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Untitled (Galvanized 1 Iron Wall), 1974 The Contingent Object of Contemporary Art This page intentionally left blank The Contingent Object of Contemporary Art martha buskirk THE MIT PRESS cambridge, massachusetts london, england © 2003 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. This book was set in Minion, Syntax, and Scala Sans by Graphic Composition, Inc., Athens, Georgia, and was printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Buskirk, Martha. The contingent object of contemporary art / Martha Buskirk. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-262-02539-6 (hc. : alk. paper) 1. Art—Reproduction. 2. Art—Attribution. 3. Art, Modern—20th century. 4. Aesthetics, Modern— 20th century. I. Title. N8580 .B87 2003 709'.04'5—dc21 2002038061 Contents acknowledgments vii introduction 1 1 authorship and authority 19 2 original copies 59 3 medium and materiality 107 4 context as subject 161 5 contingent objects 211 notes 261 selected bibliography 287 index 297 This page intentionally left blank acknowledgments This book would not have happened without the time afforded by a Bunting Fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study during 2000–2001. My first thanks therefore go to the people whose advice and assistance were crucial as I was pursuing this fellowship, specifically Carol Armstrong, Laura Hoptman, Rosalind Krauss, Kathy O’Dell, and Laura Tonelli. I also benefited from a sabbatical leave from my teaching duties, which was sup- ported by Kate Bodin, John Raimo, and the many colleagues at Montserrat College of Art who took over my responsibilities while I was away. Rita Nakashima Brock, Director of the Bunting Fellowship Program, provided important support for the research that I under- took during the Bunting year. Nor would this book be possible without a publisher, which it found with the encouragement and support of Roger Conover at the MIT Press. It is difficult to imagine researching a contemporary topic without the excellent re- sources and knowledgeable librarians at the Museum of Modern Art Library. The Research Library of the Getty Research Institute, particularly the Special Collections staff, provided access to important firsthand documents in the collection. The Fine Arts Library at Har- vard University has been indispensable on an ongoing basis, and Abby Smith in particular has helped with many urgent requests. I would also like to thank the artists whose work I discuss, particularly those who have taken the time to talk about aspects of their work with me over the years that I have been considering these issues. In addition, the images for this book came from many places, and the book in its present form would not have been pos- sible without the help of many artists, artists’ assistants, galleries, museums, and others who provided images or helped direct me to their source. Three people in particular, Linda Norden, Kim Sichel, and Ronnie Wright, volun- teered to read the entire manuscript, which has benefited enormously from their generos- ity. The early stages of the writing process took place in the context of a works-in-progress group at the Bunting. Denise Buell, Alison Crocetta, Colleen Kiely, Sue Miller, Angelica Nuzzo, and Daryl Tress all helped shape the initial formulation of these ideas. At the MIT Press, Matthew Abbate’s thoughtful attention to the text and Erin Hasley’s elegant design gave the book its final form. Many others have read sections of this project at different stages or have provided other important support during the research and writing: Bill Arning, Barbara Bosworth, Judy Brown, Michelle Brown, Alan Colby, Susan Edwards, Jane Farver, Ana Guerra, Blyth Hazen, Patricia Johnston, Caroline Jones, Masako Kamiya, Therese Lichtenstein, Sarah Lowe, Joanne Lukitsh, Roxana Marcoci, Siobhan McDonald- Stowell, Terry and Sam Moriber, Christopher Phillips, Lisa Reeve, Robin Reisenfeld, Vir- ginia Rutledge, Sandy Schleinz, Vernon Shetley, Elisabeth Smith, Beatrice St. Laurent, Liselot van der Heyden, and Lawrence Waung. I also thank my parents, Mary and Fred Buskirk, and my sister, Janet Buskirk, for all their encouragement. Finally, and most of all, I would like to thank Scott Hadfield, who read every word, often more than once, and pro- vided his enthusiastic support along every step of the way. The Contingent Object of Contemporary Art Robert Morris, Statement of Esthetic Withdrawal, 1963. Typed and nota- rized statement on paper and sheet of lead over wood mounted in imi- 5 tation leather mat, overall 17 ⁄8" x 3 23 ⁄4". The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Gift of Philip Johnson. © 2002 Robert Morris / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo © 2001 The Museum of Modern Art, New York. introduction Consider two examples. One is a notarized statement incorporated into a metal, wood, and imitation leather construction, and the other is an ad published in a major art maga- zine. Both were authored by artists, employ the written word to make a statement about authorship, and relate to works in which the artist’s hand or touch has been displaced to varying degrees by the use of manufactured components or techniques of industrial fabri- Advertisement placed by Donald cation. But there the similarities end, because the first, Robert Morris’s 1963 Statement of Judd, Art in America, March 1990. Esthetic Withdrawal, plays ironically on the power of the artist to author a work through an act of designation by presenting a legalistic inversion of such an act, whereas the second, a 1990 ad taken out by Donald Judd in Art in America, is an utterly serious repudiation of a work that Judd did not want presented under his name. Morris’s Statement refers to his 1963 Litanies, a construction in which a hanging ring holds 27 keys. Each key is inscribed with a word taken from a translation of one of the notes that comprise Marcel Duchamp’s Green Box, a text consisting of a series of litanies ascribed by Duchamp to the chariot or sleigh component of his Large Glass. Morris exhibited Lita- nies in his first solo exhibition, where it was bought by Philip Johnson. Statement came six months later, when Morris still had not received payment and responded with the follow- ing declaration, duly signed and notarized: “The undersigned, ROBERT MORRIS, being the maker of the metal construction entitled LITANIES, described in the annexed Exhibit A, hereby withdraws from said construction all esthetic quality and content and declares that from the date hereof said construction has no such quality and content.” The play with legal rhetoric continues in the relief presented as Exhibit A, which portrays front and pro- file views of Litanies incised in lead, the same material used in Litanies itself. One issue raised by Morris’s statement is the question of what power an artist contin- ues to have over a work of art after it has left the artist’s possession; in particular, to what degree the artist can change the status of the work without physically altering the object it- self. If it is the aesthetic of the piece that is at issue, as the wording of the statement suggests, one then has to ask by what aesthetic criteria we judge a work such as Litanies: a construc- tion consisting of a ready-made ring, individually worked keys, and, set into the lead sur- face above the hook from which the ring hangs, a brass lock. What is the content of a work that makes textual reference to another artist, with those references inscribed on keys that will never unlock the actual lock below which they are suspended? If a legal declaration can purport to remove aesthetic quality and content from a work, the statement also forces us to consider how these qualities might have entered the work in the first place. The familiar form of keys on a ring continues the challenge presented by Duchamp in the beginning of the twentieth century, when he invented the concept of the readymade to describe works of art he made simply by selecting and so designating a series of everyday objects chosen precisely because of their familiarity. Although both Litanies and Statement of Esthetic Withdrawal are constructions rather than readymades, the readymade certainly lies behind Statement, since the linguistic withdrawal of aesthetic attributes (even if ironic) implies a preceding possibility, the radical act of designation rather than making through which the readymade is produced. The ultimate irony of Statement lies in the fact that, far from sub- tracting content from Litanies, it adds to the subtle paradox already contained in the jux- taposition of textual keys and an actual, if nonfunctional, lock. Furthermore, the act of adding a retroactive overlay of interest to the initial construction suggestively echoes the role that the notes published in Duchamp’s Green Box played in relation to his Large Glass. The second statement, Judd’s quarter-page advertisement in the March 1990 Art in America, consists of black text surrounded by a simple black outline: “The Fall 1989 show of sculpture at Ace Gallery in Los Angeles exhibited an installation wrongly attributed to Donald Judd. Fabrication of the piece was authorized by Giuseppe Panza without the ap- proval or permission of Donald Judd.” The ad therefore announces a much more com- prehensive withdrawal, one that encompasses not just aesthetic quality and content but authorship in its entirety. The dispute concerned a 1974 work owned by Giuseppe Panza and installed in his villa in Varese, Italy, which consists of an uninterrupted row of largely identical five-foot-high galvanized iron plates affixed via hidden brackets so that they stand eight inches in front of the wall along three sides of a room.
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