Apropos of nothing, I was struck by this passage from an interview with Hal Foster (via):
OH: Yet I think the problem is raised anew by new social art practices and relational aesthetics, art practices that are still very much concerned with the breakdown of boundaries between art and the everyday. How do you understand the curious persistence of that mission within contemporary art today? If that project is continued, what do you foresee as the repercussions for art as a specific genre of production?
HF: My sense is that one cannot decide once and for all between artistic autonomy and social embeddedness. It is a tension that should persist. Sometimes I am on the side of Adorno, and sometimes I am opposed. It depends on the situation. To me that is not opportunistic, it is simply being responsive. Even if the autonomy of art is always only semi-autonomy, it is important to insist on. Otherwise art becomes instrumental, which is problematic even if that means it is an instrument in the hands of progressive artists.
One thing that strikes me about relational art is that it treats art spaces like a last refuge of the social—as if social interaction had become so difficult or so depleted elsewhere that it could only happen in the vacated spaces of art. It was such a sad take on the state of sociability at large. I also felt that, for all its worthy attempt to work against the spectacular basis of contemporary art, there was a way in which it posed participation as a spectacle of its own. I suppose I am more interested in practices that use art as a guise or ruse for other practices altogether, such as pedagogy, say, or politics.
I suppose the easy joke here has to do with relational aesthetics being the last refuge of something, at the very least. But I find the note of pathos Foster locates in it to be all too real, if not a recommendation of the practice. I can't decide, though, if that sad take represents an actual comment on the state of sociability at large, a more narrow comment on state of sociability among those whose etiolated lives make relational aesthetics seem exciting, or (most likely, I fear) another burbling forth from a culture that, to borrow a phrase, fosters a form of assent which does not involve actual credence.
Lots more going on in the quote above and the interview as a whole, of course, to which I no doubt will never get. I would note before leaving that I'm struck by the apparent (to me, at any rate--I may be wrong) contradiction between Foster's gentle insistence on the (semi!) autonomy of art and his professed greater interest in practices that use art as a guise or ruse. A bit of a shift there.
Well, HF proclaims his interest in being "responsive" to changing social/aesthetic contexts in his first paragraph that you quote. So his shiftiness (as you put it)in the next one shouldn't come as a surprise. I'm not sure if this a legitimate position or not, but it is one with a certain intuitive appeal.
I'd feel better about relational aesthetics were people not using it to replace or distract from the more traditional practices of the visual arts -- which I quite frankly enjoy, and which make-up the better part of my background.
Posted by: Arthur | September 09, 2010 at 02:07 PM
Hi Arthur, good to hear from you. I think you're right, and if Foster had simply said it was a matter of judgment, I'd certainly have no objection. And I don't really have an objection now, I suppose--he's entitled to feel however he feels. But it still seemed to me like he was saying that he felt it important to insist on the (semi) autonomy of art mostly when he wasn't personally sympathetic to the particular variety of "social embeddedness" involved. These aren't matters that can be solved by an exact equation, of course, but I for one would hope for better criteria than that.
And really, a greater interest in pedagogy? Relational aesthetics may veer into the unbearably twee, but if this is all a matter of preference, I shudder at the thought of someone who gets more excited by that.
Posted by: JL | September 10, 2010 at 03:31 AM
Well, I'll admit to not having read Foster, so obbviously I'm talking out of my ass here. Certainly any theory -- formal or informal -- of artistic value is easily subject to being bent and twisted for impure reasons. I think the proof is the results -- maybe their coherance more than their accuracy -- and you may very well be right about that. Is there a particular form of "social embeddedness" that Foster demonstrably prefers? And how eregious is it? Pedgagogy does sound pretty drab.
Tweeness is a ubiquitous in contemporary art in general and I admit to being seduced by it in the past. (I think I'm growing out of it in my middle young adulthood.) I haven't thought about it, but there might indeed be something particularly bad about putting on social events (or travesties of such) in spaces that weren't really designed for it. But I'm not sure.
Anyway, good to hear from you as well.
Posted by: Arthur | September 10, 2010 at 03:04 PM