Lecture 11 - Critique & production of institutions

Thursday 23^rd February

Lecture 11: The Production and Critique of Institutions

Artists like Hans Haacke have been involved with critique of the institution.

Marx argued that under capitalism we must sell our labour as a commodity and therefore feel no connection with the work we're doing. If you're paid by someone else to do your labour you feel disconnected from it and this leads to alienation.

Marx states that ideology explains our own alienation within society. We're not free to think through our own position in the world Our life circumstances are rooted in our material situation. Our beliefs about our situation are social constructs.

Marx felt that social institutions (church / school / press) played an important role in perpetuating ideologies.

In post revolutionary France, new social institutions arose to reflect the new values of France. There was a violent overthrow of French monarchical society.

The Louvre was used to bring individuals together and make them aware that they were part of a new society. Things which had been held apart from the general public were now thrown open for people to see.

The Louvre sought to denigrate the old ways of society and promote the benefits of the new order. It helped to integrate the public into the new social structure.

Peasants were free from absolute poverty under monarchical rule but were subject to the relative poverty of wage labour.

In the book 'Mythologies' Roland Barthes talks about cultural prejudices which occur in things like magazine covers. Two core terms he talks about are nature and history. Certain beliefs seem so natural that they are unquestionable. Some natural

assumptions have been historically constructed. An ideological assumption might be_t for example, that women are caring and men are strong.

Marx and Engels argue that consciousness is a social product We don't freely think or consider our place in the world - our place in th£ world generates our

beliefs.

Tony Bennett reads that the Great Exhibition is all about demonstrating the power and prowess of various countries. Exhibitions like this generate a feeling of public space and public belonging. You behave and you are av/are of your behaviour being monitored. This is one of the core functions of this type df space according to Bennett.

Peter Burger identified that within the art museum, exhibits speak to the individual. The avant-garde seeks to bring together art and life, instead of them being held apart. It contests the status of art.

In Russia art was integrated into society and was connected with social change and usefulness.

For Roger Fry, colour and shape (formal characteristics) started to be seen as a representation of feelings and emotions. Works started 10 be understood as gauges for the artists own emotions. Fry was involved in the canonism of Gaugin's practice.

Clive Bell, a contemporary of Fry, talks about significant form (formal organisation) in order to provoke an emotion in the viewer. There's an attempt to engage with the emotional life of the viewer in the gallery. The works became a vehicle for the viewer's own emotions* Abstract art doesn't reflect social reality - it becomes an opportunity to witness your own intellectual capabilities at play.

The space of the public art gallery became one which was separate from the pressures of everyday life. It is free of any means-ends relationship.

Selling yourself into wage labour was a fundamental part of life in the earty 20^th century. Then we have this space (the gallery) which is free from means-ends pursuit. The sense of freedom is limited to this space, however.

Dada was a form of anti-art It rejected convention and normality. The Dadaists believed that perpetuation of individualism had led to the horrors of World War I The Dada manifesto was made up of rejections of certain concepts.

Marcel Duchamp's 'Fountain' comments on the way in which an artwork is socially displayed. Even though the work was rejected for exhibition, the discussion of it meant that the readymade became an accepted part of art practice. The fact that it was rejected comments on the denial of function and everyday usefulness from the gaffery space.

There is no inherent 'otherness' which inhabits a work of art - what makes them different is what we do with them. Duchamp is emphasising that art has become removed from practical life.

You must institutionalise art and separate it from everyday life. Brian O'Doherty looks it social function of the gallery in the post war era.

In the 'White Cube' gallery you get a beautiful, clean environment and a highly finished floor, bare white walls, rectangular layout, spotlighting and works hung with a lot of space around them.

Clemet Greenberg was a key figure in the theorisation of abstract art. When looking at works like colour fields you could have your own, individual, visual response. You need the right kind of de-contextualising space in order to enjoy the work.

Haacke developed work in the 1960s to question the status of these de-con textualised spaces which seek to be held apart from everyday life.

Michael Asher's Clare Copley Gallery Installation' took down the partition wall between the managerial office and the space which is usually dedicated to aesthetic

appreciation. The work comments on the status of the gallery in America in the 1970s.

You can see paintings leant up against the back of the room, waiting to be sold. They seem to lose the status that they had when they were hung up for display -they say something different to us. Their commodity status is being emphasised.

The cultural coding of architectural forms and the expectations of the public add to gallery complexes-