Performance Photographs and Artist Interviews in the Contemporary A
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All We Have: Performance Photographs and Artist Interviews in the Contemporary A Dissertation SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Rachel M. Wolff IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Jane Blocker June 2016 Rachel M. Wolff 2016 Copyright ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS While writing this dissertation, I watched The Shining many times. This wasn’t only about the idea that “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” though I’m sure I had some moments resembling that. My obsession with the film was, in fact, completely about the end. Trapped in a snowy maze, terrorized by a mutated father who wields an ax and bad intentions, little boy Danny realizes that he must walk backwards in his own footsteps in order to mask his movements and trick his pursuer. In this moment, the only way to safety is to retrace one’s own steps. My situation is surely not anywhere near as dire, but this retracing of steps is the task at hand. Such a concern is about charting a path through the dizzying maze of writing about pictures and words, of putting together a project like the dissertation, but it’s also a matter of acknowledging the steps one takes along the way, to know that you walked with purpose and with guidance, to make it to safety. With that in mind, I first need to thank my excellent committee. Michael Gaudio provided necessary breadth for this project at its very beginning and, in his role as Director of Graduate Studies, expanded much of its research through departmental enthusiasm and support. Cindy Garcia’s course on race, diasporas, and performance built an exceptional reading list for many of these themes, and she has helped me understand how photographs move and change across the disciplines. Jennifer Marshall is the best advocate one could hope for: fierce, funny, and caring. Her rigorous yet ever engaged writing practice has shaped my own in so many ways. As for Jane Blocker, it is almost surreal to acknowledge her here, as it was while reading her acknowledgments in What the Body Cost that I realized I desperately wanted to work with her. Her writing in that book is honest, meticulous, and intimate—all things that she is in person as well. She is a good listener, a careful talker, and willingly devotes an incredible amount of intellect and patience in me as an advisee and a person. I don’t take it for granted. Both Jane and Jenn bring an immense amount of investment not only to their work, but also their relationships. They are such exceptional role models for how to be a scholar and a human, and there have been many times in this process that I am quite positive I owe them just about everything. I remain grateful to my advisors at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, who fundamentally and critically shaped who I am as an art historian. David Getsy introduced me to much of the scholarship that I still love the most, and continues to support my work. Debra Mancoff instilled in me that the backbone of good scholarship is invested research. Daniel Quiles taught me that what we do is at its best when we are as generous in our engagement as we are human in our practice. I also want to thank my extended University of Minnesota writing family at the Center for Writing. Emily Bruce was the first person to read early versions of my chapters, and our conversations provided formative insight. Steph Rollag Yoon sat i across from me almost every week, as both writing consultant and co-mentor, endlessly listening and listing, to keep me going when I often couldn’t or wouldn’t go. Through the Dissertation Writing Retreat, Katie Levin created a writing oasis that launched me into work on this project in earnest. From her I learned not just how to talk about writing, but also how to trick yourself into actually doing it. I appreciate all of my colleagues in the graduate program at the University of Minnesota, who work hard to create an environment that is engaged and supportive. I simply cannot give enough thanks to one of them, Aron Lorber. Aron is a stabilizing force, both as a colleague and as a friend. I have a feeling it is quite rare to know someone like Aron, who is so smart about so many things that you know you want to be in his atmosphere for the long haul. I am lucky to have many friends who make exceptional colleagues and vice versa, though I owe three in particular lengthier statements of gratitude. Anthony Romero’s influence marks so many aspects of this dissertation; he has made me a sharper, riskier, and more passionate thinker. Allison Richards and I put in many writing hours together, motoring each other through not just our dissertations but through life’s ups and downs. Danica Sachs is a one-woman long-distance writing group and a tireless cheerleader, whose keen attention to artworks continually incites me to go back to the object when the going gets tough. I am incredibly grateful for my parents, who enthusiastically supported my pursuit of art history as both a career and a passion, and are equally appreciative of what they learned along the way. And in this process, I am most personally indebted to Nick Lambert. I hope that I have not reminded him too much of Jack Nicholson at the typewriter. Nick’s support has been a constant from our very beginning, when I tentatively asked if he might be willing to drive many hours through the desert to see something called the Spiral Jetty and, without hesitation, he answered – yes. ii DEDICATION For my mom, my favorite teacher. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Illustrations v Introduction 1 Chapter One: The photographs in our hands 56 Chapter Two: The other side of the tape 115 Conclusion 167 Illustrations 171 Bibliography 185 iv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure 1 – James VanDerZee, Family Portrait, 1926 22 Figure 2 – Yoko Ono, Cut Piece, 1965 56, 62 Figure 3 – Hippolyte Bayard, Self-Portrait as a Drowned Man, 1840 57 Figure 4 – Detail of book page from Yoko Ono: Arias and Objects (1991) by Barbara Haskell and John Hanhardt 63 Figure 5 – Full book pages from Yoko Ono: Arias and Objects (1991), by Barbara Haskell and John Hanhardt 65 Figure 6 – Yoko Ono, Audience Piece, 1962 77 Figure 7 – Cindy Sherman, Untitled #242, 1991 (from the Civil War Series) 80 Figure 8 – Full book page from Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment (2011), by Rebecca Schneider 82 Figure 9 – Detail of book page from Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment (2011), by Rebecca Schneider 87 Figure 10 – Marina Abramović, Rhythm 0, 1974 92 Figure 11 – Marina Abramović, Rhythm 0, 1974 92 Figure 12 – Marina Abramović, The Artist is Present, 2010 100 Figure 13 – Selection of audience portraits from The Artist is Present, 2010 101 Figure 14 – Yoko Ono, Clock Piece, 1965 112 Figure 15 – Spread from Jackson Pollock article in Life Magazine, August 1949 147 Figure 16 – Pollock painting as photographed by Hans Namuth, 1950 148 Figure 17 - Pollock’s body at the scene of his car accident, August 1965 149 v Introduction In his 1998 catalogue essay for the Jackson Pollock exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, then-Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture Kurt Varnedoe speculates on the continued significance of Pollock’s paintings for artists, scholars, and art critics. MoMA’s show was dedicated to understanding Pollock as a breakthrough artist, one who put United States painting on the map in a way that finally rivaled Europe. As the first New York retrospective for Pollock since the one mounted in 1967, just ten years after the artist’s death, the museum situated his legacy within the scholarship and art criticism that had been produced about him.1 Despite this setting, in his catalogue introduction, called “Comet: Jackson Pollock’s Life and Work,” Varnedoe emphasizes the continued presence of Pollock’s production as existing in mostly “unrecorded, nonverbal, subjective responses.”2 Varnedoe offers this as a counter to the copious and prolific amount of writing done about Pollock, which potentially threatens to compete with the paintings themselves. He writes, “There was a time when it seemed very important that these be pictures without words—when the man who made them and many who were drawn to them believed that trying to say what they meant was a pointless betrayal.”3 Here, Varnedoe looks back to the beginnings of Abstract Expressionism, 1 At the time of the exhibition, MoMA launched an interactive online portion of the exhibition, still visible here: http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/1998/pollock/website100/index. html. That text frames Pollock and the exhibition primarily within art criticism, introducing him to viewers through lines from critics writing about his work and life. 2 Kirk Varnedoe, “Comet: Jackson Pollock’s Life and Work,” in Jackson Pollock, ed. Kirk Varnedoe (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1998), 77. 3 Ibid. 1 indicating that the work at its time of production appeared unsophisticated or even “inarticulate,” as he says, thereby resisting words entirely. At the same time, he is drawing on the indescribability of a genius such as Pollock, whose mythic legacy is now surrounded and supported by words, including those of the popular press, art critics, art historians, and well-circulated gossip. In the face of the changes from 1956 (when Pollock died) to 1998, Varnedoe reflects, “By now, though, these are pictures amply wrapped in words: the many stories have themselves become a story, and cocoon the work so densely that a full-time devotee of Pollock studies might thrive without ever escaping their fabric.”4 Varnedoe does not conclude that such words can overtake pictures—he closes his essay by stating that “no matter how daunting the store of verbiage on art, there is always…a great deal (sometimes the core) left over, and only learnable first hand”5—but his concern about the possibility of words eclipsing pictures points to a tension between the artwork and what is said about it.