Contemporary art and illustration - Reading Group, - conducted by Dr Alison Rowley.

The purpose of this session was a small plenary group to help to think of Art critique through reading, and particularly here for the forthcoming exhibition and graduate show.

Exhibitions, the changing scene of management;

The most important recent change in the last 50 years or so, is the historical context of artists themselves, becoming curators. Prior to this time, curatorship was a separate entity and profession which usually came from an academic background of studying the history of art.
(The book entitled "Thinking about Exhibitions" is a useful reference).

Historically, for the past 300 years, art was presented in galleries, intended for the view of the wealthy. Within these vastly open decorated spaces, paintings were hung with just the name of the artist and perhaps a date of when painted. However over the last 50 years, particularly with the advent of electronic technology, we are nowadays festooned with headphones and an accompanying super curated description of the artworks, and therefore, the experience of observation alone is mediated by these recordings.

In the 1950s, the second wave of modernism emerged in the United States, with artists such as Jackson Pollock, Clouse Oldenburg and others, they completely changed the experience of visiting art galleries. Artists, for the first time, were given authority to present artworks in their own way, for themselves to critique, review and most importantly, control.

The most dramatic of these new 'experiential artworks' was the work of Yves Klein entitled "Void". In this so-called works, which was really a performance, it appeared at the opening of the show, that the artist simply jumped out of the window, - into the void, to the astonishment of the viewers.

This opened a fashion for the next few years within this second wave of modernism, and the work which is often described as situational or "happenings" emerged; for example see the work of Claus Oldenburg, entitled "happenings/soft storeroom".

The emergence of "the Gallery as an Experience" then developed over the next 20 years, where works held within them were organised with a need to interrelate with each other. The concept of the gallery as an experience today continues. Artworks being displayed together have to play off one another. They, therefore, need to build up upon a single theme, which can be, for example, didactic or political, or educational, or conceptual, religious, et cetera

Another major influence on creating 'galleries as an experience' was the work was undertaken by Joseph Beuys, the German contemporary artist in the late 1950s, initiated to a large degree when he performed his own works entitled "I like America and America likes me".
He created a spectacle in all its glory, which in fact was created through a sense of manipulation of the audience. Within this works, on his arrival from Germany at the airport, he was transported in an ambulance directly to the gallery in New York; and ushered by the ambulance crew to a waiting glass cage or pen in which a wild coyote was waiting for him. All that Beuys had with him, was a walking stick and the sackcloth. He remained in the pen with the coyote for the next three days and had to share food with the dog.

My own interpretation of this work (whilst cruel to the coyote!), was symbolic in the sense that Beuys may have been suggesting that the spectacle and glory of his immediate disembarkation into the United States, being confronted with a wild animal, and then attempting to tame it in shamen and ritualistic style engagement with it, may be an analogy; not too un-similar to the Europeans first landing in the United States and attempting to tame what they believed the indigenous Indians as savages.
Perhaps this was the point that he may have been trying to make? However, I think that this was completely lost on most of the audience...

Whereas in a mixed the gallery exhibition, by controlling the whole show from end to end, the viewers and spectators will take away memories of their own specific works with their own unique interpretations of what they like and dislike.

[See the example by the artist Daniel Boren, where he painted stripes throughout the grand colonnades of some of the major Parisian landmarks for an exhibition. His intention being to create a new "aesthetic" experience].

Thinking further about the idea of curators as artists, Arnold Bode was perhaps the first; he was the founder of the Documenta exhibitions held in Kassel in Germany. The significance of this exhibition space was that the castle museum, known as the Fridericianum, was the oldest in Europe that opened in 1779. The importance of its use for the new Documenta exhibitions was because the Nazi regime had banned the showing of artworks within this space and had banned Bode (a native born in Kassel), from practicing Art. Indeed, the Fridericianum Museum was later bombed extensively by the British and allied forces during World War II.  So the poignancy of rebuilding it to become a centre for the Documenta exhibition, 10 years after the end of the war and then subsequently every five years thereafter, cemented its future through to the present day as a key exhibition site for contemporary fine art.  Arnold Bode, as Artist and Curator, set this new dynamic.

The next major change in the process of exhibiting art, happened when the curators took over a space that was no longer being used. The Kunsthalle in Bern, Switzerland, had remained empty since the war. Harald Seezman, born in Bern was the local curator, and he had the weight and power, both politically and socially, in seeking, and getting the initial approval to use this space, and then attracting key artists in order to turn it over to them for them to exhibit whatever they wished. He became the Director of the Kunsthalle, and radically, Seezman got massive publicity when he gave permission in 1968 to Christo and Jeanne-Claude to 'wrap' the Kunsthalle itself.  This completed the change in the use of art spaces for exhibitions, and then in 1969 when the exhibition entitled "Live in your Head: When Attitudes Become Form" was held at the Kunsthalle.    This act in 1969 effectively changed contemporary art exhibitions forever, but the furor caused Seezmen to have to resign his directorship as a result.  In the art world though, Seezman wasn't harmed by this and went on to curate Documenta 5, in 1972.