Self-Referentiality and Mass-Production in the Work of Allan Mccollum, 1969 - 1989

REPRINT FROM ALLAN McCOLLUM STEDELIJK VAN ABBEMUSEUM Eindhoven, Holland; 1989 Self-Referentiality and Mass-Production in the Work of Allan McCollum, 1969 - 1989 ANNE RORIMER SINCE 1977, when he shifted the focus of his earlier frame and its enclosed ‘image’ are combined on one production, Allan McCollum has been involved in an and the same pictorial field. investigation of the work of art with regard to its function within the social system. ‘If one wants to Although no two pieces are ever identical, each understand art,’ McCollum has stated, ‘it seems to Surrogate presents the same, self-reflexive image of me, one should begin with the terms of the situation a typical painting and thus provides what McCollum in which one actually encounters it’.1 To this end, the has aimed at from the inception of this series: ‘a artist has developed a diverse series of works that universal sign-for-a-painting’2. Since their literal reflect upon the status of art in contemporary culture. Although their particular means and emphasis necessarily vary, the Surrogates, Perpetual Photos, Perfect Vehicles, and Individual Works, created by McCollum during the last twelve years, call attention to the place of art as an economic and psychological, not merely physical, presence within society. A small, square work, Untitled, 1977, measuring 21 x 21 cm and made of wood covered with an off-white acrylic, marks McCollum’s departure from his previous approach to painting and his achievement of a new level of thematic interest. This transitional piece is to be distinguished from prior works by the artist because of the simple presentation of its own painted surface as a primary and singular fact. Notably moreover, the frame of the work exists as an extension of its painted surface since a groove of about a centimeter in depth creates a narrow indentation close to and parallel with its edge. As in the ensuing Surrogate Paintings in wood – first conceived in 1978 as individually colored monochromes and in 1979 as images of black- centered, matted, and framed objects – and the cast Plaster Surrogates, 1982, the surrounding picture llaAn McCollum: Surrogate Paintings, Acrylic on wood, 1979-82 in ironic manner the demand for uniqueness traditionally associated with works of art. In this way, the Surrogates, as their title suggests, are able to play the part of painting. Denuded of abstract or figurative referential content and ostensibly blank, they bring the many uses of art in society to the fore, whether as a decorative element, item of exchange, symbol of prestige, or possession of personal worth, suggesting the scope of its possible functions. The Perpetual Photos, 1982-present, exhibited for the first time in 1984, reinforce the significance of the Surrogates. Rather than directly creating a painted image that is about being a painting as in the case of the Surrogates, in these works, McCollum produces photographs by enlarging the diminutive and illegible images of paintings that may be found in the backgrounds of television performances. The resulting images deny access to any knowledge of the Allan McCollum: Untitled, 1977, acrylic on wood, 21 x 21 cm. original; instead they exist in their own right as blurred abstractions derived from the media where content is their own depiction, the Surrogates declare paintings have been clearly subordinated to the larger themselves to be paintings in a generalized state. As scenario. As the artist has explained, ‘When I enlarge such they may be looked at in relation to how a these little meaningless smudges up to lifesize – the painting is treated – as opposed to what it might size of a picture we might hang in our own home – portray – within the current cultural context. there’s nothing there, just the ghost of an artwork, the ghost of content’3. These ghostlike images serve to The Surrogates may be hung singly or together in haunt the spectator insofar as they ‘mimic one’s small or large groups depending on the given search for meaning in an artwork’4. The absence of situation, which is dictated in every case by the conventions of installation in the home, museum, or one-person exhibition. No single work in this series is identical with another in size or color or possible combinations thereof. Never large in scale and posessing a slightly rough surface, they maintain a reference to painterliness and the handmade along with their mechanically produced appearance. At the same time as they all are virtually alike, they satisfy Allan McCollum: Perpetual Photo #2, 1982-84, silver gelatin print, Allan McCollum: Photo from TV with Painting #2, 1982 (source for 20 x 22”. Perpetual Photo #2, 1982-84). 2 specific content (which is, in itself, their content) The Vehicles address the notion of the transcendent, turns the viewer’s attention toward a consideration of timeless work of art. In parallel manner with the the meaning of content in general and its constant Surrogates and Photos, they stand as neutral signs regeneration. that colorfully, sleekly, and wittily point to their own emptiness as vases. Paradoxically, their emptiness as vases imbues them with a weighty import as functionless objects that nonetheless function to carry signification. In short, they refer to themselves as symbolic objects that, specially allocated and classified within the social order as art, automatically signal the expectation of content and engender the desire for response. Through their reference to the small scale, symbolic collectible or bibelot, McCollum’s most recent series, the Individual Works, extend his aesthetic inquiry further. A continuing piece, open to future realizations, it exists to date in two parts, one of which is a turquoise blue and the other a salmon pink. Allan McCollum: Perfect Vehicles, Moorglo on concrete, 1988. These room-sized displays are each comprised of over 10,000 small, similarly-scaled, graspable Like the Surrogates and Perpetual Photos, the objects. In recent exhibitions the Individual Works Perfect Vehicles, 1985 (large-scale version, 1988), have been placed contiguously on a single pedestal have been divested of particularized content in order table measuring approximately 50 square meters. to present themselves as objects belonging to the Each separate object represents a different category of art. The Vehicles, differing one from combination of top and bottom halves of shapes cast another in color only, are cast in solid plaster. from about 150 different household items or their Modeled by McCollum after the most typical antique parts. No two objects are alike, although their sheer Chinese ginger jar, which has been extensively reproduced and copied for centuries, they represent a generalized abstraction of a vase form, although they lack its characteristic hollowness5. Formally suggesting both the male and the female6 and also alluding simultaneously to both womb and tomb, they cut across the stylistic boundaries of past and present objects of design. They embody multiple associations ranging from ancient vessels such as burial urns to contemporary household decanters that figure prominently in modern home decor. Arrayed in grouped isolation on pedestals or dominating an exhibition space like over-lifesized statuary, the Vehicles are emblematic of their own uselessness as vases made into art. In a tongue-in-cheek text pertaining to these works, the artist wishfully affirms and rhetorically queries: ‘In extinguishing absolutely the possibility of any recourse to utility, I mean to accelerate the symbolic potential of the Vehicles toward total meaning, total value. I aim to fashion the most perfect art object possible....Is it not my role as an artist to reproduce and repeat at will – that psychic effervescence – associated with the unrepeatable and perfectly unique timeless moment in which the rest of 7 Allan McCollum: Individual Works, enamel on hydrocal, 1987/88, the world simply fades away? sizes vary from 2 1/2” to 6” in length, 2” in diameter. 3 Allan McCollum: Untitled Paintings, 1969, dye and bleach on handkerchiefs, 39 x 39 cm each. multiplicity and seeming similarity gives an overall psychological value in the culture usually is effect of mass-produced identity. In this way, these concealed or, at least, not overtly stated. In seeking to works incisively cut through the established divisions devise forms for allowing the work of art to comment between high and low art, or art and non-art forms of upon itself, McCollum has drawn upon, as well as production. As McCollum has pointed out with made reference to, the significant aesthetic concerns respect to the Individual Works project: ‘... it of a number of his immediate predecessors and, in addresses what is lost in the opposition of art the process, redefined their aims. Paintings exhibited production and industrial production, the cultural prior to 1975 when he was living in Los Angeles trope of the Unique versus the Expendable, the anticipate McCollum’s future work in as much as Irreplaceable versus the Common: the psychological they suggest the nature of his artistic enterprise at the underpinnings of the Class system as mediated outset of his career in the late 1960’s. through our making of things. This work is about an unnecessary and arbitrarily configured dichotomy we During the period from 1968-1977, McCollum all seem to need to believe in...’8. developed increasingly systematic and mechanical sets of procedures for the production of ‘self- BY BRINGING THE MAKING OF art into the referential’ art works. Unstretched, stained paintings immediate sphere of industrial mass-production, the of 1969 – done on a small scale using handkerchiefs work seeks to overcome the restrictive barriers that and in a large format using canvas – ironically tend to cordon art off from greater accessibility. referred to Color Field painting, extensively exhibited Unlike other works dealing with relationships in America at this time9.

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