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The Self-Conscious Artist and the Politics of Art: from Institutional Critique to Underground Cinema

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The Self-Conscious Artist and the Politics of Art: from Institutional Critique to Underground Cinema THE SELF-CONSCIOUS ARTIST AND THE POLITICS OF ART: FROM INSTITUTIONAL CRITIQUE TO UNDERGROUND CINEMA SOPHIA KOSMAOGLOU JUNE 2012 THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF FINE ART AT GOLDSMITHS, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON. THE SELF-CONSCIOUS ARTIST AND THE POLITICS OF ART by Sophia Kosmaoglou is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. 1 THE SELF-CONSCIOUS ARTIST AND THE POLITICS OF ART: FROM INSTITUTIONAL CRITIQUE TO UNDERGROUND CINEMA ABSTRACT The current debates about political art or aesthetic politics do not take the politics of art into account. How can artists address social politics when the politics of art remain opaque? Artists situated critically within the museum self-consciously acknowledge the institutional frame and their own complicity with it. Artists’ compromised role within the institution of art obscures their radically opposed values. Institutions are conservative hierarchies that aim to augment and consolidate their authority. How can works of art be liberating when the institutional conditions within which they are exhibited are exclusive, compromised and exploitive? Despite their purported neutrality, art institutions instrumentalise art politically and ideologically. Institutional mediation defines the work of art in the terms of its own ideology, controlling the legitimate discourse on value and meaning in art. In a society where everything is instrumentalised and heteronomously defined, autonomous art performs a social critique. Yet how is it possible to make autonomous works of art when they are instantly recuperated by commercial and ideological interests? At a certain point, my own art practice could no longer sustain these contradictions. This thesis researches the possibilities for a sustainable and uncompromised art practice. If art is the critical alternative to society then it must function critically and alternatively. Artistic ambition is not just a matter of aesthetic objectives or professional anxiety; it is particularly a matter of the values that artists affirm through their practice. Art can define its own terms of production and the burden of responsibility falls on artists. The Exploding Cinema Collective has survived independently for twenty years, testifying to this principle. Autonomy is a valuable tool in the critique of heteronomy, but artists must assert it. The concept of the autonomy of art must be replaced with the concept of the autonomy of the artist. KEYWORDS: art, art institution, autonomy, institution, contemporary art, critique, Exploding Cinema, institutional critique, ideology, politics, political, aesthetic, agency, museum, use-value, underground cinema. 2 THE SELF-CONSCIOUS ARTIST AND THE POLITICS OF ART: FROM INSTITUTIONAL CRITIQUE TO UNDERGROUND CINEMA CONTENTS ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 2 CONTENTS ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 3 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................................................................................. 5 Interest and ambition .......................................................................................... 6 De-mystification .................................................................................................. 9 Art history and international contemporary art .................................................... 12 CHAPTER ONE: “INSTITUTIONALISED CRITIQUE” ................................................................................................................ 16 Critique and its vicissitudes ................................................................................ 23 What is the “institution of art”? .......................................................................... 27 The art institution as a discursive formation ........................................................ 35 Critique within the institution ............................................................................. 40 The defence of autonomy .................................................................................. 44 Critique and the instrumentalisation of art .......................................................... 48 Critique of institutional critique .......................................................................... 55 Epilogue of institutional critique ......................................................................... 57 CHAPTER TWO: THE VICISSITUDES OF AUTONOMY........................................................................................................... 59 A self-conscious institution ................................................................................ 62 The critical function of autonomous art .............................................................. 63 Autonomy and heteronomy ............................................................................... 66 What is the value of artistic autonomy? .............................................................. 71 Institutional autonomy ...................................................................................... 75 Autonomy and philosophy ................................................................................. 79 CHAPTER THREE: GREAT EXPECTATIONS ............................................................................................................................... 83 Institutionalisation ............................................................................................ 85 Undecidability, indeterminacy and plurality ......................................................... 97 How do we recognise art? ............................................................................... 103 An institution of legitimisation .......................................................................... 111 The museum as parergon ................................................................................ 115 3 The institution as a productive apparatus ......................................................... 117 Neutralisation and the accretion of value and sense .......................................... 120 Politics and the war of culture .......................................................................... 124 The three fields: society, power and art ........................................................... 129 The Politics of art ............................................................................................ 133 CHAPTER FOUR: NO STARS NO FUNDING NO TASTE ......................................................................................................... 139 ARTISTS MARCH ON THE MUSEUM .................................................................. 142 THE EXPLODING CINEMA ................................................................................ 145 THE LONDON FILM-MAKERS’ CO-OPERATIVE ................................................... 149 PARTICIPATION (PROXIMITY/COMMUNITY/CONTEXT) ..................................... 156 OPEN ACCESS ................................................................................................. 160 YOUTUBE AND THE CULTURE INDUSTRY ......................................................... 165 INDEPENDENCE OR AUTONOMY ...................................................................... 167 THE USE-VALUE OF ART ................................................................................. 174 A DIVERSE NETWORK OF INDEPENDENT INSTITUTIONS ................................. 178 CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................................................................................. 183 BIBLIOGRAPHY .............................................................................................................................................................................. 194 4 INTRODUCTION The period between the 1940s and 1970s saw a radical expansion of art into public space; it took the form of protest, confrontation and provocation. This was an international phenomenon and ranged from groups like Cobra, the Lettrists and the Situationist International in Paris to the Art Workers’ Coalition in New York; the Gutai Art Association, Butoh and Angura theatres in Japan; COUM Transmissions, Artists’ Placement Group and the Film-makers’ Co-op in London. There was Fluxus, the Viennese Actionists, Gustav Metzger’s auto-destructive art, Gordon Matta-Clark’s building cuts and Richard Long, Michael Heizer and Robert Smithson’s forays into the landscape. What are the factors that have contributed to the current state of affairs, where artists seek approval and support from the very authorities they purportedly seek to challenge? Where art is ubiquitous but neatly institutionalised, safe and predictable. Art fairs supplement their commercial function with critical components, in the form of panel discussions and entertainment value, with the recuperation of performance art as spectacle.1 The art world appears to be constantly transformed by the appearance of new artists, new trends and new spaces. However, the conventions of the art world
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