Reading Group Report: Painting's Critical Force in Our Times

In the reading group meetings for Critical Studies each person contributed a reading of his/her own interest to be read and discussed by group members during the four meeting sessions. For the interdisciplinary nature of the course, we encountered a variety of subjects of the readings submitted[1] – subjects ranged almost arbitrarily that would have had seem like a jumble of titles and compositions. Some interesting conversations took place during the discussion; yet generating in-depth debates within the given timeframe requires a thorough comprehension of most fields in the arts. After a sound investigation and re-reading of the articles submitted by members of the group, I have come to realise that despite the range of topics, there are fundamental issues in the practice of art that concern us all.

In this report I will first give an overall look of my interest in the works of Daniel Buren and his dedication to theorising the practice of art through his bands. Buren's surprising long career working in situ is not a success by luck; I will shed light on how he has contextualised the bands, and from there relate to other practice of similar nature. One of the readings in the group I find most relevant to Buren's practice is Jane Rendell's Art and Architecture. In her book Rendell introduces the term "Critical Spatial Practice" to title the specific kind of practice that operates outside of the galleries' physical limits. Much like Buren's work, such practices often have strong attachment/reference to social reality. Also, from Victor Burgin's The City in Pieces, we get a better understanding of the developments of the concept of space – focused on the psychological approach, exposing the intervening relationship between physical and virtual spaces. Relating it to art-making, many artists have looked at the ambiguous in-between areas and incorporated new technology that encourages the participation in the process. The analogy made between film and painting by Walter Benjamin (Harrison, 513-4) gives a good comparison between the so-called "new" and "old". I would, to end this report, argue that painting as one of the primarily art forms has the ability to accept, adopt, and transform.

During shift in social structure as a result of urbanisation in the 1960s, many social movements took place including the student revolution in Paris in May 1968. Buren as an active artist in Paris at that time decided to make only works in situ, always using 8.7 centimetre-wide vertical stripes, alternating coloured with white or transparent. This format had not been assimilable to the codes of art. The anonymity of the bands suggests that the creator is no longer the owner of his/her work, and it is not his/her work, but a work. The bands have a consistency that ensures the exposure to be viewed in different places and at different times; and the repetition of the bands shows that there is no perfectibility.

The system that Buren employs does not direct attention to the bands; rather, the bands are produced, placed/displaced to be looked at. In an accompanying essay to an exhibition of his painting at Yvon Lambert in early 1971 titled Critical Limits, Buren's interest in the Althusserian notion of a "theoretical practice" could be found evident [2]; yet for him, the act of painting precedes writings and goes beyond them. It is an act of a political one: when he pastes fabric or paper stripes in public places, paints bands in the wall space between art works in a gallery, raises flags outside of a museum on the streets, he is referencing the act of painting to its historical context. He believes that every artist is obliged to pass over the sociological aspect of the proposition before him/her due to lack of space and considerations of priority among the questions to be analysed.

When we look at how Buren's bands came about, we might be intrigued in what may have seemed to be a purely conceptual and minimal practice to be deeply rooted in the significance of painting. Cézanne has been a central reference to Buren whose revolutionary contribution to painting in abandoning illusionism and representation. He poses questions on the possibility of treating painting as painting – that is, as painted, or as paint itself. This concern for painting is an acknowledgement of painting's physical limits, namely, its subject matter, support, frame, dimension, etc. What Buren has done with the creation of his signature stripes is to explore how peinture (art of painting) as opposed to tableau (covered pictorial dimension) opens beyond itself by virtue of the limits that define it and onto a field that exposes the institutional and cultural frameworks that it takes its presence.

One of the foremost limits of painting is dimension, i.e. space. Buren's in situ works incorporate the stripes as a visual tool with architectural structures that extend both painting and architectural spaces. Yet it is not only a visual attempt to work on sites – often, site-specific works focus more on reformulating the ways in which space is understood and practiced. There is a branch of practice that is set in an interdisciplinary terrain that deals with urban condition, both critically and spatially. Jane Rendell presents the term "Critical Spatial Practice" (2006) to name this branch. She points out that in the 1960s and 1970s numerous social and art movements were informed by an interest in architecture and public space. Since then, the discussion on the urban condition within different academic disciplines has created an in-between place for art and architecture for the aspects of the spatial, the temporal, and the social. Exhaustive background of the developments of the concept of space can be found in Victor Burgin's The City in Pieces. In this essay Burgins analyses on urbanisation in the writings of Walter Benjamin and Henri Lefebvre are elaborated. He notes that major changes in representations of space and space of representations that took place in the early twentieth century shattered a certain space, a space which Lefebvre describes as a psychological one [3]. From an architectural perspective, one of the most visible changes of style is the walls made of steel and glass. Lefebvre supplies the concept of the membrane (Lefebvre, 175-6) which suggests a possibility of coexistence – the coexistence of inside and outside, of private and public – in other words, urban modernisation blurs the distinction between such boundaries. As for Benjamin, walls of steel and glass construct the image of the modern, and that porosity, transparency, light, and free air are the essential components that represent the twentieth century (Benjamin, 292).

Buren's in situ installations in historical sites offer a genuine insight into engaging and contextualising the spatial and social functions of painting as a practice of art. These functions, explains Rendell, are different from the architectural functions of sheltering or responding to social needs. "Art offers a place and occasion for new kinds of relationship 'to function' between people. (Rendell, 4)" Les Deux Plateaux installation in the courtyard of Palais Royal in Paris is a good example. This work completed in 1986 provoked an intense debate over the integration of contemporary art and historic buildings during that time. This work, then, has become a platform for conversations between the conventional and the contemporary, the authoritative and the questionable, as well as between art and architecture. From a conventional painting point of view, the stripes in its two-dimensional form are capable of conveying the three-dimensionality of the given space.

Buren's increasing use of transparency in recent years has consolidated the function of the membrane. The installation Plus grand ou plus petit que ?(Bigger or Smaller?) in the Castle of Tours, France (see images) harmonises the confines of art space and public space on such a scale that once approaches the work, one begins to wonder whether it is the castle that exposes the work, or the work that exposes the castle; and which has more influence over the other. This relationship people create in the production and occupation of art and architecture makes it not only a work made to be seen but to be experienced. The application of painting (including also the stripes and transparencies) has permeated the physical architectural configuration through the castle's historical bourgeois significance into a change of ownership from that of the private to the public; hence to a state that seeks active social engagements.


1.
Daniel Buren.
Plus grand ou plus petit que ? 2006.
Château de Tours, France
Photograph : hsiaohui, 2006.
Glass windows on each level are tinted in red, yellow, and green consequently from top to ground floor.



2.
Daniel Buren.
Plus grand ou plus petit que ? 2006.
Château de Tours, France
Photograph : hsiaohui, 2006.
Floor and walls are fully painted in the colour themed on the entire level. Occasional stripes appear around edge of the windowsill



3.
Daniel Buren.
Plus grand ou plus petit que ? 2006.
Château de Tours, France
Photograph : hsiaohui, 2006.
Public occupation has given a dynamic aspect to this work.

Since the age of modernisation, the advance in technology has had the most remarkable development. Today, our conception of space has gone beyond what our eyes can ascribe – such as the invention of fast-speed vehicles that distort our concept of distance; radio and internet that alter our ways of communication; television and cinema that confuse our perception of reality. As a result, one can no longer find balance between physical and psychological space. Benjamin's analogy comparing the cameraman and the painter[4] concludes that film offers a more significant reality through permeation with mechanical equipment. Mechanical reproduction of art has made it accessible to a wider audience, yet art that is meant for the masses loses its critical force, for that the masses seek distraction whereas art demands concentration from the spectator. While celebrating the expansion of perception of space brought by modernisation, what we cannot ignore is the danger of getting lost in interface due to the excess of information. How, then, should the practice of art in our times function its critical apparatus?

Compared to the mass media, for Benjamin, a painting has always had an excellent chance to be viewed by one person or by a few. However, from what I have presented with examples of Buren's works and introduction on Rendell's Critical Spatial Practice, painting as a practice of art is apt at public engagement as well as maintaining its critical force. Although in the current atmosphere of critical theory, painting seems to be an ambivalent subject, for that it is set within its own physical frames and limits. I would argue that critical theories based on language and semantics cannot be the sole determinant of a work’s meaning and significance. I identify with Rendell's view on critical theory, that it is reflective rather than objectifying. Thus the critical force is the level of ability to transform rather than describe the work/practice. Apart from Buren, there are other animated artists who exercise similar practices – practices that arise from issues in painting and extend to embrace collaboration. For example, Sarah Hughes' largely ephemeral installations that explore space through pattern, combining the traditional motif of the paisley and the formal devices of Op Art, recent installations trace sources high and low, the overlapping and intersecting conditions of production and of use. Michael Lin Min-Hong borrows flower patterns from traditional Taiwanese fabrics to make large-scale installations that invite the viewer to share the space of art and architecture in socially contemplative ways. Lin's installations act as vernacular interactions where the hierarchical structures of painting, culture, museum practice, and social exchange are mentarily subverted. Polly Apfelbaum wanders through the ambivalent space between painting, sculpture, and installation by creating dyed fabric laid on the floor that deals with the relativity of time, feminist issues, and complexity in what appears to be simplicity. Katharina Grosse's combination of painting with architecture and sculpture produces an immersive experience, in which her work physically encompasses us rather than solely hanging on a wall. All of these examples show that the perception of space can be critically provoked by certain practices of art. I believe in what Rendell defines as the function of art [5], and painting as one of the primarily art form/practice is still capable of sustaining it.



Notes
[1] The group I was assigned to consists of the following members and the readings from each individual are indicated below:
N.C.
"Walter Benjamin: The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction 1936." Art in Theory 1900-1990. An Anthology of Changing Ideas. Ed. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood. Blackwell, 1995. 512-9
A.D.
Heiser, Jörg. "Emotional Rescue." Frieze. Issue 71: 70-5
B.D.
von Drathen, Doris. "Private Crossing." Vortex of Silence – Proposition for an Art Criticism Beyond Aesthetic Categories. Milano, Italy, 2004. 83-92
F.G.
Krauss, Rosalind E. "The Destiny of the Formless." Formless – A User's Guide. New York: Zone Books NY, 1997. 235-55
S.H.
Rendell, Jane. "A Place Between." Art and Architecture: A Place Between. London: I.B. Tauris, 2006. 1-12Ibid. “Collaboration.” 153-61
H.H.
"Daniel Buren." As Painting: Division and Displacement. Ed. Philip Armstrong, Laura Lisbon, and Stephen Melville. Columbus: Wexner Center for the Arts, the Ohio State University, 2001. 86-9
A.S.
Burgin, Victor. "The City in Pieces." In/Different Spaces – Places and Memory in Visual Culture. Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996.
[2] Buren's statement in the essay: "The following text results from a specific practice or work which is meant TO BE SEEN. This text is only the demonstration, presentation of this work, and not its theory. It could be considered as an illustraction of the work in question. It is dictated by the work itself and it not an abstract and purified image of some future project." (Armstrong, 87)
[3] Lefebvre: "Around 1910 a certain space was shattered. It was the space of common sense, of knowledge [savoir], of social practice, of political power… the space, too, of classical perspective and geometry […] bodied forth in Western art and philosophy, as in the form of the city and town." (Lefebvre, 25-26)
[4] Walter Benjamin in his essay of 1936 The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction makes an analogy with a surgical operation to compare the different approaches to healing a sickness between the surgeon (hence, the cameraman) and that of the magician (hence, the painter) to which he infers that while the magician maintains a natural distance between the patient and himself, the surgeon penetrates into the patient's body.
[5] "… art is functional in providing certain kinds of tools for self-reflection, critical thinking and social" (Rendell, 4)



Bibliography
Brennan, Stella Brennan. "Pattern Recognition: The Art of Sara Hughes." Art New Zealand. Issue 112, Spring 2004.
Benjamin, Walter. Gesammelte Schriften vol.5. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1772; quoted in Buck-Morss, The Dialectics of Seeing, 303
Burgin, Victor. "The City in Pieces." In/Different Spaces – Places and Memory in Visual Culture. Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996.
Crimp, Douglas. "The End of Painting." October vol.16, 1981. 69-86
"Daniel Buren." As Painting: Division and Displacement. Ed. Philip Armstrong, Laura Lisbon, and Stephen Melville. Columbus: Wexner Center for the Arts, the Ohio State University, 2001. 86-9
von Drathen, Doris. "Private Crossing." Vortex of Silence – Proposition for an Art Criticism Beyond Aesthetic Categories. Milano/Italy, 2004. 83-92
Heiser, Jörg. "Emotional Rescue." Frieze. Issue 71: 70-5
Krauss, Rosalind E. "The Destiny of the Formless." Formless – A User's Guide. New York: Zone Books NY, 1997. 235-55
Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Blackwell Publishing Limited, September 1, 1991
Michael Lin. Ed. Ivy Cooper. Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, 2004.
Nadaner, Dan. "Painting in an Era of Critical Theory". Studies in Art Education vol.39 No.2 winter, 1998. 168-82
Rendell, Jane. "A Place Between." Art and Architecture: A Place Between. London: I.B. Tauris, 2006. 1-12
Ibid. "Collaboration." 153-61
"Walter Benjamin: The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction 1936." Art in Theory 1900-1990. An Anthology of Changing Ideas. Ed. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood. Blackwell, 1995. 512-9