2. Institutional Critique and the Politicization of Conceptual Art

INSTITUTIONAL CRITIQUE AND THE POLITICIZATION OF CONCEPTUALISM

Dr Matthew Bowman

Tuesday, 23 October 12

From 1963, the Vietnam War escalated from

being an internal conflict to all-out

American involvement.


In March 1968, the “May Lai” massacre consisted of American soldiers executing in a cold blood a village of

Vietnamese civilians; between 347 and 504 people were killed, regardless of age or gender, while many women had been gang-raped and mutilated. In the

investigation that subsequently followed, reports of the My Lai massacre went from white-wash, public knowledge, twenty-six men being charged, and

eventually only one man found guilty. Second lieutenant William Calley was sentenced to life imprisonment and

hard labour in 1971; the sentence was reduced to three years house arrest


May 1968 riots, Paris



In Germany, a young generation came of age in the late 1960s, bitterly aware that many of their parents, teachers, business people, and politicians were involved previously to some degree—whether through active support or

through passive collusion—with the Nazi party. Many of that earlier generation denied awareness of the concentration and extermination camps which Jews, intellectuals, and gypsies had been sent. Right-wing newspapers published by Axel Springer lambasted the students and left-wing radicals, leading to increased societal tensions, the

death and beating of numerous students, the assassination attempt upon the popular left-wing figure Rudi Dutschke, and ultimately the formation of the terrorist group The Red Army Faction led by Andreas Baader, Gudrun

Ensslin, and Ulrike Meinhof.


1968 Prague Spring, Soviet tanks quash reform in Czechoslovakia.


On May 4 1970, students protesting against the Vietnam War, and in particular Nixon’s decision to send the military into neighbouring Cambodia, ended in blood shed at Kent State University, Ohio, when National Guardsmen released 67 bullets in 13 seconds, thereby killing four students and injuring a further nine more


“one major paradox of all conceptual practices . . . was that the critical annihilation of cultural conventions immediately acquires the conditions of the spectacle, that the

insistence on artistic anonymity and the demolition of authorship produces instant brand names and identifiable products, and the campaign to critique conventions of visuality with textual interventions, billboard signs, anonymous handouts, and pamphlets inevitably ends

by following the preestablished mechanisms of advertising and marketing campaigns”

— Buchloh, “Conceptual Art, 1962-1969”


The label “institutional critique” originated not with the artists themselves, but seems to have first appeared in an essay titled “On Practice” (1974) by Mel Ramsden, a member of the Art & Language group. However, the popularization of the term dates mostly to the publication of another essay, titled “In and Out of Place” by the American artist Andrea Fraser (who could be considered part of a second generation of institutional critique

practice).


Paintings are bought and sold. The artist sits in his solitude, knocks out his paintings, assembles, then waits for someone to confer the value, some external source. The artist isn’t in control of his value. . . . the artist is estranged from his own

production. This is the great issue, I think it will be the growing issue of the seventies: the investigation of

the apparatus the artist is threaded through.

—Robert Smithson, “Cultural Confinement”


Michael Asher (1943), Claire Copley Gallery, 1974.


Michael Asher's installation of a bronze cast of Jean Antoine Houdon's statue of George Washington (1788/1917) , Art

Institute of Chicago 1979,



“Inasmuch as painting is a game. . . . Inasmuch as as to paint is to represent the external (of interpret it or appropriate it of dispute it or

present it). . . . Inasmuch as to paint is a function of aestheticism, flowers, woman, eroticism, the daily environment, art, dada,

psychoanalysis, the war in Vietnam, WE ARE NOT PAINTERS. . . . “Painting is by nature

objectively reactionary.”

Statement from Daniel Buren, Olivier Mosset, Michel Parmentier, and Niele

Toroni (BMPT), June 1967.

“Art is the illusion of disorientation, the illusion of liberty, the illusion of presence, the illusion of the sacred, the illusion of Nature. . . . Not the painting of Buren, Mosset, Parmentier, or Toroni. . . . Art is a distraction, art is false. Painting begins with Buren, Mosset, Parmentier,

Toroni.” (September 1967)Tuesday, 23 October 12

Daniel BurenRandom Bill-boarding, April 1968,(Rue Jacob in

Paris)

Buren’s stripes are always 8.7cm in width.



Daniel Buren, Photo-Souvenir : Watch the

Doors Please, Chicago, 1980


Les Deux Plateaux, 1985–1986, work in situ, Cour d’honneur du Palais-Royal, Paris, France


Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917, photographed by Alfred Stieglitz

“Whether Mr Mutt made the fountain with his own hands or not has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an article of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view – created a new thought for that object.”

Buren objects to the understanding of the readymade-as-art as being the result of a speech act by the artist, a moment of choosing, that hides the institutional frame.


Buren excludes the “oceans, the deserts, the Himalayas, The

Great Salt Lake, virgin forests, and other exotic places—all invitations for artistic safaris.”

(Critical Limits, 1970)

Buren thus critiques and rejects, for example, Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, 1970

(shown on the left)


Daniel Buren, Diagrams from “Critical Limits,” 1970Buren’s essay suggests the influence of structural Marxist writer of Louise Althusser, in particular his conception of “Ideological

State Apparatuses.” Tuesday, 23 October 12

Hans Haacke (b. 1936)

Condensation Cube,1963


Hans Haacke,News, 1969

“Information,” Haacke stated in 1971, “can be very powerful. It can affect the general social fabric.”


David Lamelas Oficina de information sobre le Guerra de Vietnam a tres Niveles: La Imagen Visual el texto y el audio (Office of Information about the Vietnam War on Three Levels: Visual Image, Text, and Audio), Venice Biennale1968


Hans Haacke (b. 1936),MoMA Poll, 1970.

“Would the fact that Governor Rockefeller has not denounced President Nixon’s

Indochina policy be a reason for you not to vote for him in November?

“If ‘yes’ please cast you ballot into the left box.

“If ‘no’ into the right box.”


Initially influenced by “systems theory,” Haacke’s work evinces interest in the writings of Frankfurt School member Jürgen Habermas and his concept of “communicative

rationality” and historicization of the “public sphere” as well as the sociological writings of Pierre Bourdieu


Hans Haacke, Manet-PROJEKT 741974


Hans Haacke, Mobil

“Mobil’s management in New York believes that the South Africans subsidiaries sales to the police and military are but a small part

of their total sales.”

“Total denial of supplies to the police and military forces of a host country is hardly consistent with an image of responsible

citizenship in that country.”

“Many public relations opportunities are available through the sponsorship of programs, speculative exhibitions, and

services. These can often provide a creative and cost effective answer to a specific marketing objective, particular where

international, governmental, or consumer relations may be a fundamental concern.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art.”


“I, too, wondered whether I could not sell something and succeed in life. For some time I had been no good at anything. I am forty years old... Finally the idea of inventing

something insincere finally crossed my mind and I set to work straightaway. At the end of three months I showed what I had produced to Philippe Edouard Toussaint, the owner of the Galerie St Laurent. 'But it is art' he said 'and I will willingly exhibit all of it.' 'Agreed' I replied. If I sell something, he takes 30%. It seems these are the usual conditions, some

galleries take 75%”—Marcel Broodthaers


Marcel Broodthaers (1924-1976)

Musée d'Art Moderne, Département des Aigles,

1968-1972


The Département des Aigles of the Musée d’Art Moderne, Section XIXème Siècle, was in fact inaugurated on the 27th of September, 1968, in the presence of leading

representatives of the public and military. The speeches were on the subject of the fate of Art (Grandville). The speeches were on the subject of the fate of Art (Ingres). The speeches were on the subject of the relationship between institutional and poetic violence. I cannot and will not discuss the details, the sighs, the high points, and the

repetitions of these introductory discussions. I regret it.


Marcel Broodthaers(1924-1976)

Musée d’art Moderne,Département des Aigles, Section des

Figures, 1972


Broodthaers’ museum fiction corresponds with writings by the

French philosopher-historian Michel Foucault, and in particular his books The Origin of Things (1966) and The

Archaeology of Knowledge (1969) who posited categories within the human sciences, economics, language, and

history as constructs with very definite historical circumstances.


Broodthaers at Documenta V, 1972


André Cadere (1934-1978), Round Wooden Bars (Unlimited Paintings), 1970-78


INSTITUTIONAL CRITIQUE AT THE GUGGENHEIM


Photo-souvenir : Peinture-Sculpture (Painting-Sculpture), 1971. Work in situ at the Guggenheim, New York


Shapolsky et al. Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, A Real Time Social System, as of

May 1, 1971


We have held consistently that under our charter we are pursuing esthetic and educational objectives that are self-sufficient and without ulterior motive. On those

grounds the trustees have established policies that exclude the active engagement toward social and political ends. It is well understood, in this connection, that art may have social and political consequences, but these, we believe, are furthered by indirection and by the generalized, exemplary force that works of art may exert upon the environment, not as you propose, by using political means to achieve political ends, no matter how desirable

these may appear to be in themselves. We maintain, in other words, that while art cannot be arbitrarily confined, our institutional role is limited. Consequently, we function within

such limits, leaving to others that which may appear outside our professional competence.

Letter from Guggenheim Director, Thomas Messer.


Joseph Beuys,Office for Direct Democracy by ReferendumDocumenta V, 1972(founded 1971)


King Louis [Ludwig] II had Hans H. sent away [from] his castles. His majesty prefers you to this specialist of compositions for the flute. I can understand—if it is a matter of artistic

choice. But is not the enthusiasm that His Majesty displays for you motivated by a political choice as well? I hope this question disturbs you as much as it does me. What ends do

you serve, Wagner? Why? How?


THE IDEA OF THE INSTITUTION


The European avant-garde movements can be defined as an attack on the status of art in bourgeois society. What is negated is not an earlier form of

art (a style) but art as an institution that is unassociated with the life praxis of men. When the avant-gardistes demand that art becomes

practical once again, they do not mean that the contents of works of art should be socially significant. The demand is not raised at the level of the

contents of individual works. Rather, it directs itself to the way art functions in society, a process that does as much to determine the effect

that works have as does the particular content.

—Peter Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde


Once the signed bottle drier has been accepted as an object that deserves a place in the museum, the provocation no longer provokes; it turns into the opposite. If an artist today signs a stove pipe and exhibits it, that artist certainly does not denounce the art market but adapts to it. . . . Since now the protest of the historical avant-garde against art as an institution is accepted as art, the gesture of protest in the neo-avant-garde becomes

inauthentic. Having been shown to be irredeemable, the claim to be protest can no longer be maintained.

— Peter Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde


Arthur Danto, using Warhol’s Brillo Boxes as an example, suggests that art cannot be visually distinguished

from non-art objects.

Instead, what distinguishes Warhol’s from normal Brillo Boxes is their

acceptance within what Danto calls the “artworld” (all one world)

Art objects become defined as art objects through that acceptance,

through the existence of an artworld.


Overall, the procedures of institutional critique resemble the deconstructive philosophy of Jacques Derrida. Describing his own philosophical practice, Derrida writes in his classic

1967 book, Of Grammatology: “The movements of deconstruction do not destroy structures from the outside. They are not possible and effective, nor can they take

accurate aim, except my inhabiting those structures.”

Other influences: Pierre Bourdieu (his book The Love of Art), Michel Foucault (The Order of Things), Frankfurt School Theory (especially Theodor Adorno on “The Culture Industry,”

Herbert Marcuse, and Jürgen Habermas), Roland Barthes on “myth.”


ART WORKERS’ COALITION


Vassilakis Takis Tele-sculpture

“the first in a series of acts against the stagnant policies of art museums all over the world. Let us unite, artists with scientists, students with workers, to change these anachronistic situations into information centres for all artistic activities.”


Hans Haacke, Carl Andre,

Gregory Battcock, Lucy Lippard, Max Kozloff,

Seth Siegelaub, Willoughby Sharp,

Lee Lozano, Dan GrahamJean Toche


“For me there can be no art revolution that is separate from a science revolution, a political revolution, a educational revolution, a drug revolution, a sex revolution, or a personal revolution. I cannot consider a program of

museum reforms without equal attention to gallery reforms and art magazine reforms which would eliminate stables of artists and writers. I will not call myself an art worker but rather an art dreamer and I will participate only in a total revolution simultaneously personal and public.”

—Lee Lozano



January 8, 1970

Art Workers' Coalition and the

Guerilla Art Action Group protest in front

of Picasso's "Guernica" at the

Museum of Modern Art,

New York City with the AWC's "And babies?"

poster.


“What one wants, the other objects to strenuously; e.g., one wants to destroy museums, the other wants to reform them or use the museums as they are for his own artistic

ends, and the third simply wants a piece of pie.” —Hans Haacke

“By the end of 1971, the AWC had died quietly of exhaustion, backlash, internal divisions . . . and neglect by the women, who had turned to our own interests.”

—Lucy Lippard


FEMINIST ART PRACTICES


Hannah Wilke (1940-1993),What Does this Represent? What Do You Represent?1974


Adrian Piper (1948),Self-Portrait Exaggerating My Negroid

Features, 1981


Mary Kelly (1941),

Post-Partum Document, 1973-79: Documentation IV: Transmitional

Objects, Diary and Diagram, mixed media, 1976


Judy Chicago (1939), The Dinner Party, 1973-79. A collaborative work organized by Chicago and involving 129 artists.


Ana Mendieta (1948-1985)Facial Hair Transplants, 1972


Ana Mendieta (1948-1985)Rape Series,

1973


Martha Rosler (1943),Bringing the War Home: House Beautiful1967-72


Martha Rosler (1943),Bringing the War Home: House Beautiful

1967-72


Martha Rosler (1943),Bringing the War Home: House Beautiful

1967-72


Martha Rosler(1943)

Semiotics of the Kitchen

1975


Why does Buren insist on the words “stretcher” and “canvas”?

What is his critique of the readymade and land art? Do you agree?

What is his solution to the problem he describes? How does Buren use the concepts of inside and outside?

Why does Buchloh refer to 1960s society as an “administrated” society?

Does Buchloh view Conceptual Art as a success?



2. Institutional Critique and the Politicization of Conceptual Art

Documents