Bodies Withdrawn: The Ethics of Abstraction in Contemporary Post-Minimal Art by Edward Bacal A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of History of Art University of Toronto © Copyright by Edward Bacal 2018 Bodies Withdrawn: The Ethics of Abstraction in Contemporary Post- Minimal Art Edward Bacal Doctor of Philosophy Department of History of Art University of Toronto 2018 Abstract This dissertation examines the work of Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Doris Salcedo, Teresa Margolles, and Santiago Sierra, artists that redeploy the aesthetics of 1960s minimalism in relation to contemporary political crises. I argue that these artists make an important case for the political and ethical relevance of aesthetic abstraction, insofar as their work imagines forms of co- existence that resist the sovereign organization of human bodies. In each chapter, I discuss a selection of major works by an individual artist, emphasizing theoretical analyses that privilege deconstruction, bio- and necropolitical theory, and continental philosophy. I situate artistic practices in relation to their social and political contexts to consider how Gonzalez-Torres, Salcedo, Margolles, and Sierra respond to issues such as the AIDS crisis, state violence, and socio-economic subjugation. Specifically, I consider how they use minimalist formal strategies to convey the socio-political abstraction of human life and, further, to address the conditions in which certain bodies fail to appear. These artists demonstrate how the body’s disappearance produces an abstraction: not the sign of a body but the index of its withdrawal from appearance (to invoke the etymological meaning of abstrahere). By portraying the material traces of the figure’s negation, they account for the aesthetic and political challenge of presenting anonymous bodies and beings. Their work thereby inverts minimalism’s concern with the relation of objective forms to embodied viewers, in that it reveals art’s contradictory relation to inaccessible bodies. This approach carries important aesthetico-ethical ramifications: it exposes !ii viewers to unknowable and imperceptible beings, challenging dominant ethical models based on the inter-subjective relation of autonomous individuals; hence, it illustrates an ethics of co- existence that is irreducible to subject-object binaries and to the subjectivization of embodied life. !iii Acknowledgments If this dissertation has taught me anything, it’s that any work of creation is really the work of everyone else. One simply renders the traces of one’s diffuse encounters with countless others and with the world at large. So, to count but few of those countless others… First and foremost, I am grateful to my family for the unconditional love and personal, moral, and material support they have always provided me, allowing me to pursue my aspirations while trusting me with the freedom to do so. I thank my parents for making all of this possible and to Michael and Natalie for their invaluable friendship. I feel very fortunate to have worked with my committee, which has been consistently supportive, open-minded, patient, and amicable. I only regret being too shy to develop stronger relations with them. It has been a real privilege to have John Paul Ricco as my supervisor. I continue to marvel at his scholarly ingenuity, which I take as a model and an inspiration for what one can do in art writing. All of our interactions have been meaningful for me and I hope this is the beginning of a more infinite conversation of sorts. Likewise, I sincerely appreciate the opportunity to have worked with Elizabeth Legge and Eva-Lynn Jagoe, whose expertise, humour, and encouragement have augmented this project and made writing it much more enjoyable than it would have been otherwise. I am grateful to everyone that has discussed my research, assisted me, or reached out to me (to be sure, there are more names I can list or remember and many unknown names I cannot). I extend my sincere thanks to Jordan Bear, an exemplar of academic generosity; to the friends I’ve made through this PhD, including but not limited to Arielle, Jackson, Gary, Marina, Emily, and Jerome (thank you for both erudite discussion and critical girl-talk); to everyone I’ve worked with in the Graduate Union of Students of Art (to name just one, Samantha Chang’s efficiency and organization will never cease to amaze me); to the art department staff for their administrative support and answering of persistent requests; to the organizers of conferences and workshops I’ve participated in; to Susan Morrison, Fiona Allen, Gemma Angel and Caroline Fournet, and Yasmin Nurming-Por, for extending publication opportunities; to Emilie Kedlie and Andrew Blackley, respectively of and formerly-of the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation, for !iv their interest, generosity, and support (it is heartening to think about how a shared passion for FGT’s work so often generates varied, unexpected, and meaningful interactions. This fact undergirds the existence of this dissertation and, in my opinion, totally legitimates Gonzalez- Torres’ artistic project); to Santiago Sierra and Luis Navarro for their time, communication, and resources; to Rebecca Comay, first, for sharing her insights into Doris Salcedo and, second, for serving as my internal examiner; to Philip Armstrong, for his contribution as external examiner; to James Cahill for generously discussing a separate project that, in turn, informed this one; to Jean-Philippe Uzel and Emmanuel Licha, for including me in their “Topographies of Mass Violence” study group; to Karl, Tim, and Schuyler of U of T’s Centre for Ethics, for including me in their Graduate Associate group; to those involved in the many other extracurricular programs and opportunities I have been able to benefit from during my degree; and to everyone on campus that has supported my role as a university student and employee and has pushed for equity at U of T. I want to acknowledge that much of my academic success is built on a Jackman Humanities Institute fellowship I undertook as an undergraduate in 2010-2011, where the seeds of this project began to stir. I hope to continue building on that momentum and to extend that kind of support I received to others. Finally, a very special “thanks!” goes to Susan Morrison, whose particularly decisive influence as a teacher, interlocutor, journal editor, and friend has motivated me to study art and theory to the extent that I have. I am more than grateful to take that influence into the rest of my career and life. This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Additionally, I received support from the following sources: the Department of Visual Studies’ Graduate Expansion Fund, a Pekka K. Sinervo scholarship, various conference and travel grants from my home department, and a conference grant from the School of Graduate Studies. !v Table of Contents Acknowledgements !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! iv Table of Contents !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!vi List of Figures !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!viii Introduction: Towards an Ethics of Abstraction in Contemporary Post-Minimal Art !!!!!!!!!!!! 1 Why Minimalism? !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 3 Abstraction: Aesthetics, Politics, Ethics !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 6 Background to the Project !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!10 Felix Gonzalez-Torres !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!14 Doris Salcedo !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 17 Teresa Margolles !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 19 Santiago Sierra !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 21 1. Somebody Other than this, Nobody Other than this: Felix Gonzalez-Torres' and the Undoing of Subject-Object Relations !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 24 Stacks and Piles: Debts to, and Departures from, Minimalism !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 28 Undoing Subjects: Positions and Bodies !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 41 Undoing Portraits !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 44 Undoing Names and Bodies !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 52 Bodies Against AIDS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!