Amelia Jones/Andrew Stevenson, Performing the Body
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undergraduate. The selection or the material Andy Warhol means that students can compare different White Car Crash viewpoints on roughly the same area easily - 1963 three of the four chapters in Part I deal with classical Indian art and architecture. The downside is a certain one-sidedness to a book that ostensibly deals 11ith cultural difference in all its manifestations in the world of visual culture. However, this .can be defended as the comparison between James Fergusson, Ananda Coomaraswamy and Partha ~litt er is an excellent way of introducing students to precisely the conclu sio ns Thomas heads toward s. There's also a neat juxtaposition between Jantjes' welcoming of difference and hybridity in contemporary visual culture, and Araeen's closing scepticism. I Niru Ratnam is a writer and art historian. Performativity ........................................................................ To Say is To Do Mark Harris Perfonning the Body/Perjonning the Text, eds Amelia Jones and Andrew Stephenson, Routledge, London, 1999, 306pp, 66 ill us, p/b, £15..99, 0 415 19060 6, h/b, £50, 0 415 19159 2. This is a diverse collection of 18 texts that evolved from conferences on performance and performativity organised in 1997 by edi tors Amelia Jones and Andrew Stephenson. To the editors, this variety of essays is justi fied as a way of disrupting traditional models down again. This is too intricate an issue to though when Jones and Stevenson extend it of art history. Their goal is nothing less than settle \vith off the shelf teleologies like Kant to any cultural commentary, such as art to bring about a revolution in the commen to Modernism. For one thing, so much hap history, that is adequately critical or reflexive. tary on visual culture by using the conceptual pened in aesthetics between Kant and the But then they go even further, urging engage tool of performativity, as it has been devel 20th Century as to have once and for all ment beyond conventional critique, proposing oped for example in gender studies. In their impeded uncritical access to his ideas. Hegel 'the act of interpretation itself as a kind of view this is necessary because most recent is not mentioned in this book, yet the intro performance', at which point it is hard to see analytical approaches perpetuate those struc duction to his Aesthetics (perhaps as challeng what is gained that isn't already part of the tures by which artwork is assigned value and ing and problematic a modernist antecedent critical apparatus. This programme doesn't meaning. Somewhat rashly, the reader is as Kant's Critique of Judgement) is helpful clear the decks for a new art history and effectively invited to judge these essays by for understanding why modernist formalism offers no distinction between itself and the radical claims set out in the introduction. has at no stage intended obj ectivity. earlier unorthodox histories and aesthetics, Not surprisingly, most fall well short as The key to salvaging art history for the like those of Arnold Hauser, Adrian Stokes, models of transformative research. Despite editors is JL Austin's term 'performative' Theodor Adorno or John Berger. its pretensions, however, the introduction is which was intended by him to designate those Perhaps the editors are persuaded by helpful for describing clearly art history's forms of speech 'in which to say something is their own enthusiasm that some oversimpli failure to question readers' desires and com to do something', but which has lately served fication is permissible to strengthen their plicity in establishing meaning because of the explanation of gender issues and perfor case. A scapegoat is named for the present those modernist assumptions that objectivity mance art by identifying a continuous enact crisis: 'the usually heterosexual, white, is still possible in determining quality. The ment of sexual identity within the everyday Euro-American male art professional'. And familiar road back through Greenberg to Kant production of culture. Without much lest we missed it first time .around we are is delineated. contention we can recognise this process reminded later in Jones' own essay of the Th ere is a lot to question here - most occuring elsewhere in the formation of sub culprit as 'implici~ly masculine, white, het irritatingly the resurrection of a caricatured jectivity with racial or national identities. erosexual, upper middle class, etc'. Modernism just to have-something to knock Performativity becomes more attenuated Unfortunately the essay Jones writes on '.Iinimalism perpetuates further examples of as fashions shifted in the New York of the articulate the conflicting cross-cultural and bias against which we are warned in the intro 1950s. What moves this onto another regis erotic demands on these writers who were duction. Most invidious is her fixation on ter though, is Butt's ability to assemble the complying with the expectations of two differ Michael Fried's 'Art and Objecthood' (serving vanities and real affections felt by Rivers ent audiences. Finally, in a reconsideration of as springboard for her feminist reassessment into a critical position taken by his artwork Viennese Actionism's controversial swansong of Minimalism) which she elevates to demonic against the Abstract Expressionists whose performance Art and Revolution, Philip canonical status, when its actual importance own notions of artistic inauthenticity were Ursprung analyses performativity in terms of lies more with the debates around sculpture in inseparable from their homophobia. the Actionists misdirected resistance against which it participated at that time. In an account strengthened by reference the German tendency to overinvest art prac Among the other contributions however, to late Heideggerian concepts of technologi tice with socially redemptive potential. The are six or so outstanding essays that make the cal exploitation of human resources, Phelan irresponsible and unassimilable nature of the book worthwhile. Best of these have to be explains how Warhol used the repeated Actionists' performance for the entire politi Gavin Butt's piece on Larry Rivers' enactment images of car crashes, suicides and electric cal spectrum is set in productive contrast to of camp sensibility and Phelan's unveiling of chairs to reveal the ineluctable continuity of Joseph Beuys' veiled authorisation of conser Warhol's accumulated American deaths. Butt death into the present. Of the remaining vative tendencies towards cultural hegemony. and Phelan go a long way to indicating what a pieces three are particularly memorable. Such essays don't attempt to act perfor genuinely new art history might feel like, per What is surely the most appalling of Amer matively, but instead reveal the performa forming their subject from the inside in a ica's homegrown enactments of death, the tive at work in their subjects. The generous identification that nevertheless Southern lynching spectacles, is given new 'engagement with the processes of art pro resists predictable positions. profile in Michael Hatt's essay. Like Phelan, duction and reception as performative', With agile humour Butt coaxes several Hatt redirects Austin's performativity, in this requested in the introduction, would surely strands of thought together, leaving you case as a means of assigning individual entail a move out of art history and into cre wondering how on earth such a feat can be responsibility for the murders, seen here as ative, or concentrically driven, writing. In made to seem effortless, particularly with so enacting concepts of white honour while cul which case Stokes and Adorno return as problematic a figure as Rivers. In his bid for pability is deflected onto mob will. Reina paradigms to haunt what is a flawed, but companionship and relevance Rivers is Lewis discusses orientalist accounts of harem often enough interesting collection. I shown to have concealed his Jewishness to life by early 20th-century Turkish expatriate perform first black and then gay identities, women. She deploys performativity to Mark Harris is an artist. 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