The ironic turn: the ‘self-portraits’ of Dutch conceptual artists Ger van Elk and Bas Jan Ader Radboud University Nijmegen Research master thesis HLCS Art and Visual Culture Charlotte Vromans 4174313 January, 2017 Dr. W.J.G. Weijers Dr. M. Gieskes Table of Contents Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 4 Chapter 1. The ‘self-portraits’ of Dutch artists Bas Jan Ader and Ger van Elk ................ 15 1.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 15 1.2 The historical contextualisation of conceptual art with references to the work of Van Elk and Ader ............................................................................................................................. 15 1.3 Conceptual art ........................................................................................................................... 19 1.3.1. The methodology of conceptual art .......................................................................................... 20 1.3.2. Conceptual art in the Netherlands: Beeren, Gilardi and Cornwell ............................... 21 1.3.3. A Synthesis……………………...............................................................................................................24 1.4 Reception: irony ....................................................................................................................... 25 1.4.1. Ger van Elk: ironic self-reflection ............................................................................................... 26 1.4.2. Bas Jan Ader: tragic self-irony ..................................................................................................... 28 1.4.3. Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................ 30 1.5 Visual analysis .......................................................................................................................... 31 1.5.1. Ger van Elk - The Adieu ................................................................................................................... 32 1.5.2. Bas Jan Ader - In search of the miraculous .............................................................................. 35 1.5.3. Summary ............................................................................................................................................... 41 1.6 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 43 Chapter 2. Romantic irony; the self-conscious and self-deconstructive artist ............... 46 2.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 46 2.2. The ironic, aesthetic, and reflexive turn: preconditions to ‘romantic irony’ ..... 48 2.3 Friedrich Schlegel: irony as aesthetic phenomenon .................................................... 50 2.3.1 Progressive Universalpoesie and Transzendentalpoesie ..................................................... 51 2.3.2. Reflection .............................................................................................................................................. 53 2.3.3. Aesthetic techniques: the presence of the artist .................................................................. 55 2.3.3.1. Permanente Parekbase ........................................................................................................... 55 2.3.3.2. Transzendentale Buffonerie .................................................................................................. 58 2.3.3.3. Reflection ..................................................................................................................................... 60 2.4 Reception: romantic irony as laughter at the human condition and the discourse of art .................................................................................................................................................... 62 2.4.1. Paul de Man – a dialectic of the self as a reflexive structure .......................................... 63 2.4.2. Reflection .............................................................................................................................................. 67 2.5 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 69 2 Chapter 3. The medium of Van Elk’s and Ader’s self-portraits ............................................ 71 3.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 71 3.2 Conceptual art as the causation of the post-medium condition .............................. 73 3.3 Modernist theory on medium-specificity ........................................................................ 75 3.3.1. Clement Greenberg: the medium as essence ......................................................................... 75 3.3.2. Michael Fried: the medium as instanteneousness .............................................................. 77 3.3.3. Stanley Cavell: the medium as an automatism ..................................................................... 78 3.4 Rosalind Krauss’s semiotic square: ‘the medium in the expanded field’ .............. 82 3.4.1. Technical support ............................................................................................................................. 83 3.4.2. Kitsch ...................................................................................................................................................... 85 3.4.3. Medium .................................................................................................................................................. 86 3.4.4. Installation ........................................................................................................................................... 89 3.4.5. Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................ 90 3.5 Knights of the medium: Van Elk and Ader ....................................................................... 91 3.5.1. Ger van Elk’s medium ...................................................................................................................... 91 3.5.2. Bas Jan Ader’s medium ................................................................................................................... 94 3.5.3. Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................ 98 3.6 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 99 Chapter 4. Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 101 5. Bibliography ................................................................................................................................... 104 6. List of figures .................................................................................................................................. 110 7. Appendix .......................................................................................................................................... 142 8. Summary .......................................................................................................................................... 146 9. Verklaring geen fraude en plagiaat ........................................................................................ 147 3 Introduction If you ask me, the history of mankind falls into three significant stages. In the first, man didn’t recognise his own reflection, any more than an animal does. (…) Man was no different to start with. One hundred per cent subjective. An ‘I’ that could question a ‘self’ did not exist. Second stage: Narcissus discovers the mirror image. (…) Henceforth the ‘I’ sees a ‘self’. There was no demand for psychological insight at this stage, for man was to himself what he was, namely his mirror image. Whether or not he liked what he saw, his self did not betray him. I and self were symmetrical, each other’s mirror image, no more than that. We lie and our reflection lies with us. Only in the third stage were we dealt the blow of truth. The third stage begins with the invention of photography. (…) In former times, when people had their portraits painted and they didn’t like the result, they blamed the artist. But the camera can’t lie, as we all know. So it is revealed to you over the years through countless photographs that you aren’t really yourself most of the time, that you and your self are not symmetrical, indeed that you exist in a variety of strange incarnations for which you would refuse all responsibility if you could. (…) An I seeking to assert itself amid the constant clamour of alter egos. This is the third stage, in which self-doubt, previously a rare state of mind, flared into consternation. Alfred Issendorf in Willem Frederik Hermans1 The self-portrait has played a central role