30th December- Research- 'Revolutionary time and the Avant-Garde' by John Roberts
30th December (began)- Research-
Book quotes and reflections
'Revolutionary time and the Avant-Garde' by John Roberts
INTRODUCTION
'For it is president the avant-garde as a space of the non-identities tasks of revolution and modernity-Pursued from within the technique like challenges of art's post art status-that brings art's conceptual self-articulation (under the emancipatory name of the 'end of art') to self consciousness. In defining why this is so, we therefore first need to outline why Hegel, the 'end of art' and conceptualisation are. It such strange companions as one would initially assume. For a defence of the avant-gardens fundamentally about establishing an adequate periodisation of the modern.' (Page 4) Hegel and the ends of Art 'As such this post-Nietzschean expressionism has become the other, if less assertive, voice of the 'end of art' humanism's critique of theoretical abstraction and conceptualisation: contemporary art is sick and entropic because it takes away from the artists powers of aesthetic irreconcilability. Without the intense engagement of long-term aesthetic transformation in the studio, the artist is subject to the 'post-art' lures of weak subjectivity, and then, fatally, to the political vicissitudes of art as life. This is why, for Kuspit, the 'end of art' under the regime of post aesthetics and post-art represents the end of 'religion of art' in which arts necessary illusions prepare a 'gateway to the realm of spirit'. It is precisely arts indifference to the world that allows the spectator to enter its aesthetic particulars as a civilised 'sanctuary from the barbarism of the world' thereby creating a psychic space 'in which we can own ourselves and survive' (page 9)
When originally reading the above section of the book I began to think that the writing was very outdated and does not consider the ability of art. The 'spirit' of art can still develop with the modern conceptualisation. The 'end of art' is the depth of art and the surrounding socialisation not solely the once prestigious 'unearthly' nature of work. This aspect is in itself outdated as it is the western painterly work heals at that height and argued for against the developing 'end of art'. I agree, as is evident in my own work, that the individual viewers spiritual and inexplicable experience can gain more favour than over conceptualisation however not to understate the ability of the artist to do both simultaneously and effectively. Kuspits analysis does violence to the emancipation of art and does not allow a progressive outlook concerning new conceptualisation. The prestige of the art discussed is not allowing Hegel's view as the 'end of art' being expansion and renewal. The end of 'integral art' as Kuspit discusses is much more small minded than the overall concept. Hegel rejects aesthetic as an invariable norm against which artist quality and value is measured. Therefore Kuspits analysis is radically subjective and although allowing aesthetic value to stand apart front the political and conceptualisation aspects is important. Solely holding that as the 'gateway' to any more meaningful realm is reductionist and therefore non modern.
'Intellectual and collective self-recognition of human beings in the transformative processes of artistic production, or Bildung' (page 10)
'If the 'end of art' under capitalism is a misnomer (for art to transform itself prematurely into non-artistic technique is rightly to destroy its prefigurative or non-identities function as an emancipatory force), the 'end of art' as the non-teleological self-abolition of art as art is of necessity what drives the research programmes, multiple stratagems and temporal forms that currently fill out 'a positive notion of a reflexive and experimental art'. (Page 14)
The Avant-Garde Research Programme
'As Fredric Jameson has declared from a similar perspective: 'the productive uses of earlier radicalisms... lies not in their triumphant reassemblage as a radical precursor tradition but in their tragic failure to constitute such a tradition in the first place' in other words, the function of the avant-garde today is inseparable from the absences and discontinuities that it carries with it.' (Page 15)
I have currently also been reading Fredric Jameson's political unconscious. It is very heavy so takes time to fill interpret and absorb. However, seeing it referenced in other places assures me that my cross referencing is useful and the material I am dealing with is all intrinsically linked. The historical defence meant jones here and the historicism involved with the avant-garde means it can not exist without consideration. As with many things. However in a world of globalisation and linkage, the research surrounding this area seems laced with other directions that deserve equally as much attention. I am investigating how revolutions place in art was taken, held and revised throughout history. The avant-garde is inseparable to this.
'The avant-garde is an essentially 'suspensive' category under capitalism' (page 15) -John Roberts
The Avant-Garde and the second economy 'The second economy is that sphere of artistic and cultural activity that has little or no relationship to the primary economy of art: salerooms, auction houses, museums and large public galleries' (page 22)
The above explanation is what is hard to get our heads around as art students. Many of us have grown up in a type of system that has a plan for you as you leave that system and advance to be part of the market. Many of us have been raised to believe this is in some way the measure of success however this alternative field would be ever more enriching and progressive in solving modern struggles of justice.
Expanded field- 'many of these groups and artists affiliated to them have some kind of working relationship with the art world proper, in terms of participation on museum and non-for-profit spaces, and as part of the general dialogue and debate within the official art work on art's social role' (page 26)
Expanded field work has allowed creative sphere to grow and spread a type of progression through other industries. It created a new wave of artists and economic workings. Theology grows the light this and the social relations that stem outwardly also allow this to be readily produced. However, it is becoming ever more difficult to exist in this space and fully participate with the society around you. Artists shift from in market to project-to-project group work often loosing strict identity. Trying to exist away from the first economy, however the now first economy has shifted still. Through the Late 1970's which saw the Rise of neoliberalism and unregulated capitalism meaning that work is more casual and less supportive. Industry is using disposable job structures to produce the capital readily, similar to sourcing of the internal products. This is all hidden under the lie of a more free life and 'creative thinking' in terms of job security and opportunities. Responsibility, as with most things, is removed from any power structure and placed upon the individual.
The avant-garde, precarity and the crisis of the labour-capital revolution
Adorno- 'in a fascinating aside he says: a 'widely accepted notion.. [is] that art per se ought to be visual. It ought not' (page 33)
The avant-garde, Autonomy and Bildung
'Process more broadly identifiable with an extension of Hegelian Bildung: the creation of a space of collaborative (and self-critical) learning through the encounter with art. What is central to this tradition of Bildung is that art and intellectual labour and labour in the self are not opposed.' (Page 35)
'As a process of realised reflexivity, art has to bring its praxiological place in the totalising critique of capitalist relations into a cognitive relationship to the world' (page 37)
Belatedness and Transnationality
'That globalisation is a way of talking about not just the free passage of capital and commodities within a 'borderless' world, but also the free passage and exchange of revolutionary ideas' (page 43)
'Internationalisation of the margins'
Art, Negation and the avant-garde
'The challenge of second negation lies not just in the critique and removal of the old capitalist forms, but in the universal harnessing of free creative power'(page 61)
'Between first negation and second negation sits very much within this philosophical tradition as the place where we come to transform our relationship to the know in order to reflect on the unknown. As the horizon of the unknown known, the absolute.' (Page 73)
'Given that revolutionary politics is driven and shaped by collective actions and decisions, artistic-political work that seeks to participate in or redefine the nature of the political process becomes subsumed under this collective process, producing an inevitable instrumentalization of art's means and ends' (page 75)
Badiou- the truths of adr remain independent of the operations of capitalism' (page 83)
Adorno- 'the artists fetishistic investment in the artworks imagined independence from the commodity form' (page 84)
CHAPTER 2
Autonomy and the Avant-garde
'Adorno's promise was seen as a 'encumbrance' and 'embarrassment', today it keeps alive the untruth of capitalist rationality and freedom. This is because the possibility of the autonomous artwork is what exposed the false totality of capitalist production' (page 97)
Photograph- (page 106)
'Artist want to survive in a corporate-capitalist society, they must organise themselves externally'
'Artist-as-thinker' (page 112) 'in a shared process of reflection and research, On my way! High looking is never far away from reading and looking and reading are never far away from the extension of the artwork into an unbounded group dialogue'
'Adisciplinarity, then is concerned with non-standard applications as a way of saying both the boundaries of knowledge in art, but also the epistemological truth claims of the discipline employed or referred to by the art' (page 118)
Chapter 3
Belatedness, internationalism and the avant-garde
Pages 132/133- Richard Hamilton, Art &Language, Victor Burgin 'intellectualising of practices'
'Artist here doubles as a writer who functions as a researcher, who in turn functions as a collaborator with other intellectual workers and non-artists, who In turn contribute collectively, intellectually to the critical development of the work' (page 144)
'Thinking is seen as an intellectually Indebted process, social and collaborative. ' (page 148)
'The Scriptovisual is the place where the subject position of the artist-as-monad is challenged and dissolved. But insisting on the continuity between image and text, production and interpretation (producer and spectator) theoretical text and visual text, the scriptovisual locates authorship as embodied in the unfolding Intratextual and intertextual movements of the sign. (page 152)
'Since the mid-1990's, however, the cultural effects of neoliberalism have produced a sizeable counter-move, as a new generation of artists, political philosophers and cultural theorists have allied themselves to a realignment of the left after the anti-globalisation movement' (page 170)
Book quotes and reflections
'Revolutionary time and the Avant-Garde' by John Roberts
This book is incredibly intellectually grounded. Therefore it has been difficult to comprehend each section holistically. As I have been reading this book I have had to dip in and out of other research also, such as word meanings and implications in differing contexts. This has been difficult yet also incredibly enriching. I am now aware of the meaning of many words that sit further in the artistic sphere. I find myself familiarising myself constantly with the meaning and use of political terminology however sometimes I lack this in the artistic space. Although I consider practice and sphere knowledge to be fluid, it helps to now become more comfortable with other texts that use the same language. The discussions within the book are in depth and very considered. I have therefore been able to move away and form my own opinions before coming back to the book to read how each section is linked together. Hegel is one example of this. I was not particularly familiar with Hegelian theory before reading this book or Jameson's work also. I am now much more familiar with the inner workings of the main concepts considered and what has been said since about these aspects in connection with the avant-garde. Many times I have considered including the term in my writing or essays however, it is not until reading this book that I now consider myself as knowing what the avant-garde entails along with the implications of such both primary and secondary. (first and second negative). I have chosen quotes from the book, all of which I have not directly discussed or reflected upon. This is due to the fact I am still coming to terms with the internal concepts and discussions that so intrinsically link throughout the book. I have concentrated more on understanding the work and ding surrounding research than directly reflecting on the chosen quotes, this is to try and enhance my understanding of the timeline of events leading to modern day opinions and interpretation of the avant-garde. And, as a result, what this entails for modern day 'revolutionaries' or anti-capitalist ideology in the artistic sphere. As my practice sits directly under this banner.
'For it is president the avant-garde as a space of the non-identities tasks of revolution and modernity-Pursued from within the technique like challenges of art's post art status-that brings art's conceptual self-articulation (under the emancipatory name of the 'end of art') to self consciousness. In defining why this is so, we therefore first need to outline why Hegel, the 'end of art' and conceptualisation are. It such strange companions as one would initially assume. For a defence of the avant-gardens fundamentally about establishing an adequate periodisation of the modern.' (Page 4) Hegel and the ends of Art 'As such this post-Nietzschean expressionism has become the other, if less assertive, voice of the 'end of art' humanism's critique of theoretical abstraction and conceptualisation: contemporary art is sick and entropic because it takes away from the artists powers of aesthetic irreconcilability. Without the intense engagement of long-term aesthetic transformation in the studio, the artist is subject to the 'post-art' lures of weak subjectivity, and then, fatally, to the political vicissitudes of art as life. This is why, for Kuspit, the 'end of art' under the regime of post aesthetics and post-art represents the end of 'religion of art' in which arts necessary illusions prepare a 'gateway to the realm of spirit'. It is precisely arts indifference to the world that allows the spectator to enter its aesthetic particulars as a civilised 'sanctuary from the barbarism of the world' thereby creating a psychic space 'in which we can own ourselves and survive' (page 9)
When originally reading the above section of the book I began to think that the writing was very outdated and does not consider the ability of art. The 'spirit' of art can still develop with the modern conceptualisation. The 'end of art' is the depth of art and the surrounding socialisation not solely the once prestigious 'unearthly' nature of work. This aspect is in itself outdated as it is the western painterly work heals at that height and argued for against the developing 'end of art'. I agree, as is evident in my own work, that the individual viewers spiritual and inexplicable experience can gain more favour than over conceptualisation however not to understate the ability of the artist to do both simultaneously and effectively. Kuspits analysis does violence to the emancipation of art and does not allow a progressive outlook concerning new conceptualisation. The prestige of the art discussed is not allowing Hegel's view as the 'end of art' being expansion and renewal. The end of 'integral art' as Kuspit discusses is much more small minded than the overall concept. Hegel rejects aesthetic as an invariable norm against which artist quality and value is measured. Therefore Kuspits analysis is radically subjective and although allowing aesthetic value to stand apart front the political and conceptualisation aspects is important. Solely holding that as the 'gateway' to any more meaningful realm is reductionist and therefore non modern.
'Intellectual and collective self-recognition of human beings in the transformative processes of artistic production, or Bildung' (page 10)
'If the 'end of art' under capitalism is a misnomer (for art to transform itself prematurely into non-artistic technique is rightly to destroy its prefigurative or non-identities function as an emancipatory force), the 'end of art' as the non-teleological self-abolition of art as art is of necessity what drives the research programmes, multiple stratagems and temporal forms that currently fill out 'a positive notion of a reflexive and experimental art'. (Page 14)
The Avant-Garde Research Programme
'As Fredric Jameson has declared from a similar perspective: 'the productive uses of earlier radicalisms... lies not in their triumphant reassemblage as a radical precursor tradition but in their tragic failure to constitute such a tradition in the first place' in other words, the function of the avant-garde today is inseparable from the absences and discontinuities that it carries with it.' (Page 15)
I have currently also been reading Fredric Jameson's political unconscious. It is very heavy so takes time to fill interpret and absorb. However, seeing it referenced in other places assures me that my cross referencing is useful and the material I am dealing with is all intrinsically linked. The historical defence meant jones here and the historicism involved with the avant-garde means it can not exist without consideration. As with many things. However in a world of globalisation and linkage, the research surrounding this area seems laced with other directions that deserve equally as much attention. I am investigating how revolutions place in art was taken, held and revised throughout history. The avant-garde is inseparable to this.
'The avant-garde is an essentially 'suspensive' category under capitalism' (page 15) -John Roberts
The Avant-Garde and the second economy 'The second economy is that sphere of artistic and cultural activity that has little or no relationship to the primary economy of art: salerooms, auction houses, museums and large public galleries' (page 22)
The above explanation is what is hard to get our heads around as art students. Many of us have grown up in a type of system that has a plan for you as you leave that system and advance to be part of the market. Many of us have been raised to believe this is in some way the measure of success however this alternative field would be ever more enriching and progressive in solving modern struggles of justice.
Expanded field- 'many of these groups and artists affiliated to them have some kind of working relationship with the art world proper, in terms of participation on museum and non-for-profit spaces, and as part of the general dialogue and debate within the official art work on art's social role' (page 26)
Expanded field work has allowed creative sphere to grow and spread a type of progression through other industries. It created a new wave of artists and economic workings. Theology grows the light this and the social relations that stem outwardly also allow this to be readily produced. However, it is becoming ever more difficult to exist in this space and fully participate with the society around you. Artists shift from in market to project-to-project group work often loosing strict identity. Trying to exist away from the first economy, however the now first economy has shifted still. Through the Late 1970's which saw the Rise of neoliberalism and unregulated capitalism meaning that work is more casual and less supportive. Industry is using disposable job structures to produce the capital readily, similar to sourcing of the internal products. This is all hidden under the lie of a more free life and 'creative thinking' in terms of job security and opportunities. Responsibility, as with most things, is removed from any power structure and placed upon the individual.
The avant-garde, precarity and the crisis of the labour-capital revolution
Adorno- 'in a fascinating aside he says: a 'widely accepted notion.. [is] that art per se ought to be visual. It ought not' (page 33)
The avant-garde, Autonomy and Bildung
'Process more broadly identifiable with an extension of Hegelian Bildung: the creation of a space of collaborative (and self-critical) learning through the encounter with art. What is central to this tradition of Bildung is that art and intellectual labour and labour in the self are not opposed.' (Page 35)
'As a process of realised reflexivity, art has to bring its praxiological place in the totalising critique of capitalist relations into a cognitive relationship to the world' (page 37)
Belatedness and Transnationality
'That globalisation is a way of talking about not just the free passage of capital and commodities within a 'borderless' world, but also the free passage and exchange of revolutionary ideas' (page 43)
'Internationalisation of the margins'
CHAPTER 1
Art, Negation and the avant-garde
'The challenge of second negation lies not just in the critique and removal of the old capitalist forms, but in the universal harnessing of free creative power'(page 61)
'Between first negation and second negation sits very much within this philosophical tradition as the place where we come to transform our relationship to the know in order to reflect on the unknown. As the horizon of the unknown known, the absolute.' (Page 73)
'Given that revolutionary politics is driven and shaped by collective actions and decisions, artistic-political work that seeks to participate in or redefine the nature of the political process becomes subsumed under this collective process, producing an inevitable instrumentalization of art's means and ends' (page 75)
Badiou- the truths of adr remain independent of the operations of capitalism' (page 83)
Adorno- 'the artists fetishistic investment in the artworks imagined independence from the commodity form' (page 84)
CHAPTER 2
Autonomy and the Avant-garde
'Adorno's promise was seen as a 'encumbrance' and 'embarrassment', today it keeps alive the untruth of capitalist rationality and freedom. This is because the possibility of the autonomous artwork is what exposed the false totality of capitalist production' (page 97)
Photograph- (page 106)
'Artist want to survive in a corporate-capitalist society, they must organise themselves externally'
'Artist-as-thinker' (page 112) 'in a shared process of reflection and research, On my way! High looking is never far away from reading and looking and reading are never far away from the extension of the artwork into an unbounded group dialogue'
'Adisciplinarity, then is concerned with non-standard applications as a way of saying both the boundaries of knowledge in art, but also the epistemological truth claims of the discipline employed or referred to by the art' (page 118)
Chapter 3
Belatedness, internationalism and the avant-garde
Pages 132/133- Richard Hamilton, Art &Language, Victor Burgin 'intellectualising of practices'
'Artist here doubles as a writer who functions as a researcher, who in turn functions as a collaborator with other intellectual workers and non-artists, who In turn contribute collectively, intellectually to the critical development of the work' (page 144)
'Thinking is seen as an intellectually Indebted process, social and collaborative. ' (page 148)
'The Scriptovisual is the place where the subject position of the artist-as-monad is challenged and dissolved. But insisting on the continuity between image and text, production and interpretation (producer and spectator) theoretical text and visual text, the scriptovisual locates authorship as embodied in the unfolding Intratextual and intertextual movements of the sign. (page 152)
'Since the mid-1990's, however, the cultural effects of neoliberalism have produced a sizeable counter-move, as a new generation of artists, political philosophers and cultural theorists have allied themselves to a realignment of the left after the anti-globalisation movement' (page 170)
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