Janet Kraynak
Anthology of Art
Anthology of Art
When I read the question posed - "what is your vision or a yet unknown art?" - the first thought that came to mind was something the philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote several hundred years ago. I recognize the perversity of going back to seemingly arcane Enlightenment philosophy to answer a question about the futurity of artistic practice - but there is a reason. Kant was asked to respond to the question, "What is the Enlightenment?", which, of course, was the period in which he was living. While it was not the first time philosophy had "sought to reflect on its own present", as Michel Foucault once noted, the way in which Kant approached the question was significant. As Foucault explains, for Kant, "the present" was viewed not as a distinct era, nor as "signs of a forthcoming event", nor as a "point of transition". Rather, contemporary reality was defined negatively - seen to hinge upon difference. Namely, "What difference does today introduce with respect to yesterday?" I cite this bit of intellectual history for its interpretive value with regard to the issue at hand, in which the significance of the proposed question, for me, entails not prediction - that is, to understand the future in terms of the present, but rather to understand the present by reflecting upon its difference from the past. To shift to the context of current artistic production, the vexing issue of identifying its "difference" from what came before it necessarily raises a more basic problem: how the "present" and the "past" are defined or demarcated. Is "yesterday" constituted by the art of the eighties? the early nineties? Or now that we've entered a new century, are the nineties themselves "yesterday"? Do just the first few years of the 21st century constitute "today"? The problem with all of these attempts at periodization is that they are subject to debate, and whatever temporal frame one chooses, itself produces the answer. If we understand "the present", however, not as a fixed point or set of points, but as an ongoing process which itself is still in the act of becoming, then the task of distinguishing the contemporary involves taking measure of gradual but consequential changes. Thus, rather than identifying specific artistic trends, movements, aesthetic strategies, or mediums, what I want to consider is a more subtle reorientation: namely, the increasing professionalization (and institutionalization) of contemporary art under the auspices of what is called "globalism". This includes artists, critics, and curators, who, more than ever, have become a brand name, exporting their "product" or services globally which are, in turn, marketed in terms of the curator's identity. Significant, however, are less isolated incidents or anecdotes, offered as empirical evidence of this trend, than what they indicate: namely, the absolute commensuration of art with the political and economic marketplace. This is not the problem of the "commodification" of the art object (the concern of the early twentieth century avant-garde and that of the sixties), but a commodification of the processes of art: its systems and networks of relationships. It is a situation that is not unlike that of the Enron corporation, where the most shocking aspect of the scandal - beyond the pilfering of their own employees savings - was the extent to which the corporation (involved in future trading and thus predicting the market) shaped the very policy and sets of laws intended to regulate it. As a result, corruption was not traceable to explicit acts of quid pro quo that characterized political scandals of the past - there was no need for it, because Enron was there at the table, influencing the very economic policy that would determine their actions and, ultimately, guarantee profits for its leaders. An analogy between the Enron debacle and contemporary art may seem a bit of a stretch, but it works to underscore the degree to which the phenomenon of "globalism" - comprised within a multi-faceted set of economic, political, and social relationships - is shaping the very institutions of contemporary art, without a concomitant, self-reflexive analysis of this situation. For one, with the commercialization of "difference" and "diversity", globalism is far from being an agent of social change, but represents a set of new promotional tools, in which to be marketed to is seen as a sign of "progress". This "going global", however, is all too frequently celebrated in the contemporary artworld as unproblematically positive. To wit, the number of exhibitions that prominently place the artist's birth country parenthetically next to their names, the implication being twofold: first, that the artist is an authentic representation and embodiment of a place with a fixed identity (itself a contradiction of the very idea of identity, which is a dynamic and fluid concept); second, that the organizer/host institution is "inclusive" and thus deserving of de facto praise, of an almost moral righteousness. No matter if the exhibition itself problematically reinscribes the most stereotypical and outdated cultural concepts, or if its themes and strategies are politically suspect - as long as a list of multiple national origins is presented, all is forgiven (or does not even register). The problem is that voices of protest - or, at the very least, those which take a more nuanced and less rosy view - are essentially lost, as the structure of the artworld, with its proliferation of global biennials, international exhibitions and art fairs, and the museumification of globalism, serves to undermine and diffuse them (hence the Enron analogy). How can dissent be productively registered or ideas debated in a context that itself is a product of the very system it seeks to critique? Perhaps what is most "different" from yesterday is, therefore, the very lack of serious consideration of one's own time, forsaken for a giddy embrace of the new - a move that is fetishistic rather than reflective. In fact, the last time this issue had any weight may very well have been the late seventies and eighties, when, initially, "postmodernism" was not considered merely a trend, a period, or a style, but was hotly and divisively debated as a proposition: "what is postmodernism?" Rather than capitulating to globalism as an already determined future, it should be subject to the same scrutiny that Kant afforded the Enlightenment: to ask, that is, the question of the present - a lesson from the distant past. Janet Kraynak New York |
