The document discusses the concept of the "white cube" gallery space and how it shapes the viewing and interpretation of art. It explores the origins of the white cube in the 1930s Museum of Modern Art in New York, which established a sterile, neutral environment to isolate art from any external contexts. However, the document argues that gallery spaces are not truly neutral, but rather historical constructs that influence how art is perceived and valued. It examines various artists who have critiqued and subverted the conventions of the white cube to challenge the idea that it is the only appropriate space for viewing art.
ZAHA HADID
"Only rarely does an architect emerge with a philosophy and approach to the art form that influences the direction of the entire field. Such an architect is Zaha Hadid..." -- Bill Lacy, architect
ZAHA HADID
"Only rarely does an architect emerge with a philosophy and approach to the art form that influences the direction of the entire field. Such an architect is Zaha Hadid..." -- Bill Lacy, architect
INTODUCTION
Art Nouveau, ornamental style of art that flourished between about 1890 and 1910 throughout Europe and the United States.
The most important places for architecture during this period were Brussels, Paris and Barcelona. The name 'Art nouveau' is French for 'new art'.
It represents the beginning of modernism in design(Modern Architecture). It occurred at a time when
Mass-produced consumer goods began to fill the marketplace, and
Designers, architects, and artist began to understand that the handcrafted work of centuries past could be lost.
Flourished in major European cities and emerged in the early 1890s in all the visual arts:
1. Painting 7. jewellery
2. Sculpture 8. clothing and
3. Architecture 9. furniture
4. Interior design
5. graphic arts
6. Posters
Art Experiments dot com. Sponsorship proposal.
'Thought is also a matter'!
Official collateral EVENT Kochi-Muziris Biennale 12th December 2018 –29th March 2019. Kochi, Kerala, India.
For Sponsorship opportunity Whatsapp Artist / Curator:
Raju Sutar +91 9860480681 OR Email Art Experiments dot com raju@artexperiments.com
Pier Luigi Nervi challenged the notion that unconventional construction would be economically prohibitive. His innovative construction method, the 'Nervi System' - discovered through experimentation in the late 1930s and used in subsequent applications in the late 1940s - crucially combined processes of Structural Prefabrication and the material of his own invention: Ferro-Cemento - a light, resilient reinforced concrete – and so became standard technology in his practice. His control of the building process exceeded construction and structural motives and he was able to use it to display convincing synchronicity between aesthetics and structure. The Palazzetto Dello Sport for the 1960 Olympics was this typology’s finest expression and so too of Nervi’s ideals.
Art deco style of architecture, origins of art deco from Frank loyd wright. Art deco posters, movies, furniture, art and architecture.
http://www.greenarchworld.com/
Deconstructive Architecture and Its Pioneer Architects Rohit Arora
The concept of deconstructive architecture and main pioneers of deconstructive architecture. Town hall finland, Jacques Derrida ,Frank O Gehry , Bernard Tschumi, Zaha Hadid,Galaxy Soho, JVC entertainment Centre, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.BMW Central Building.
INTODUCTION
Art Nouveau, ornamental style of art that flourished between about 1890 and 1910 throughout Europe and the United States.
The most important places for architecture during this period were Brussels, Paris and Barcelona. The name 'Art nouveau' is French for 'new art'.
It represents the beginning of modernism in design(Modern Architecture). It occurred at a time when
Mass-produced consumer goods began to fill the marketplace, and
Designers, architects, and artist began to understand that the handcrafted work of centuries past could be lost.
Flourished in major European cities and emerged in the early 1890s in all the visual arts:
1. Painting 7. jewellery
2. Sculpture 8. clothing and
3. Architecture 9. furniture
4. Interior design
5. graphic arts
6. Posters
Art Experiments dot com. Sponsorship proposal.
'Thought is also a matter'!
Official collateral EVENT Kochi-Muziris Biennale 12th December 2018 –29th March 2019. Kochi, Kerala, India.
For Sponsorship opportunity Whatsapp Artist / Curator:
Raju Sutar +91 9860480681 OR Email Art Experiments dot com raju@artexperiments.com
Pier Luigi Nervi challenged the notion that unconventional construction would be economically prohibitive. His innovative construction method, the 'Nervi System' - discovered through experimentation in the late 1930s and used in subsequent applications in the late 1940s - crucially combined processes of Structural Prefabrication and the material of his own invention: Ferro-Cemento - a light, resilient reinforced concrete – and so became standard technology in his practice. His control of the building process exceeded construction and structural motives and he was able to use it to display convincing synchronicity between aesthetics and structure. The Palazzetto Dello Sport for the 1960 Olympics was this typology’s finest expression and so too of Nervi’s ideals.
Art deco style of architecture, origins of art deco from Frank loyd wright. Art deco posters, movies, furniture, art and architecture.
http://www.greenarchworld.com/
Deconstructive Architecture and Its Pioneer Architects Rohit Arora
The concept of deconstructive architecture and main pioneers of deconstructive architecture. Town hall finland, Jacques Derrida ,Frank O Gehry , Bernard Tschumi, Zaha Hadid,Galaxy Soho, JVC entertainment Centre, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.BMW Central Building.
Societal Homophobia, EDCI 886, Fall 2010Joelyn K Foy
This is my second social problem paper for Perspectival Philosophy: Social Reconstruction, where education is seen as the method and pathway for social reconstruction as advocated by Harold Rugg, George Counts, and Theodore Brameld, among others.
This project was an attempt to investigate the art museum as an specific building type as well as the issues involved in the design of spaces for contemporary art. As every architectonic object, art museums are deeply connected with the functions they must fulfil and must act on the user as a stimulus which requires a behaviour response.*
According to Michel Foucault museums are sites that have the curious property of being in relation with all other sites, but in such a way as to suspend, neutralize, or invert the set of relations that they happen to designate, mirror or reflect. The museum space is capable of juxtaposing in a single space several sites that are in themselves incompatible . Its space begins to function at full capacity when men arrive at a sort of absolute break with their traditional idea of time.
Designing a new museum requires a strong concept. An art museum should never be made as a neutral, weak thing. It should be made new and passionate. The museum space should create possibilities for the unpredictable. A space that is inspired, unconventional, unafraid of taking risks, humorous, provocative and spontaneous.
The new museum shouldn’t be there to train people how to answer but how to question. That what’s the new museum is for.
* Umberto Eco, taken from ’How an Exposition Exposes Itself’ quoted in Neil Leach, Rethinking Architecture, Routledge, London 1977, p.202.
Michel Foucault, Taken from ‘Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias’ quoted in Neil Leach, Rethinking Architecture, Routledge, London 1977, p.15.
Patrick Healy, Beauty And The Sublime, SUN Publishers, Amsterdam 2003
It discusses the different theories of art such as representation theory, expressive theory, institutional theory, formalist theory, historical theory, aestheticism
The power of the image: Contemporary art, gender, and the politics of perceptionDeborahJ
The relation between visual representations and the identity of the human subject.
The ideas and research that have informed this lecture are grounded in the areas of queer theory, gender studies, critical race theory, and feminist studies.
The global image. from consumer culture to the digital revolution DeborahJ
The Global Image: From Consumer Culture to the Digital Revolution is focused on the way we engage with images in the post-Internet era, when they can be shared, reproduced, altered, and distributed more easily than ever before in human history.
Beyond the visual: The Body in Contemporary ArtDeborahJ
When we think of the Body in Contemporary Art we could consider a number of different and relevant aspects. For instance, the body - the human form - is central in art, traditionally the body was often used to explore allegory, beauty and sexuality and so on. But in the twentieth century there was a significant shift in both how the body was perceived, and how it was used to create art across a range of media, from painting and sculpture to installation, photography, video art, performance and participatory art. By considering the different roles played by the body in art, we can identify that there has been a shift from being the subject, for example, in a portraiture, to becoming an active presence in live and participatory events. Alongside this there has also been a significant transformation of the role of the audience, broadly speaking, from passive viewer to active participant.
This presentation crutinises how art practitioners are navigating the artworld, which in our contemporary, late capitalist society is arguably, increasingly regulated by free market conditions, managed in the artworld by the same bureaucrats, curators, dealers and gallery owners, roles that have encroached on the career of artists themselves.
Debates around the idea that the interrelation or the interaction between artwork and viewers has been modified with the practice of Relational Aesthetics.
How Art Works: Week 5 The Rise of the ismsDeborahJ
This lecture will:
Examine how artists sought to find a language that would adequately express the changes and disruptions associated with modern life
Attempt to capture the dialectical relationship between each movement and its predecessors
Make connections between historical events and art genres
Encouraged you to think of styles as useful tools for exploration and analysis, rather than as hard and fast academic definitions, and to relate to the art itself rather than to a merely conceptual idea
Is a picture worth 1,000 words? Textual AnalysisDeborahJ
This lecture will introduce semiotics or the semiology of art, a mechanism for deriving meaning that is considered to a more inclusive development of Panofsky’s Iconography
How Art Works: Week 1 The ‘unruly discipline’ DeborahJ
This lecture will:
introduce ways to think about art and its history and help you to understand how art historians go about their practice
look at some of the issues and debates that make up the disciple of Art History
offer some reconsiderations of art history
consider the importance of the gallery and museum
Aims of todays lecture:
To analyse the conditions in which contemporary art is produced
To (re) evaluate your function as an artist within a broad context
Address making a living in the current climate of instability and enforced austerity
Consider issues of free labour, particularly internships, in the cultural sector
Safalta Digital marketing institute in Noida, provide complete applications that encompass a huge range of virtual advertising and marketing additives, which includes search engine optimization, virtual communication advertising, pay-per-click on marketing, content material advertising, internet analytics, and greater. These university courses are designed for students who possess a comprehensive understanding of virtual marketing strategies and attributes.Safalta Digital Marketing Institute in Noida is a first choice for young individuals or students who are looking to start their careers in the field of digital advertising. The institute gives specialized courses designed and certification.
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Macroeconomics- Movie Location
This will be used as part of your Personal Professional Portfolio once graded.
Objective:
Prepare a presentation or a paper using research, basic comparative analysis, data organization and application of economic information. You will make an informed assessment of an economic climate outside of the United States to accomplish an entertainment industry objective.
The French Revolution, which began in 1789, was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France. It marked the decline of absolute monarchies, the rise of secular and democratic republics, and the eventual rise of Napoleon Bonaparte. This revolutionary period is crucial in understanding the transition from feudalism to modernity in Europe.
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Francesca Gottschalk - How can education support child empowerment.pptxEduSkills OECD
Francesca Gottschalk from the OECD’s Centre for Educational Research and Innovation presents at the Ask an Expert Webinar: How can education support child empowerment?
June 3, 2024 Anti-Semitism Letter Sent to MIT President Kornbluth and MIT Cor...Levi Shapiro
Letter from the Congress of the United States regarding Anti-Semitism sent June 3rd to MIT President Sally Kornbluth, MIT Corp Chair, Mark Gorenberg
Dear Dr. Kornbluth and Mr. Gorenberg,
The US House of Representatives is deeply concerned by ongoing and pervasive acts of antisemitic
harassment and intimidation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Failing to act decisively to ensure a safe learning environment for all students would be a grave dereliction of your responsibilities as President of MIT and Chair of the MIT Corporation.
This Congress will not stand idly by and allow an environment hostile to Jewish students to persist. The House believes that your institution is in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, and the inability or
unwillingness to rectify this violation through action requires accountability.
Postsecondary education is a unique opportunity for students to learn and have their ideas and beliefs challenged. However, universities receiving hundreds of millions of federal funds annually have denied
students that opportunity and have been hijacked to become venues for the promotion of terrorism, antisemitic harassment and intimidation, unlawful encampments, and in some cases, assaults and riots.
The House of Representatives will not countenance the use of federal funds to indoctrinate students into hateful, antisemitic, anti-American supporters of terrorism. Investigations into campus antisemitism by the Committee on Education and the Workforce and the Committee on Ways and Means have been expanded into a Congress-wide probe across all relevant jurisdictions to address this national crisis. The undersigned Committees will conduct oversight into the use of federal funds at MIT and its learning environment under authorities granted to each Committee.
• The Committee on Education and the Workforce has been investigating your institution since December 7, 2023. The Committee has broad jurisdiction over postsecondary education, including its compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, campus safety concerns over disruptions to the learning environment, and the awarding of federal student aid under the Higher Education Act.
• The Committee on Oversight and Accountability is investigating the sources of funding and other support flowing to groups espousing pro-Hamas propaganda and engaged in antisemitic harassment and intimidation of students. The Committee on Oversight and Accountability is the principal oversight committee of the US House of Representatives and has broad authority to investigate “any matter” at “any time” under House Rule X.
• The Committee on Ways and Means has been investigating several universities since November 15, 2023, when the Committee held a hearing entitled From Ivory Towers to Dark Corners: Investigating the Nexus Between Antisemitism, Tax-Exempt Universities, and Terror Financing. The Committee followed the hearing with letters to those institutions on January 10, 202
Biological screening of herbal drugs: Introduction and Need for
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Natural Products, In vitro evaluation techniques for Antioxidants, Antimicrobial and Anticancer drugs. In vivo evaluation techniques
for Anti-inflammatory, Antiulcer, Anticancer, Wound healing, Antidiabetic, Hepatoprotective, Cardio protective, Diuretics and
Antifertility, Toxicity studies as per OECD guidelines
Unit 8 - Information and Communication Technology (Paper I).pdfThiyagu K
This slides describes the basic concepts of ICT, basics of Email, Emerging Technology and Digital Initiatives in Education. This presentations aligns with the UGC Paper I syllabus.
2024.06.01 Introducing a competency framework for languag learning materials ...Sandy Millin
http://sandymillin.wordpress.com/iateflwebinar2024
Published classroom materials form the basis of syllabuses, drive teacher professional development, and have a potentially huge influence on learners, teachers and education systems. All teachers also create their own materials, whether a few sentences on a blackboard, a highly-structured fully-realised online course, or anything in between. Despite this, the knowledge and skills needed to create effective language learning materials are rarely part of teacher training, and are mostly learnt by trial and error.
Knowledge and skills frameworks, generally called competency frameworks, for ELT teachers, trainers and managers have existed for a few years now. However, until I created one for my MA dissertation, there wasn’t one drawing together what we need to know and do to be able to effectively produce language learning materials.
This webinar will introduce you to my framework, highlighting the key competencies I identified from my research. It will also show how anybody involved in language teaching (any language, not just English!), teacher training, managing schools or developing language learning materials can benefit from using the framework.
Model Attribute Check Company Auto PropertyCeline George
In Odoo, the multi-company feature allows you to manage multiple companies within a single Odoo database instance. Each company can have its own configurations while still sharing common resources such as products, customers, and suppliers.
2. Is it simply an empty ‘canvas’ for the
contemplation of art?
Dundee Contemporary Arts White Cube Gallery, London
3. Encoding of Art-Space:
The Role of the ‘Art
Container’
Codes for reading and receiving visual art: art containers and
exhibition spaces. Where can art appear to be seen as art?
4. • explore the relationship between contemporary artists,
audience and the gallery wall
• examine the gallery space, a carry over from the modernist
era that is constructed along rigid laws; windows are sealed,
and the outside world must not intrude. The walls are white
and the ceiling becomes the only light source.
5. The white cube has various
roots which all finally come
together in the 1930s in the
Museum of Modern Art in
New York.
In Germany,
interestingly, this takes
place during the Nazi
period in the 1930s
6. “ The ideal gallery subtracts from the artwork all clues that interfere
with the fact that it is “art”. The work is isolated from everything that
would detract from its own evaluation of itself. This gives the space a
presence possessed by other spaces where conventions are preserved
through the repetition of a closed system of values…”
Brian O’Doherty (1976) Inside the white cube
8. The main concern of the essay
ishow to deal with the white cube
convention for gallery design.
O'Doherty's point is as simple as it
is radical: the gallery space is not a
neutral container, but a historical
construct.
9. The white cube is conceived as a place free of
context, where time and social space are
thought to be excluded from the experience of
artworks.
It is only through the apparent neutrality of
appearing outside of daily life and politics that
the works within the white cube can appear to
be self-contained -- only by being freed from
historical time can they attain their aura of
timelessness.
10. “The Museum interior was turned into antiseptic, laboratory-
like spaces – enclosed, isolated, artificially illuminated and
apparently neutral environments in which viewers could
study works of art displayed as so many isolated specimens”
(Wallach 1992 [1991], p. 282)
11. O'Doherty reminds us that galleries are shops -- spaces for producing surplus
:
value, not use value
MatthieuLaurette : Opportunities: Let's Make Lots of Money 2005 - 2010
12. When does an artist's creation
become art, and where?
Does it occur in the solitary
confines of an artist's studio or
does it require the context of an
art gallery's white cube?
What is the relationship between
these two culturally charged
spaces?
How does the site of art's
presentation shape the meaning
and determine even the very
possibility of its existence?
14. Marcel Duchamp Portable museum (boite-en-valise, 1941)
The flaps on the box can be opened to reveal a compilation of his works
reproduced in photographs, prints and models, thus creating a portable,
re-arrangeable museum
The First International Dada Exhibition (1920)
Anarchic and experimental display
15. October 11, 2009
Andrea Fraser on Institutional Critique
The following quote sums up how I feel about art, and the blurring of art's
lines, especially in my critical defense of relational practice for my thesis
project.
"[Michael] Asher took Duchamp one step further. Art is
not art because it is signed by an artist or shown in a
museum or any other 'institutional' site. Art is art when it
exists for discourses and practices that recognize it as art,
value and evaluate it as art, and consume it as art,
whether as object, gesture, representation or only idea.”
Andrea Fraser, "From the Critique of Institutions to an Institution of Critique,"
Artforum, September 2005.
16. Moving from a substantive understanding
of “institution” as specific places,
organisations, and individuals to a
conception of it as a social field, the
question of what’s inside and what is
outside becomes much more complex.
Andrea Fraser, “From the Critique of Institutions to an Institution of Critique”,
ARTFORUM, Sept. 2005
17. Critiques on the
institutions of art
(principally museums and
galleries) are made in the
work of Marcel
Broodthaers, Daniel Buren
and Hans Haacke.
Daniel Buren
‘Closed show’
GalerieAppolinaire, Milano
(1968)
Gallery doors sealed with
green-white stripes
18. 68 PEOPLE PAID TO BLOCK A MUSEUM
ENTRANCE
Santiago Sierra
Museum of Contemporary Art. Pusan,
Korea. October 2000
19. In 1971, the Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne rejected his work
Manet-Projekt 74 from one of their shows. The work was related to
the museums recent acquisition of EdouardManet’s Bunch of
Asparagus and detailed the provenance of the painting and Nazi
background of the donor.
Hans Haacke
Manet-Projekt 74
(1971)
21. MoMA (1929)
• A ‘White Cube’;
• Never meant to have ‘kept’ its art as permanent
collections like traditional museums.
22. Guggenheim, New York
‘I need a fighter, a lover of space, an agitator, a tester and a wise
man. . . . I want a temple of spirit, a monument!’
-Hilla Rebay to Frank Lloyd Wright, 1943
24. The typical setup of the museum-as-factory looks like this. Before: an
industrial workplace. Now: people spending their leisure time in front of TV
monitors. Before: people working in these factories. Now: people working at
home in front of computer monitors.
Andy Warhol’s Factory served as model for the new museum in its
productive turn towards being a “social factory.” By now, descriptions of the
social factory abound.It exceeds its traditional boundaries and spills over
into almost everything else. It pervades bedrooms and dreams alike, as well
as perception, affection, and attention. It transforms everything it touches
into culture, if not art. It is an a-factory, which produces affect as effect. It
integrates intimacy, eccentricity, and other formally unofficial forms of
creation. Private and public spheres get entangled in a blurred zone of
hyper-production.
HitoSteyerl, “Is a Museum a Factory?”
E-flux Journal #7, June 2009 - http://www.e-flux.com/journal/view/71
28. Fred Wilson, Mining the Museum, 1992-1993, (Indian Room) installation funded by Baltimore
Museum of Contemporary Art, at the Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore
29. Fred Wilson, Mining the Museum, 1992-1993, (Baby Carriage and Hood ) installation funded by
Baltimore Museum of Contemporary Art, at the Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore
31. Postmodern Spaces
Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers. Pompidou Centre, built in 1977.
32. “The white cube as the perfect or only site for
showing and viewing art has been a contested
idea for many years now. As artist began to see
their work in the broader cultural context of its
production so the context in which the work was
seen came to have a greater significance.”
Sam Ainsley
34. O'Doherty, Brian. Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).
http://www.societyofcontrol.com/whitecube/insidewc.htm
Editor's Notes
Discussion Question
one of the most important and intriguing themes in art today: the relationship between artist and museum.artists of the past eighty years have often turned their attention—both creatively and critically—to a reappraisal of the ideas and systems of classification traditionally associated with curatorship and display of art (and also museum artifacts)
This lecture will:explore the relationship betweencontemporary artists, audience and the gallery wallexamine the gallery space, a carry over from the modernist era that is constructed along rigid laws; windows are sealed, and the outside world must not intrude. The walls are white and the ceiling becomes the only light source. The white cube was in the modern era, and remains in these contemporary times, the conventional means of displaying art. The ‘ideal’ gallery subtracts from the artworks all cues that interfere with the fact that it is art. Objects introduced into this space become art.
the white cube was initially only a variance of a rich tradition of differently coloured rooms in museums around 1900. The white cube has various roots which all finally come together in the 1930s in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Before and after the First World War, there was a desire to show pieces of art against a background with the greatest possible contrast to the dominating colours of the paintings.The valorisation of white paint was also supported by the architectural discussion of the time, in which hygiene considerations played a role: dirt shows, of course, more easily on white walls than on other colours. Then in the 1920s discussions in which white received connotations of infinite space started to emerge, mainly among Constructivist artists and architects. This coincided with temporary exhibitions becoming increasingly important in the museum, and with them the moveable partition wall and flexible groundplan.In Germany, interestingly, this takes place during the Nazi period in the 1930s. In England and France white only becomes a dominant wall colour in museums after the Second World War, so one is almost tempted to speak of the white cube as a Nazi invention. At the same time, the Nazis also mobilised the traditional connotation of white as a colour of purity, but this played no role when the flexible white exhibition container became the default mode for displaying art in the museum.
“ The ideal gallery subtracts from the artwork all clues that interfere with the fact that it is “art”. The work is isolated from everything that would detract from its own evaluation of itself. This gives the space a presence possessed by other spaces where conventions are preserved through the repetition of a closed system of values…”Brian O’Doherty (1976) Inside the white cube
According to O’Doherty’s classic study Inside the White Cube, such spaces are actually rife with meaning, highly politicised and extremely powerful.The white cube is the dominant model for the showing of art with most galleries, museums, and alternative spaces still employing it.O'Doherty was writing not only within the specific context of post-minimalism and conceptual art of the 1970s, but also from the point of view of artistic practice. Aside from being a prominent critic, O'Doherty was also an installation artistAs both theorist and practitioner, insider and outsider, he was not in a bad position to examine the ideology of something as peculiar as the modern gallery space, the much loved and maligned "white cube.”
The main concern of the essay ishow to deal with the white cube convention for gallery designO'Doherty's point is as simple as it is radical: the gallery space is not a neutral container, but a historical construct.Furthermore, it is an aesthetic object in and of itself. The ideal form of the white cube that modernism developed for the gallery space is inseparable from the artworks exhibited inside it. The white cube not only conditions, but also overpowers the artworks themselves in its shift from placing content within a context to making the context itself the content. However, this emergence of context is enabled primarily through its attempted disappearance.
The white cube is conceived as a place free of context, where time and social space are thought to be excluded from the experience of artworks. It is only through the apparent neutrality of appearing outside of daily life and politics that the works within the white cube can appear to be self-contained -- only by being freed from historical time can they attain their aura of timelessness.
“The Museum interior was turned into antiseptic, laboratory-like spaces – enclosed, isolated, artificially illuminated and apparently neutral environments in which viewers could study works of art displayed as so many isolated specimens”
Enter the white cube, with its even walls and its unobtrusive artificial lighting -- a sacred space that (despite its modern design) resembles an ancient tomb, undisturbed by time and containing infinite riches. O'Doherty uses this analogy of the tomb and the treasury to illuminate how the white cube was constructed in order to give the artworks a timeless quality (and thus, lasting value) in both an economic and a political sense. It was a space for the immortality of a certain class or caste's cultural values, as well as a staging ground for objects of sound economic investment for possible buyers. O'Doherty reminds us that galleries are shops -- spaces for producing surplus value, not use value
When does an artist's creation become art, and where? Does it occur in the solitary confines of an artist's studio or does it require the context of an art gallery's white cube?What is the relationship between these two culturally charged spaces? How does the site of art's presentation shape the meaning and determine even the very possibility of its existence?
“The White Cube carries the same depressingly familiar aura, of an unassailable or transcendental authority, and derives from earlier aristocratic regimes of taste and aesthetics, or we might say, that presents itself as ‘democratic’, as postmodern fragment, or as a-historical model forcing through an ‘absolute value’. This reduces art’s necessary plurality guaranteed by the gallery system’s claim of neutrality, isolating any ‘infection’ of the real. This is a disaster by any definition, since it mediates the production of artistic gestures into a single ingenious system of ‘ethical’ values, fragmented onto egoistic or ethnic particularities, as a vague infinite of personal freedoms, whilst quietly endorsing the aestheticisation of the political. We are therefore obliged to seek a space of suspension from these motives, in the artistic gestures of refusal.”
Marcel Duchamp Portable museum (boite-en-valise, 1941)The flaps on the box can be opened to reveal a compilation of his works reproduced in photographs, prints and models, thus creating a portable, re-arrangeable museumThe First International Dada Exhibition (1920)Anarchic and experimental display
Institutional Critique is an art term that describes the systematic inquiry into the workings of art institutions, for instance galleries and museums For almost 40 years, Michael Asher has encouraged museums and art galleries to question the logic of their organizational and architectural structures Andrea Fraser on Institutional CritiqueThe following quote sums up how I feel about art, and the blurring of art's lines, especially in my critical defense of relational practice for my thesis project."[Michael] Asher took Duchamp one step further. Art is not art because it is signed by an artist or shown in a museum or any other 'institutional' site. Art is art when it exists for discourses and practices that recognize it as art, value and evaluate it as art, and consume it as art, whether as object, gesture, representation or only idea.”
Moving from a substantive understanding of “institution” as specific places, organisations, and individuals to a conception of it as a social field, the question of what’s inside and what is outside becomes much more complex.
White Cube issuesIsolation, dehistoricizing of art objects in seemingly neutral space.Viewing and/vs. understanding: legacy of assumed immediate understanding of "timeless masterpieces" and existence of universal, transcultural meanings and values in museum works.Museum as architected, pre-encoded space, the inside where art exists or appears, vs. the outside world, where art doesn't exist or is indiscernible. Comparisons with sacred space of temples, churches, shrines. Interpretive space of museum installations, special exhibitions, galleries. contemporary and the recent histories of institutional critique, spatial production and politics. If the gallery space is saturated with ideology (as O'Doherty claims), and if it can be analyzed spatially and politically through artistic practicesThe act of critiquing an institution as artistic practice, the institution usually being a museum or an art gallery. Institutional criticism began in the late 1960s when artists began to create art in response to the institutions that bought and exhibited their work. In the 1960s the art institution was often perceived as a place of cultural confinement and thus something to attack aesthetically, politically and theoreticallyIn 1968 Daniel Buren sealed a gallery in Milano
Hans Haacke is a leading exponent of Institutional critique, particularly targeting funding and donations given to museums and galleries. In 1971, the Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne rejected his work Manet-Projekt 74 from one of their shows. The work was related to the museums recent acquisition of EdouardManet’s Bunch of Asparagus and detailed the provenance of the painting and Nazi background of the donor. During the 1990s it became a fashion for critical discussions to be held by curators and directors within art galleries and museums that centred on this very subject, thereby making the institution not only the problem but also the solution. This has changed the nature of Institutional critique,
In exploring galleries and institutions we become aware of the many contexts- historic, cultural, physical and philosophical- that ‘frame’ art practice and art works;Examine how such practices and modes of display emerged over the Modern eras;Explore how ‘frames’ bestow meaning upon art, and vice versa.
The typical setup of the museum-as-factory looks like this. Before: an industrial workplace. Now: people spending their leisure time in front of TV monitors. Before: people working in these factories. Now: people working at home in front of computer monitors. Andy Warhol’s Factory served as model for the new museum in its productive turn towards being a “social factory.” By now, descriptions of the social factory abound.It exceeds its traditional boundaries and spills over into almost everything else. It pervades bedrooms and dreams alike, as well as perception, affection, and attention. It transforms everything it touches into culture, if not art. It is an a-factory, which produces affect as effect. It integrates intimacy, eccentricity, and other formally unofficial forms of creation. Private and public spheres get entangled in a blurred zone of hyper-production.
The work of Michael Asher deals with issues concerning the contextual—and thus architectural and institutional—condition of art. Michael Asher’s work is based on direct and highly site-specific interactions with art institutions and their contexts. More exactly, Asher responds to the ways in which museums and exhibition spaces present themselves, or the objects they display, to their various publics.
American conceptual artist LouiseLawler, who moves in the field of tension of institutionalcritique and Appropriation Art, When museums became a focus of artistic interest in the early seventies, criticism was initially directed at the institution itself, as a centre of power. LouiseLawler smoothly develops this first generation of institutionalcritique and reflects social, aesthetic, and economic aspects of the institutional framework. She photographs the way works are presented in museums, galleries and private homes, and also follows them behind the scenes in depots, storerooms, and at auctions. Lawler’s practice goes beyond oppositional criticism of institutional power in order to question it systematically from the perspective of an accomplice.
Wilson's unique artist approach is to examine, question, and deconstruct the traditional display of art and artifacts in museums. With the use of new wall labels, sounds, lighting, and non-traditional pairings of objects, he leads viewers to recognize that changes in context create changes in meaning. Wilson's juxtaposition of evocative objects forces the viewer to question the biases and limitations of cultural institutions and how they have shaped the interpretation of historical truth, artistic value, and the language of display
To demonstrate how museums ignore or misrepresent the cultural contributions and history of blacks and Native Americans, New York installation artist Fred Wilson recently "mined" the Maryland Historical Society's collection (with that institute's cooperation) to create a powerful exhibit. His juxtapositions of the artefacts and objects included a Ku Klux Klan hood nestled in a turn-of-the-century baby carriage and iron slave shackles alongside a fine silver tea set. Wilson, a conceptual artist of African American and Caribean descent, rearranged and labeled marble portrait busts, reward posters for runaway slaves, cigar-store Indians with backs turned to the viewer, doll houses and other artifacts. By creating this kind of ‘mock exhibits’ he is arguing fora more open, inclusive relationship between cultural institutions and the communities they serve.
“The white cube as the perfect or only site for showing and viewing art has been a contested idea for many years now. As artist began to see their work in the broader cultural context of its production so the context in which the work was seen came to have a greater significance.” Sam Ainsley
In an age when installations, art environments, ‘scatter art’ and large-scale mixed media works are the norm, the traditional confines of the museum and art gallery spaces are continually under scrutiny. As a natural consequence, the methods of displaying art have transformed.