Work and World: on the Philosophy of Curatorial Practice
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WORK AND WORLD: ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF CURATORIAL PRACTICE A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board ______________________________________________________________________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ________________________________________________________________________ by Susan Elizabeth Spaid August 2013 Examining Committee Members: Joseph Margolis, Ph.D.,Advisory Chair, Philosophy, Temple University Lewis Gordon, Ph.D., Philosophy, Temple University Susanna Gold, Ph. D., Art History, Temple University Sherri Irvin, Ph.D., External Member, Philosophy, Oklahoma University TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………….……...…….v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS……………………………………………….………………vii .. LIST OF TABLES………………………………………………………………………..ix LIST OF FIGURES……………………………………………………………………….x INTRODUCTION………………………………………...……………………………...xi CHAPTER 1. THE CURATOR Care…………………………………….…………………………………………….1 Imagination………………………………………………….……………………….7 Discourse……………………………………………………………………………10 Collections………………………………………………………………………….11 Curated Exhibitions………………………………………………………………...17 Belongingness………………………………………………………………………19 Inferential Properties...…….………………………………………………………..27 Relational Clusters………………………………………………………………….32 Exacted Exhibitions………………………………………………………………...37 Nonartistic Pursuits…………………………………………………………………42 Tasteful Pursuits…………………………………………………………………….50 Work and World………………………………….…………………………………52 Uncurated Exhibitons……………………………………………………………….56 2. SPECTATOR Candidacy………………………………………………………………………......60 i Social Institutions…………….……………………………………………………..66 Flukes and Failures…………………………………………………………………76 Basic Actions...……;……………………………………………………………….78 Institutional Memories….………………………..............…………………………81 Public Records………….…………………………………………………………..85 3. EXHIBITIONS Initiates………..…………………………………………………………………….89 The Medium……...…………………………………………………………………92 Concepts………………….……………………………………………………….....94 Fallibility of Reasons……………………………………………………………...114 Possibilities……………….……………………………………………………….116 Assertoric Force…………………………………………………………………...118 Unreliability……………………………………………………………………….120 Incompleteness……………………………………………………………………124 History…………………………………………………………………………….127 Thematized Seeing……………………………………………………………...130 Aided Seeing……...…………………………………………………………….131 Trained Seeing………………………………………………….……………….133 4. AESTHETICS Monadic Responses….…………………………………………….……………...139 Intentionality…………...…………………………………………………………146 Coauthorship……………………………………………………………………...160 Interpretation……………………………..………………………………………171 ii Events…………………………………………………………………………….177 Dualisms………………………………………………………………………….190 Belief………………..……………………………………………………………198 5. NONEXHIBITED FEATURES Anti-Essentialism……...………………………………………………………….203 Incomprehensibility…………………………………………………………. …..205 Asymmetries………...……………………………………………………………209 Two-Term Systems……………………………………………………………….211 Generative Symbols………………………………………………………...…….215 Inductive Reasoning……………………………………………………..……….218 Co-present References….………………………………………………..……….220 Three-Term Systems…….……………………………………………..…………222 Frege’s Legacy………….……………………………………………..………….226 Ratiocination………………………………………………………...……………228 Guitar Lessons……………………………………………………...…………….231 Husserl’s Role…………………………………………………………………….235 6. CYCLES Art Directing…..……………………………………………………………..……238 Space-Time…….………………………………………………………………….241 Attention..................................................................................................................244 Exploration……..………………………………………………………………....246 Conceptualization..………………………………………………………………..250 Presentation……………………………………………………………………….253 iii Artworld Theories………………………………………………………………...253 Reception…………….…………………………………………………………...259 7. THE ÜBERCURATOR Meta-Artistic Behavior…........................................................................................261 A Curatorial Crisis…..………...…………...…………………………………….. 267 Arts Administrators..………………………………………………………………273 Überartists………………………………...……………………………………….275 Agency…………………………………………………………………………….278 REFERENCES CITED……………..……………….………………………………….283 INDEX………………………………………………………………………………….295 iv ABSTRACT Even though viewers typically experience multiple artworks at a time, philosophers have tended to parse visual art experiences into individuated experiences with singular objects, rather than incorporate the role exhibitions play in contextualizing objects over time. Since visual art experiences typically occur in the context of exhibitions featuring multiple artworks, whether in a museum, commercial gallery, or artist’s studio, there are numerous problems associated with considering visual art experiences individuated experiences with single objects.1 I aim to show how this approach not only produces problems for the philosophy of art, but also perpetuates misunderstandings regarding the visual artist’s practice, as well as its reception. My focus on reception poses problems for those who relish curatorial authority. I prefer practices to products, since it establishes a relationship between each contributor’s actions and his/her outcomes, which gain meaning over time, unlike products that arrive ready upon delivery, independent of directed consciousness. Rather than convey an activity particular to sight, the term “visual art experience” distinguishes this type of art experience from types such as theater, film, or musical performances. Such multi-sensorial perceptual experiences, whether indoors or outdoors, accompany one’s experiencing artworks, monuments and buildings alike.2 The philosophical convention of treating artworks as singular objects has led philosophers to exaggerate: 1) the artist’s intention (Arthur Danto), 2) artworks’ 1 Julien Robson’s “Presence” (2004-2005) at the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky, was the rare exhibition that featured only one artwork. Sometimes, museums acquire a super-expensive work and exhibit it as a singular object, but such presentations are meant to elicit attention not reception! 2 I borrow the notion of experience from John Dewey, whose notion concerns direct experience, rather than experiences via photographic representations, forgery, copy or replica. Second-hand experiences seem to present their own kinds of experience, related only by appearance to some first-hand version. v atemporal features (Nelson Goodman), and 3) artworks’ expressive/symbolic capacities (Robin Collingwood, Danto, Goodman, and Roger Scruton) inviting aestheticians to treat artworks like texts, penned by a lone author. One consequence of the “lone-author” view is that book reading is the prevailing analogy for visual art experiences, eschewing obviously coauthored analogies such as walking in the park, attending a sporting event, or dining with friends. 3 Books whose advance readers and editor(s) influence their contents before being published are no less coauthored than typical nonart experiences. That exhibitions are coauthored has multiple implications for aesthetics, since it acknowledges the way visual art experiences involve multiple inputs: some combination of curator, spectators, exhibition, milieu, environment, and the facility. The curator typically works with other producer(s), whether artists or exhibition staff, to create some environment, a temporal surrounding comprised of thematically arranged artworks, specifically designed for spectators inhabiting a particular milieu, housed in some facility, which includes the physical surroundings, such as the gallery’s conditions, its wall colors, lighting, and scale. This text explores all aspects of curatorial practice from exploration to conceptualization, presentation, and reception. In differentiating curated exhibitions from non-curated exhibitions, I aim to explain how curators generate frames that visibilize each artwork’s nonexhibited features, which seems so obvious in hindsight that particular frames later appear embodied from the onset. 3 No doubt, Dewey’s seminal text Art as Experience has encouraged philosophy to accommodate visual art’s durational tenor. Some, like Richard Shusterman, reverse that thesis to advocate experience as art. vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am grateful to my four committee members who have spent countless hours discussing these issues and helping me to refine both my ideas and this text. Since my arrival at Temple University in the Fall of 2006, Joe Margolis has been a constant guide, reading and challenging numerous prelims, and eventually talking me out of writing my dissertation on the imagination. Had we not struggled for months over that daunting urge, I probably never would have written this text, even though it is certainly an outgrowth of the full year I spent wondering how to frame the imagination’s role in relationship to conceptualizing artworks. When that book finally arrives, it will no doubt have benefited from the practical groundwork laid out in this book and our near decade of debates on that subject, and many others. I am grateful to Fred Dewey for first proposing curating! I thank Susanna Gold for not only expediently reading and challenging many of my views, but for discouraging me from making several imprudent generalizations. In retrospect, I can’t imagine trying to do this work without an art historian on board and for that I fully appreciate her eagerly agreeing to join my committee from the onset. For every philosophy department that wrestles with whether to keep Pro Sem as part of its curriculum, Lewis Gordon will notice his Pro Sem syllabus at work in these