Artists' Interventions As Interpretive Strategies in Galleries and Museums
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How did the Reticent Object become so Obliging? Artists' Interventions as Interpretive Strategies in Galleries and Museums Claire Robins Thesis submitted to the University of London for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2009 2-010_ Supervisors: Dr Pam Meecham and Dr Nicholas Addison Institute of Education, University of London Declaration This doctoral study was conducted under the supervision of Dr Pam Meecham and Dr Nicholas Addison. I hereby declare that, except where explicit attribution is made, the work presented in this thesis is entirely my own. This work has not been submitted for any other degree or award in any other university or educational establishment. Word count (exclusive of appendices, list of references and bibliography): 84,364 words Claire Robins ii Acknowledgements For their knowledge, insight, humour and encouragement I would like to thank my supervisors Pam Meecham and Nicholas Addison. I would also like to thank the other friends and colleagues who read parts of this thesis at various stages of its development and from whose comments I have benefitted: John Reeve, Roy Prentice and Carey Jewitt. I am very grateful to those who gave up their time to talk to me: Ken Arnold, George Ciscle, Erin Kimes, and indebted to the sympathetic professionalism of Josephine Borradaile, Peter Cormack, Julien Hutton, Roz Mortimer, Peter Thomas and lastly to Hylton Stockwell, whose unflinching support and understanding made this thesis possible. Dedicated to the memory of my mother: Olive Courtney iii This research is motivated by two central questions 1. Why have Artists' Interventions become so widely deployed by galleries and museums as interpretive strategies intended to facilitate (and challenge) visitors' meaning making processes? 2. In what ways does the employment of a parodic or disruptive tactic, common to many Artist's Interventions, contribute to the production of new meanings in galleries and museums? THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN REDACTED DUE TO THIRD PARTY RIGHTS OR OTHER LEGAL ISSUES Sophie Calle From The Appointment (1999), an intervention at The Freud Museum, London iv Abstract This is a study about knowledge/power in galleries and museums, contested and re- configured by a genre of artworks, referred to as Artists' Interventions. Such artworks, their intended functions, and pedagogic uses are the locus of the study. I define galleries and museums as inherently pedagogic institutions, which have historically constructed and disseminated dominant systems of value. In order to examine in what ways these values have been reconfigured through Artists' Interventions, I undertake a historiography of the role of the gallery and museum. In defining interventions, I differentiate between interventionist artworks that disrupt and contest the 'normative' or dominant discourse of galleries and museums, and artworks that support and confirm established interpretations of art and artefacts, and focus attention on the former. I propose art-historical predecessors for Artists' Interventions and situate contemporary initiatives in relation to disruptive, dialogic and parodic methodologies. These are more closely examined in a central case study, a practice-based aspect of the thesis in which I make my own intervention, An Elite Experience for Everyone, performed and exhibited at the William Morris Gallery, London (2005). Where Artists' Interventions have emerged against a backdrop of dominant regulatory and divisionary discourse their disruptive and parodic strategies re-establish the museum as a discursive forum. However, the trope of disruption and dialogue has recently been accommodated within curatorial and pedagogic initiatives. Only the trickster is allowed to evade this assimilation. v Contents List of Figures 9 1. Introduction 11 Word domination 12 Interpretation 15 Dialogic potential 16 Updating the context 21 Definitions 24 What is an Artists' Intervention? 24 Galleries and museums 28 2. Methodology 29 Tracing historical trajectories 29 Activating the passivity of the viewer 32 Research sites, collections and exhibitions 33 Art practice: borrowing across intellectual traditions 35 Art practice as research 36 Learning and teaching 37 A case study 40 3. Galleries and Museums as Pedagogic Institutions 43 Outline of chapter 43 Introduction 43 Pre-Enlightenment: collections for the curious 45 Spectacular visions 46 Spectacle the antithesis of dialogue? 47 Display and containment, marking difference 47 Scopophilia and the imaginative allure of anecdote 48 Joining things up 49 Weaving tall stories 49 The Enlightenment 51 New values new orders 52 Teaching machines 54 Progress writ large 55 Against the pleasure principle 56 Science rules and measures 57 Objects at the service of the nation state 58 `For want of a little information' 60 What comes first the visitor or the object? 61 Expansion of cultural institutions 61 Transformational institutions 62 Serving the Commonwealth 63 Labels and tables 65 The corporate museum and the emergence of a New Museology 68 From reticent to obliging object 70 4. Cultivating Disruption through Intervention 74 Outline of chapter 74 Part 1: Seeds of dissent — 1920s and 1930s 77 Is it art when you say it's art or when I say it's art? 77 Questioning authority 77 The spirit of `blague' 79 A new sense of order — curating and negating 82 Confrontational aesthetics 83 Critiquing colonial methodologies for displaying others 84 Part 2: The germination of Institutional Critique 88 An art of change 88 Instituting critique 90 Climate changes in fields of knowledge 91 Taking Formalist values apart 93 Questioning the site 95 Back to the gallery or museum with more questions 96 vi Questioning the structure 98 Cleaning the museum 100 What needs to be concealed in order that we can see? 102 Artists as curators and directors 102 You can't be serious 104 Power, knowledge, eagles 105 Materialising language 110 Part 3: The contingency of art and knowledge in a climate of change 116 Demise of the radical 118 The neo-avant-garde 118 The onset of pragmatism 119 Expanding to new sites 120 Mining the Museum: a closer look 121 Breaking with passivity 124 Theorised art practice 127 Parody performed 128 Uninvited intervention 128 5. Case Study — An Elite Experience for Everyone: an intervention at the William Morris Gallery, London 131 The context for my intervention 133 William Morris's beard 135 The script unpicked 137 Section 1: In the foyer of the gallery 137 Section 2: Gallery rules 140 Section 3: William Morris's coffee cup 141 Section 4: William Morris's satchel 144 Section 5: William Morris's beard 146 The performance contextualised 149 The volunteer tour guide 150 'Speaking in quotation marks' 151 Is seeing believing? 152 The museum's reach 155 6. Humour, Irony and Parodic Methodology in Artists' Interventions 156 Introduction 156 Discovering parody 157 Defining parody and parodic method 159 Defining irony 160 Interpreting parody and irony in galleries and museums 166 Irony as a curatorial strategy 169 Tricksters, jokers, clowns, shamen and artists 170 The artist's joke 170 Acting the fool 171 Performing the unspeakable, breaking social codes and conventions 173 Vaccination 173 The paradox of confrontational and parodic practices employed as form of cultural amelioration 174 Reconfiguring understandings 176 The butt of the joke 178 Passivity and criticality 179 Truth and beauty? 182 Maryland Historic Society, ten years after Mining the Museum 182 Changing the balance of power 185 Expressing dissent: confronting the visitor 187 Should we agree to disagree or disagree to agree? 189 The place of art in eliciting criticality and emotionality in interpretation 191 Reclaiming lost sensations 194 7. Integrating Contemporary Art and Re-investing in Emotion and Curiosity at Wellcome Collection, London 196 8. Conclusion 203 Revisiting the research questions 203 Contributing through irony and parody to visitors' meaning making processes 203 Changing attitudes to visitors and interpretation 204 vii The necessity of moving beyond a concept of a reticent object 206 The role of Artists' Interventions in opening up micro and counter narratives in galleries and museums 208 Facilitating understanding between past, present, socio-political and cultural differences 209 The unstable position of artists as invited interventionists 210 Summary 213 Bibliography 216 Appendices 234 Appendix 1: Interview with George Ciscle, former director of The Contemporary, Baltimore, USA. Conducted on the 24th April 2007 at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) 234 Appendix 2: Transcript of the official audio guide, Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain 242 Appendix 3: DVD An Elite Experience for Everyone (2005), three clips. 244 viii List of Figures Frontispiece: Sophie Calle From The Appointment (1999) Fig. 1: Fred Wilson Mixed Metaphors (1993) 14 Fig. 2: Rebecca Belmore Exhibit 671B (1988) 19 Fig. 3: Andy Goldsworthy's Sandwork (1994) 25 Fig. 4: Joseph Kosuth's The Play of the Unmentionable (1991) 26 Fig. 5: Juan Capistran The Breaks (2000) 27 Fig. 6: Hubert Duprat Trichopteres (2000) 34 Fig. 7: Thomas Griinfeld Misfits (1994) 50 Fig. 8: Mark Dion Scala Naturae (1994) 53 Fig. 9: Drawing for Scala Naturae, The Great Chain of Being (1994) 53 Fig. 10: Alfred H. Barr Jr Flow Chart (1936) 66 Fig. 11: Marcel Broodthaers's notice `Musee a Vendre' (1972) 68 Fig. 12: Michael Asher Revealing the Frame (1974) 99 Fig. 13: Mierle Laderman Ukeles Hartford Wash: Washing Tracks, Maintenance Outside (1973) 100 Fig. 14: Andy Warhol Raid the Icebox (1970) 104 Fig. 15: Marcel Duchamp Fountain (1917) 108 Fig. 16: Marcel Broadthaers 'Section des Figures' in Der Adler Vom Oligozan Bis Heute (1972) 109 Fig. 17: Ad Reinhardt How to Look at Modern Art in America (1961) 112 Fig. 18: Fred Wilson From Mining the Museum (1992) 123 Fig. 19: Susan Hiller At the Freud Museum (1994) 126 Fig. 20: Andrea Fraser Little Frank and His Carp (2004) 129 Fig. 21: News From Nowhere: Visions of Utopia (2005) Exhibition catalogue produced in the form of a newspaper 132 Fig. 22: Michael Craig-Martin An Oak Tree (1974) 162 Fig.