped canvasses at Castelli in 1960 "developed" everybit of the wall, floor to ceiling, cornerro corner. Flatness, edge, format,and wall had an unprecedented dialogue in that smail, uptown Castelli As they were presented, space. the works hoveredbetweenan ensembleeffectand independence. The hangingtherewasasrevolutionary as the paintings; sincethe hangingwaspart of the esthetic, it evolvedsimultaneously with the pictures. Thebreakingof the rectangle formally confirmedthe wall'sautonomy, altering for goodthe concept of the galleryspace. Someof the mystique of the shallowpictureplane (oneof the threemajorforces that altered the galleryspace) had beentransferredto the contextof art. Thisresultbringsus backagainto that archetypal instailation shot-the suave extensions of the space, the pristineclarity, the pictures laid out in a row like expensive bungalows. ColorField
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. e n n e t h N o l a n d , i n s r a l l a t i o n v i e w . 1 96 7 , ourtesy Andr Emmerich Gallery, New york

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e n e D a v i s , i n s t a l l a t i o n v i e w , 1 9 6 8 .c o u r t e s y F i s c h b a c h Gallery, ew York (photo: John A. Ferrari) ll

1967 wal!,DwanMain Gallery, william Anastasi ,West Russell) (photo: walter

j2

H e l e n F r a n k e n t h a l e r ,i n s t a l l a r i o nv i e w . 1 9 6 8 . cou rtesy Andrd Emmerich Gallerv

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painting,which inevitablycomesto mind here' is the most impepicturesrecur as rial of modesin its demandfor lebensraum.The temple.Eachdemands asthe columnsin a classic reassuringiy its neighbor'spicks before is over effect its that enough tpu.. so perceptualfield, a be single the pictureswould up. Otherwise, claimed painting,detractingfrom the uniqueness frank ensemble shot shouldbe recogColorFieldinstallation by eachcanvas.The the moderntradition. of endpoints teleological nizedasone of the the way the picabout There is somethingsplendidlyluxurious tures and the gaileryresidein a context that is fully sanctioned We areawarewe arewitnessinga triumph of high serioussocially. in a showIike a RollsRoyce production, nessand hand-tooled outhouse' in an room that beganasa Cubistjalopy this? A comment hasbeen on you make can What comment Anastasiat Dwan in William by in an exhibition made already, the emptygalleryat Dwan' He photographed New Yorkin 1965. of the wall, top and bottom' right and left' noticed the parameters in the theiplacementof eachelectricaloutlet, the oceanof space slightly a canvas on data this all middle. He then silkscreened smallerthan the wall and put it on the wall. Coveringthe wall with an imageof that wall deliversa work of art right into the zone in dialoguescentral where surfaie,mural, and wall have engaged to modernism.In fact,this history was the theme of thesepaintings,a theme statedwith a wit and cogencyusually absentfrom the show had a peculiar For me, at Ieast, written clarifications. ou-r the wall becamea down, when the paintingscame after-effect; everyshowin that mural and so changed kind of ready-made thereafter. sDace

II. The Eyeand the Spectator

Couldn't modernismbe taught to children as a series of Aesop,s fables? It would be more memorablethan art appreciation.Think of suchfables as"Who Killed Illusion?" or "How the EdgeRevolted Againstthe Center.""The Man Who Violatedthe Canvas,, could follow "Where Did the FrameGo?" I would be easyto draw morals:think of "TheVanishing Impasto That Soaked Away-and Then CameBackand Got Fat."And how would we tell the storyof the little PicturePlanethat grew up and got so mean? How it evicted everybody, including FatherPerspective and Mother Space. who had raisedsuchnice real children,and left behind only this horrid resultof an incestuous affair calledAbstraction, who looked down on everybody, including-eventually-itsbuddies, Metaphorand picture plane, Ambiguity; and how Abstracrion and the thick as thieves, keptbootingout a persistent guttersnipe namedCollage, who just wouidn'tgiveup. Fables giveyou more latituderhan art history.I suspect art historianshavefantasies about their fields they would like to make stick.Thisis a prefaceto somegeneralizationsaboutCubism and collage that seemequallytrue and fictitious,and thuscompose a fairy talefor adults. Theforces that crushed four hundredyearsof illusionism and idealism together and evicted them from the picturetranslated deepspace into surface tension. Thissurface responds asa fieldto any mark on it. Onemark wasenoughto establish a relationship not so much with the next aswith the esthetic and ideological potencyof the blank canvas. The contentof the emptycanvas increased asmodernism went on.Imaginea museumof such potencies, a temporal corridorhung with blank canvasses-from 1850, 1880, 1 9 I 0 ,1 9 5 0 , 1 9 7 0E . a c hc o n r a i n s b,e f o r e a b r u s hi s l a i d on it. assumptions implicit in the art of its era.As the series approaches the present, eachmemberaccumulates a more comt>

plex latent content.Modernism's void endsup stuffedwith classic The specialized ideasall readyto jump on the first brushstroke. an invention as modern canvas is as aristocratic surfaceof the human ingenuityeverevolved. paint itself,became the Inevitably,what went on that surface, and locus of conflictingideologies. Caughtbetweenits substance potential, paint in its material body re-enacted its metaphorical the residualdilemmasof illusionism.As paint becamesubject, was squeezed out of it.Theintegand process, illusionism object, rity of the pictureplaneand the morality of the medium favorlatto asscheduled from Czanne eral extension.The mainstream it with verticaland alongthe wall,measures Color Fieldglides maintainsthe propriety of gravity and the horizontal coordinates, upright viewer. Thisis the etiquetteof normal socialdiscourse, viewer is continually reintroduced and through it the mainstream now so to the wall, which in turn supportsthe canvas-its surface that an objecton it would causeit. asit were,to blink. sensitive But ashigh art vacuumedthe picture plane,the vernacular While the itselfin transgressing its vulgar equivalent. surpassed with a curtain of traditional perspective Impressionists occluded paint, popular paintersand photographers in many countries grotesqueries to gamedwith illusion from Archimboldesque glitter,hair.stones, minerals,and ribbons trompe lbeil. Shells, photographs, frames,shadowboxes. were attached to postcards, in the Victorian'scorrupt verThis tacky efflorescence, saturated - was,of course, a subsion of short-term memory nostalgia and Surrealism. Sowhen, in l9l l, Picasso stratumof Symbolism on a canvas, stuckthat pieceof oil cloth printedwith chair-caning may haveseenit asa retardataire someadvanced colleagues gesture. critics Exhibit A. Artists.historians, That work is now collage's at it. It marks an l9l I to take a look are alwaystrampingbackto picture's glass passage from the irrevocable through-the-lookingAnalytic Cubism into the secular space. space world, the spectator's didn't push laterallybut pokedout the picture plane,contradicting previousadvances in definingit. Facets of spaceare thrust forward;
J6

PabloPicasso, ll Lifewith ChairCaning,tgll Sri

sometimes they look stuckon the surface. Bits of Analytic Cubism, then,couldalready be seen asa kind of. collage manqud. The moment a collagewas attachedto that unruly Cubistsurfacethere wasan instantaneous switch.No Ionger ableto pin a subjecttogetherin a space too shallow for it, the multiple vanishing points of the Analytic Cubistpicture showerout into the room with the spectator. His point of view ricochetsamong them.The surfaceof the pictureis madeopaqueby collage. Behind it is simply a wall, or a void.In front is an open space in which the viewer's palpable sense of his own presence becomes an increasingly shadow. Expelled from the Edenof illusionism. kept out by the literal surface becomes enmeshed in of the picture,the spectator the troubledvectors that provisionallydefinethe modernistsensibility.Theimpurespace in which he stands is radically changed. The esthetics of discontinuitymanifestthemselves in this altered pockspaceand time.The autonomyof parts,the revolt of objects, etsof void becomegenerative forcesin all the arts.Abstraction and reality not realism conductthis rancorousargumentthroughpictureplane,like an exclusive out modernism.The countryciub, keeps realityout andfor goodreason. Snobbishness is,afterall, a form of purity,prejudicea way of being consistent. Realitydoes not conformto the rulesofetiquette, subscribe to exclusive values, or wear a tie; it hasa vulgarsetof relations and is frequently seen slummingamongthe senses with other antithetical arts. in that areimplicated Both abstraction and reality, however, division space. The exclusive sacred twentiethcenturydimension, between them hasblurredthe factthat the firsthasconsiderable - contrary practical relevance to the modernmyth that art is "use(apartfrom being"culture") less."Ifart hasany culturalreference and time.Theflow of of our space surelyit is in the definition throughthe artwork energy articulated betrveen concepts of space and the space and leastunderstood we occupy is one of the basic forces in modernism. redefines the observer's Modernist space status, conception of tinkerswith his self-image. Modernism's space, not its subject matter,may be what the public rightly conceives asthreatening. no threats, Now,of course, space contains
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hasno hierarchies. Its mythologies aredrained, its rhetoriccol_ lapsed. It is simply a kind of undifferentiatedpotency. This is not a "degeneration" ofspace but the sophisticated convention ofan advanced culture which has cancelledits valuesin the name of an abstraction called"freedom.',Spacenow is not just where things happen;thingsmakespace happen. Space wasclarifled not only in the picture, bur in the place wherethe picturehangs-the gallery, which,with postmodeinism, joins the pictureplaneasa unit of discourse. If thepictureplane defined the wall, collage defines the space betweenthe wails.The fragmentfrom the real world plonked on rhe picture,s surface is the imprimaturof an unstoppable generative energy. Do we not, throughan odd reversal, aswe standin the galleryspace. end up inside thepicture,looking out ar an opaquepictureplanethat pio_ tectsus from a void? (Could Lichtenstein,s paintingsof t].ebaik of a canvas be a text for this?)As we movearoundthat space, looking at the walls,avoidingthings on the floor,we becomeawarethat that galleryalsocontains a wanderingphantomfrequently men_ tionedin avant-garde dispatchesthe Spectator. Who is this Spectator, alsocalledthe Viewer, sometimes called the Observer, occasionally the perceiver? It hasno face, is mostlya back.It stoops and peers, is slightlyclumsy. Its atrirude is inquiring, its puzzlement discreet. He-I,m sureit is more male than female_ arrivedwith modernism, with the disappearance of perspective. He seems born out of the pictureand,like someperceptual Adam. is drawnbackrepeatedly to contemplate it.The Spectator seems a little dumb; he is not you or me.Alwayson call,he staggers into placebefore everynew work that requires his presence.This obliging stand-inis readyto enactour fanciest speculations. He tests them patientlyand doesnot resent that we providehim with direc_ "The viewerfeels tions and responses: . . ."; ,,theobserver " notices. . ."; the spectator moves. . . .,,He is sensitive to effects: "The effect on the specrator is . . . .,, He smellsout ambiguities like a bloodhound:"caughtbetween theseambiguities, theipec_ tator. . . ." He not oniy stands and sitson command;he liesdown and evencrawlsasmodernism presses on him its final indignities.
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Roy Lichtenstein Frame, 196E, , Stretcher courtesyIrving Blum (photo: RudolphBurckhardt)

Plunged into darkness, deprived ofperceptual cues, blasted by strobes, he frequentlywatcheshis own image choppedup and recycled by a varietyof media.Art conjugates him, but he is a sluggishverb,eagerto carry the weight of meaning but not alwaysup to it. He balances; he tests; he is mystified, demystified.In time.the Spectator stumbles around betweenconfusingroles:he is a cluster of motor reflexes, a dark-adapted wanderer, the vivant in a tableau,an actormanqu, evena triggerof soundand light in a space land-mined for art.He may evenbe told that he himselfis an artist and be persuaded that his contributionto what he observes or trips overis its authenticatingsignature. Yetthe Spectator hasa dignifledpedigree. His genealogy includes the eighteenth centuryrationalist with an astute eyeAddison's perhaps, Spectator, whosegalleryequivalent is called "the onlooker"and "the beholder." A closerantecedent is the Romanticself,which quickly splitsto producean actor and an audience, a protagonist and an eyethat observes him. ThisRomantic splitis comparable to the additionof the third actorto the Greek stage. Levels of awareness are multiplied, relationships reformed, new voidsfilledin with meta-commentary by the audience.The Spectator and his snobbish cousinthe Eye good arrivein company. Delacroix callsthem up occasionally; Baudelaire hobnobs with them.Theyarenot on suchgoodterms with eachother.The epicene Eyeis far more intelligentthan the Spectator, who hasa touch of male obtuseness. The Eyecanbe trainedin a way the Spectator cannot.Itis a finely tuned,even nobleorgan, esthetically and sociailysuperiorto the Specrator. It is easyfor a writer to havea Spectator around*there is something of the Eternal Footmanabouthim. It is more difficultto havean Eye,althoughno writer shouldbe without one.Not havingan Eye is a stigma to be hidden,perhaps by knowing someone who has one. The Eyecanbe directed but with lessconfidence than rhe Spectator,who, unlike the Eye,is rathereager to please.The Eyeis an oversensitive acquaintance with whom one must stayon good terms.It is often quizzeda little nervously,its responses received
4l

- observation respectfully. It must be waited on while it observes being its perfectlyspecialized function: "The eyediscriminates between. . . .Theeyeresolves . . . .Theeyetakesin. balances, perceives weighs,discerns, . . . ." But like any thoroughbred, it has its limits. "Sometimes the eyefails to perceive. . . ." Not always predictable, it hasbeenknown to lie.It hastroublewith content, which is the lastthing the Eyewants to see. It is no good at all for Iookingat cabs, bathroomflxtures, girls,sports results.Indeed, it is so specialized it canend up watchingitself. But it is unmatched for looking at a particular kind of art. The Eyeis the only inhabitantof the sanitized installation shot. The Spectator is not present. Installation shotsaregenerally of abstract works;realists don,tgo in for them much.In installation shotsthe questionof scaieis confirmed (the sizeof the galleryis deduced from the photo)and blurred (the absence of a Spectator couldmeanthe gallery is 30 feethigh).Thisscalelessness conforms with the fluctuationsthrough which reproductionpasses the successful work of art.The art the Eyeis broughtto bearon almost exciusivelyis that which preserves the picture plane- mainstream modernism.The Eyemaintains galleryspace. the seamless its walls sweptby flat planes of duck.Everything else-all thingsimpure, includingcollage-favors the Spectator.The Spectator stands in space brokenup by the consequences ofcollage, great the second forcethat altered the galleryspace. When the Spectator is Kurt Schwitters, we arebroughtto a space we can only occupythrough eyewitness reports, by walkingour eyesthroughphotographs that tantalize ratherthan confirmexperience: his Merzbau of 1923at Hanover, destroyed in 1943. "It growsabout the way a big city does." wrote Schwitters, "when a new buildinggoes up, the HousingBureauchecks to see that the whole appearance of the city is not goingto be ruined.In my case, I run across somethingor other that looks to me as though it would be right for the I(deE ICathedralof Erotic Miseryl, so I pick it up. takeit home,and attachit and paint it, always keepingin mind the rhythm of the whole.Then a day comeswhen I realizeI havea corpse on my hands-relics of a movementin art

--.-'
K u r t S c h w _ i r t eir4 se , r z b a u , b e g uln 9 2 l _ d e s r r o y e d1 9 4 1 , Hanover,Germanv 43

So what happensis that I leavethem alone,only rhat is now pass. I coverthem up either wholly or partly with other things,making As the structuregrowsbigclearthat they arebeing downgraded. hollows,caves appear, and theselead a life valleys, ger and bigger, juxtaposed the overall structure.The surfaces within of their own give rise to forms twisting in everydirection,spirallingupward.An the of the most strictlygeometricalcubescovers arrangement are curiouslybent or otherwise whole, underneathwhich shapes twisted until their completedissolutionis achieved." in the Merzbau.They look don't report on themselves Witnesses themselves in it. The Environment 4f it, rather than experience was a genrenearly forty yearsaway,and the idea of a surrounded one.All recognized the invasion was not yet a conscious spectator put it, "proof space, the author being,asWerner Schmalenbach gressively The energypowering this invasionis not dispossessed." for if the work had mentioned by Schwitters, though recognized. any organizingprinciple,it was the mythos of a city.Thecity proand a primitive esthetic of juxmodelsof process, vided materials, forced by mixed needs and intentions.The taposition-congruity contextof collage and of the galleryspace. city is the indispensable it. Modern art needsthe soundof traffic outsideto authenticate The Merzbau was a tougher,more sinisterwork than it appears to us.It grew out of a studio- that is, available in the photographs (upand a process. Space extended an artist, materials, a space, and so did time (to about l3 years).The and downstairs) stairs asstatic,as it looks in photographs. work cannot be remembered years, it was a mutating, polyphonic conFramedby metersand functions,conceptsof space and of struct,with multiple subjects, mementoes of suchfriendsasGabo, art. It containedin reliquaries It was an autobiographyof voyages in Arp, Mondrian, and Richter. "morgue" (The of city scenarios Sex Crime wasa the city.There of Grottoof Love,The Cave of EroticMisery,The Cave,The Cathedral (TheNiebelungen theMurderers). Culturaltraditionwaspreserved Exhibition\.It Michelangelo Cave,The Cave, the absurd Goethe of Depreciated Heroes) and offeredmodels revisedhistory (TheCave -two built-in systems of of behavior(TheCaves of HeroWorship)
44

value that, like their environment,were subjectto change. Most of theseExpressionist/Dada conceirs were buried, like guii, by the later constructivistoverlaythat turned theMerzbaulnto a utopian hybrid:part practical design(desk, parr sculprure, stool), part architecture.As the Expressionism/Dada was collagedovea esthetic history was literalizedinto an archeological record.The Constructivism did not clarify the structure, which remained,as "irrational Schmalenbach says, space.,,Both space and artist_we tend to think of them together-exchanged identities and masks. As the author'sidentitiesare externalized onto his shell/cave/ room,the wallsadvance upon him. Eventually he flitsarounda shrinkingspace like a pieceof movingcollage. Thereis somerhing involutionaland inside-outabourthe Merzbau.Its concept had a kind of nuttiness that somevisitors acknowledged by commentingon its lackof eccentricitv. Its - between numerous dialectics Dadaand constructivism, structure and experience, the organicand the archeological, the city outside, the space inside-spiralaroundone word: transformation.Kate Steinitz,the Merzbau's most perceptive visitor,noticed a cave,,in which a bottleof urine was solemnlydisplayed so that the raysof light that fell on it rurnedthe liquid to gold.,,The sacramental nature of transformation is deeplyconnectedto Romantic idealism; in its expressionist phaseit tests itselfby performing rescue operations amongthe most degraded materials and sub_ jects'Initially the pictureplaneis an idealized transforming space. The transformation of objects is contextuar, a matterof relocation. Proximityto the pictureplaneassists this transformation. When isolated, the conrext of objects is the gallery. Evenrually, rhegallery itselfbecomes, like the pictureplane,a transforming force. at this' point,asMinimalismdemonstrated. art can be literalized and detransformed; the gallerywill makeit art anyway. Idealism is hard to exringuish in art,because rhe empryg"il.iy itselfbecomes art manqudandso preserves it. Schwitters,s Merzbaumay be the fir-st exampleof a "gallery,,as a chamberof transformatibn, from which the world can be colonizedby the convertedeye. Schwitters's careeroffersanother exampleof an intimate space
45

definedby his proprietaryaura.During his stayin a British detena tion campfor enemyaliens,on the Isle of Wight, he established place for disin a camp under a table.This creationof living space placedpeople is animal,ludicrous, and dignified.Inretrospect, sigwhich, like the Merzbau,wecan only remember, this space, forceda reciprocalfunction between nifies how firmly Schwitters of Merz, by just living. Like pieces art and life. mediatedin this case curtainedby moving feet,are occupancy, the trivia of sub-tabular in time.by day-to-dayliving, into ritual. Could we transformed piecein a self-created now saythis waspartly a performance proto-gallery? an odd sports Merzbau,like otherCubistcollages, Schwitters's view,"a feelletter-lettersand wordsbeingdonorsof, in Braque's accomA soundtrack ing of certainty." Collage is a noisybusiness. paniesits wordsand letters.Withoutgoing into the attractivecomplexitiesof the letterand the word in modernism,they are disrupmediaand wordscut across tive.FromFuturism to the Bauhaus, All mixed movementshavea literally forcethemselves on stage. but to the galleryspace theatrical component which runs parallel much to its deflnition.Theatwhich,in my view,doesn't contribute may haverecogrical conventions die in the gallery. Schwitters nizedthis when he separated his two kindsof theater:one wasa enveloping actualization of the Merzbau, chaoticmulti-sensory stage of the conventional spectator; the other a clariflcation the gallery Neither reallyintrudeson the through Constructivism. gallerydoesshow sometraces of thoughthe immaculate space, in the gallerysubhousekeeping. Performance Constructivist scribes to an entirelydifferentsetof conventionsfrom stage performance. of ordinarylifeSchwitters's recitations brokethe conventions person properly framedhis dressed talking,iecturing.The way his utterances musthavebeendisorienting like a bank tellerpassing you a hold-up note aftercashingyour check.In a letter to Raoul group in 1921Hausmannhe reportson a visit to VanDoesburg's 24: "Doesburg in which reada verygooddadaistic Program [in the Hague],
46

he saidthe dadaist would do somethingunexpected. At that moment I rosefrom the middle of the publick and barkedloud. some peoplefainred and werecarriedout, and the papers reported,that Dadameani barkine. At oncewe got Engagements from Haarlemand Amsterdam. It was soli out in Haarlem, and I walked so that all could seeme, and all waited that I shouldbark.Doesburg saidagain,I would do somethingunexpected. This time I blew my nose.The papers wrore phat [sic] I didnot bark,that I blew only my nose. In Amsterdamit was so full, that peoplegavephan_ prises tastic didnt bark,nor blow my nose, [sic]to getstilla sear,I i recited the Revolution.A ladycouldnot stoplaughingand had to be carried " out. The gesturesare precise and could be briefly interpreted - ,,I am a dog, a sneezer. a pamphlet." Like piecesof Merz, they are collaged into a set situation (environment), from which they derive energy.The indeterminacy of that context is favorable ground for the growth of new conventions,which in the theater would be smothered by the convention of '.acting.,, Happenings were first enacted in indeterminate, nontheatrical - warehouses, spaces desertedfactories,old stores.Happenings mediated a careful stand-off between avant-gardetheater and collage.Theyconceivedthe spectatoras a kind ofcollage in that he was spreadout over the interior-his attention split by simultaneous events,his senses disorganizedand redistributedby firmly transgressed logic. Not much was said at most Happenings.but, like the city that provided their themes,they literally crawled with words. Words,\nd.eed,, was the title of an Environment with which Allan I(aprow enclosedthe spectatorin l96l; I4lo rds contained circulating names (people) who were invited to contribute words on paper to attach to walls and partitions. Collage seemsto have a latent desireto turn itself outside-in; there is somethine womblike about it. Yet the realization of the Environment was oddly retarded.Why is there almost nothing Environmental between Cubism and - barring forthcoming Russiansurprises Schwitters - or between Schwitters and the Environments of the late fifties and early sixties which arrive in a cluster with Fluxus, the New Realists,Kaprow. I(ienholz, and others?It may be that illustrarive Surrealism,con47

Allan Kaprow,.4r Apple Shrine, Environmenr, 1960, c o u r t e s y J u d s o n G a l l e r y ,N e w Y o r k ( p h o r o : R o b e r t M c E h o y ) 48

servingthe illusion within the picture,avoidedthe imprications of the expulsionfrom the picture plane into real space. Within this time therearegreatlandmarksand gestures that conceive of the gaileryasa unit-Lissitzky designed a modern gallery space in 1925in Hanover, as Schwitters was working athis Meribau.But with somedoubtfulexceptions (Duchamp,s coalbags and string?), they do not emerge from collage. Environmentalcollaeeand assemblage clarify themserves with the acceptance of ihe tabreau asa genre. With tableaux(Segal, I(ienholz),the illusionisric space within the traditionalpicture is actualized in rhe box of the gallery. Thepassion to actualize evenillusion is a mark_even a stigma_of sixties art.With the tableau, the gallery,,impersonates,, other spaces.Ir is a bar (Kienholz), a hospitalroom (I(ienh olz),a gas station(Segal), a bedroom(Oldenburg), a living room (Segal). a "real" studio(Samaras).The galleryspa..,,q,rotes,, the tableaux and makesthem art, much as their representation became art within the illusory space of a traditional picture. The spectator in a tableausomehowfeets he shouldn'tbe there. Segal's art makes this clearer than anyoneelse,s. His objects_great lumpsof them- weara historyof previous occupancy, whether bus or dineror door.Their familiarityis distanced by ihe gallery contextand by rhe sense ofoccupancyconveyedUytfre plastei figures. The figuresfreezethis history bf urug. at a parriculartime. Like periodrooms, Segal,s pieces arecloselylime_bound while they imitatetimelessness. Sincethe environment is occupied already, our relationshipto it is partly preemptedby the figures, which havethe blush of life completelywithdrawn from them. They-evenin their mode of manufacture-aresimuracra of the living and ignoreus with someof the irritating indifference of the dead. Despite their postures, which signifyratf,erthan enact relationships, they alsoseemindifferentto eachother.There is a slow,abstract lapse between eachof them and between them and their environment. Theiroccupancy of their environment is a large subject. But the effect on the spectator who joins them is one of trespass. Because trespass makesone partly visibleto oneself, it playsdown bodylanguage. encourages a conventionofsilence.
49

and tendsto substitute the Eyefor the Spectator. This is exactly painted what would happenif Segal's pictures.Itis tableauxwere "realism." a very sophisticated form of Segal's white plasteris a conventionof removal, which alsoremoves us from ourselves. Encounteringa Hansonor a de Andrea is shocking;it violates our own sense of reality or the reality of our senses. Theytrespass not only on our space but on our credibility.Theyderive,in my view,not somuch from sculptureasfrom collage,somethingtaken indoorsand artifiedby the gallery.Outdoors, in the propercontext, they would be accepted aslive, that is.would not be looked at twice.Theyarestations on the way to the ultimate pieceof coilage -the living figure.This figurewasprovidedat O. K. Harrisin 1972 by Carlin Jeffrey:the living sculpture. which, like a pieceof collage,declared on request its own history.A live figure asa collagereturnsus to Picasso's costumes for Parade, a walking Cubist picture; and it is a goodpoint at which to pick up thesetwo modern familiars, the Eyeand the Spectator, again. The Eye and the Spectator setoff in differentdirectionsfrom AnalyticCubism.The Eyegoes alongwith Synthetic Cubismasit takesup the business of redefiningthe picture plane.The Spectator,aswe haveseen, copes with the invasionof realspace from picturepiane, Pandora's opened by collage. These two directions or traditions, asthe criticGeneSwenson calledthem-vie with eachotherin theiropprobrium.The Eyelooksdown on the Spectator; the Spectator thinks the Eye is out of touch with real life. The comedies of the relationshipare of Wildean proportions;an Eyewithout a bodyand a body without much of an Eyeusually cut eachother dead.Yet they indirectly maintain a kind of dialogue no one wantsto notice. And in latemodernism the two come together for the purpose of refreshing their misunderstanding. After modernism's final - and American- climax, the Eyebears pictureplaneoff triumphantlytoward ColorField;the Pollock's Spectator bringsit into real space where anything can happen. In the late sixtiesand seventies, Eye and Spectator negotiate sometransactions. Minimal objectsoften provokedperceptions other than the visual.Though what was there instantly declared
50

Claes O l d e n b u r gH , appening f r o m , , T h eS t r e e t , , , courtesy L e oC a s t e l lc i a l l e r y ,N e wy o r k ( p h o t o :M a r t h aH o l m e s )

5 l

itsclf to the eye,ir had to be checked; otherwise,what was the poinr of rhree-dimensionality? Thereare two kinds of time here: i5( <t? ryrchended rhe object at once, like painting, then the body bore the eyearoundit.This prompteda feedback between expectationconfirmed(chpcking) and hitherto subliminalbodily sensation. Eye and Spectator were not fusedbut cooperated for the occasion.The finely tuned Eyewas impressed with some residualdatafrom irs abandoned bbdy (the kinesthetics ofgravity. tracking,etc.) .The Spectator's other senses, alwaysthere inlhe raw, were infusedwith someof the Eye,s fine discriminations.The Eyeurgesthe body aroundto provideit with information_the body becomes a data-gatherer.There is heavytraffic in both directions on this sensory highway-betweensensation conceptualized and conceptactualized. In this unstablerapprochement lie the origins of perceptual scenarios, performance, and Body Art. The empty gallery, then,is not empty.Its walls are sensitized by the picture plane.its space primed by collage;and it containstwo tenantswith a long-termlease. Why was it necessary to invent them?Why do the Eyeand the Spectator separate themselves out from our daily persons to interruptand doubleour senses? It often feeisasif we can no longer experience anything if we don't first alienateit. In fact,alienationmay now be a necessary preface to experience.Anything too closeto us bearsthe label ,,Ob" jectify and Re-ingest. - espeThismodeof handlingexperience cially art experience-is inescapably modern.But while its pathos is obvious, it is not all negative. As a mode of experience it canbe calleddegenerate, but it is no moreso than our,,space,, is degenerate.It is simplythe resultof certainnecessities pressed upon us. Much of our experience canonly be broughthome throughmediation.Thevernacular example is the snapshot.you can only see what a goodtime you had from the summersnapshots. Experience can then be adjusted to certainnormsof ,,having a goodtime.,, TheseI(odachrome iconsareusedto convincefriendsyou did have a goodtime-if theybelieve it, you believe it. Everyone wanrsro have photographs not only to provebut to invent their experience. This constellation of narcissism, insecurity, and pathosis so
52

Lucas S a m a rs a,B e d r o o m , 1 9 6 4 , courtesyThe paceGallerv,New york 53

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influential I suppose none of us is quite free of it. Soin most areasof experience there is a busy trafficin proxies and surrogates.The implicationis that directexperience might kill us.Sexusedto be the last standwhere privacy preserved direct experience without the interposition of models. But when sex went public,when its studybecame asunavoidable astennis, the fatal surrogate promising "real" experience entered, by the very consciousness of selfthat makesit inaccessible. Here, aswith other "feeling"is turned into a mediated experience, consumer product. Modern art, however, in this as in other areas, was aheadof its time.Forthe Viewer-literallysomething you look through-and the Eyevalidate experience. Theyjoin us wheneverwe entera gallery, and the solitariness of our perambulations is obligatory, because we arereally holding a mini-seminar with our surrogates. presence To that exactdegree, we are absent. beforea work of art, then, meansthat we absentourselves in favor of the Eye and Spectator,who report to us what we might have seenhad we been there.The absent work of art is frequently more presentto us. (I believeRothkounderstoodthis better rhan any other artist.) This complexanatomyof lookingat art is our "elsewhere" trip; it is fundamentalto our provisionalmodern identity, which is alwavs beingreconditioned by our Iabilesenses. ror thi Spectator andihe Eyeareconventions which stabilize our missingsense of ourselves. Theyacknowledge that our identityis itselfa fiction,and they giveus the illusionwe arepresent through a double-edged self-consciousness. We objectify and consumeart,then,to nourish our nonexistent selves or to maintainsomeesthetic starveling called"formalist man." All this is clearer if we go backto rhat momentwhen a picturebecame an activepartnerin perception. Impressionism's flrstspectators must havehad a lot of trouble seeing the pictures.When an attemptwas madeto verifythe subject by goingup close, it disappeared.The Spectator wasforcedto run backand forth to trap bits ofcontentbeforethey evaporated. The picture, no longera passive object, was issuinginstructions. And the Spectator beganto utter his firstcomplaints: not only "What is it supposed to be?" and "What doesit mean?" but

CI a e sO l d e n b u r g E n s e m b l1 e9 ,6 j , , Bedroom courtesy N a t i o n a lG a l l e r y o f C a n a d aO , rrawa 56

v a r d K i e n h o l z . T l r eB e a n e r y( d e t a i l ) , 1 9 6 5 , e c t i o n o f t h e Sr e d e l i j k M u s e u m , A m s t e r d a m 57

, a nw i t hH a n d T r u c k , 1 9 7 5 , D u a n eH a n s o nM courtesyO. K. HarrisWorks of Afi, New York(phoro: Eric Pollitzer) 58

ohn de Andrea, installation view,1974, ourtesy O. K. Harris Works of Art, New York

59

G e o r g e S e g a l ,c a s S t d t i o n .1 9 6 8 , c o u i l e s y N a t i o n a l 6 a l l e r y o f C an a d a , O t t a w a

"Wheream problems I supposed to stand?', of deportment are intrinsicto modernism. Impressionism beganthat harassment of the Spectator inseparable from most advancedart.As we read avant-garde dispatches, it seems that modernismparadedthrough a vastsensory anguish.For once the objectof scrutinybecomes active;our senses are on trial. Modernism underrineJthe fact that "identity" in the twentieth century is centeredaround perception, on which subjectphilosophy,physiology,and psychology have alsoconverged major efforts.Indeed, just as systems were a nineteenth centuryobsession, perception is a twentieth.Itmediates between objectand ideaand includes both.Oncethe ,,active,. artworkis includedin the perceptual arc,the senses arecalled into question; and sincethe senses apprehend the datathat confirm identity,identity becomes problematic. The Eyethen standsfor two oppositeforces:the fragmentation of the selfand the illusion of holding it together.The S.-pecrator makespossible suchexperience as we are allowed to have.Aliena_ tion and esthetic distance become confused-andnot unprofitabrv. It seems like an unstablesituation: a fracturedself,senses on the blink, surrogates employed in tasksof fine discrimination. But ir,s a tight lirrle sysrem with a lot of stabilitybuilt into it. Ir is reinforced everytime you call on the Eye and the Spectator. But the Eyeand the Spectator srandfor more than slipping senses and mutatingidentity. When we became self-conscious aboutlookingat a work of art (lookingat ourselves looking),any certainty aboutwhat's"out there,,was erodedby the unceriainties ofthe perceptual process.The Eyeand the Spectator standfor that process, which continuallyrestates the paradoxes of consciousness. There is an opportunityto dispense with thosetwo surro.,directly.,, gates and experience Suchexpeiience. ofcourse. can_ celsthe selfconsci ou sness that sustains memory.SoEyeand Spec_ tator acknowledge the desire for directexperience, at the same time theyrecognize that the modernist consciousness can only temporarily submerge itselfin process. Again the Eyeand Spec_ tator emerge with a doublefunction_ asmuch curators of our consciousness assubverters of it. Somepostmodern art shows an
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Carlin Jeffrey. installationview t972. courtesy O .K . H a r r i s W o r k so f A r r , N e wy o r k (photo: Eric Pollitzer)

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arefrozenby those ofthis.Its quotasofprocess exactappreciation providesnot which documentation, memory organized of traces it. of but the evidence the experience, then, givesus opportunitiesto eliminatethe Eye and Process, them; and this hashapaswell asto institutionalize the Spectator the Eyein favorof eliminates pened. Conceptualism Hard-core well equipreasonably is Language reads. the mind.Theaudience that formulateart'sendof conditions ped to examine the sets self-referential Thisinquiry tendsto become product:"meaning." like the conditions more art or more like is, or contextual that it. that sustain thereis a maris the galleryspace.Thus conditions One of these "installation"at Castelli in I(osuth's aboutJoseph velousparadox not a looking is books.It open the the benches, I972: tlretables, of informalityis deceproom.Theceremony room; it is a reading study,aswe might imagine tive. Hereis the aura of Wittgenstein's it cancels evenpuritanical, essential, Bare, is it a schoolroom? it. Or gallery tllat the of esthetics asweli asdrawson the specialcloister image. is.It is a remarkable - an imageof a man in a gallerythreatening his So is its opposite Conceptualism violence.If or explicit implicit with own substance eliminatesthe Eyeby once againmaking it the servantof the the Spectator identifies mind, BodyArt, suchasChrisBurden's, trinity.The sacramental art-a with the artist and the artist with Eiiminatart. advanced of a theme is punishmentof the Spectator by identifyinghim with the artist'sbody and ing the Spectator is an of art and process on that body the vicissitudes enacting movement. double perceive again the We conceit. extraordinary it. but only at the priceof alienating is madepossible Experience in Thereis somethinginfinitely patheticabout the singlefigure on itsbody,gatherIimits,ritualizingits assaults testing the gallery, off. shake it cannot flesh the ing scantyinformation on mind or the the life of the art becomes cases In theseextreme into iife of the body,and eachoffersits returns' The Eye disappears phantomsuicide, in a surrogate's the mind, and the Spectator, induceshis own elimination.
64

III. Contextas Content

When we all had front doors-not intercomand buzzer-theknock at the door still had someatavistic resonance. De euincy got off one of his bestpassages on the knockingat the gatein Macbeth. The knockingannounces that "the awefulparenthesis"-the crime -is overand that "the goings-on of the world in which we live" areback.Literatureplaces us asknocker (Mrs. Blake answering the door sinceMr. Blakeis in Heavenand must not be disturbed) and knockee(the visitor from Porlockbringing Coleridgedown from his l(ubla l(han high). The unexpectedvisitor summonsanticipation, insecurity, evendread-despite that it's usuallynothing. sometimes a kid who knockedand ran away. If the houseis the houseof modernism, what knockscanyou expect? The houseitself, built on idealfoundations, is imposing, eventhoughthe neighborhood is changing.Ithasa Dadakitchen, a fine Surrealist attic,a utopianplayroom, a critics'mess, clean, galleries well-iighted for what is current. votive lightsro various saints, a suicide closet, vaststorage rooms,and a basement flophousewherefailedhistories lie aroundmumbling like bums. We hearthe Expressionist's thunderous knock,the Surrealist's coded knock,the Realists at the tradesman's entrance, the Dadas sawing through the back door.Verytypical is the Abstracrionisr's single, unrepeated knock.And unmistatable is the peremptory knock of historicalinevitability,which setsthe whole house scurrying. Usuallywhen we'redeepin something,a gentle knock drawsus - it can't be much.We open to answerit by its lack of pretension the door to find a rather shabbyfigure,with a facelike the Shadow,
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but very benign.We arealwayssurprised to find Marcel Duchamp there; but therehe is,insidebeforewe know it. and afterhis visithe neverstays too long-the houseis not quite the same. He first "white cube"in l9l8 and invented visitedthe house's the ceilingif inventionis makingus conscious of what we agree not to see, i.e.,take for granted.The secondtime, four yearslater,he delivered - coneveryparticie of the interiorspace to our consciousness sciousness and the lackof it beingDuchamp's basicdialectic. The ceiling, until he "stood"on it in 1938, seemed relatively safe from artists. It's alreadytakenup by skylights, chandeliers, tracks. fixtures. We don't look at the ceiling much now. In the history of indoorlookingup, we rank low.Otherages put plenty up thereto look at.Pompeii proposed, amongotherthings,that morewomen than men lookedat the ceiling.The Renaissance ceilinglockedits paintedfiguresinto geometric cells. The Baroqueceiling is always sellingus something orherthan the ceiling, asif the ideaof shelter had to be transcended; the ceilingis reallyan arch,a dome,a sky,a vortex swirling figuresuntil they vanish through a celestial hole, like a sublimeoverhead toileu or it is a luxuriouspieceof handtooledfurniture,stamped, gilded, an albumfor the family escutcheon.TheRococo ceilingis asembroidered asunderwear(sex)or a doily (eating).The Georgian ceilinglookslike a white carpet, its stuccoed borderoften stoppingshort of the angle of ceilingand walls;inside, the central rose, dimpledwith shadow, from which descends the opulent chandelier. Often the imageryup there suggests that lookingup wasconstrued asa kind of lookingdown, which gently reverses the viewer into a walking stalactite. With electriclight, the ceilingbecamean intenselycultivated gardenof fixtures, and modernisrn simplyignoredit. Theceiling Iostits rolein the ensemble of the total room.TheGeorgian ceiling, for instance, dropped a palisade to the picturemolding,extending the roof 's domain asa graceful, graduatede4closure. Modern architecture simply ran rhe blank wall into the blank ceilingand Iowered the lid. And whar a lid! Its pods,floods, spots, canisrers, ductsmake it a technician's playground. Up there is yet another undiscovered vernacular, with all the probitv of function that cer66

tifiesits bizarrearrangements of grid and acoustictlle as honestthat is,unconscious. So our consciousness. which spreads like a fungus,inventsvirtuesthe schlockdesignerdidn,t know he/she had. (Themorality of vernacularis our new snobbism.) The only gracetechnologybestowed on rhe ceiling is indirect lighting, which bloomslike lily padson the overheadpond or which, from recessed lips.flushesan areaof ceiling with the crepuscular smoothness of an Olitski.Indirectlightingis the colorfieldof rhe ceiling. But up theretoo is a dazzling gardenof gestalts. On the morecommonregiments of recessed lights,crisscrossing in endless perceptual drill, we canprojectthe esthetic of the Minimal/Serial era.Orderand disorder smartlylapseinto a singleideaaswe move around below,raisingthe issueof an alternativeto both. It must havebeenan odd feelingto come into the International Exhibitionof Surrealism at the Galerie Beaux-Arts in 193g, see most of thosewild men neatly fitted into their orthodox frames. then look up expectingthe usual deadceiling and seethefloor.ln our historiesof modern art, we tend to take old photographs as gospel.They areproof,so we don't grill them aswe would any other witness.But so many questionsabout thoseI ,200 Bagsof Coaldon't have answers.Were there really 1,200bags?(Counting them is a task to drive Virgoscrazy.lWasit the first time an artist quantifiedlargenumbers,therebygiving an eventa quota,a conceptual frame? Wheredid Duchampget those 1,200bags? (He firstthoughtof suspending openumbrellas but couldn,tgetthat many.) And how could they be full of coal?That would bring the ceiling-and the police-down on top of him.Theymusthavebeen stuffedwith paper.How did he attachthem all? Who helpedhim? Youcan look throughthe Duchamptomesand not be clearabout this.What happenedro the ceiling lights?The photographs show them washingout a clusterof bagshere and there.And mysteryof mysteries. why did the other artistslet him get away with it? He had a title of sorts:"Generator-Arbitrator.,of the exhibition. Did he hangthe picrures also?Did he conceive them simplyas decorfor his gesture? If he were accused of dominating the show, he couldsayhe took only what no one wanted-the ceilingand a
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M a r c e l D u c h a m p , I . 2 0 0 B a g so f C o a l ,i n s t a l l a t i o n v i e w a t "lnternational E x h i b i r i o n o I S u r r e a l i s m , " 1 9 3 8 ,N e w Y o r k 68

little spoton the floor; the accusation would underlinehis (gigantic) modesty, his (excessive) humility.No one looksat the ceiling; it isn't choiceterrirory- indeedit wasn't (until then) rerritory at all. Hangingoveryour head,the largestpiecein the show was unobtrusivephysicallybut totally obtrusivepsychologically. In one of thosebad punshe loved,Duchampturnedthe exhibition topsy-turvy and "stoodyou on your head.,,The ceilingis the floor and the floor,to drive home the point, is the ceiling.For the stoveon the floor-a makeshiftbraziermade from an old barrel, from the looks of it - becamea chandelier. The police rightly wouldn't let him put a fire in it, so he settled for a light bulb.Above (below)are 1,200bagsof fuel and below (above) is their consuming organ.A temporalperspective stretches between.at the end of which is an emptyceiling. a conversion of massto energy, ashes, maybea commenton history and on art. This inversionis the first time an artist subsumedan entiregal- and managedto do so while it was full of lery in a singlegesture other art. (He did this by traversing the space from floor to ceiling. Fewremember that on this occasion Duchampalsohad his say aboutthe wall: he designed the doorsleadingin and out of the gallery. He madethem- againwith reservations from the police revolving doors, that is,doorsthat confuse insideand outside by spinningwhat theytrap.This inside-outside confusion is consistent with tilting the galleryon its axis.)By exposing the effect of contexton art,of the container on the contained, Drlchamp recognizedan areaofart that hadn't yet beeninvented.This invention of contextinitiateda series of gestures that ,,develop,, the idea of a galleryspace asa singleunit, suitable for manipulation asan esthetic counter. Fromthis momenton, thereis a seepage of energy from art to its surroundings. With time the ratio betweenthe literalization of art and mythification of the galleryinversely increases. Like everygoodgesture, Duchamp's CoalBags becomes obvious postfacto.Gestures are a form of invention.They can only be done once,unlesseveryone agrees to forgetthem.The bestway of forgetting something is to assume it; our assumptions drop out of sight.
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As an invention,however, patent is its most distinthe gesture's - far more than its formal contenr,if any.I supguishingfeature posethe formal contentof a gesture lies in its aptness, economy, and grace. It dispatches the bull of history with a singlerhrusr. Yet it needsthat bull, for it shiftsperspective suddenlyon a body of assumptions and ideas.Itis to that degree didactic,as Barbara Rosesays, though the word may overplaythe intent to teach. If it teaches, it is by irony and epigram, by cunning and shock. A gesture wisesyou up.It depends for its effecton the context of ideasit joins. changes and It is not art,perhaps, but artlikeand thushasa meta-lifearound and about art.Insofar asit is unsuccessful it remainsa frozencurio,if remembered at all. If it is successful it becomes history and tendsto eliminateitself.It resurrects itself when the contextmimics the one that stimulatedit. making it "relevant" again.So a gesture has an odd historicalappearance, alwaysfainting awayand reviving. The ceiling/floortransplantgesture might now be repeatable as a '1project." A gesture may be a "young" project;but it is more argumentative and epigrammatic, and it speculates riskily on the future.It callsattentionto untestedassumptions, overlookedcontent, flawsin historicallogic.Projects-short-termart madefor specific sites and occasions-raise the issue of how the impermanent survives. if it does. Documentsand photographschallenge the historicalimaginationby presenting to it an art that is already process dead.The historical is both hampered and facilitated by removingthe original,which becomes increasingly fictitiousasits afterlives becomemore concrete.What is preserved and what is allowed to lapseedit the idea of history-the form of communal memory favoredat any particulartime. Undocumentedprojects may surviveasrumor and attachthemselves to th personaof their originator,who is constrained to developa convincingmyth. - it seems Ultimately projects to me - are a form of historical revisionism position.That wagedfrom a privileged positionis definedby two assumptions: that projectsare interestingapart from being " art"- that is,they havea somewhatvernacularexistencein the world; and that they can appealto untrained aswell
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astrainedsensibilities. Our architects of personalspace, quasianthropologists, perceptual revisionists. and mythologistsmanqushavethus madea breakin how the audienceis construed. We are now awareof a tentativeattempt to contactan audience that postmodernism would like to call up but doesn.tquite havethe number.This is not the startof a new populism.It is a recognition of a neglected resource, aswell as disaffection with the privileged placedby art educationin the gallery space.Itmarksa spectator move awayfrom the modernistconceptionof the spectatorabusedon the basisof presumed incompetence, which is fundamentally a Romanticposition. Gestures havea becomingquality,and somecan.retroactively. becomeprojects.There is a projectshrewdness implicit in Duchamp's two gallerygestures.They have survivedtheir naughtinessand becomehistoricalmaterial,elucidatingthe galleryspace and its art.Yetsuchis Duchampiancharismathat they continueto be seenexclusively in the context of his work. They efficiently keep history at bay.which is one way of remaining modern (Joyce is the literary equivalent) . Both the CoalBagsand the Mile of String,done four yearslater (1942) for the Firstpapers of Surrealism showat 55l MadisonAvenue, areaddressed ambiguously. Are they to be delivered to the spectator, to history,to art criticism, to otherartists? To all,of course, but the address is blurred. If pressed to sendthe gestures somewhere, I'd sendthem to other artists. Why did the other artistsstandfor it not once but twice? Duchampwasveryobligingabouthangingpeopleup on their worstinstincts, especially when thoseinstincts were disguised as ideology. The Surrealists' ideologyof shocksometimes manifested itself asexaitedpublic relations. Shock,as the history of the avantgardeshows, is now small-arms equipment. Duchamp, I feelsure, was seen assomeone who couldgenerate attention. In delegating him to provideit, the artistswere playing little Fausts to an amiable demon.Whatis the Mile of String?At a level so obviousour sophistication immediatelydisallowsit, an imageof deadtime. an exhibition paralyzed in prematuresenescence and turned into a grotes71

que horror-movieattic.Both Duchamp,s gestures fail to acknowledge the other art around,which becomes wallpaper.yet the artists'protest (did any ofthem eversayhow they feitZl is preempted. For the harassment of their work is disguised asharass_ ment of the spectators. who haveto high-steplike hens aroundit. Ttvo kids (SidneyJanis's boys)playednoisy gamesduring rhe openingfrom which Duchampof courseabsented himself.A con_ noisseurof expectations of all kinds, Duchamp,s interference with "set" is part the spectator's of his malign neutrality.The string,by keepingthe spectator from the art, becamethe one thing he/ihe remembered.Instead of beingan intervention,somethi;g between the spectator and the art,it gradually became new art of some kind.What inflictssuchharassment is innocuous_5,2g0feetof continuousstring.(Againthe unverifiablequantificationgivesa conceptual neatness to the epigram. ) Fromthe photographs, the stringreconnoitered the space relentlessly, loopingand tautening across eachoutcropwith demented persistence. It crisscrosses, changes speeds, ricochets backfrom pointsof attachment, clusters in knots.wheelsnew sets of parallaxes wirh everystep, parcelling up the space from the insidewithour the slightest formalworry.yet it followsthe align_ ment of the room and bays, erratically replicating ceilingand walls.No obliques plungeacross the centralspace, which becomes fenced in, casually quotingthe shape of the room.Despite the apparent tizzyof randomness, the room and what is in it deter_ mine the string's peregrinations in an orderlyenoughway.The spectator is harassed. Everybit of space is marked. Duchamp devel_ opsthe modernist monad:the spectator in his gallerybox. Like all gesrures, the stringeitheris swallowed or sticks in his_ tory'steeth. It stuck, which meansthat the formal aspect, if any, hasn'tbeendeveloped. Thestring,s pedigree borrowsfrom Constructivism and is a clichin Surrealist painting. The string literalized rhe space many of the pictures in thi exhibitionillustrated.This actualization of a pictorialconvention may be an (un_ conscious?) precedent for the will to actualize of the latesixties and seventies.To paint something is to recess it in illusion.and
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dissolvingthe frametransferred that function to the galreryspace. Boxingup the space (or spacing up the box) is part ofthe central formal themeof Duchamp's art: containment/inside/outside. From this anglehis scattered artifacts arigninto a rough schema.Is the - a surrogate box- a container of ideas head?And the windows, doorways, and apertures the channels of sense? The two lock into fairly convincingmetaphor. The ricochetingstring (association tracts?) wrapsup the galleryspace, modernism,s thinking bowl; the Boiteen valise is memory; the LargeGrass \s the mock mechanical apotheosis of aperture and insertion(the insemination of traditon? the creative act?);the doors(open/shut?) and windows (opaque/transparent?) the unreliable senses throughwhich infor_ mation flowsboth ways(asit doesin puns),dissolving identityas a fixedlocation. Identityliesscattered aroundin humorouslv alienated body parts, which contemplate inside/outside-iiellsen_ sation, - or rather, consciousness/unconsciousness the slash (glass?) berween rherwo.Lackingidentity,rhe parts. rhe senses, the ideas decompose the paradoxical iconographer glidingaround this anthropomorphicshambles. As the Mile of Stringshowed, Duchampis fond of boobytraps. He keeps the spectator, whose presence is always voluntary, hung up on his own etiquette, thus preventinghim/her from disapproving of his/her own harassment - a sourceof further annoyance. Hostilityto the audience is one of the key coordinates of mod_ ernism, and artists may be classifled according to its wit, style, and depth.Like someobvioussubjects, it hasbeenignored. (It,samaz_ i n g h o w m a n ym o d e r n i sh r i s r o r i a nm s i m e r h ea i t i s ts c u r a t o r i a l shadow, directing rrafficaroundthe work.) This hostilityis far from trivial or self-indulgent-though it hastreenboth.For throughit is wagedan ideological conflictaboutvalues_ofart,of the lifestyles that surroundit, of the socialmatrix in which both areset. Thereciprocal semiotics of the hostilityritual areeasily read.Eachparty- audience - is not quite freeto breik and artisr certaintaboos.The audience can,tget mad,i.e.,become philis_ tines.Itsangermust be sublimated, alreadya kind of proto_ appreciation. By cultivating an audience throughhostility, the
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avant-gardegaveit the opportunity to transcendinsult (second nature to businesspeople) and exerciserevenge (also second nature).The weapon of revengeis selection.Rejection,according to the classicscenario,feedsthe artist'smasochism,senseof injustice, and rage.Enough energy is generated to allow both artist and audience to presume they are fulfilling their social roles. Each remains remarkably faithful to the othert conception of his rolethe relationship's most powerful tie. Positive and negative projections volley back and forth in a social charade that wavers between tragedy and farce.One negativeexchangeis basic: the artist tries to sell the collector on his obtuseness and crassnes s - eisilv oro- and'the j e c t e do n a n y o n e m a t e r i a le n o u g h t o w a n t s o m e t h i n g collector encourages the artist to exhibit his irresponsibility.Once the artist is assigned the marginal role of the self-destructivechild, he can be alienatedfrom the art he produces.His radical notions are interpretedas the bad manners expectedfrom superior tradesmen.The militarized zone between artist and collector is busy with guerillas.envoys,double-agents, runners, and both major parties in a variety of disguises as they mediate between principle and money. At its most serious,the artist/audience relation can be seenas the testingof the socialorder by radical propositions and as the successful absorption ofthese propositionsby the support system - galleries, museums,collectors, even magazinesand house critics -evolved to barter success for ideological anesthesia.The main medium of this absorptionis style,a stabilizingsocial constructif ever there was one. Style in art, whatever its miraculous, self-defining nature,is the equivalentof etiquettein society.It is a consistent gracethat estabiishes a senseof place and is thus essentialto the social order.Those who flnd advancedart without contemporary relevanceignore that it has been a relentless and subtle critic of the social order,alwaystesting,failing through the rituals of success, succeeding through the rituals of failure.This artist/audience dialogue contributes a useful definition of the kind of society we have evolved. Each art licensed a premises where it conformed to and sometimes tested the social structure - concert hall. theater.
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ffi

ffi
e l D u c h a m p , , M i l ec / 5 l r i r g , i n s t a l l a t i o n v i e w a t P a p e r so f S u r r e a l i s m , " I 9 4 2 , N e w Y o r k ( p h o t o : J o h n D S c h i f f )

gallery. garde Classic avanthostilityexpresses itselfthroughphysi(radical cal discomfort theater), excessive noise(music) , or by (thegalleryspace). removing perceptual constants Commonto all aretransgressions of logic,dissociation of the senses, and bore(the dom.In these arenas order audience) assays what quotas of disorder it canstand. are,then,metaphors Suchplaces for consciousness and revolution.The spectator is invitedinto a space wherethe actof approach is turnedbackon irself. Perhaps a perfectavant-garde actwould be to invitean audience and shootit. With postmodernism, the artist and audienceare more like each other. Theclassic hostilityis mediated, too often,by irony and farce.Both partiesshow themselves highly vulnerableto context, and the resulting ambiguities galiery blur their discourse.The space shows this.In the classic eraofpolarized artistand audience, the galleryspace maintainedits statusquo by muffling its contradicitonsin the prescribed socio-esthetic imperatives. For many of us,the galleryspace still givesoff negativevibrationswhen we wander in. Esthetics areturned into a kind of socialelitism- the galleryspace is exclusive.Isolated in plotsof space, what is on displaylooksa bit like valuable jewelry,or silver: goods, scarce esrherics areturned into commerce-the galleryspace is expensive.What - art it contains is,without initiation, well-nighincomprehensible is dfficult. Exclusive audience, rareobjects difficult to comprehend -here we havea social, financial, and intellectual snobbery which models(andat its worstparodies) our sysrem of iimited production, our modesof assigning value, our sociai habitsat large. Never wasa space, designed to accommodate the prejudices and enhance the self-image of the uppermiddleclasses, so efficiently codified. The classic galleryis the limbo betweenstudioand modernist living room,wherethe conventions of both meeton a carefully ground.There neutralized the artist's respect for what he has invented is perfectly superimposed on rhebourgeois desire for possession. Fora galleryis,in the end,a placeto sellthings-which is O.K.Thearcane social customs this-the stuffof surrounding socialcomedy-divertattention from the business of assigning material valueto that which hasnone.Herethe hostileartistis a
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commercial sinequanon.Bygassing up his self_image with obso_ lete romanticfuel.he provideshis agentwith the meansro sepa_ rate artist and work, and so facilitateits purchase.The artist,s irresponsible personais a bourgeois invention, a necessary fiction to preserve someillusionsfrom too uncomfortablean examination illusionssharedby artist,dealer, and public.It is hard now to avoid the conclusion that latemodernistart is inescapably dominated by the assumptions-mostly unconscious-ofthe bourgeoisie; Baudelaire's viciousand noble prefaceTothe Bourgeoisie for the Salonof 1846is the prophetic text.Through recipiocating paradoxes the ideaof freeenterprise in art goodsandideas,,lppo.t, socialconstants asmuch asit attacks them.Attackingthem has indeedbecomea permissible charadefrom which bolh parties emergerelativelysatisfi ed. This may be why the art of the seventies locatesits radical notions not so much in the art as in its attitudesto the inherited "art" structure. of which the gallery space is the prime icon.The structureis questioned not by classic resentment but by project and gesture, by modest didacticism and phasingof alteinatives. These arethe hiddenenergies of the seventies; they present a lowlying landscape which is rraversed by ideasdeprivedofabsolures and poweredby low-gradedialectics. No peaksare forcedup by irreconcilable pressures. Thelandscape levelsoff partlybecause the genres involvedin mutual recognition (post_ and avoidance Minimalism,Conceptualism, Color Field,Realism, etc.;are - one is asgoodas another.The nonhierarchical democracy of meanscontributed by the sixties is now extended to genres, which in turn reflecta demythifiedsocialstructure(the ,,professions,, now carryfewerrewards and diminishedprestige). The sixties still headline mostpeople's perception of the seventies. Indeed one of the "properties" ofseventies art is the failureof sixties critics to lookat it. Measuring the seventies by the sixties is faultybut un_ avoidable (an artist's new phase judgedin relationro rhe is always one previous) . Nor doesthe skippeddecade theoryhelp_ the flfties revivalturned out to be a bummer. Seventies art is diverse, made up of nonhierarchicalgenres and
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- solutions.Major energies - indeedunstable highly provisional no longergo into formal painting and sculpture(young artists have a fairly goodnosefor historicalexhaustion)but into mixed post-Minimal,video' tuning the environ(performance, categories ment), which presentmore temporarysituationsinvolving an art crosses seventies When necessary, of consciousness. inspection a being understatement way media in a gentle,nonpolemical is what of its low profile.It tendsto deal with characteristic and the mind, and so presents immediatelypresentto the senses narcissistic, Thus it often appears itself asintimate and personai. boundary the locating asa modeof this is understood unless "ends"and something elsebegins.Itis not in wherea person for it toleratesambiguity well. Its intimacies of certainties, search castsincethey turn privacyinside anonymous havea somewhat form of public discourse-a seventies out to make it a matter of Despitethis personalfocus,there is no curiosityabout distancing. mattersof identity.Thereis greatcuriosityabout how consciousconcerns is a key word.It telescopes Location nessis constructed. perceived,one Whatis (perception) . (space) and.how aboutwhere and asPhoto-Realism aswidely removed gathers from genres is not asimportant(thougha dwarf called post-Minimalism. aroundknockingat everydoor).Most sevschlepps iconography of verificationson an ascending to attempta series entiesart seems (internal);psychologiphysiological (out physical there); scale: roughlycorresmental.These word, cal; and,for want of a better personal space, are genres.The correlatives pond with available and silence. of time conventions, exploration perceptual revisions, locatea body,mind, and placethat can be verifications These or at leastpartly tenanted.If flftiesman was a Vitruvian occupied, of alienatedpartsheld survivorand sixtiesman composed man is a workablemonad-figure seventies together by systems, and groundinto a quasi-social place, offigure a transposition and of fifties art doesnot rejectthe consequences situation.Seventies The sixties and sixtiesart, but somebasicattitudeshave changed. art. Often there is an attemptto by seventies audience is rejected communicatewith an audiencethat hasn'tbeen interferedwith
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by art, thus dislodging the wedge rhat ,,arr,,has driven between perception and cognition. (The growth of alternative spacesacross the country outside the formal museum structure is part of this_a change of audience, location, and context that makei it possible for New York artists to do what they can,t do in New york. Seven_ ) ties art remains troubled by history, yet so much of it is temporary it rejects the historical consciousness.It questions the system through which it presenrsitself, yet most of it passedthiough that system.Its makers are socially concerned but politically iniffec_ tive. Some of the dilemmas suppressed during the avant-gardeera have come home to roost,and seventiesart is working thiough them in its rather elusive way. With postmodernism,the gallery spaceis no longer ,,neutral.,, The wall becomesa membrane through which estheticand com_ mercial valuesosmotically exchange.As this molecular shudder in the white walls becomesperceptible,there is a further inversion of context.The walls assimilate;the art discharges. How much can the art do without? This calibratesthe degreeof the gallery,s mythification. How much of the object,seliminated content can the white wall replace?Conrext provides a large part of late modern and postmodernart'scontent.This is seventies art,smain issue, as well as its strengthand weakness. The white wall's apparent neutrality is an illusion.It standsfor a community with common ideas and assumptions. Artist and audi_ ence are,as it were, invisibly spread-eagled in 2-D on a white ground. The developmentof the pristine,placelesswhite cube is one of modernism'striumphs-a development commercial,esthet_ ic, and technological. In an extraordiriary strip-tease. the art within baresitself more and more, until it presentsformalist end_ products and bits of reality from ourside- ,,collaging',the gallery space.The wall's content becomesricher and richer (maybe a col. lector should buy an "empty" gallery space). The mark of provin_ cial art is that it has to include too much-the context can't replace what is left out; there is no system of mutually understood assumptions. The spotless gallery wall. though a fragile evolutionary product
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of a highly specializednature, is impure. It subsumes commerce It is in artist and audience,ethics and expediency. and esthetics, off perfect surface is a it, so it the image of the society that supports resisted' temptation should be which to bounce our paranoias.That The white cube kept philistinism at the door and allowed modernism to bring to an endpoint its relentlesshabit of self-deflnition.It hothoused the serialjettisoning of content.Along the way numeras epiphaniescan be, by suppresous epiphanieswere purchased, cannot be summarily dismissed, wall white If the of content. sion changesthe white wall, since knowledge it can be understood.This projections based on unexposed its content is composedof mental wall is our assumptions.Itis imperative for every assumptions.The this content and what it doesto his/her work' know to artist The white cube is usually seen as an emblem of the estrangement of the artist from a society to which the gallery also provides a survival compound, a proto-museum access.Itis a ghetto space, a set of conditions, an attitude,a timeless, with a direct line to the place deprivedof location,a reflex to the bald curtain wall, a magic chamber,a concentrationof mind, maybe a mistake.It preserved theposs\bi$o{artbutmadeit"diffi.cutt.ltismainlyaformalist of abstractpainting and invention, in that the tonic weightlessness by sculpture left it with a low gravity. Its walls are penetrable only an the most vestigialiilusionism.Wasthe white cube nurtured by with its obsession Was art? internal logic iimilar to that of its encystingart that would not otherenclosurein organic response, wise survive?was it an economic constluct formed by capitalist models of scarcityand demand?Was it a perfect technological shrinkageresultingfrom specializationor a ConstructivisthangFor over from the twenties that became a habit, then an ideology? better or worse it is the single major convention through which art is passed.Whatkeepsit stableis the Iack of alternatives'A rich constellationof projectscomments on matters of location' not so alternativesas enlisting the gailery spaceas a much suggesting Genuine alternativescannot come from unit of estheticdiscourse. within this space.Yet it is the not ignoble symbol for the preservahas tion of whatlociety finds obscure,unimportant, and useless.It
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incubated radicalideas that would haveabolished it. the gallery space is all we'vegot,and mostart needs it. Eachsideof the white cube questionhastwo. four, six sides. Is the artistwho accepts the gallery space conformingwith the socialorder?Is discomfortwith the gallery discomfortwith art,s etiolated role.itscooptionand vagabond status asa refuge for homeless fantasies and narcissistic formalisms? During modern_ ism,the galleryspace wasnot perceived asmuch of a problem. But then.contexts arehardto readfrom the inside.The ariistwasnot awarehe wasaccepting anythingexcept a relationship with a dealer.And ifhe sawbeyondit, accepting a socialcontextyou can do nothingaboutshows a lot of commonsense. Most of us do exactly that.Before largemoral and culturalissues, the individual is helpless but not mute.His weapons areirony.rage, wit, paradox, satire. detachment, scepticism. A familiarkind of mind comes into focushere- restless, selfdoubting, inventiveabout diminishing options, conscious of void,and closeto silence. It is a mind with no flxedabode, empirical, always testingexperience. conscious of - and ambiguous itselfand thus of history aboutboth. ThisFaustian composite more or lessflts numerousmodernists from Czanne to de I(ooning. Suchfigures sometimes convince you that mortalityis a disease to which only the mostgiftedare susceptible, and that the privileged perceprion resides in rhe psyche that canmaximize the contradictions inherentin exis_ tence. Sucha figure, whatever its symbolist or existential pedigree, suffers from a romanticinfection with the absolute;achingfor transcendence, it is detained in process. Thisfigure,which hasgen_ erated mostof modernism's myths,hasdonegreatservice; but it is a periodfigurethat might well be fully retired. For now contradiction is our dailyvernacular, our artitudes to it a passing anger(a short-term synthesis?), humor,and a kind of bemused shrug. We tolerate otherpeople's necessary anesthesia, as they do ours. Whoeverbends on him/herself the raysof contradiction becomes not a herobut the vanishing point in an old picture. In our own interests, we arehardon the art that precedes us.Weseenot so much the art asan emblemfor attitudes,contexts,and myths
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unacceptable to us. Finding a code to reject this art allows us to inventour own. Modernism has also provided us with another archetype:the artist who. unaware of his minority, seesthe social structure as alterable through art. A believer,he is concerned not so much with the individual as with the race; is, in fact, a kind of discreetly authoritarian socialist.The rational, reformist urge refers to the age ofreason and is nourished on the utopian habit. It also has a strong mystical/ideal component that places heavy responsibilities on the function of art. This tends to reify art and turn it into a device exactlymeasuringits dissociationfrom social relevance. So both archetypesalienate art from the social structure with opposite intentions.Both are old Hegelian doubles partners,and they are rarely pure. You can pick you own pairings: Picassoand Tatlin; Soutine and Mondrian; Ernst and Albers; Beckmann and MoholyNagy. But the history of utopianism in modernism is rather splendid. The magnitude of the individual's presumption is clear to us, but it is also clearto him. So while aligning himself with mystical energies,he also courts the rationalitiesof design- an echo of the Design of the Creatorthat the artist-creatorintends to correct.At the end of an era it is easyto be funny about such ambitions.We tend to patronize high ideals after their failure. But the idealist/utopians are dismissed too easilyby our New York habit of mind - in which the myth of the individual as a republic of sensibilityis firmiy set.European utopians-who can forget Kiesler moving like a Brownian particle through the New York milieu? - don't do well here. Coming from a different structure, their ideas don't play in a every secondgeneration.But a societythat reshufflesits classes kind of Europeanmind could think about social problems and art's transforming powers very well. Now we ask some of the same questionsabout the missing audience and where it has gone.Most of the peoplewho look at art now are not looking at art; they are looking at the idea of " art" they carry in their minds. A good piece could be rvritten on the art audience and the educational fallacy. We seem to have ended up with the wrong audience.
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What makesartistsinterestingis the contradictionsthey choose to edit their attention-the scissors they invent to cut out their self-image.The utopianartist/planner findsthat his individuality, which must conformto the socialstructurehe envisions. breaks the rule of suchconformityby its individualism.As Albert Boime wrote (Arts,Summer'70): " .. . Mondrian opposes subjectivity on the groundsthat individualismleadsto disharmonyand conflict, and interferes with the creationof a 'harmonious materialenvironment' (i.e.,a universally objective and collective outlook).At the sametime,he is preoccupied with artisticoriginalitybecause in his view only the uniquelygiftedindividualcould discover the universalorder.He therefore urged all artislsto detachthemselves 'from the majority of the people.' " For such artists,intuition must be thoroughly rationalized. Disorder, covertlysuppressed in Mondrian'sclearsurfaces and edges, is manifestin the whole arbitrary "Mondrian achieved natureof his choices. As Boimesays, equilibrium only afterinnumerablecomplexsteps, and the multiplication of decisions betrays his personality." So what can one saywhen one enters Mondrian's room (which he himselfneverentered, sincehis 1926sketch for a SalondeMadame B. d Dresden wasnot madeup until 1970[for an exhibitionat Pace Gallery] )? We arein a proposition that conjugates basicneeds-bed,desk, shelf- with principlesof harmony derivedfrom the natural order. "Precisely on account of its profoundlovefor things,"wrote Mondrian,"non-figurative art doesnot aim at rendering them in particular their appearance." But Mondrian'sroom is asclearly based panelsareso on natureasif it werelined with trees.The adjusted that theyadvance and recede.within a narrow compass. The room breathes, asit were,throughthe walls.This is enhanced producing by its perspective, the obliques Mondrian formallyproscribed.The room is not so much anthropomorphic aspsyche-morphic.Itspowerfulideas coincide with mentalcontoursperfectly sensed by Mondrian:"In removingcompletely from the work all objects, the world is not separated from the spirit, but is on the contraryput into a balanced opposition with the spirit,sincethe one and the other arepurified.Thiscreates a perfectunity between
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Piet Mondrian, Salon de Madame B. d Dresden, i n s t a l l a t i o n v i e w ( a f t e r r h e a r t i s r ' sd r a w i n g o f 1 9 2 6 ) , 1 9 7 O , c o u r t e s y T h e P a c eG a l l e r y ,N e r v Y o r k ( p h o t o : F e r d i n a n d B o e s c h ) 84

the two opposites." Since the walls.despite Mondrian,s objections to Cubism's realism, represent a sublimated nature,the occupant is similarly encouraged to transcend his own brute nature.In this space, the grossness of the body seems inappropriate; from this room burps and fartsare exiled.Through systems of abutmentand s,lide, rectangle and squaredefinea space that placesone insidea Cubistpicture; the occupantis synthesized into a coefficient of orderwhosemotion is in consonance with the rhythmsenclosing him or her.The floor - which containsan uncharacteristic oval ( a rug?)- and ceilingaddtheir verticalpressures. It's a marvelous place to visit. The visionis not hermetic.Windows aliow for discourse with the outside.Random process-what you seethroughthe window_ is precisely framed.Is this formallyacknowledged in the smallbite the lower left cornerof the window takesorrt of u black scuare (muchasTexas bitesoff a pieceof Arkansas)? For all its sober idealist program, the room remindsme that Mondrian liked to dance(thoughhis dancing, which wasterrible, was based more on extractingpleasure from the programmedmovementswhile happilycoupled than on wild abandon). Mondrian,s room.Dro_ posedan alternative to the white cubethat modernismienored: "By the unification of architecture, sculpture and paintiig, a new plasticrealitywili be created. paintingand scurpture will not manifestthemselves asseparate objects, ,o. u, ,-,r.ul art, which destroys architecture itself, nor as ,applied.art, but being purely constructive will aid the creation of a surrounding not merely utilitarianor rationalbut alsopure and complete in its beauiy.,, - ironic,funny,fallible_ still accepted Duchamp's aitered rooms the galleryasa legitimate placefor discourse. Mondrians ,poil.r, room-a shrineto spiritand MadameBlavatsky_attempted to introduce a new orderthat would makethe gallerydispensable. The two counterposed categories suggesring; comicslapstick not unknown to modernism: the scruffyand the clean, the bacterial and the hygienic, part ofthe grand the sloppyand the precise. irony presiding oversuchdialectical separations is their frequent mimickingof eachotherin disguises too elaborate to remove here.
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Mondrian and Malevichshareda mysticalfaith in art'stransforming socialpower.Both men'sventuresoutsidethe picture plane weretentative;both were politically innocent.Tatlin,in contrast, was all socialinvolvement,full of greatschemes and energy. One figuretook Tatlin's radicalsocialprogramand Malevich's formal idealismand negotiated betweenthem to produceexhibitions that could- and did - alter-thepublic mind. Lissitzkydid so through an inspirationthat doesn'tseemto occur to idealists and planners. radicalsocial He acknowledged the bystander, who became the involvedspectator. Lissitzky, our Russian connection, was probablythe first exhibition designer/preparhtor. In the processof inventingthe modern exhibition,he alsoreconstructed the - the first seriousattempt to affectthe contextin gallery space which modern art and the sDectator meet.

Afterword
Writing about your past writing is the closestyou ger to coming back from the dead.You assume a false superiority over your previ_ ous self. who did all the work. So, looking back at these articies, revived between their own pasteboards,what do I have to add? A great deal. In the past ten years so much.has been buried as if it never hap_ pened.Msual art does not progressby having a good memory. And New York is the locus of some radical forgetting. you can reinvent the past, suitably disguised,if no one remembers it. Thus is origi_ nality, that parenred fetish of the self, defined. What has been buried? One of the art communitv,s conceivablv noble efforts: the concerted move of a generation to question, through a matrix of styles,ideas. and quasi-movements, the con_ text of its activity. Art used to be made for illusion; now it is made from illusions.In the sixtiesand seventies the attempt to dispense with illusions was dangerous and could not be tolerated for long. So the art industry has since devalued the efforr. Illusions are back, contradictions tolerated, the art world,s in its place and all,s well with that world. When the economics of a field are disturbed or subverted the value systembecomesconfused.The economic model in place for a hundred years in Europe and the Americas is prod.uct,filtered through galleries, offered to collectorsand public institutions, written about in magazinespartially supported by the galleries, and drifting towards the academic apparatus that stabilizes "history" certifying,much as banks do, the holding of its major repository, the museum. History in art is, ultimateiy, worth money. Thus do we get not the art we deservebut the art we pay for.This comfortable system went virtually unquestioned by the key figure it is basedupon: the artist. The avant-garde artist's relation to his or her social context is made up of contradictionsbecausevisual art has a tin can tied to its tail.It makes things. And to switch Emerson around, man is in
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the saddleand ridesthesethings to the bank.Thevicissitudes of this product,asit tacksfrom studio to museum,provokeoccasional comment,usuallyof a vaguelyMarxist kind.The idealism implicit in Marxism haslittle attractionfor devotedempiricists, among whom I includemyself.Every systemconstrues human nature according to its desiredends,but ignoring the grubbier aspects of our nature,or disguisingthem, is everyideology,s basic attraction.It sellsus on the idea that we arebetter than we are.The varietiesofcapitalismat leastrecognize our basicselflshness: this is their strength.The comedies of ideologyand the object(whether it be artwork, televisionset,washingmachine)a1s;played out on a field rampantwith the usualfalsehopes,lies, and megalomania. Art is of course implicated in all this,usuallyasan innocent bystander. No one is more innocent than the professional intellectual, who hasneverhad to decidebetweentwo evils,and to whom compromiseis synonymous with having his or her epaulettes torn off. It was the avant-garde that developed the self-protective idea that its producthad a mysticaland redeemingesthetic, socialand moral value.This ideaarose from the fusionof idealist philosophy'sremnantswith idealisticsocialprogramsat the beginningof modernism.John StuartMill's On Libertymust be the ideal text to justify any avant-garde, whether of right or left. whether Futurist or Surrealist. But locatingmoral energyin a saleable objectis like sellingindulgences, and we know what reformsthat provoked. Whateverits heroicvirtues,the avant-garde notion has,we now see, liabilities.Its peculiar relationto the bourgeoisie (flrstcitedby Baudelaire in his preface to the Salonof 1846)is interdependent and ultimately parodic. The cult of originality,the determinarion of value,the economics of'scarcity, of supplyand demand, apply themselves with a particular poignancy to the visualarts.Itis the only art in which the artist'sdeathcauses a profound economic shudder.The avant-garde artist's marginalsocialpositionand the slow move of his or her work, Iike someunmanned craft,to the centersof wealth and power perfectlysuitedthe prevailingeconomic system. With any valuableproduct,the first task is to effect its separation from its maker.Modernism'ssocialprogram,if one
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can call it that, ignoredits immediatecontexrto call for large reformson the basisthat it spokewirh a privilegedvoice.linis is the "fame" fallacy:askBabeRuth for solutions to the Grear Depression. ) We now know that the maker has limited control over the content of his or her art.It is ils reception that ultimatelyderermines irs content.and that content,as we seefrom revisionistscholarship. is frighteninglyretroactive. The retroactiveprovisionofconrenr to art is now a cottage industry. And it is cumulative. Even,one musr shoehorn-in his or her little bit of conrenr. Nor hasrhe original content,if we look at the history of modernism.an1, massir.e ideologicaleffect. Modernism transformed perception. but rhe politicsof perception remainunwritten.In the sixties and sevenriis, during the art community'sdissenton Viernamand Cambodia. a new insight took hold: the systemthrough which the work of artistswas passed had to be examined.Thisis a key marker,ro my mind, of what is clumsilycalledpostmodernism (is deathpostlife?)in visualart. This was radical.Sometimes it's saferto sound off about large political mattersthan to cleanup your own kitchen.political courageis measured by the degree to which your positioncan.if prupursued, dently hurt you.It'sless comfortable to beginthe political process at home.Postwar American artists, with someexceptions (e.9.StuartDavisand David Smith)had a poor understanding of the poiitics of art'sreception. But several artistsof the sixtiesand particularlythoseof the Minimal/Conceptuaigeneraseventies, tion, understood verywell.Theirconcern involveda curious transposition.Art's seif-referential examinationbecame,almostovernight,an examination of its socialand economiccontext. Several mattersprovokedthis. Many artistswere irritatedby the audience available for art; it seemed numb to everything but, ar best, connoisseurship. And the expensive compound(gallery, collector, auctionhouse, museum)into which art inevitably was deliveredmuffled its voice.Art's internal development beganto press against several conventional boundaries, inviting contextual readings. All was occurringin a restless socialcontext in which
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A protestand radicalformulationswere an everydaypresence. quasi-revolution potentiallyrevolutionarysituationexisted.That remain, failed,asit had to. But someof its insightsand lessons is vested interest in suppressing as I before, there a though. said them. - and will probablyremain soquestion It is an unanswered or to this situationwere teleological whether the art'sresponses political.If the art work is the key unit of discourse, both esthetic the thinking then went, removeit.The and economic, therefore, in a spasmaround a vacuum.Thereis nothing or systemcloses infinithe sacramental very little to buy, and "to buy" is. of course, If tive. Make the art difficult; that will hinder its assimilation. art lives by criticism.make art more like criticism,turn it into words And then havepeoplepay that make criticismitself an absurdity. of his or for that.Examinethe collector, including the provenance her bank accounustudywhat NancyHanksusedto call the enemy:the trustee.Studythe corporatedrift of museum'sgreatest the most consistently the museumand how the museumdirector. persecuted becomes a gypsywith a tie memberof the bourgeoisie, and a suit. Studyart'smonetaryfate,the protectionismthat surrounds greatinvestment. Seethe auctionhouseat work, where the living but not partakein it. artist may witnesshis or her authentication, Seethe contradictions inherentin the placewhere art is shown implicit in this system and sold.And note the self-selection wherebythe art of the museumsis very differentfrom what Cdzanne talkedaboutwhen he wantedto do overImpressionism. (andjust as led to art madeup by prescription Justasformalism so i1sown poeticspecimens), the New Criticism usedto generate degree have forth a kind of museum art, to that museums drawn . an officialart. appropriate for massviewing.I would hesitateto this proccounterpose a sinkinglandscape of goodart that evades ess. But the thought that thereis more here than our arrogance allows us to perceive remainstroubling.And how do we explain the passion for the temporarythat attemptedto forestallthe future?Aboveall, we were reminded,we must be awareof the
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arbitraryand manipulativeways of assigning value. What was the natureof this curious outburstof insight?Apart from the usualmild socialism, was it a desireto control the content of art by its producers? or an attempt to separate art from its consumers? Partof this,intentional or not, was the break-upin the seventies of the mainstreaminto multiple styles, movements, activities. Thispluralismwas intolerableto estheticpurists,whose passion for a mainstream. however,assists marketing_ not the first time that esthetic idealismand commercesuperimpose perfectly. The system alsomaintainsits certaintyof new produci by a peculiar imperative I call "slotting,,.unique to the visualaris.Most artistsbecometime-boundto the nioment of their greatest con_ tribution, and arenot allowed out of it.The presentrushes by,leaving them curatingtheir investment-sad imperialistsof the esthetic self.Nor is any changetolerated;changeis considered a moral failure unlessits morality can be convincingly demonstrated. Removed from contemporarydiscourse, such artistswait for random breezes from the present. Originality is reified; so is its creator. The art scene in any greatcenteris alwaysa necropolisof stylesand artists, a columbarium visitedand studiedby critics, historians, and collectors. What a grandirony thar all this insight led. in the eighties, to a reconfirmationof all that had beenlaid bare and rejected. product and consumptionreturnedwith a plethora of contentfor those starved of it.The new work's defense againstsmooth consumption is in its variousmasks, in which complexinternal ironiesare decipherable. Subject matter exploitsitself,and someof the paradoxesofpop return,often serviced by a criticismthat brilliantlv questions the basis for valuejudgements. The galleryspace has againbecomethe unchallenged arenaof discourse. But that is the subjectof this book. Sufficeit to sayhere that the elusiveand dangerous art of rheperiodberween1964and l9Z 6 is sinking, with its lessons, out of sightas,giventhe conditions of our.ultrr.., it must. Brian O'Doherty New york City 1986
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