In at least two paragraphs (using your own words) define the positions of Fried, Smithson, and Bourriaud as outlined by Voorhies.
In an additional paragraph or two state your own opinions/philosophy responding to the four positions (Voorhies included) as you understand them thus far. Feel free to invoke other artists or precedents in exhibitions to outline or defend your position..
Michael Fried has a problem with theatricality in the artwork of the minimalists. He said they were “NOT PAINTING” and “NOT SCULPTURE” and identified the condition as “Objecthood”. They were described as having a lack of visual immediacy. Smithsons piece on cultural confinement was a little extreme but it resonated with me. Just because we aren’t told to submit doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. I think it is our duty as artists to question everything in our culture especially institutions.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoy the work that Bourriaud uses as examples for relational. Hollers work in “Experience” is the most extreme and dry example of experiential artwork I have ever seen. It is ridiculously strait forward and to the point. The only thing strange about this work is its location (and the slide went through the floor). The community like feel in a gallery setting is the point of this work. It is questioning the boundaries of what we call art.
I really enjoy experiential artwork and the more I read about relational aesthetics the more work I find that fits in its categories. I also see the point made by Voorhies about the danger of it being exploited by gallery owners and curators to broaden the audience of gallery attendees. I find it very humorous that fried refers to minimalist works as theatrical. I understand why they are referred to as such, but from a contemporary perspective the work is far from theatrical.
Good.
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ReplyDeleteSmithson is against the confinements of the gallery space and is interested in the interaction between the art and the viewer. His non-site series challenges spectators to view art in a different apparatus. He wanted to deflect the attention of the gallery and direct the attention to places like outside of the gallery.
ReplyDeleteBourriaud is interested in relational esthetics and relational art which relies on the experience a viewer has in a more interactive setting. He is interested in portraying an experience.
Fried was against theatricality placed upon the tradition of Minimalism. He said artists sometimes used the work as a stage. An ordinary object would have to have a sort of theatrical meaning.
It’s good to learn about the history of critique of the new form of exhibitions but I feel like we have been living in that new form of these ideas for all our lifetimes. The “white cube” has been questioned, challenged, explored, and is back to being the most efficient way to show work. Today, all forms of art are equally important, critically. Interactive art is valued but still needs substance. “Non-site” is the new “site.”
Smithson also against cultural confinement as imposed by curators in terms of prescriptive exhibition content.
DeleteBourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics is about analyze artworks that work with the human interactions, such as cooking, reading, dancing, meditating among individuals/group/community. Something important to know about Relational Aesthetics is that a lot of artworks were produced based on misunderstanding of the idea. Such as Holler’s Experience. In Holler’s work it is obvious that the spectators were being controlled to participate in specific ways. This causes people to start thinking about the industrialized and capitalized institutions that artworks are being showed in and the idea of spectators transforming into consumers waiting in line.
ReplyDeleteVoorhies also expressed that even though “social practice” and participatory art touch based with Bourriaud’s idea but it is too limited if to say that they are the same thing because there are other aesthetic criteria other than social practice.
Fried believes that by viewing art as an event the “theatricality” of participating in such event distract viewers from actually appreciating the artworks themselves.
Smithson works with the idea of non-sites. He challenges the idea of the gallery space and how the space influences artists and the way they create their work.
For general public, a gallery appeal to them as a place where they have to dress and act certain ways. I believe with this idea in mind, the awareness of being in such space will cause some theatrical gestures to happen.
According to Bourriaud's theory of "relational aesthetics" within which Voorhies categorizes Holler's work "Experience”, art should prioritize the engagement and participation of the spectators as process to experience a work of art and if achieved, that is when you conceive the aesthetics of the work. In Bourriaud's view, it is a way to counter the modernists' ideologies in terms of their attitude of particularizing medium and being totally unsociable.
ReplyDeleteMichael Fried on the other hand is against theatricality, as it has the spectator's role in art, which he argues that such situation takes the art from its innocence. Although, Smithson and Fried are modernist, Fried is absolutely rebarbative. The concepts of Bourriaud and Smithson criticize Fried's rigidity. Smithson has his view on non-site as it shows the processes of his work that is not seen and he presents that in the gallery to still "take the viewer's mind outside of the gallery space.
I think that humanness as symbol in art gained its position by the revolutionary works of the minimalist artists, in conceptual approach. The "literal" notion of them like Frank Stella still had to do with the satisfaction of the spectator. Today artists are making art more enjoyable by spectators than you could ever imagine. Food is shared in an exhibition space as art, the work of Captain at KNUST, even Antonio Miralda' food installations.
Human values and cultures are taking the shape of art in contemporary context. Artists are bringing into the museums, the things spectators find it worthful to their life, for instance the work of Group Material.