I DO NOT WANT TO TALK AN ESSAY ON THE THREEFOLD OF ARTISTIC LABOR, SCULPTURAL AWARENESS AND PUBLIC PERCEPTION (EMPHASIZING ROBERT MORRIS´S ANTI-POSITIONING IN POSTWAR ART HISTORY) BY BORIS STEINER MASTER THESIS LUCA SCHOOL OF ARTS BRUSSELS FINE ARTS 2018 SUPERVISED BY STEFAAN VERVOORT CONTENT I DO NOT WANT TO TALK 5 INTRODUCTION 7 PART ONE 9 PART TWO 23 NEVERTHELESS I FIND MYSELF HERE AND TALKING 34 CONCLUSION 35 ACKNOWLEDGLEMENT 38 4 “I do not want to travel to distant places to give talks about the people I have been close to. The people to whom I owe art I made half a century ago. Minimalism does not need to so much either knew it or never will because it is too late hear from me. I do not want to travel to distant places to now. I do not want to document my starting points, turning give talks about art I made yesterday. Contemporary art is points, high points, low points, good points, bad points, making enough noise without me. I do not want to be filmed stopping points, lucky breaks, bad breaks, breaking points, in my studio pretending to be working. I do not want to dead ends, breakthroughs or breakdowns. I do not want to participate in staged conversations about art—either mine talk about my methods, processes, near misses, flukes, or others, past or present–which are labored and disguised mistakes, disappointments, setbacks, disasters, obsessions, performances. I do not want to be interviewed by curators, lucky accidents, unlucky accidents, scars, insecurities, critics, art directors, theorists, aestheticians, aesthetes, disabilities, phobias, fixations, or insomnias over posters I professors, collectors, gallerists, culture mavens, journalists should never have made. I do not want my portrait taken. or art historians about my influences, favorite artists, Everybody uses everybody else for their own purposes, and I despised artists, past artists, current artists, future artists. A am happy to be just material for somebody else so long as I long time ago I got in the habit, never since broken, of can exercise my right to remain silent, immobile, possibly writing down things instead of speaking. It is possible that I armed, and at a distance of several miles.” 1 was led into art making because talking and being in the presence of another person were not requirements. I do not want to be asked my reasons for not having worked in just one style, or reasons for any of the art that got made (the reason being that there are no reasons in art). I do not want to answer questions about why I used plywood, felt, steam, dirt, grease, lead, wax, money, trees, photographs, electroencephalograms, hot and cold, lawyers, explosions, nudity, sound, language, or drew with my eyes closed. I do not want to tell anecdotes about my past, or stories about 5 6 The passage cited is Robert Morris’s all- an art history based on period and style. his fourfold essay “Notes on Sculpture” purpose document for replying to Perceived as a pioneer of Minimalism, (1966-1969), in which Morris discusses invitations for giving a public lecture. As Morris has produced works that can be the fundamental intentions of mid-sixties he clarifies himself, “[…] as an aging artist associated with Minimal Art, Concept Art, installation art, nowadays conceived as I am still on occasion invited to these Land Art, Anti Form, Process Art et cetera. Minimal Art. This series of essays also stupid shindigs. For years I made up Keeping his practice in constant evolution, describes how the seemingly simple excuses for not showing up.”2 It’s a truly Morris is, in a strange way, tolerant and gestures made by Minimal artists make sympathetic way of unchaining oneself submissive to everything that is bigger or the work a function of the relation from the expectations and obligations smaller than him, while at the same time between sculptural object, space, and the that are imposed on artists nowadays, he remains ungraspable for the orthodox viewer. Furthermore, this part will discuss namely, the idea that artists offer practitioners of art history. Morris’s essays “Anti Form” (1968) and guidance to the interpretation of, or even “Some Notes on the Phenomenology of explain, their work. Morris has always This essay will look into Morris’s Making: The Search for the Motivated” shown himself a great opponent of an positioning, —or, better said, anti- (1970), in which Morris tries to reveal the overtly explanatory approach to art. This positioning —in postwar art history, and unification of the creational execution emerges profoundly in his writings, but how his relentlessly fluctuating attitude is and the artistic result. By emphasizing a also in his unrestrained exploration and relevant for contemporary practice. The production process and method that are diversification of art and its modes of first part of this essay will primarily follow dominated by chance and determinism, production. Morris does not want his the volume Continuous Project Altered Morris proposes a totally different work to be seen from a singular Daily: The Writings of Robert Morris, approach to art-making. His refined, but perspective, and neither does he abide by which was published in 1993. It contains processual, work connects to an analysis of behavior in making, language as a system, and the mingling of object-based and performative arts. Here, I am curious to detect Morris’s intentions regarding his versatile approach in the use of medium, material and context. In the second part, I will 'test' Morris's position by revisiting it from a contemporary perspective. With the discussion of Morris’s writings in hand, I will discuss and compare texts by contemporary voices in art discourse and practice, like Rosalind Krauss, Jeff Wall, and Andrea Fraser. My ambition for both parts is, firstly, to offer insight in the elaborate writings of a very honorable artist, and, secondly, to flesh out the contemporary relevance of Morris’s Figure 1: Robert Morris "Continuous Project Altered Daily", 1969 benefaction to an art-form that is Earth, clay, asbestos, cotton, water, grease, plastic, felt, wood, thread waste, electric lights, photographs, and tape significantly process-based. recorder, dimensions variable. Installation at the Leo Castelli Warehouse, New York, March 1-22, 1969. 7 8 PART ONE THE LITERALITY OF SCULPTURE, THE THREE L’S, TRANSMITTING A BODILY CONFRONTATION, AN ENDS-MEANS HOOKUP, AND PROBLEM-SOLVING. 9 10 The work of Robert Morris has been view of his group of seven grey-painted, to walk around the object and sense its If “Notes on Sculpture, Part 1" typically designated by the label Minimal plywood polyhedrons, shown first in 1963 mass and tactility. advocated a direct, immanent experience Art. Although this term was used by art at Green Gallery in New York, Morris Color, Morris continues in the of the work, which is contrasted to the critics more than by artists, it has spread stated that the sculptures need to be same essay, is bypassed for the reason more mimetic or 'indirect' meanings the now-common idea of Morris's work experienced and understood on a total that it is essentially an optical addition to historically coupled to painting, “Notes on being devoid of all symbolical and different level than painting, which is the shape. The physicality of sculpture Sculpture, Part 2” is mainly dedicated to discursive meaning. Minimalism, it is historically associated with mimetic, would bow down whenever color is used. size and scale in sculpture. “The often said, represses all content matter symbolic and expressive functions. The Even the color issued by materials like awareness of scale is a function of the that does not derive from the material tactile nature of sculpture, so Morris wood, for Morris, distracts viewers from comparison made between that constant, facticity, the matter-of-factness, of the indicates, should very clearly be distinct experiencing the physicality of the work; one's body size, and the object.”4 The work itself. Minimal Art cancels out any from the optical qualities that are at the neutral colors such as white or grey were Minimalist sculpture seems to fall in mimetic, symbolic or expressive function base of painting. Morris contradicts the therefore applied instead. On the other between the size range of either of the work. However, the clichéd idea literality of sculpture to the illusionism in hand, the same argument is used by monumental – or ornamental. Both that Minimalist Art is ‘meaningless’, painting, in “Notes on Sculpture, Part 1” Morris for the most immaterial influence polarities, the monument and ornament, namely, that it declines all external values, (1966). A sculpture should therefore not to the sculptural surface, which is light. engender a different perception of the is fully absent in Morris's work. In fact, the be hung on a wall, since it will try to deny But as immaterial as light is, it is also object. The ornamental has an intimate artist has consistently refuted the idea gravity. To perceive a three-dimensional naturally part of the space like for quality since its detail requires a closeness that his work has no content; he has only object, it is essential to place it on the example the floor is. The coincidence of of sight and examination. This notion, for differentiated his work from those ground. This also evades the limitation of light changes the perception of sculpture example, can be found at the doors of the meanings and experiences usually (and multiple ways of viewing since the floor is constantly but is embraced for its quality Baptistery of Saint John in Florence, which historically) associated with painting. In shared with the viewer, who is now able to confront the viewer with the are profiled with a number of fine bronze temporality of experiencing a three- reliefs that each portray biblical episodes.