piggymalone: 2011

Thursday, 21 July 2011

The category 'sculpture' in crisis

Some thoughts on Rosalind Krauss's essay 'SCULPTURE IN THE EXTENDED FIELD'

Post-modernism, as I understand it, can not be easily characterised stylistically or thematically. It is a web of components of equal significance. One of these components, I take, is the notion of opposites/paradoxes; the mathematical equation of two negatives making a positive, that is to say cancelling each other out, neutral. There is no hierarchy, no top, no bottom. This comes to mind as Krauss describes a sculpture as 'mirrors placed at strange angles in ordinary rooms'. Here we have opposites: the strange and ordinary co-existing in one space/plane and together, producing a third : reflections. Are these reflections the work of art itself, i.e. the 'sculptural' object in question here? Or is the art work the unusual arrangement of the mirrors? Regardless, independently, the room, the mirrors and the reflections are not works of art (or are are they?); they were produced to serve a function yet, together they become one. This is the crisis, and rather than reacting to it by eliminating all deviations from a sculptural archetype, Krauss does the complete opposite and accepts the changing identity of the category 'sculpture' as 'infinitely malleable' thus acknowledging the mirrors and their reflections of strange angles as a part.

Krauss mentions postwar American art in relation to this shift of identity. I presume in reference to the Abstract Expressionists who 'kneaded and stretched' the identity of painting which had a knock-on effect on other forms of art.

Next, Krauss discusses our acceptance of new art through a process of historicism, familiarisation and analysis to work out from what and where the object evolved. When viewing the new, Krauss is suggesting that we seek to 'diminish newness and mitigate difference' and that we do this by placing it within an evolutionary process, much like our own evolution. This is the only model of creation we know, it dictates our understanding of the world thus we naturally feel compelled to apply this to everything new; we see everything as a product of evolution, even art forms. It is only through this, can we feel at ease with the new. This can explain why people find it so difficult to understand, that is, to accept/like abstract art as it (some argue) bears no physical likeness to the visible world around us and is not clear from what it evolved.

Naum Gabo's Construction in Space with Crystalline Centre from 1938-40

Donald Judd's Untitled geometric forms from 1984

When minimalism appeared as a new art form in the 1960's critics were quick to historicise it formally as an evolution of the Constructivists of the 1920s and 30s in terms of their shared 'inert geometries' and 'factory production'. The fact that their theoretical contents were, not only completely unrelated but, complete opposites was 'swept aside': 'Never mind that Gabo's celluloid was the sign of lucidity and intellection, while Judd's plastic-tinged-with-gayglo spoke the hip patois of California'. It was the need to understand a formal evolution that took priority in art criticism, however inaccurate that has subsequently proven to be.