Catalog Essay- First Draft
Exhibition Catalog Essay
Draft 1 (27/1/15)
TITLE
March 29th, 2015
Curated by Cleo Smits
At the Claire Copley Gallery in Los Angeles, Michael Asher turned the gallery space itself into an artwork in 1974 by removing a wall, exposing the office behind the exhibition space. In doing so, the conceptual artist reminded visitors that the artworks usually on display exist in the context of the business aspect of commercial art galleries. Asher’s practice commented on the role of artworks- how they are viewed and circulated- and on the hidden disagreeable realities of the art world. His works were always ephemeral and site-specific, the spaces he interacted with would be returned to their original state, leaving behind no artworks to be sold or displaced elsewhere. This simple and powerful intervention in the Claire Copley Gallery is an early example of what later came to be known as institutional critique.
The term institutional critique is used to describe art that is critical about institutions within the art world. This kind of work takes the art world, which it is inherently a part of, as its’ subject; pointing out faults, analyzing its realities, and at times calling for change in the systems and institutions it critiques. Although the term institutional critique was not used until 1985[1], conceptual artworks from the 1960s are now categorized as some of its first examples. These conceptual artists are considered to be Marcel Duchamp’s descendants, the inheritors of his first explorations of art that was about art.
Duchamp made work that questioned the nature of art and how something is determined to be art. With his famous ‘ready-mades’, he declared that something is an artwork when an artist claims it to be art. This notion confronted longstanding beliefs about what art is and isn’t, about the value of art, and about the process of creating art. The big questions Duchamp forced the art world to ask and our were inherited by conceptual artists in the 60s, who pushed even further by determining that an artwork need not even be materialized in the first place- the idea itself could be the artwork- and no physical object or product need result from the artistic process of creation. Conceptual artists began asking their own questions about the art world and its norms, finding that they could make this the subject of their work.
The conceptual artists working in the late 60s and early 70s most commonly referenced as producing works of institutional critique are Michael Asher, Marcel Broodthaers, Daniel Buren, Robert Smithson, and Hans Haacke. They investigated what could be considered as established art by the institutions of the art world, such as museums, galleries, and publications, to subvert and break away from the frameworks they found in place. This type of investigation meant that these artists began to question hierarchies, rules, and practices in the art world set in place over time. Once these became clear, the artists scrutinized them, determining what they found problematic within such frameworks. Artists continued to engage in institutional critique into the 80s and 90s, the themes and methods of their critique shifting over time.
[TITLE] explores three examples contemporary artists engaging in institutional critique today. A central question in this exhibition is how contemporary institutional critique engages with institutions that are still being developed or constructed- such as in our context as an institution with a newly constructed campus on Saadiyat Island, where museums are currently in development.
Institutional critique is a tool that has been used by artists throughout art history; [TITLE] investigates how artists are using this tool now. What topics are artists exploring in their works? How are they engaging in their critique? Does their critique have a goal? Investigating various types of contemporary institutional critique reveals artists’ anxieties about the current art world, from the constructed nature of art historical narratives, like in Serkan Ozkaya’s work, to art market practices in Babak Golkar’s work, to labor practices and institutions’ responsibilities in the matter, as explored by the Gulf Labor. As one of the first student-curated exhibitions in the Project Space of the recently opened NYUAD campus, there is an intentional implication in beginning with a self-reflexive exhibition- it sets the stage to consider our position and role within this context. This essay aims to analyze these contemporary examples through the lens of a historical framework of institutional critique.
Serkan Ozkaya’s works often challenge the idea of the ‘genius artist’ and his or her role in Western art history; his series Dear Sir or Madam places himself as an individual and an artist in direct communication with art institutions, then displays ensuing correspondence as the artwork. In The Return Project, Babak Golkar finds ready-mades, which he then manipulates and transforms in a process that critiques the art market. The Gulf Labor group describes themselves as a ‘coalition of artists and activists’ working to raise awareness about the living and working conditions of migrant laborers on Saadiyat Island, where museums such as the Louvre and the Guggenheim are in development. Their art project 52 Weeks is a form of protest that accompanies their boycott of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi project until their demands regarding the current labor conditions of the project are met.
In Institutional Critique: An Anthology of Artists’ Writings, the editors Alexander Alberro and Blake Stimson define institutional critique as, “artistic practice that reflects critically on its own place within galleries and museums and on the concept and social function of art itself.”[2] This exhibition has a more expansive understanding of institutional critique to include all institutions with a relationship to and effect on the art institutions. The artists in this exhibition approach a broad range of institutions relating to the contemporary art world.
Art historically, institutional critique has been analyzed as taking place in different phases, or ‘waves’. This can help to track the changes that have occurred over time, but one needs to keep in mind that especially with the artists engaging in the critique of cultural institutions, the categories in this type of timeline are not full of contradictions and they are often blurred. In his chapter “Notes on Institutional Critique,” curator and critic Simon Sheikh breaks up the history of institutional critique into two waves. Sheikh considers this first wave to be the late 60s and early 70s, characterizing it as when artists positioned themselves against the institution in their work.
An example of an artist belonging to this type of institutional critique is Robert Smithson. Smithson equates the museum to a jail or asylum and the gallery space to a cell, writing that artworks lose their charge when inside spaces he deems to be neutral in his essay “Cultural Confinement” (1972). Smithson elaborates his analogy:
“The function of the warden-curator is to separate art from the rest of society. Next comes integration. Once the work of art is totally neutralized, ineffective, abstracted, safe, and politically lobotomized, it is ready to be consumed by society.”[4]
Robert Smithson was a contemporary of Michel Asher’s, and though they are placed in the same wave of institutional critique and both of them were critiquing institutions in their work, these artists had very different attitudes towards art institutions and methods of challenging them.
Michael Asher’s work was often an intervention inside the very museum or gallery space to which Robert Smithson was so averse. Asher offered a subtle commentary meant to invite the viewer into topics about the art world from within the institutions themselves; his method of being against the museum is rather subversive. Robert Smithson tended to avoid the traditional gallery or museum space with his ‘sites’, such as his famous Spiral Jetty site, a large-scale outdoor installation made up of natural elements.
The second wave of institutional critique delineates artworks made in the 1980s, and is characterized by Simon Sheikh as the institutionalization of institutional critique- when it began to become accepted by museums and was entered into the canon of art history as a category of art. Artists were working within the very institutions that prompted the subjects of their works. Artist often cited as practicing institutional critique during this time include The Guerrilla Girls, Renee Green, Christian Philipp Müller, Fred Wilson and Andrea Fraser. Curator and writer Maria Lind elaborates on how this shift affected the content of second-wave institutional critique in her chapter titled “Restaging the Institution”. She writes that this move of artists into the art institutions focused the critique on their approaches to their collections and practices with the intention was to identify, expose and condemn problems within such institutions.
In her contribution to Art and Contemporary Critical Practice: Reinventing Institutional Critique, artist and writer Hito Steyerl sees the major change between these waves as a “shift from a critique of institution towards a critique of representation… by comprehending the whole sphere of representation as a public sphere, where material representation ought to be implemented, for example in form of the unbiased and proportional display of images of women or black people.”[5] Steyerl calls this type of second-wave critique of representation a ‘new social movement within the arts scene’ because of its demands that art institutions include artists from underrepresented groups in their collections, such as women and minorities.[6] The Guerrilla Girls, an artist collective of anonymous women, which began in 1985 to protest the under-representation of women in museums, exemplify this kind of institutional critique. The Guerrilla Girls exposed the lack of women artists in the traditional art historical narrative through protests and artworks in the form of posters and billboards citing statistics on the topic.
EXAMPLE: Fred Wilson
As Hito Steyerl acknowledges in her essay on the subject, describing institutional critique through these waves is a simplification of a ‘complex development’ that cannot be so neatly defined.[7] The philosopher Stefan Nowotny calls the desire to classify, or canonize artistic practices of institutional critique as a paradoxical endeavor in his essay “Anti-Canonization: the Differential Knowledge of Institutional Critique”. He explains that, “canonization itself belongs to the specifically institutional practices that institutional critique refers to- and indeed critically refers to.”[8] Taking Nowotny’s view on the attempt to classify and neatly canonize these artists into the art historical narrative allows us to analyze works from any of the aforementioned time periods according to many different complex strands of institutional critique, instead of as pertaining to one wave or another. This can also pertain to contemporary examples of institutional critique. Instead of trying to define a third, current wave, it is more valuable to understand contemporary examples through the framework of these previous waves.
Scholars have certainly entertained the idea of a potential third wave of institutional critique, analyzing current engagements with this type of art. Simon Sheikh proposes that current occurrences and discussions are predominantly initiated and circulated by curators and directors of art institutions. He suggests that contemporary critical discussions and works about institutions, “are usually opting for rather than against them. not an effort to oppose or even destroy the institution, but rather to modify and solidify it. The institution is not only a problem, but also a solution!”[9] That is, when institutions self-critically propagate artworks that point out their flaws, they seem to be open to using critique to grow.
Sheikh goes on by asking the reader to consider just what this new ‘shift’ signifies; what does it mean when curators and critics begin to engage in a practice of institutional critique, when it becomes ‘internalized’? On one hand, this development can be seen as detrimental to the nature of critique because it might soften the kind of critique being produced. He suggests that ‘institutional auto-critique’ becomes a way of controlling critique. On the other hand, internalized critique can potentially be the most effective, actually resulting in change and not simply discussion.[10] Bearing in mind Shiekh’s argument, [TITLE] become an example of this type of exhibition. As a student curator in a university, I have the unique position to use the exhibition itself as a critique of this very institution. [TITLE] is an endeavor to follow Sheikh’s suggestion of how we can institutional critique:
“Rather, one must try to historicize the moments of institutional critique and look at how it has been successful, in terms of being integrated into the education of artists and curators… one can then see institutional critique not as a historical period and/or genre within art history, but rather as an analytical tool, a method of spatial and political criticism and articulation that can be applied not only to the art world, but to disciplinary spaces and institutions in general.”[11]
THIS EXHIBITION
- Context here [UAE, Saadiyat, NYUAD]/ this exhibition and how it fits into these theories:
- This exhibition becomes an example of institutional critique propagated by a curator- w/in an institution
- The exhibition as a whole becomes a critique of the institution it is within
ARTISTS/EXAMPLES OF WORK
-
SERKAN OZKAYA
- questions the importance we place on specific canonical works, reproduction/copies of work
- What does this series have to do with the context here?
- Questioning W. art history and pertinence with these ‘satellite’ museums and the universalist narratives they strive for
- Mona Lisa example
-
BABAK GOLKAR
- Description/ explanation/ analysis
- How does it connect to our context?
- Possible parallels to draw between Babak and Fred Wilson?
- Mask example
-
GULF LABOR
- Explanation- process, source (website, open source), structure of group, etc.
- What they hope to accomplish
- Have they accomplished something? Successful?
- Analysis: parallel to Guerrilla Girls- ‘2nd wave’ methods
- Week 1 example
- What do these examples reveal about how institutional critique is approached/ used today?
- My curatorial process/ decisions (?)
Works Cited
Alexander Alberro, Blake Stimson. Institutional Critique: An Anthology of Artists’ Writings. MIT Press, 2009. Print.
Fraser, Andrea, “From the Critique of Institutions to an Institution of Critique”, Artforum, 2005.
Raunig, Gerald, and Gene Ray, eds. Art and Contemporary Critical Practice : Reinventing Institutional Critique. London: MayFlyBooks, 2009. Print.
Nowotny, Stefan. “Anti-Canonization: the Differential Knowledge of Institutional Critique,” 21-28.
Steyerl, Hito, “The Institution of Critique,” 13-20.
Sheikh, Simon. “Notes on Institutional Critique,” 29-32.
[1] Andrea Fraser, an artist who practices institutional critique in her own work (starting in the late 1980s) claims to be the first author to use the term ‘institutional critique’ in the essay “In and Out of Place,” in 1985. Fraser explains that the artists from the 1960s and 70s now considered to be the founders of institutional critique (Michael Asher, Marcel Broodthaers, Daniel Buren, and Hans Haacke), did not use this term when describing their own work.
Fraser, Andrea, “From the Critique of Institutions to an Institution of Critique”, published in Artforum, 2005, from Alberro, Alexander, and Blake Stimson, Institutional Critique: An Anthology of Artists’ Writings, (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2009), 408.
[2] Alexander Alberro, Blake Stimson. Institutional Critique: An Anthology of Artists’ Writings. MIT Press, 2009. Print.
[3] Sheikh, Simon. “Notes on Institutional Critique.” Art and Contemporary Critical Practice : Reinventing Institutional Critique. Raunig, Gerald, and Gene Ray, eds. London: MayFlyBooks, 2009. Print.
[4] Nowotny, Stefan. “Anti-Canonization: the Differential Knowledge of Institutional Critique.” Art and Contemporary Critical Practice : Reinventing Institutional Critique. Raunig, Gerald, and Gene Ray, eds. London: MayFlyBooks, 2009. Print, 24.
[5] Steyerl, Hito, “The Institution of Critique” from “Art and Contemporary Critical Practice: Reinventing Institutional Critique, Gerald Raunig, and Gene Ray (eds), (MayFlyBooks London, 2009), 17.
[6] Ibid, 16.
[7] Ibid, 14.
[8] Nowotny, Stefan. “Anti-Canonization: the Differential Knowledge of Institutional Critique.” Art and Contemporary Critical Practice : Reinventing Institutional Critique. Raunig, Gerald, and Gene Ray, eds. London: MayFlyBooks, 2009. Print, 21.
[9] Sheikh, Simon, “Notes on Institutional Critique” from “Art and Contemporary Critical Practice: Reinventing Institutional Critique, Gerald Raunig, and Gene Ray (eds), (MayFlyBooks London, 2009), 30.
[10] as pointed out by Hito Steyerl,
[11] Sheikh, Simon. “Notes on Institutional Critique.” Art and Contemporary Critical Practice : Reinventing Institutional Critique. Raunig, Gerald, and Gene Ray, eds. London: MayFlyBooks, 2009. Print, 30.
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