Nico Israel’s conversation with Meg Cranston makes for easy yet insightful reading. Trained in conceptual techniques as she was, Cranston has the ability to speak academically about her process. Yet the interview also contains some curious anecdotes about life as an artist, such as the time she was punched at her own opening. However, it is the seemingly casual comments that point to more complex issues that I find to be the most interesting parts of the interview. The following three quotes are of particular interest:
“I liked the gesture – you know the idea that you could do whatever you want” (Cranston and Israel, p11)
“I analyse things to life” (Cranston and Israel, p14)
“It sounds quaint now, but that was the thinking – to destroy the difference between philosophy and art” (Cranston and Israel, p19)
These three quotes highlight a development in art that has its origins in the multifaceted shifts and demarcating that occurred in the transition from Modernism to Post-Modernism.
Hal Foster has identified how art discourse became intertwined with philosophical discourse after this development. At the same time, art practices became more open, more pragmatic and more multicultural. Instead of residing in a grand castle atop a big hill overlooking the field of life, art turned into an amorphous, gaseous blob, able to penetrate any and all aspects of life in the pursuit of whatever might be interesting at the time. However, “this position is also not-so-benignly-liberal, in the sense that its relativism is what the rule of the market requires.” (Foster, p125)
Returning to Cranston, it is clear that she is grounded in the art-as-philosophical-questioning-of-knowledge approach to making. Yet now there is a feeling that maybe this method has become contaminated; hyper-contextualising has reached its peak and the time has come for art to regain some boundaries that are its own. In critiquing Frank Gehry’s post-modern architecture, Foster observes its perverse flamboyancy as being indicative of a disconnection between skin and structure. Whilst this can also be seen as a criticism of the more grossly over-produced elements of the art world, it connects to the call for some kind of unification of medium specificity within art discourse: “formal articulation requires a resistant material, structure or context” (Foster, p40). To save art from completely vanishing into the late-capitalist ether, perhaps requires a re-joining of art’s skin with its structure.
References
Cranston, Meg and Israel, Nico, ‘Running On Light Feet’, in Hot Pants in a Cold Cold World: Works 1987-2007, Auckland, 2008, pp6-21.
Foster, Hal, Design and Crime, London, 2002.
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3 comments:
This blog of yours sound very similar to one of Pricillas, the Lane Relyea article. Pricilla was concerned that at Elam we may not be being taught enough within a particular discipline. I just think that it's up to the individual, the flower to flower approach, as Cranston calls it or the going deep approach. It's difficult though, I think we all realize we have limited time, especially at Elam, you know, to use facilities and technicians and also to use other resources for conceptual engagement. I like your skin and structure analogy, its true after all that we are working within a visual language. Concept and its physical embodiment is important and go hand in hand. I find a lot of people don't understand that meaning is embedded within a medium though, it's a simple one and maybe it's been forgotten, but visual things signify meaning/concepts.
Liked the fact that you turned art into an amorphous, gaseous blob. Created an image of Meg Cranston's balloon (air required to read Jane Austen's complete works) morphing into a huge billowing balloon swallowing Artspace, and rolling on down K.Rd. to take in all the other galleries before rolling down to impale itself on the Art Galleries clock tower, suffering the slings and arrows of irate critics whilst the artists of Lilliput try and tie it down. Yes late night. However I did find your call to re-join arts skin with its structure an intriguing proposition and wondered what kind of strategies this might entail.
I really relate to what Masako brought up about the ability of visual choices made by the artist to signify meaning or concepts. I remember in first year we were always asked why things were a certain colour, or were made out of rubber instead of plastic, or were drawn in pen rather than pencil and what these subtle differences in media conveyed to the audience. I don't seem to be asked these sorts of questions anymore, and i'm sure it's not because my choices are all correct! But maybe the emphasis has shifted to a more all-over approach where these tiny details are overlooked. It's in this way that i relate to Sean's call to re-unite arts skin with its structure. To consider the work as a whole, but a whole in which all the small parts are relevant to the overall intent.
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