n. 17 dicembre 2017/marzo 2018

A Painting by Hans Haacke : Dematerializing Labor di Andreas Petrossiants

Artistic activity is a mode – a singular form – of labor power . Antonio Negri, 2008 1

To center an essay concerning the more - than - expansive discursive field denoted by «painting», on just one work by Hans Haacke, might at first glance seem misplaced. However, while Haacke’s work was surely instrumental for the shifts in Western artistic pra ctice comprising the «conceptual turn» of the 1960s and the parallel «dematerialization» of the art object, his painting Taking Stock (unfinished) (1983 - 1984 ) not only brings such broad period generalizations into question, but also examines the labor invo lved in producing (the value of) a painting [fig. 1]. Taking Stock (unfinished) , first exhibited at the Tate Gallery in 1984, depicts Margaret Thatcher in the style of Victorian portraiture, encoded with information concerning the careers and art collectio ns of Charles and Doris Saatchi, as well as their ties to Thatcher and her reactionary government. Referring specifically to the medium and style of the work, Haacke remarks that it was produced to cite and critique how Thatcher «expressly promotes Victori an values, nineteenth century conservative policies at the end of the twentieth century». He continues: « Thatcher would like to rule an imperial Britain. The Falklands War was typical of this mentality». 2 This essay proposes to displace and problematize the traditional discourses applied to historicizing conceptual art, and to describe how Haacke employs both physical «painterly» and immaterial conceptual labor to produce a material object. He fosters a str ategy mirroring the changes in the structure and critical position of the (art) worker

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during the late 1960s. 3 As Isabelle Graw astutely remarks: painting «indeed seems to demonstrate how value is founded in something concrete, the living labor of the arti st». 4 It must also be noted that such a strategy responds explicitly to the market resurgence of painting in the 1980s through hyper - speculation and institutional market - shaping. W hen the insistence on materiality of ( neo ) expressionist painting — that text - b ased/conceptual practices ostensibly operated to make obsolete — returns through a series of market - oriented and hegemonic structures, Haacke’s work makes clear that the act , or perhaps even agency , established by so - called artistic «skill» may continue to c onstitute a critical or subversive mirroring s trategy. We might remember that, notwithstanding that Marx did of course acknowledge that art - working can become just another role in the capitalist division of labour, he was also hopeful for the potentiality of escape from the market via artistic skill. 5 The «living labor» performed by Haacke to create the painting, posited in the work/non - work dialectic, allows painterly skill to emerge as a subve rsive action — albeit in a manner somewhat tongue - in - cheek. The p rimary physical labor — mark - making — involved in the production of such a painting describes its final informational and aesthetic value: an index of signs, as Graw would rightly remark, that point towards information transmitted by Haacke. Douglas Crimp rem arked that the Thatcher painting, and an earlier work featuring a painting of Ronald Reagan — Oelgemaelde, Hommage à Marcel Broodthaers ( Oil Painting, Homage to Marcel Broodthaers [1982]) — «were presumably intended to comment on the relationship between these people’s reactionary politics and the current [1980s] revival of painting in a reactiona ry art - world situation» . 6 This revival of a specific type of painting was exactly the type of market manipulation that the Saatchi collection profited from; they colle cted «works by Baselitz, Chia, Clemente, Guston, Kiefer, Morely, Schnabel, and Stella». 7 Similarly coded into the work is that as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Whitechapel gallery (a public institution as Haacke reminds us), Saatchi «profited fr om inside information about exhibition plans of the Gallery, which allowed him to buy works, notably by Francesco Clemente and Malcolm Morely, at a favorable moment». 8 Interestingly, as this essay will describe, the traditional labor employed in the makin g of a painting — applying paint to a surface, for example — is augmented here. Firstly, by Haacke’s research practice — which Rosalind Krauss has described as his medium — and

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secondly, in the labor undertaken to learn to paint in the style of Victorian portraitu re. Haacke is clearly not a painter, but in the case of Taking Stock (unfinished) , a painting was produced by his hand. Another reason for the form , remarks Haacke, was «to mess up the labels» after he had been «stamped a conceptualist». 9 We might be reminded of the American artist Louise Lawler’s common refrain that she is not a photographer, notwithstanding the fact that much, though surely not all, of her work is often installed or distributed as printed images — more appropriately, as re - iterations and re - performances of «pictures». There is a similar displacement of artist from medium found in the labor Haacke performed in making Taking Stock . The painting does not stand - in for the «liveliness» of a displaced artist, which Graw indicates to be specific to painting. 10 Instead, he displaces himself with indexed information and with feigned/performed «painterly» skill to disrupt the (institutional) system within which his work is shown. Rather than subversion in the traditional sense, this st rategy resembles what Lieven de Cauter has called «subversivity»: a strategy closer to cultural activism than political praxis. 11 To understand the two forms of work undertaken by Haacke, we must acknowledge the autonomist definition of immaterial labor: w ork carried out in post - Fordist/de - industrialized/late capitalist economies that produces material information and data, eschewing physical products. There is a clear temporal link between theorizations of the «dematerialization» of art and the immateriali zation of (art) labor. Antonio Negri has described this historical parallel, summarizing the relationship between periods of artistic activity and «forms of capitalist production and organization of labor». 12 In classical Marxist readings of modern art, Rea lism echoes the centralization of the class struggle, Impressionism mirrors the division and specialization of labor, abstract painting follows the abstraction of labor, and so on, culminating of course in the events of May 1968, which Negri considers «the end the mass worker». 13 It is also when explicit protest meets art production (Art Workers Coalition for example), and when the immaterial (art) worker confronts the dematerializing art object. Both the former and the latter are structures that model or re present abstracted materiality, and stem from the globalized late capitalist marketplace that developed in the post - war West. 14 As Negri and Michael Hardt write in their Empire :

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The immediately social dimension of the exploitation of living immaterial labo r immerses labor in all the relational elements that define the social but also at the same time activate the critical elements that develop the potential of insubordination and revolt through the entire set of laboring practices. 15 Haacke had already acti vated this «critical element» in his art working by producing the landmark works MOMA - Poll (1970) and Shapolsky et al. Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, a Real - Time Social System, as of May 1, 1971 (1971) [fig. 2 and fig. 3 ]. More than a decade later, Taking Stock (unfinished) adjusts this research/text - based strategy for the temporal context of the 1980s to comment on the market for specific styles of painting. Thus, Haacke acts as both painter and immaterial laborer, producing both painted object replete with symbolic imagery and information collected via research. In an interview with Paul Taylor , Haacke remarks: «I don’t engage in formal exploration for its own sake. I choose the medium that appears to be most useful for a particular occasio n or purpose» . 16 When asked if Taking Stock could have employed a photograph of Thatcher instead, Haacke answers with a definitive no, because «photography doesn’t have the aura of painting». 17 In this case, the aura clearly has to do with the specific socio - political re lations denoted by institutionally exhibited painting in the 80s. By inscribing this information into his work, Haacke can utilize various artistic forms to evoke the same critique. The medium is not the (entire) message, but is clearly the container for t he critique; the message is produced by the material/immater ial work constituting its form, and therefore producing its content. This painting emphasizes a particular shortcoming of terminology applied to historicizing the aforementioned conceptual turn; i n particular, we are reminded of Martha Buskirk’s problematizing of the term «dematerialization». In her book The Contingent Object of Contemporary Art , she argues that by displacing once - coveted (modern) artistic autonomy and the singular artwork’s presup posed authenticity, conceptual artists inevitably strengthen the interdependence between the artist and each iteration of an artwork. 18 Such a work, seeking to do away with authenticity, somewhat paradoxically, becomes progressively more contingent upon the artist’s «hand», which we might refer to as (conceptual) skill. As John Roberts notes of such a «reskilling» and «hand»: following the development of immaterial forms of production and the readymade’s becoming an artistic tradition, « the place and functio n of the hand changes

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its role in art». 19 There emerges «a new set of cognitive relations between eye and hand», according to Roberts, and « skill reemerges as the craft of reproducibility and the craft of copying without copying, realigning the emergent totipotentiality of the hand with general social technique». 20 Placing, ordering, and selecting (Roberts) take the place of leaving a painted mark on the canvas — though Haacke does both the former and latte r in his painting : this dual - gesture fostering the crux of the work’s critical strength. We might take his often discussed Der Pralinenmeister ( The Chocolate Master [1981]) as an example of such a «contingent» re - performance of work in various forms throughout his practice [fig. 4 ]. The information accumulated in the research for this wor k is represented in the form of printed diptychs in galleries and museums , but Haacke has also distributed it as an artist’s b ook — not to mention printed in catalogues and the like. In presenting information about the German post - war chocolate magnate and art collector Peter Ludwig, Haacke links Ludwig’s economic exploitation of workers, murky political affiliations, and most impo rtantly how those affiliations were utilized to cultivate an impressive art collection and major international institutional sway. Conveyed via the work’s comprising text, Ludwig can be seen to shrewdly incorporate immense art world power, both as a framer of the art market and of institutional taste. Returning to Negri and Hardt, it becomes clear that this artistic model echoes the changes to the worker in the post - Fordist economy. As they describe: The central role previously occupied by the labor power of mass factory workers in the production of surplus value is today increasingly filled by intellectual, immaterial, and communicative labor power. 21 It is possible to replace the “mass factory worker” with the “painter,” and read the sentence as a descrip tion of conceptualist practices rooted in cognitive labor, research, pedagogy, and publicity. Following this logic, Taking Sto ck (unfinished) stands out as it confronts new (alienated) forms of laboring through the form of a painting — supposedly teleologically «obsolete», but all the more institutionally valuable in the age of late capitalism. Haacke’s practice is firmly rooted in such conceptu al pedagogy, coupled with subversion via the encoded data and subsequent publicity that often accompanied the installation of his earlier works — before “shock” and controversy were welcomed by institutions. This was surely the case with the exhibition of Ta king Stock (unfinished) as well. Most

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tellingly perhaps, one month after its exhibition, Charles Saatchi resigned his position on the Patrons of the New Art Committee at the Tate and his trusteeship at the Whitechapel Gallery as well. 22 Returning to Kraus s’s point that Haacke’s medium is research, it follows that the labor undertaken to produce an artwork is a necessary sub - practice: the work within the artwork, so to speak. 23 His painting remains the form, while the information encoded onto the pictorial s urface takes the place of imagery to become the «content». Krauss also argues, referring to Der Pralinenmeister , that Haacke’s labor echoes art historical research that Ludwig engendered on his collected artworks by loaning them to museums — thereby making h is collection more valuable. Krauss then goes on to describe that Haacke’s «research and the research typical of art history mirror each other». 24 This mimicry is a direct mining of an museological role within an artistic practice. Haacke’s research, unlike that performed by museum workers, clearly points to controversy, scandal, and unsavory institutional practices, with the goal of educating the spectator to destabilize the very role that he mimics. Pierre Bourdieu remarks in conversation with Haacke that in this sort of work, Haacke carries «out a diversion of processes used by wise managers», and furthermore that he creates «an analysis of the symbolic strategies of ‹patrons› in order to devise a kind of action that will turn their own weapons against the m». 25 Bourdieu also says to Haacke that «the work’s aesthetic necessity has to do with the fact that you say things, but in a form that is equally necessary, and just as subversive, as what you say». 26 Haacke’s response is revealing: «‹Form› speaks and ‹content› is inscribed in ‹form›». 27 Interestingly the traditional mode of describing a painting, as a material on a specific support — for example the ubiquitous «oil on canvas» — here becomes the entire support; in other words: «oi l on canvas» takes the place of the support , and information take s the place of the material. As such, we mig ht refer to the medium of Taking Stock (unfinished) as «information on oil - o n - canvas». With this, we can return to the fraught notion of dematerialization, and make the case for Haacke’s dematerializing or « immaterializing » of labor, rather th an of the art object . Haac ke succeeds in molding together painting — Victorian no less — and con ceptualism, creating a critical and mate rial (art) object from the joint material/immaterial labor of paint ing and research.

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Returning to Graw’s arguments for the inherent indexicality of painting, we see that her model ceases to apply to Taking Stock without a minor adjustment. Such indexicality , as proposed by Graw, is different here from the examples she provides, due to the signified that Haacke’s painted signs point to wards . Rather than acting as a sign for t he absent author, the information instead points to the intricate socio - political relations undergirding art’s exhibition, collection, and historicization in the museum — in this case, the relations between the Saatchi advertisin g empire, market speculation, and their art collection. And so, while th e sign depicted is That cher sitting in a ( highly - symbolic ) Victorian interior, the signified is the profoundly unsettling intermingling of neo - liberal media control, art world complicity with (in) biopolitical structures , reactionary politics, and furthermore the state of the alienated (art) worker, rather than the absent author named in the accompanying wall label or text.

IMAGE CAPTIONS 1. Hans Haacke, Taking Stock (unfinished) , 1983 - 1984, oil on canvas, gilded frame . © Hans Haacke / VG Bild - Kunst. Courtesy the ar tist and Paula Cooper Gallery, New York. 2. Hans Haacke, MOMA - Poll , 1970, 2 transparent ballot boxes with automatic counters, color – coded ballots. © Hans Haacke / VG Bild - Kunst. Courtesy the artist and Paula Cooper Gallery, New York. 3. Hans Haacke, Shapolsky et al. Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, a Real - Time Social System, as of May 1, 1971 , 1971, two maps (photo - enlargements) black & white photographs; 142 typewritten sheets; 6 charts; one explanatory panel. © Hans Haacke / VG Bild - Kunst. Courtesy the artist and Paula Cooper Gallery, New York. Photo by Roland Fritsch. 4. Hans Haacke, Der Pralinenmeister , 1981. © Hans Haacke / VG Bild - Kunst. Courtesy the artist and Paula Cooper Gallery, New York.

1 Antonio Negri, “Metamorphoses: Art and Immaterial Labor,” in Art and Multitude: Nine Letters on Art, Followed by Metamorphoses: Art and Immaterial Labor , trans. Ed Emery (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2011), 108. This essay was presented by Negri at the Tate Britain on 19 January 2008. 2 Hans Haacke, in Yve - Alain Bois, Douglas Crimp, Rosalind Krauss, and Haacke, “A Conversation with Hans Haacke,” October , vol. 30 Autumn, 1984, pp. 24 - 28. The work was first sho wn at Tate in the 1984 exhibition “Hans Haacke.” See the exhibition pamphlet: Catherine Lacey, “Hans Haacke” (London: Tate Gallery, 1984). Included in the exhibition was also Oelgemaelde, Hommage à Marcel Broodthaers ( Oil Painting, Homage to Marcel Broodth aers (1982), comprised in part by a painting of Ronald Reagan, also

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physically painted by Haacke. Taking Stock is conspicuously missing from the pamphlet, purportedly due to the time of printing. 3 See: Julia Bryan - Wilson, Art Workers: Radical Practice in the Vietnam War Era , (Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press, 2009), in particular the chapter on Haacke: “Hans Haacke’s Paperwork.” 4 Isabelle Graw, “The Value of Painting — Notes on Unspecificity, Quasi - Persons and Value,” Pa per presented at International Conference, “The Labor of the Multitude? The Political Economy of Social Creativity,” 20 - 22 October 2011, Free/Slow University of Warsaw; accessed from “Isabelle Graw: ‘The Value of Painting — Notes on Unspecificity, Quasi - Pers ons and Value,’ Vimeo , last accessed 22 July 2017, https://vimeo.com/32747382. 5 See: Karl Marx, Grundrisse , ed. and trans. David McLellan (New York: Harper and Row, 1971). 6 Crimp, in “A Conversation with Hans Haacke,” 25. 7 Information provided by Haac ke to accompany Taking Stock (unfinished) , Ibid., 27. 8 Ibid. 9 Haacke, in Ibid., 34. 10 Isabelle Graw, “The Value of Liveliness: Painting as an Index of Agency in the New Economy,” in Painting Beyond Itself: The Medium in the Post - Medium Condition (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2016), 80 - 81. 11 Lieven De Cauter, “Notes on Subversion/Theses on Activism,” in Art and Activism in the Age of Globalization , eds. De Cauter, Ruben de Roo, and Karel Vanhaesebrouck (Rotterdam: NAi, 2008). I am borrowing Roxana Ma rcoci’s eloquent definition of de Cauter’s term; see: Roxana Marcoci, “An Exhibition Produces,” in Louise Lawler: Receptions , ed. Emily Hall, exh. cat., pp. 20 - 29 (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2017). 12 Antonio Negri, “Metamorphoses: Art and Immaterial Labor,” 102. It is important to note that Negri believes that we have, in our contemporary moment, surpassed postmodernity, and with it immaterial, cognitive, and affective labor; he argues that with «contemporaneity» we have transformed immaterial labor i nto biopolitical labor: “into activity which reproduces forms of life.” Ibid., 115. On cognitive capitalism, a third era of capitalism that follows mercantile and industrial capitalism, see the book: Cognitive Capitalism, Education and Digital Labor , eds. Michael A. Peters and Ergin Bulut (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2011), which begins with an essay by Negri. 13 Negri, “Metamorphoses,” 102 - 106. 14 See: Ernst Mandel, Late Capitalism (London and New York: Verso, 1978). See also: Frederic Jameson, “Postm odernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,” New Left Review , n. 146 (August, 1984). 15 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 29 16 Haacke in, Interview by Paul Taylor, “Hans Haacke: The Art of Pol itics,” Flash Art , n. 261 (July/September, 2008), accessed from: http://www.flashartonline.com/article/hans - haacke - 2/. 17 Ibid. 18 Martha Buskirk, The Contingent Object of Contemporary Art (Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 2003). See also: Lucy R. Lipp ard and John Chandler, “The Dematerialization of Art,” [written late 1967] Art International , vol. 12, no. 2 (February, 1968), pp. 31 - 36. 19 John Roberts, The Intangibilities of Form (London: Verso, 2007), 88. 20 Ibid., 88 and 98. 21 Negri and Hardt, 29. 22 Hans Haacke, “Taking Stock (unfinished), 1983 - 1984,” in Working Conditions: The Writings of Hans Haacke , ed. Alexander Alberro (Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 2016), 109 - 110. 23 Elsewhere I have called this artistic strategy «labour en abyme» following Craig Owens’s discussion of «photography en abyme». See: Craig Owens, “Photography ‘en abyme’,” October , vol. 5 (Summer, 1978), pp. 73 - 88. See my “Working Without a Break: The Echoes of Changing Labour Structures,” (MA Thesis, C ourtauld Institute of Art, 2017), for a prolonged discussion of the strategy with regards to the work of Haacke, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Lawler, and Jill Magid. 24 Rosalind Krauss, in “A Conversation with Hans Haacke,” 37. 25 Pierre Bourdieu in conversatio n with Hans Haacke, “‘Free Exchange,’ 1994, with Pierre Bourdieu (excerpts),” in Working Conditions , 176 (see note 22). Full text published in English as: Pierre Bourdieu and Hans Haacke, Free Exchange (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1995). 26 Bourdieu, in I bid., 181.

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27 Haacke, in Ibid.

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