The Modernist Inheritance by Catherine Elwes

The Modernist Inheritance



The Modernist Inheritance
Tampering with Technology and Other Interferences

The author explores the context by which video art emerged. By the 1960’s video, a new moving images format, became one of the most interesting media for diverse artists to explore. Since the beginning, video was defined by “the modernist aesthetic concerns” (p.21) that characterized post-war American and European painting.

What happened to painting and sculpture?

Artists were beginning to have less interest in the “qualities” of traditional materials, and less interest in the transformation of painting. By the 1950’s a modernist emphasis emerged on “surface, texture and the optical effect” (p.21) and the “truth to material". The materials weren’t required to represent something other than itself; they were simply to show its essence and its transcendence. Modernist art promoted an inclination of pure thought connected with “self-contemplation”. American post-war artists in particular received recognition for the production of art pieces in which the pure material was the subject. For example, Carl Andre showed an installation of bricks forming a platform, Donald Judd created metal boxes, and Richard Serra made steel slab installations in public spaces. Outside of the pure essence of the material, any visible intervention of the artist was censured, and with this traditional fine arts showed its possible annihilation.

The pure essence of material, as a signifier, defined modernism at that time and was the frame in which video emerged. In the beginning there was a preoccupation with process, lighting, filming, developing, printing, editing, and finally projecting. All the processes of creating a video were present and were revealed in the image. Video was considered as non-representational-however artists like Nam June Paik worked with video as something that represented the material by creating machines that interfered with their own technical process. Artists didn’t have access to the image directly without destroying the camera and turning the signal off.

The author refers to Marcel Duchamp, and his success in convincing a1917 public that his urinal was art, as an antecedent in the linguistic research of conceptual art. Conceptual artists could focus on a representational system that put order in objects and people and defined its value. In addition, conceptual artists demonstrated how these classifications were translated to the sphere of art and showed a cultural classification of what was considered art or not. Through their own practice conceptual artists focused on the displacement of the relationship between material and meaning. However the author points out that some artists used an absurd juxtaposition of materials and refers to the work of Meret Oppenheim who in 1930 created a furry teacup, or the enormous Mickey Mouse created by the American Claes Oldenburg. According to the author in conceptual art language became the axis, replacing the art object by “complicated and incomprehensible theoretical propositions” (p.23).

The production of video represented an interaction with a set of processes and machines defined by the artist’s or producer’s concerns. The image was produced through different machines, at a distance, however, according to the author, early video technology offered different ways of intervention. Video artists were interested in the exploration of malfunction, and problems of the technology to expand its knowledge about the “medium’s expressive potential” (p.24).

The Specificities of the Medium

As an introduction to this section the author refers to the French artist Cesar who created a piece in which he placed a set of televisions on the top of a pedestal and threatened them with a gun, as the first “assault” on television and portable video. Little by little the understanding of television and video gave more opportunity for artists to intervene and alter the image at the point of reception. Other artists with more technical expertise were able to dissemble the camera to alter it or improve it.

Television

In the first television sets, the image was scanned in a “vidicom” tube, which was a glass tube containing phosphor. In this tube an image was scanned - in 525 lines in the United State, and 625 lines in Europe. The scanner was activated by an electron gun, which bombarded the phosphor with electrons in a controlled rhythm. To create an image in the monitor, first of all the electron beam scanned the image and then the rhythm of the lines in the monitor moving 24 frames per second.

The first television set was in black and white and had a mono system sound. In comparatively with its weakness, the television offered visual content capable of holding the collective attention of viewers. The social response to the television was important, and soon become the substitution for many family activities, establishing its new social role. This substitution of family interaction for “bland narratives and establishment views of broadcasters” was the first element of exploration for artist. The author refers to the German artist Wolf Vostell, who in 1962 proposed several actions like changing the channel so fast that was impossible to see it, or burying it or eating it for dinner. With these actions the artist tried to smash the negative narrative of television. In one Nam June Paik, the artist used magnets to distort the television image. He also pursued the John Cage’s same idea silence and chance, and in one piece exposed the audience to their own breathing sounds. June Paik reduced the image of the television as a simple line of light. In its installation “In Moon is the Oldest TV” (1965), the artist modified the scanner so that the light on the monitor was reduced as a simple circle imitating the shape of the moon. In further versions of this installation the artist used magnets to distort the shape of the circle. In each of the twelve monitors the moon was re-shaped to represent the different stages of the moon.

Since the beginning, artists have been interested in intervening technology in ways of improving it or in a ways of improvising it to obtain specific results. Since the 1950 artists like Ben Laposky produced visual abstractions, using the distortion of sound waves with a “deflector plates attached to an oscilloscope” (p.26). The oscilloscope used the same principles as the television, and was susceptible to magnetic interference. By 1963 Nam June Paik used the same technology to create a hybrid machine. He created this set by adapting the output of a radio into a television. The amount of light was controlled by the level of volume.

Camera

The camera was the subject to all kinds of interventions by artists. The curiosity and the immense interest to discover the inside of the medium, took an artist like Douglas Davis to bury, smash, and finally throw it out of the window filming its own process of destruction. According to the author this basic form of “torture” were signs of the understanding of the internal workings of a camera. In 1975 the artist Mary Lucier created the piece “Dawn Burn” in which the artist exposed the camera to the direct sun creating a nice work about sunrise, but as a consequence, destroying the camera. In 1975 the German artist Jochen Gerz created the piece “Prometheus”, in which he reflected direct sun light into the lens using a mirror. The image was consumed by burn marks made by the sun. The author points out that with the concentrated use of light, these pieces revel weak spots in the technology.

Camera to Monitor, Video Feedback

The author refers to artists like Bill and Louise Etra and Ben Tatti, as artists interested in video feedback. They pointed the camera directly to the monitor, creating a “closed-circuit manifestation of the video process” (p.28). The author defined this as an endless process of re-feeds itself with itself, a “self-contemplation” (p.28). The video feedback was defined as a deconstructive device, or a result of the hallucinations of the consumption of LSD. The feedback attracted interest for its “ability to dramatize the imaging function of the camera as well as the perceptual processes of the artist.” (p. 28)

Sound Feedback

To exemplify sound feedback the author refers to the artist Richard Serra, who created the piece “Boomerang” in 1974. In this piece he used a delay in the relation between speaking and the image of the woman speaking, at the same time, through headphones. For the participant, Nancy Holt, video was the source and destination of the speech. The speaker became conscious of the processes by which thoughts were formed. Holt described the experience, “I am surrounded by Me, my mind surrounds me, goes out into the world, then comes back inside me . . . no escape.”(p. 29)

Sync Sound

Richard Serra used the anti-synchronization of sound to represent the destruction of what should be an understandable communication system. The American artist Bruce Newman created a piece in which the face of the artist in the image is upside-down. He said the same term over and over until he finally caught the movement of the mouth, creating synchronization. By the end of the 1960’s it was technically possible to create these effects, thanks to small technical advances in Portapacks.

Years later, the American Artist Gary Hill, in his piece “Why do things get in a muddle? (1984) made the image run in the opposite direction to the sound, creating confusion, even when the movie was played backwards.

Further Malfunctions

One of the most famous modernist videos used a television technical problem, and used it as an important resource in this work. The television sets, in the beginning, presented a problem of losing the synchronization and moving from frame to frame. The vertical and horizontal buttons were really helpful in synchronizing the image again. The artist Joan Jonas adjusted the vertical button to create an effect. In 1972 she created, "Vertical Roll" a video about herself slamming, rhythmically, a table with her hand, and synchronizing it with the vertical line scrolling over the image. The action seemed that her hand was pushing the vertical line of the frame. It looked like the impossible was happening, reversing the immateriality of the video image by climbing inside the technology and touching a physical component.

Feminist Art Theory. Politics in Practice. Video Technology and the Feminine (1992)

Feminism-Art-Theory

Hilary Robinson

In the chapter Politics and Practice, section on Video Technology and the Feminine, Nell Tenhaaf describes how women artists, since the 60’s, have been using technology which was originally considered masculine, and how they have appropriated it for themselves to create their own space out of the sexism of art history and practices in which they were marginalized. The author states that the use of technology offers a great opportunity for women artists to develop a visual discourse.

Willing Machines/Bachelor Machines

The author refers to Friedrich Nietzsche’s postulation of the masculine will, which is the central force of technology in the modernist era. The will of power is wound together with concepts of duality, the machine as masculine, and submission as feminine. The author explores Nietzsche’s definition of will: as a guide for the body to a determined desire, the will to power. She then compares the will with the machine. “Will has replaced reason as the highest mental faculty…Modern thinking ego is characterized by the I-will and, I-can.” (p.378) This idea has created a metaphor of modernity in which the body as a source of desire is separate from the mind as defined as will. The philosophy of the will determines the male body as subject to technological power, and a focus in the future. The base of the will is the duality of masculine dominance and feminine submission, and this duality determines the technology arena. The strong gender differences, as well as the will to power, frames the male controlled progress through technology development.

The author compares the “bachelor machine” with “Nietzsche’s willing machine which determine by will and desire” (p.379). She defines the bachelor machine as the result of desire turning into it self, and refers to Marcel Duchamp’s Le Grand Verre, and explains that both represent masculine bachelors and feminine brides as opposites. The bachelor machine represents masculine desire through the machine or technology. Le Grand Verre represents, according to Robinson, the absence of the body and the feminine. The author refers to several cases through history in which the bachelor machine became a signifier for different interpretative systems like the Einsteinian clock. Michael Serres determines the bachelor machine as a representation of the history of machines, however now the bachelor machine has moved into the informational state. The authors refer to Jean-Francois Lyotard who declares that “the growth of power, and its self-legitimization, are now taking the route of data storage and accessibility, and the operability of information.” (p. 380) The bachelor machine is delineating a ”mythical technological framework”(p.380) in which the male defines his self as the creator of it. The author refers to the difference between the bachelor machine and the willing machine, and she points out that the feminine is more present in the former.

Robinson states that both represent “male self-representation”(p.380), and they play the role of the god-creator. The product of these machines (literary machine, social machine, etc.) is going to be a part of the machine itself. As different from men, which has a presence as subject, a woman is not able to speak for herself; the feminine in the era of biotechnology is absent.

The author wonders “. . .how women can turn herself in the technological order,” (p.380) and refers to the proposition of Luce Irigaray of the creation of the autoeroticism engine in her interpretation of the female body parts. She states that autoeroticism is a site of empowerment for woman, and she explains that when a woman touches herself, she establishes a position in which she clams her soul, and the essence of herself. However, Irigaray brings up the fear of many for biological determinism, as well as sexuality as a definer of being female. Irigaray states that the theory about the body is important because “every part of the body confronts a set of social meanings” (p.381). Autoeroticism is presented as out of the context of the bachelor machine’s sexual frame.

Threshold

The author describes metaphorically the television monitor as something alive, as the frame of change from dark to light. She compares the cinema with the screen as the connector between the subject and the camera. This can be the bachelor machine - but an electronic one. The monitor is like a double-sided mirror: one side emits light and the other reflects an image. On one side we have the subject, which in the cinema is the spectator, and “the male gaze situating the subject within the dominance of the phallic”(p.383).

The author describes the insides of the television, as well as the video monitor. The electron bean hits a curve covered with phosphor. This action produces light, then with the shot of a negative electron from the back of the monitor, its passes through the neck to the tube faced by a positive voltage. Outside the images is discharged. Here the author brings a reference to Irrigaray.

Body Parts

The author points out the fact that many women artists developed her visual discourses using video, opening a space for the expression of female desire. The author then describes the video work of different artists, like Kate Craig’s Delicate Issues (1979), and she describes it as a powerful piece about body, technology and power. This is a piece about the female body, in which the use of in-focus, and out-of-focus, as well as the closeness of the camera, creates an effect of unidentifiable parts of the body. At certain moments, the work uses dramatic contrasts, and abrupt close focus on details like hair, skin, and eyes. The use of a breathing sound gives an effect of intimacy/closeness, and at the same time frames the different parts of the body expressing autoerotic pleasure.

Marshalore’s trop(e)isme (1980) shows the artist, again, as the subject. The artist puts her fingers into her vagina taking some menstrual blood out and then covers parts of her face with it. She then takes a cigarette and smokes it with satisfaction. In this piece the artist tries to state a taboo, and at the same time tries to break it. The use of video allows women artists to express an important part of the “absent subjectivity that characterizes postmodernism” (p.385). The author points out that this position has been an important point of attention for women artists working in the new media. “Women artist have been developing important work in the theorization and practice”(p.385)

The author writes that the use of technological media as a language of the female body is complicated because the body is absorbed by the ideology of the “idealized body”. The body’s fragmentation is questioned in the development of technology, when it can be replaced by the bionic body, and this shows how society has been controlled by the technological media.
By the end the author refers to the limitation imposed by the debate about essentialism, and according to her this debate doesn’t assert any difference. Here, she refers to women of color.

Janet Price and Margrit Shildrick. Feminist Theory and the Body

Feminist Theory and the Body

Lynda Birke

In Linda Birke’s article “Bodies and Biology” she analyses the central point in theorizing about the body: the difference between sex (biology difference) and gender (social difference). However, some feminist disagree with the analysis of this differences. Birke states that the biological body is a problem in feminist theorizing.

Biology is a synonym for living organisms and its processes, in this way human biology resembles dualism, and this is s problem for feminist theory. Biological discourse tends to provoke gender division, as well as the definition of the social roles of women and men, and as a logical response, feminism has been against biological determinism. They stand for some kind of “social constructivism of gender”(p.43).

The body has become a main point of interest for feminists and non-feminists alike. Some theorists tend to emphasize sex-gender dualism, emphasizing the living body, and “transcend the mine/body dichotomy”(p.43). The body is the “signifying and signified”----- In this way the body is defined as something through which you can have social discourse.

The body is important for feminist theory, however the focus on the interior and its processes have been limited, as well as ‘the body development” (p.43). Feminist theorists have been deconstructing texts and images, although the analysis of inside the female body’s images had been ignored. The author exposes that the analysis of images in biology texts are important. The representation of the female body’s interior is evident in the work of two authors, Donna Haraway (1991), and Emily Martin (1994), who presented a work about images of the immune system, and how this is culturally defined. The author points out two aspects of these two texts, one is about the analysis of the “cultural understanding” (p.44), how through the images and the discourses the immune system is going to be understood. The second one is “the permeability of the body,” (P.44) according to Haraway, “the postmodern immune system” is part of a network of bodies, and these bodies, through its permeability, is harassed by the “discourses of science”(p.44).

The author describes how, even with great interest about the body, there is a lack of interest about the inside of the body, and these areas are out of the reach of philosophers of biology. The author considers that the body’s interiors need to be exposed to cultural criticism and be considered as something which is moving, changing, and not only as a medium to analyze cultural meaning. However, the experience or the perception of the inside of the body is affected by culture.
The author points out that although we can highlight “human development in terms of transformability” (p.46), fixity concepts of “the gene” is gaining attention. These kind of concepts reinforce the conservative ideas of “family, gender and race”(p.46). Contrary to feminist intention, these concepts are expanding into the culture through the discourse of “genes”.

The author refers to the permeability of the body, and she points out the work of Elizabeth Grosz, who talks about gender and the organism as something fluid and transformative; the author refers, as well to Haraway’s work “visions of the cyborg,” in which she also talks about fluidity. She talks about polymorphous information systems, and highlighting fluidity across boundaries. While these two authors argued for female fluidity, Birke agrees with the two authors, however argues that organisms have an entity itself. Haraway uses this metaphor of fluidity to argue about this western idea that organisms are determined by genetics.

Referring to this idea of transformation is the social idea that female bodies are devaluated, and this conversation about self determining or transformation is a way to get out of this simple self vs. the body. This section examines several scholars’ views about the self, using biology theory in different degrees to talk about the self.

Janine Antoni

Janine Antoni

Antoni uses her own body as a primary tool- sometimes the whole body, and sometimes parts of it, such as her mouth, hair, and head. Through her body the artist explores issues like process, materiality and cultural perceptions of the body. She uses diverse materials to produce her work like chocolate, soap, etc. Performance is an important medium for the artist, however she didn’t intend to do it, she was focused on the process of making, and the process of production. In the performance Loving Care (1992) Antoni uses her own hair as a paintbrush, and in the performance the artist mops the gallery floor with her heir pushing the public out of the gallery. And with this she is trying to explore concepts of the body and power.


http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/antoni/index.html

Shigeko Kubota

Shigeko Kubota
Fluxus is an international group of artists, created in 1960. In this group were a mix of different artists using different media, as well as diverse disciplines. One artist who was an important part of this group since the beginning is Shigeko Kubota; born in Japan 1n 1937. Kubota stated her participation in Fluxus in 1964. During this time Kubota discoverd and started working with video.f Kubota is known as an important artist for elevating video as an art form. In 1965 she presented, during the Fluxus movement public festival in New York, Vagina Painting a really controversial performance. She painted over a horizontal paper using a brush that extended from her vaginal position. This work was referred to as a “subversion” of the Jackson Pollock technique of painting, or dripping paint over a canvas. The artist was creating a parody of the work of Yves Klein, who in his Happening of the 1950, used naked women as paint brushes. According to Peggy Phelan in Art and Feminism, “using her vagina as a source of inscription. Kubota questioned the western cultural designation of female genitalia.”(p.65)

http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/community/blogosphere/feministbloggers/2007/10/page/2/

Phelan, Peggy. Art and Feminism, Paidos

Whitney Chadwick. Women, Art, and Society

Women, Art, and Society
Whitney Chadwick

In Chapter 10, “Modernist Representation: Female Body”, the author points out that the gradual development of different forms of expression about the “self-consciousness” which defines modern art, conceded with the materialization of the first group of women artists. The artist refers to the “avant-garde” as the “dominant ideology of artistic production”(p.279) which was used to relegate women artists as has happened before in different times in art history. The author states that there never existed a female Bohemia or artistic myth of the woman artist. She argues that women don’t have a history of art, therefore, it is difficult to place, or name, or mythologize women’s art. The author argues that if expressionism and feminism are in conflict, then the relationship of some artists like Modersohn-Becker and Kathe Kollwitz to Expressionism is difficult to state clearly. “Stylistic innovation and monumental size”(p.279) leave the production of many artists like Georgia O’Keeffe and Frida Kahlo in an position in which art and femininity are opposites. The author points out that artists like Monet, Gauguin, Renoir and Picasso merge “the artistic creation with male sexual energy, presenting women as powerless” (p.279) and as sexual objects.

The author refers to Carol Duncan’s article, “Domination and Virility in Vanguard Paintings” in which Duncan makes clear the equalization of creativity and the male’s sex desire in the work of several artists who formed part of the Fauves, the Cubists, and the German Expressionists. She claims that “the vanguard myth of individual artistic freedom is built on sexual and social inequalities” (p.280). The subject of the female is diminished to “flesh”, defenseless to the artist and viewer. The female form is transformed based on the “sexual” desire of the artist. Whitney points out the importance of Duncan’s essay to argue about the representation of the female body. Duncan brings up the concept of the female nude as a form for male pleasure. Contemporary feminist art historians should further investigate the issues around sexualized looking, other forms of looking and female subjectivity.

In the modern art movement, while women were pushed out of the political and aesthetic discussion, many women focused on the female body as a principal subject. The author points out that many critics are split between essentialism and constructivism of femininity, as well as a “psychoanalytic construction of sexual differences”(p.282). The author states that in order for us to understand and get access to conceptualization about the female body, we need to access it through medical, art, and legal discourses. The work of female artists about gender, representation of female body, and esthetic conventions, represent important “precedents”(p.282).

Valadon and Modersohn-Becker were two important female painters whose work about the female nude form challenged the way the female form was represented - figures connected to nature, and controlled by emotions and biology. Critics couldn’t find Valadon’s nudes a “signifier for male creativity” (p.282), and for this the artist was relegated for her “femininity”. The author describes Valadon’s nudes as figures in control of their surroundings and of their own movements.

The author describes a change from the seductive femininity created by Symbolist painters and the idea of ‘natural-womanhood’ (p.286). The idea of the natural female body was developed extensively by Gauguin. Between the artist related to the German Expressionism there are Paula Modersohn-Becker and Kathe Kollwitz, which exposed a clear conflict between the modernist beliefs and the “social reality” (p.286). Modersohn-Becker had trouble trying to create images merging both experiences. Kathe Kollwitz focused on the production of social images. Modersohn-Becker focused on the term of “earth mother”, and through her models she developed an interest in embodying the “elemental nature” (p.286).

The author points out that critic Karl Scheffler states the incapacity of women to be part of the production of culture due to her connection to nature, and of course “her lack of spiritual insight” (p.289). Modersohn-Becker made this ambivalence clear through a poem and defined her ambitions as masculine. The author continues to analyze the work of Gauguin and points out the contrasting relationship between native women and the white artist in a “colonized society” (p.290).

The author refers again to Modersohn-Becker and Kathe Kollwitz. About the first the author points out the death of the artist after giving birth, and questions the disparity between the idea of motherhood and “the biological reality of fecundity”(p.290). In the case of Kathe Kollwitz she addressed the concept of motherhood in a “perspective of class and history”. Kollwitz through her work stood for the social purpose of art and in this way she broke with “the modernist cultivation of individual artistic freedom”(p.292).

Finally, the author refers to the surrealism in which the segmented and re-created female body became the “Surrealist signifier” (p.310). Many female artists felt attracted to surrealism for its anti-academic character, as well as its emphasis on personal expression. However, female artists were confronted with the idea that the creative role was only played by a male role, as well as the metaphorical destruction of the “object and subject with the violent assault on the female image” (p.310). Even though women made important contributions to surrealism, in many cases their interest in the movement was develop not for their political or theoretical similarities, rather for their personal relationships with male artist. However, women artists changed “the erotic violence of male artist for a magical fantasy” (p.311) and their images of the body were claimed as “Self”. Different images of the female body, in surrealism, were identified with a “creative nature” (p.311), and artists like Remedios Varo, Leonora Carrington, and Dorothea Tanning developed fantastic themes in their work. Eliminated from Surrealism theory, women artists focused on their own reality. Surrealism recreated women as a “magic object and sites on which to project male erotic desire” (p.313). The work of artists like Frida Kahlo, Maria Izquierdo and Leonora Carrington shows how the work of females artist is important and “the use of mirror to assert the duality of being, the self as observer and observed.”

Hannah Wilke

Hannah Wilke was an American feminist artist working with the body as major theme, more specifically her own body. As many feminist artists during the 70’s, Wilke used the performance as a central medium to develop her concepts, however she used different techniques like sculpture, photography, drawings, mixed media, and assemblage. The artist used her body or only an abstraction of it to develop her work. In many works, she used her own beauty to play with the concept of the “ model” and being able of the deconstruction stereotypes of femininity. In many pieces the artist used ceramic, latex or chewing gum to resemble vaginal forms. She used photography, drawings or other materials with these organic shapes. Wilke worked with different concepts like female identity, sexuality, stereotypes of femininity, pain, feelings and pleasure. In the last part of her life she documented and worked on a series of photographs “Intra-Venus” in which she recollected all the process of her disease, and her deterioration after treatment.