"The Language of Flowers" - Michael Taussig

Taussig, Michael. “The Language of Flowers”, Walter Benjamin's Grave, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006, pp.189- 289. 

I was fascinated by the territory Michael Taussig's The Language of Flowers observes. From an anthropological perspective he discusses human symbols of art and gesture, ritual, myth and objects which symbolically speak for what is indescribable, the mystical, in a way that language can not necessarily articulate. He finds a commonality among the symbols he presents -- flowers, cartoons, the ascephales, the fresh corpse of a hanged man, the mandrake and its myth of the little gallows man -- they each sit in an undecided state between the living and non-living, simultaneously representing life and death, the known and the unknown human realms.

   It struck me how closely his discussion relates to the images, objects and experiences Freud poses in his psychoanalytical analysis of the effect of the uncanny, which I will try to briefly describe here as: the effect of things that appear familiar yet simultaneously foreign, resulting in an uncomfortably strange feeling for the observer and causing them to a momentarily reassess their relation to the world and it assumed natural order -- an instance of recognition of the mystical.

Freud declares “it is undoubtedly related to what is frightening -- to what arouses dread and horror” (pp.219) and among the things he identifies as causing the 'uncanny effect' are severed limbs which appear to have life, life-like or living dolls, zombies, the double, the ghost, the automaton and momentary states of madness. Each, in one one way or another reflect Taussig's figures – they sit on the boundary of the living and non living, the known and the unknown and seem to speak to the human psyche as potent symbols.

   These parallels suggest a sort of universal aesthetic language, and I find it interesting, from this perspective, how much contemporary art is concerned with The Uncanny, or perhaps the language of The Uncanny is used to rationalize artworks which seem to operate in it's aesthetic realm. I am thinking of artworks such as Francis Upritchard's model of a preserved head, Untitled Head: Peter Holmes or Rachel Whitbread's arresting full-size plaster impression of a Victorian sitting room, Ghost, in which Whitbread essentially mummifies a living space (Iverson, p. 409). They both refer simultaneously to life and death and their enigmatic shifting quality seems to lie in this. I would go so far as to say that they act as symbols just as Taussig and Freud's do in referring to something 'more', something which is not present to consciousness which is said, in an instant, in a way that words could possibly not do.

Freud, Sigmund. “The Uncanny” (1919), Art and Literature, Pelican Freud Library, Vol. 14, London: Penguin Books, 1990. pp. 363- 4.

Iverson, Margaret. “In the Blind Field: Hopper and The Uncanny”, Art History, Vol.21, no.3, 1998. pp. 409-29.

Taussig, Michael. “The Language of Flowers”, Walter Benjamin's Grave, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006, pp.189- 289.

Beyond the Dualistic Art/Market Model- Isabelle Graw

Isabelle Graw, High Price: Art between the market and Celebrity Culture, Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2009, pp. 81-94 & 112-116.

In Beyond the Dualistic Art/ Market Model, Isabelle Graw analyses the intrinsic link between art and the art market, arguing that they are not irreconcilably opposite (p.81). Exemplifying this she presents a discussion of the 'successful artist' as the ubiquitous model of the ultimate entrepreneurial self and its absorption by the mainstream commercial sector as the blueprint for the perfect creative worker (p.113).

   This model evokes an image of the profitable artist as a kind of heroic, exceptional being who is so terribly clever they can succeed as a radical individual, a non-conformist, a person who can operate outside the regulations of the commercial sector, avoiding the punching of the clock of working for the man, yet achieving capital independence in an increasingly capitalist society.

   It suggests someone who is in complete control of their productivity, career choices and market destination. It's an appealing, almost romantic picture (which I would love to believe in!), however, it seems quite incomplete and naïve in so far as it is perceived by the mainstream sector. Ironically the picture fails to recognise that such success is concurrently, partly dependent on the multitude of variables and trends of commercial art-market, media and so forth that both consumes and reflects it. By varying degrees, talent aside, often those few who do make it commercially are either savvy at conforming to certain sectors, have lucky encounters or else once in the market experience a kind of hijacking to one degree or another by the commercial market itself -- which acts also as an agent to clientele and media and may not necessarily always reflect the artists' intellectual intentions nor representation. For example, what is to stop the latest buyers agreeing to interior shoots (including their art collection) for the latest Home and Garden magazine?

   It raises the question of how much freedom and autonomy the artist, once relying on the commercial market, really has over their production and/or representation? Many artists will admit to making 'sellers' along with works they find more interesting, yet less saleable; that they may have to agree to and/or align themselves with scenarios which make them dollars, but possibly compromise their intentions or politics.

   It seems that by varying degrees once an artist is 'on the market' and has a buying audience, he or she requires inclusion by it to live and to continue practicing, inevitably, they are also dependent and hence vulnerable to its influence of whims of inclusion/ exclusion, trends and media which are ultimately making them successful. The stakes are raised by financial success, therefore autonomy and flexibility of practice can potentially be limited by it. It's a pot-holed road to navigate and suggests just how integrated the art and its art market are. When I think of the money-art market I have to agree with Graw's remark: “it seems the times when artistic production offered a counter image to the world of labour seem to be well and truly over”(p.112).

 

Epeli Hau'ofa- "Our Sea of Islands"

Epeli Hau'ofa, "Our Sea of Islands", A New Oceania: Rediscovering Our Sea of Islands, Suva, Fiji: The University of the South Pacific, 1993. pp.2-16
 

In his paper Our Sea of Islands Epeli Hau'ofa appeals for a new idealogical/ linguistic perspective on the economic, migratory and geographic status of the Polynesian islands. He argues that the current attitude towards the islands' societies and territories as being too small, with too few resources and being too far from the economic centres of the world to exist autonomously (and are hence condemned to a perpetual state of wardship to wealthier nations) is a Western imperialist construct which is integral in propagating the very problem it is concerned with (5); that this attitude or 'metaphor' is a belittling language which potentially could lead to a moral paralysis of its people and could effectually lead to an apathy and fatalism symptomatic of those colonialized peoples who have been “herded and confined to reservations.”(6) 

  I found Hau'ofa's concern with language and how it operates around the issue to establish a rhetoric of power and belittlement very interesting. His example of the colonial Christian missionaries of Papua New Guinea referring to local workers and policeman as 'boys' and the Europeans as 'masters' as a means to “...establish[ed] and reinforce social stratification along ethnic divisions”(3) draws an interesting parallel to the imposed language of 'smallness' that is the current prevailing Western attitude to the Pacific Islands. He states “There is a gulf of difference between viewing the Pacific Islands as 'islands in a far sea' (as has been historically constructed by Europeans) to 'a sea of islands'”(7) as was the perspective of the Pacific people who had lived there autonomously for over 2000 years. He identifies the former as emphasizing an idea of powerlessness - tiny remote dots of land distanced from world economic centres, to the latter stressing empowerment- many islands encompassing a huge ocean area rich in marine resources, cultures and people unhindered by boundaries. He alleges the linguistic perspective of 'smallness' fails to recognize the actuality of Pacific economic and geographical enlargement through international immigration, reciprocity and commerce between the homelands and their new settlements and acts as a kind of colonial confinement.

  His paper is an impassioned entreaty to mobilize a more holistic, optimistic metaphor applicable for the Pacific and its people to reclaim autonomy within the globalised westernized world they now live. In this respect what I found myself deeply respecting about the work is that he aligns his writing with his political concerns and the function of language with in them. His style is inclusive and humanistic, almost story-like. He embeds his politics within his means to communicate by avoiding the dense and often difficult prevailing Western academic language and communicates his ideas and knowledge in an inclusive manner - paying homage to the myth, legend and oral traditions of Polynesian peoples whilst defying the exclusivity of the language of the hegemonic imperial systems of knowledge at work. He not only appeals to the “... rarefied circles of national politicians, bureaucrats, diplomats and assorted experts”(14)  but the ordinary people it concerns. He expresses this sentiment distinctly when he refers to historical relationships of dominance and subordination in his assertion “Keeping ordinary people in the dark and calling them ignorant made it easier to control and subordinate them”(4)

 

Fried, Michael “Art and Objecthood” Artforum, vol. V no. 10, June 1967, pp12-23.

Written in 1967 Michael Fried's Art and Objecthood proclaimed that the new emerging art movement of Minimalism was a plea for a new genre of theatre which threatened to negate art. That the work wasn't concerned with art itself but with the circumstances under which it was beheld by the spectator. He suggests the survival of the arts (as he valued them) had come “increasingly to depend on their ability to defeat theatre”(21).

  Obviously Fried's fears were largely ignored- Minimalism continued to 'perform' and artists have continued to make art but I find the piece compelling in a historical sense. It seems by identifying this newly emerging mode of art presentation/ viewership he unwittingly, despite being opposed to it, played a part in establishing a theoretical discourse for the ideas to firmly embed themselves in future activities. The idea that an artwork can conspire with its audience and its environment to be understood and/ or experienced as opposed to existing entirely on its own plane has become well and truly absorbed into main stream contemporary art- most obviously installation.

  In thinking of how artworks now so commonly operate in this way  I remembered my first visit to the Turbine hall of the Tate Modern. In its architectural makeover from power-station to contemporary art museum, the enormous hall has been reserved entirely as an installation space to exhibit year- long site specific works on a massive scale, acting as a kind of theatre. When I visited Olaf Elliasson's Weather Project was installed. The only light emitted in the hall was generated by a huge half sun on the far wall with its other half  reflected in the the mirrored ceiling. After a few moments of adjusting to the light and taking in the sight I looked down to see that the floor was covered in people lying down gazing up at their own reflections bathed in the strange yellow glow, 'experiencing' the art - Playing subject to its performance.

  The piece strikes me as an almost painfully ironic example of everything Fried despised and believed to threaten in the arts, functioning in the arts- Not only its theatricality but its size, emphasis on nature, the mirrored ceiling acting to make the audience aware of their own presence, its dependence on its environment to function and its temporality. And to add insult to Frieds injury, played out in one of western arts most influential contemporary art museums.

Fried, Michael “Art and Objecthood” Artforum, vol. V no. 10, June 1967, pp12-23.

Groys, Boris “The Topology of Contemporary Art”,  Antinomies of Art and Culture, USA:Duke University Press, 2008, pp. 71- 80.

Chris Kraus- "Cast Away", Video Green: Los Angeles Art and the Triumph of Nothingness.

Kraus, Chris. “Cast Away”, Video Green: Los Angeles Art and the Triumph of Nothingness, New York: Semiotext (e), 2004, pp.145- 150

When Chris Kraus describes the story of a student of a high-profile graduate programme who flees the seminar room and subsequently quits her course due to her advisor criticizing her work as 'too sentimental' and likening it to a Hallmark greeting card she writes, rather cynically, that “it never dawned on her [the student] that anything is permissible in the contemporary art world as long as it is pedigreed, substantiated, referentialized”(147). In stating this, she, an educator of such courses herself, openly acknowledges that a student studying by the typical art school model today can present almost anything as long as she is equipped with the 'right' contemporary art ideological lingo. Concurrently, only 'anything' will be acceptable and deemed valid by the institution if it is dressed up in such a way.

   This raises interesting questions about contemporary art education which generally, as described here, places critical attitude hierarchically foremost over attention to other aspects or modes of teaching. If little else is yet clearly defined about what post-modernism is, we do know by it's very nature of continually seeking self-definition that it is characteristically inward looking and self theorising. Developing theoretical critique around practice is obviously a necessary tool for making and talking about art in such a climate. But does placing it as the dominant educational model for evaluating practice and thus marginalizing attention to other ways of making and talking about art such as technique or materiality necessarily equip students for making art in an art world where, just as Kraus states, anything is permissible? And further, does it merely train artists in an ideological gamesmanship necessary to evaluate and validate almost anything whilst leaving them with a very limited skill base or ability to think about or make art outside of this inherent language?

   These are enormous questions and part of the problem that not even De Duve In his analysis of contemporary art school education, When Form has Become Attitude - and Beyond, can claim to be able to answer ( 31). But I agree with his suggestion that the current model which he describes as the triad of notions 'attitude-practice-deconstruction' ( 26) is problematic. That it is less a newly devised doctrine for attempting to educate in the art climate now, but a postulate which has evolved out of a subversion of its predecessors values -- he states “a mere after-image, as the negative symptom of a historical transition who's positivity is not clear yet” ( 31). It looks neither forward nor back but deconstructs itself and tends inevitably to place suspicion against those it has followed, namely the materiality/invention of the modernists, the technique/imitation of the academy. As a perspective for education I believe it tends to stand to limit the credibility of other ways to teach, think, learn and make art in a contemporary art world where there are, it seems, limitless ways to make art and ways to be an artist.

De Duve, Thierry. “When Form Has Become Attitude- And Beyond” (1994), Theory in Contemporary Art since 1945, Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005, pp. 19-31

Kraus, Chris. “Cast Away”, Video Green: Los Angeles Art and the Triumph of Nothingness, New York: Semiotext (e), 2004, pp.145- 150

Rakoff, David. “An Interview with the Artist David Fischl”. newyorkartworld.com, Oct 27 2002. Web. 2 April. 2011